A Bullet for Billy (10 page)

“Well, your choice, sir.”

“How much is it?” I said.

“Three dollars.”

“I'll take it,” I said.

“It will turn a healthy man into a dope fiend,” he said by way of warning.

“I'll take my chances.”

I dug out the money and handed it to him and put the bottle into my back pocket.

The Cap'n waited until we were outside before saying, “What the hell you going to do with that?”

“Take it along with us just in case.”

“Just in case what?”

“You change your mind.”

“I won't.”

“Well, we'll have it along just in case.”

He shook his head and we crossed the street again to where our animals were, and he climbed up into his hack with grit and took up the reins and snapped them. I put the bottle into my saddle pouch and climbed aboard the stud and followed
along with him down the south road and the unknown, and all the while, I'm sure, even though neither of us talked about it, we were both thinking the same thing: how it was going to be once we caught Billy, and the Cap'n had to put a bullet in him.

T
he gun had gone off as they struggled for it. Billy said how he had to use the privy; it had worked before. Ira Hayes knew his own boy would have been about Billy's age had he lived from childbirth. But he hadn't. The doctor came out wiping his hands on a towel, his face hangdog, that blustery night so many years before with the wind slashing across the Kansas prairies like sharpened knives that wanted to cut everything in their path, a hard snow ahead of it that rattled the windows till they came near to breaking.

“I did what I could, Ira, but your baby boy came out of the womb lifeless. Tried to breathe
air into its nostrils, but to no avail. Stillborn is the medical term, but tragedy is the human one.”

Ira and his wife were always careful after that not to try and make another one. His wife was fragile as a wildflower.

“You think we should?” she said that first night months afterward, knowing he was lonely and she was too; the two of them lying there in the dark listening to the last of the winter winds crying as if the winter was trying to stop the land from being born again.

But already fresh grass stems were struggling from the rich earth. Nature, an unstoppable force.

He'd shrugged, full of doubt whether he was too old to make a child with her, whether she was too old. The doctor had said one more miscarriage could take her too. Ira didn't want to run the risk of losing the only woman he'd ever come to love. They had named their unborn William.

“I reckon we should wait,” he said. And so they had waited all through the spring and into the middle of summer. Then one day they were out cutting sod together to repair that same west wall the winter had nearly battered down, and it came a sudden rainstorm. The sky darkened the color of ripe plums and the air seemed to shimmer with something uncertain and became very
still for a time. Blackbirds hurried away from the storm's approach, winging their way across the sky. They could see lightning like twisted wire dancing in the distance. Ira remembered an abandoned bachelor's one-room soddy within a mile of where they were and rushed her into the wagon and whipped the team of horses with a fury. They arrived just as the first raindrops the size of liberty dollars began hammering down.

They huddled inside under a smidgen of roof rafters that still had some sod on them, and the storm quickly surrounded them with a roar and a fury that wasn't uncommon on the plains. At times the ground shook from the thunder and she clung to him, afraid, and he held her, unafraid, even though he'd seen what a storm like that could do to beasts and humans. He'd once been a drover on the long trails out of Texas when he was just a kid and had seen men and cattle killed dead by lightning. He had seen dry washes and gullies suddenly roaring with a wall of water that would and could drown a cowboy looking for strays. But he was unafraid, because he was a man who believed firmly in the fates—that if it was your time to go, you were going to go, and not heaven nor hell nor all the gods, Christian or otherwise, could prevent your going. He believed, and he told her this one time while they were courting, that a man's days are numbered
in the book of life, and when your number comes up, that's it.

She'd said to him at that time, “Are you a Christian, Ira?”

“No ma'am, I don't reckon so (this before he met Cap'n Rogers, who'd arrested him and prayed with him till he felt born again).

“That's too bad,” she'd said. “I was raised to believe in Jesus and the Holy Bible.”

“I hope it don't change things with us,” he said.

“No, I don't suspect it will. You can't always help who it is you fall in love with, can you?”

“No ma'am.”

So there they were now cleaved to one another with the rain coming in and her trembling in his arms and as sudden as a lightning bolt his desire for her flashed within him. The next they knew they were being intimate there on the ground of that old bachelor's hut, the rain falling in around them, the mighty sky dark and brooding, the ground trembling, and she kept saying, “We must be careful, Ira. We must.”

“Yes, yes,” he said. And he tried his best to be careful, but neither of them was sure afterward if he had been careful enough. Then the late fall arrived and trouble arose within her pert body. The baby she carried because he was not careful with her wanted to come early. He remembered
blood and water on the floor. He remembered her cries of agony as they waited for a doctor who never arrived. He remembered burying her in the same ground they'd used for a garden when it was planting time. He remembered how alone he felt and all the rest till he went way wrong in life and became what he became—an outlaw of sorts. Then fate brought him Cap'n Rogers, and it all got better after he stepped out of the prison gates.

He was thinking about all these things that evening as he sat playing checkers with Billy, how he'd have liked a son with her, and mourning the loss of his wife and the two babies she nearly had, both boys as it turned out. Then Billy suddenly said, “I sure got to use that privy, Mr. Hayes.”

Ira didn't see much caution in it. The boy was soft-spoken and respectful enough, and besides, he'd go and get his pistol and strap it on, and nobody but a crazy person who was unarmed would try a man wearing a gun.

Ira walked him out back and waited outside the shithouse door studying the night sky laced with stars like the sequins on a gown of a song-stress he'd seen one time at the Birdcage Saloon in Tucson. And as much as he reflected on the sorrows of his life, he was grateful for what he presently had, a good new wife and a baby on the
way, a decent job, and a little money in the bank. He thought himself a lucky fellow.

He was leaning there looking up at the sky when Billy suddenly burst out and grabbed hold of him quick as anything Ira could have anticipated. His fatal mistake: forgetting how old he'd become and how slow his reflexes compared to those of a wild youth.

They struggled for the gun and Billy wrested it from his grip finally, and aimed it cocked at him and said, “Don't make this harder than it has to be, Mr. Hayes. I don't want to shoot you.” Then Billy marched him back inside the jail.

“Just undo these manacles round my wrists and let me go and you'll be home this night safe in bed with your wife.”

“There sure is nothing I'd like more, son.”

Billy had the revolver aimed at Ira's chest as he used the key to unlock the manacles. And maybe Ira just didn't think Billy would shoot him. He knew if he let a prisoner escape, the city council would probably fire him, say he was too old for the job. Incompetent. If it hadn't been for the letter of recommendation from Cap'n Rogers, he might never have gotten the job in the first place. He sure didn't want to lose it, he told himself. He had Jane to worry about as well. Jobs were scarce as it was. He could wait and see what was to hap
pen and let fate take its course, as he'd always done. But maybe this was one time where he had to take a hand in it. And as he stared down the barrel of his own pistol, he decided fate was dictating he take action.

He made his play, and Billy pulled the trigger, and Ira dropped back like somebody had clubbed him. He fell to the floor groaning.

Bill shucked off the remaining manacle and bent over the fatally wounded man and looked him in the eyes.

“Why'd you do it, Mr. Hayes? You could have just gone on and let me leave out of here and you'd be…”

“Jesus,” Ira muttered and reached his hand forth to Billy, who thought he was saying an epithet but quickly realized he thought Billy was Jesus. Billy backed away, just out of reach of Ira's trembling fingers. “Jesus, where's Katherine?” Ira said in a voice so low and soft, Billy barely could make out the words. “Didn't she come with you?” Billy knew from Ira's having spoken of her that Katherine was Ira's first wife, the one who lost the babies and died in childbirth.

Billy stood away, tucked the revolver into his belt, and ran out the door. There were half a dozen saddle horses tied up in front of Avery's Wild West Billiard Emporium & Oyster Bar, and Billy jumped the first one he came to and rode off
into the dark just as several men came out talking loud and laughing. The men were cowboys off a nearby cattle outfit, and when they saw one of their horses had been stolen they gave chase but lost the villain in the darkness, and returned to learn that the sheriff had been murdered by his boy prisoner. It was what everyone talked about the rest of that night in every saloon, the killing of old Ira Hayes.

Doc Bunyon came and got the body with the help of his retarded assistant, Olaf, and laid Ira on a table fashioned from an old wood door with the knobs removed and set on a pair of sawhorses. Drained him of his blood and fluids using an embalming machine he bought off an army surgeon who'd used it in the Civil War, a dandy little machine made of copper and rubber tubes. He then sent the retard to Ira's house to ask the widow Hayes to pick out a suit of clothes. The town preacher had been notified of the killing and had gone straight to Ira's house and informed Jane Hayes of the tragic events and sat with her for comfort's sake. It was the preacher who answered the door when Olaf knocked and stated his reason. Jane Hayes was too distraught, and so the preacher told Olaf to go and pick from the closet what he needed. The retard came back with black coat and checkered trousers and a blue shirt.

“What about the shoes?” Doc Bunyon wanted to know, and the retard started back to get shoes but Doc said, “Never mind, he don't need shoes where he's going.” Then he trimmed Ira's hair around his ears and combed the rest down with rose water, parting down the middle with a rubber comb. He finished the task by waxing Ira's gunfighter mustaches, and powdered his cheeks.

“How's he look?” he asked the retard.

“Pretty,” the retard said.

W
e'd not gone a mile from Finger Bone when the Cap'n slumped over in the hack. I rode alongside and grabbed the reins and brought it to a halt.

“Cap'n!”

His eyes rolled my direction but I could see he was in a terrible way. A grove of cottonwoods stood just off the road and I led the hack over there, then lifted the Cap'n out and laid him under the shade. I got the laudanum out of my saddle pouch and told him to take a swallow. He tried waving it off, but I insisted, and he finally took a long swallow of it, then lay back and closed
his eyes. I wondered if this was it, if the Cap'n's string had run out.

He lay there for a few moments, then opened his eyes again.

“I'm sorry, Jim…”

“Nothing to be sorry for,” I said.

“Maybe this dope the doctor give me will take hold in a few minutes and I'll be able to go on.”

“I'm going to take you back to Finger Bone,” I said.

He shook his head.

“No, I need to go find Billy before it's too late.” He cringed, then took a deep breath and let it out again. “Maybe I could stand another swallow of that.” I put the bottle of laudanum to his mouth and he drank. And after a few minutes he said, “That's helping some.”

I waited another half an hour, then said, “What do you think?”

He shook his head.

“I'm not sure I'm able to move just yet.”

“I've got an idea,” I said.

“I'm listening.”

“I'll take you back to Finger Bone and let you rest up there, and I'll go on ahead and see if I can find Billy. I'll ride to that dugout on the river and see if he's there. How will that suit you?”

He slowly nodded his head.

“Maybe it's best,” he said. “I sure hate to leave this on you, Jim.”

“You're not leaving anything on me I didn't want put on me,” I said. “That was the case, I wouldn't be here now.” I helped him up into the hack, tied the stud on back, and rode him back to Finger Bone. I got him a room at the hotel and got him into it.

“I'll be back in a day one way or the other. If not, you know something didn't go right. Otherwise, I'll see you back here tomorrow.”

By late afternoon, along toward dusk, I came to the dugout the barkeep back in Finger Bone told us about. Just beyond it ran the river, glittering like broken glass with the last of the sun in it.

There were three saddle horses and a mule tied up out front. The dugout was long and low and had but two windows notched into the logs; one was covered in oilskin and the other had cheap glass. The doorjamb was without benefit of a door but had a heavy tarp rolled up and tied off above the frame I supposed was used instead of a door when the need arose.

One of the saddle horses was a gray, the same color the barkeep described as having been stolen.

I reined in and tied up next to the gray, then dismounted. I didn't know what the kid looked like but I'd figure it out.

I stepped in through the opening of the doorway. It was cool and dark inside, and it took time for my eyes to adjust to the poor light. Two men stood at the plank bar and one behind it. The rest of the room was in deep shadows.

I stepped to the bar and said, “Whiskey.”

“Right-o,” the man behind the bar said.

“You Terrible Donny Dixon?”

“Who'd be wanting to know?”

Terrible Donny Dixon had a blind eye—his left—that was the color of spoiled milk, and a long horsy face, a nose looked like it had been broken more than once, and a receding hairline with a widow's peak.

“I heard a man could buy some cheap beaver at your place,” I said.

“A man could,” he said.

“How much?”

“Twenty dollars, stranger. That cheap enough for you?”

I sipped the whiskey as my eyes adjusted to the dark interior of the place. There were two other men sitting at a table with a bottle between them watching me closely. They could have been on the dodge and thinking I was a lawman. Or they could have just been the curious type. My eyes
scanned the room, and I saw someone sitting in the farthest corner alone, but it was too dark to tell if he was young or old. He was hatless, and I thought not many men of this country go around without a hat on.

“Too much,” I said.

“How much you willing to pay?” Terrible Donny said.

“Hell, I don't know, where's the merchandise?”

He said, “Just a minute,” and went around the end of the bar and over to the doorjamb and shouted, “Maize, get your goddamn ass in here!” In a few moments a thin, emaciated woman came in through the door and over to the bar, and the other men watched her like she was a prize steer they were getting ready to bid on for supper. “Fellow is looking for some beaver,” Terrible Donny said. “Wanted to see the goods before he plunked down his money. Show him the goods, honey.” She pulled down the top of her shift to reveal two small breasts the size of pears. Just looking at her eyes, the way they were sunk in, the dark circles under them, the sallow skin, the skinniness, you could tell she was a dope fiend and probably not more than eighteen or nineteen years old, but looked twice that if you knew anything about dope fiends.

“Think I'll pass,” I said, still keeping an eye on
the fellow in the corner. If he came up out of his chair I was set on shooting him and anyone else in that stinking place who might want to give me trouble. I was tired and longing for home again, and I wanted to get this business over with soon as possible.

“How about two dollars for her,” Terrible Donny said. “She's worth a good two dollars.”

“No,” I said, “but you can tell me where your privy is.”

“Out back,” he said. “And that will be one dollar for the whiskey.”

I paid it rather than argue and walked outside and waited around the side of the dugout to see who came out. I wanted to see who the man was sitting in the corner and if he climbed aboard the gray. I slipped my Merwin Hulbert from the shoulder holster and held it in my hand down along my leg.

One hour passed, then another, and the land started to take on the shadows of night, and I could hear the woman inside laughing at something, then heard something break, like glass. I heard Terrible Donny curse at something. His voice was distinct, nasal and high-pitched like you might think a man would talk who had had his nuts cut off. Then right after the sun set completely, throwing off the last of its light against a
gunmetal sky, and buttery light fell through the two windows out into the darkness, a lone figure stepped out of the dugout and went straight for the gray.

I stepped out of the shadows and said, “Billy Rogers.”

He paused, one hand on the saddle horn, staring over the back of the horse.

“You got me confused with someone, mister,” he said.

“I'm here to arrest you,” I said.

The horse was between us.

“No mister, you've got me confused with someone else. My name's not Billy Rogers.”

“What is it then?”

He hesitated just a moment too long, enough to have to think up an alias, and I knew without a doubt it was him.

“Jardine,” he said. “That's my name, Jardine Frost.”

“Step away from that horse.”

“No sir, I can't.”

“You can go hard or you can go easy, son.”

“Fuck, I don't guess I'll be going at all!”

He jerked the reins free of the hitching post and spooked the horse so that it twisted and reared, and when it did a blaze of light flashed and I felt the kid's slug go through the sleeve of
my shirt between my left elbow and wrist, even as I brought up my own piece and fired back.

My first slug took his horse. It reared, then fell dead. My second slug knocked the kid down but he scrambled to his feet again and ducked into the dugout. I could hear him inside shouting at the others to back away or die. Then there was a burst of gunfire, something big—like a scattergun and two bangs from a pistol. Several men came rushing out with their hands in the air shouting, “Don't shoot! Don't shoot!”

I collared one and said, “What's happened inside?”

He stuttered that Terrible Donny had pulled his sawed-off from behind the bar aiming to kill the kid but that the kid shot him first and Terrible Donny's shotgun blast had taken off the top of the whore's head.

“Jeez Christ!” he said. “Jeez Christ! Poor Maize!”

I turned him loose, and he ran away like a frightened dog.

I ran over and jerked my Henry from its scabbard and unloaded all sixteen shots in through the windows in rapid order. I wanted the kid to know I wasn't fooling around.

“I'm here on behalf of your granddaddy, Gus Rogers,” I called when the last shot's echo died.
“You want to come out of there walking or feet first, it doesn't matter to me. But you ought to know Gus isn't going to save you. He's dying.”

There was a long silence.

“Who you?” he said.

“Not that it matters, but my name is Jim Glass. I used to Ranger for your granddaddy.”

“How I know you won't shoot me?”

“I just come to get you, kid, take you to him, is all. I've got no reason to shoot you unless you give me one.”

“He come to help save Sam?”

“He did, but he's sick as hell in a town north of here a little ways.”

“You said you come to arrest me, earlier.”

“Arrest, get, what's the difference? You look around and tell me if there's not been enough killing here today.”

“They'll just hang me if I give up,” he said. “Might as well go out guns blazing.”

“I don't know, kid. One way, you might stand a chance with a jury, but with me, you'll stand no chance at all. Your choice, but I'm not going to sit out here all night. I'm going to come in there and get you if I have to. I've done this sort of work before, and trust me, I'm good at it.”

All the while I was reloading the Henry, not to try and kill the boy, but show him some of the ef
fect of no-holds-barred warfare. I slipped the last round into the magazine and emptied it again into the building as fast as I could lever and shoot.

Then I waited a moment till the silence surrounded us and said, “Well, you coming out or not?”