Streets of Laredo: A Novel (39 page)

He thought he might try one more question.

"I've heard there's a cave," Call said.

"It's said the Garza boy carries everything he steals, and hides it in a cave. Has anyone you know seen it?" "Nope," Billy said. He knew he had to be careful in his statements. If Maria found out he had said something that gave Joey away to his pursuer, she would drive him out of Ojinaga, or else kill him.

"I don't think there's no cave," he said, lying.

"He's taken a passel of stuff," Call said. "It's got to be somewhere." Billy didn't answer. For all he knew, Joey could have ten caves. Olin Roy had seen him carry a saddle into the mountains once, but that was as close as anyone had ever come to Joey's treasure.

"Well, I expect I'd better go locate Pea Eye," Call said. He looked again at the sprightly little girl, and turned his horse.

Later, Teresa took Rafael into the sheep herd and told him that an unusual man had come.

Rafael had been there too, of course, but often he did not know of many things that happened in his presence, until Teresa told him. She stroked her baby chicken and helped Rafael suckle one of the sheep who had just lambed and had much milk.

"I think he must have been the king," Teresa told her brother. She wasn't sure what a king did, but her mother had read her two storybooks, and one of the books had stories about a king.

"I think he must have been the king," she said again, as Rafael sucked the ewe.

Famous Shoes had not wanted to go into Presidio.

"The hard sheriff will arrest me," he told Pea Eye. "He thinks I stole a horse.

It was a long time ago, but he will remember." "We've got to have shells," Pea Eye reminded him. "If we don't get shells, we'll starve and never find the Captain." They'd had a hard trip across the Pecos country. The cold was bitter, and the antelope stayed just out of range, tempting Pea Eye to shoot time after time at animals he couldn't hit. They'd had no food at all for the last thirty miles.

"You're working for the Captain now," Pea said.

"You're like a deputy. Doniphan won't arrest no deputy of Captain Call's." But Doniphan, the hard sheriff, came with the one-eared deputy, Tom Johnson, and pointed rifles at them in the hardware store.

Doniphan wore a long mustache and carried two handguns, besides the rifle. The one-eared deputy had a red face, from drink. His life had not been easy since Billy Williams shot off his ear. People mocked him, and Doniphan, his boss, had no sympathy. As everyone on the border knew, Doniphan had been born without sympathy.

"We're here waiting for Captain Call," Pea Eye said, when he saw the rifles pointed at them. "We're both deputies. We've been hired to help the Captain bring in Joey Garza." "This Indian is a horse thief," Doniphan said. "He's escaped me once, because of a fire. He won't escape me again." "He's called Famous Shoes because he walks everywhere," Pea Eye told him. "He wouldn't steal a horse because he don't use horses. The only use he'd have for one would be to eat it." "Stealing horses to eat is still stealing horses," Doniphan said. "Start walking toward the jail." "I have never stolen a horse in my life," Pea Eye said. "Why are you arresting me?" "Because you're with this horse thief," the sheriff answered. "You might be a horse thief, too." Pea Eye went along to the jail. He felt bad about Famous Shoes. He should have come into the town alone and bought the cartridges. He had ignored the old man's advice, which was foolish of him. Almost every time he ignored someone's advice, whether it was Lorena's or Mr.

Goodnight's or the Captain's or Famous Shoes', he had cause to regret it.

Doniphan put the two prisoners in separate cells.

"Once I hang this old red nigger, and I'll get to it quick, you can go," Doniphan said.

"I suspect you're a criminal, but I can't prove it." The next day, several people came to the jail and stared at Famous Shoes. Doniphan had let everyone know the man had been recaptured. He decided to keep the old man on display for a week, as a form of publicity. His boast was that no criminal escaped him. Now he had recaptured the one man who had escaped him.

He decided to hang him publicly, as an example. Normally, he would just have taken him out and yanked him up and let him choke; normally, an old Indian with a taste for horseflesh would not have merited a public hanging. But Famous Shoes' escape was the only escape there had been from Sheriff Doniphan's jail, and he wanted it to be known up and down the border that he had avenged it.

Pea Eye's repeated claim that Famous Shoes worked for Captain Call merely annoyed Doniphan. He left the old man without food for two days, to show his annoyance. When Pea Eye tried to share his frijoles with him, Doniphan moved Famous Shoes a cell away, so that Pea Eye couldn't pass him the food.

"Why are you starving him?" Pea Eye asked.

"All he done was eat a dead horse, and that was years ago." "He evaded the law--my law," Doniphan replied. "He deserves worse than starving, and he'll get worse than starving, too." Famous Shoes said nothing. Talking to the hard sheriff was a waste of breath. He began to regret having left the Madre. He knew that his time was near, but was sorry that it might be the hard sheriff who put him to death. He had hoped to die near the Rio Rojo; even though he had not made contact with the spirit of his grandfather, the spirits of many of the Kickapoo people were there, along the river. It would have been a better place to give up his spirit than the jail of the hard sheriff.

Famous Shoes was old, though. He had lived past the time of his people. He knew that few men got to choose the place of their going, or of their coming, either. Only the wisest old men and women of the tribe were able to determine when or where to accept their deaths. Only the wise could do that, but even with those few wise ones, there had to be more than wisdom.

For wisdom, in his view, had ever been a downward path: luck was better than wisdom, while one was alive. It was mainly the lucky who got to die in the right time, or the right place, or so Famous Shoes felt.

He himself had been lucky, for he had lived in the lands of the Mexicans and also the lands of the whites. Both peoples hated Indians, yet he had lived a long life. His main regret was that he had not kept his last wife. She had grown dissatisfied and left him, just as he was beginning to appreciate her attentions. He missed her sorely for many years, and still missed her, when he thought about her.

Also, he would have liked to know how to read. It seemed that his dream of having Pea Eye's wife teach him would be frustrated. The one-eared deputy, who didn't hate him as much as the hard sheriff, let him have an old piece of newspaper that had the book tracks on it.

Famous Shoes tried his best, for what he thought might be the last time, to make sense of the tracks on the paper, but it was no use. He lacked instruction, and he had to give up.

Every time Pea Eye mentioned the Captain, Sheriff Doniphan got a cold look in his eye, and the look in his eye was not very warm to begin with.

"I doubt he'll show up, and if he does, I'm apt to lock him up, too," he told Pea Eye. "He's just an old bounty hunter--he ain't the law. He's too old to catch that Mexican boy, anyway." "Well, Charlie Goodnight don't think so," Pea Eye said. He thought that name, at least, might impress Doniphan, but the truth seemed to be that nothing impressed Doniphan.

"He's another one that's too old," Doniphan said. "These old buffalo need to be put out to pasture. They won't be catching no more swift bandits, and if they come round me, I'll send 'em home." In fact, now that Joey Garza had become such a sought-after outlaw, Sheriff Doniphan had developed a plan to catch the young robber himself.

The boy's mother had been in his jail once already, although Doniphan had been gone at the time, delivering a man to the penitentiary. Now she had gone to Crow Town, to warn her son, but she would have to come back sometime, and when she came back, Doniphan meant to arrest her. What his deputies had done to her then would seem like child's play, compared to what he meant to do to her now.

Next, he would find her son and kill him. There would be no capture and no trial. There would just be a bullet, or two, or three.

Doniphan didn't suppose it would hurt his reputation to dispatch Joey Garza; in fact, it would make it. After that, every border killer from Matamoros to Juarez would know that Joe Doniphan was a sheriff to be reckoned with. The people would stop talking about old-timers like Woodrow Call and Charlie Goodnight; when it came to modern lawmen, Joe Doniphan would be the first name that came to mind when trouble on the border was being discussed. The next time they needed a federal marshal to clean out Crow Town or any other nest of ruffians, his name would likely be at the top of the list.

Sheriff Doniphan was in the midst of just such a dream of glory when Captain Call walked in, with a Yankee at his heels. The one-eared deputy, Tom Johnson, saw him coming and quickly stepped in to alert the sheriff.

"I think it's old Call," he said.

"I've never seen the man, but I think it's him." Doniphan was startled. He had not expected the old man to appear. He got up and put on his hat. After all, the man had been a great Ranger once. Showing him a little respect wouldn't hurt.

Call had seen too many country sheriffs to be much interested in what he heard about Sheriff Doniphan. Presidio was a small town, in a remote spot on the border. Few criminals of the first class would have any incentive to pass through it. The man had probably harvested his reputation by arresting local thieves, or men who got drunk and shot their best friends. Local law work was mostly of that order. When told at the hardware store that Doniphan had arrested Pea Eye and Famous Shoes, Call had been irritated, but not overly so. At least Pea Eye was there, and the old tracker was still with him.

When he stepped into the jail, Doniphan held out his hand, but Call ignored it.

"Let those men out--you had no business arresting them," Call said bluntly. "They were sent to help me bring in Joey Garza, and you need not have interfered with them." Sheriff Doniphan was surprised that such an old man would take such a sharp tone with him. He didn't appreciate it, either. It was not the kind of talk he was used to hearing, in his own jail. The Yankee looked mild, but old Call didn't.

"I know who to arrest, I reckon," Doniphan said. "This Indian's going to be hung, in a few days. He's a known horse thief. I'm sure you've hung a good many like him, yourself." "Famous Shoes has never been known to ride a horse, much less steal one," Call informed him. "Anybody who knows anything about this part of the country knows that. Pea Eye has been my deputy for thirty years, and he's never been a lawbreaker." "He came into town with a criminal, and that's breaking the law, for me," Doniphan said, irritated by the old man's tone. He felt his temper rising. Who was this old fellow, to walk into his jail and start giving orders?

"Here," Call said, handing Doniphan a telegram. "This is from the governor of Texas.

I heard you were a stubborn man, so I asked Mr. Brookshire to have Colonel Terry wire the governor. I done it as soon as I heard these men were in your jail. I done it to save time.

We're provisioned, and we need to go. There's been another train robbery, near San Angelo." Doniphan took the telegram, but he felt himself growing angrier. He was too angry to read.

Old Call had gone around him, without even speaking to him.

Doniphan wadded up the telegram unread and tossed it on the floor. Tom Johnson, though well aware that his boss was temperamental, was appalled. They had never received a telegram from the governor before. They had never even dreamed of receiving one--at least, he hadn't. Now Joe Doniphan had received one and wadded it up without even reading it.

He hastily picked it up and attempted to smooth it out. It was from the governor, and it ordered Sheriff Doniphan to release Call's men and give him every assistance.

Call watched the sheriff, who had grown quite red in the face. He had secured the telegram as a matter of correct procedure. He knew that local sheriffs were apt to be touchy about their authority. Call supposed, from what he had heard, that Doniphan was likely to be touchier than most. So he had asked Brookshire to wire his boss and had used the time it took exchanging telegrams, to provision well. Again he had offered to release Deputy Plunkert from his duties, and again the deputy, though half frozen and permanently melancholy, had refused to be released. Now that they were back in Texas, Ted Plunkert felt that conditions were sure to improve. He resolved to stay with Captain Call, whatever it meant.

Call had not supposed that Doniphan would be obdurate enough to defy an order from the governor of Texas, but it seemed the man was just that stubborn.

"Sheriff, it is from the governor," Tom Johnson said. "Don't you want to read it?" "No, I don't, and when I wad something up, I want it left wadded up!" the sheriff said, highly irritated with his deputy.

"Goddamn the governor, and goddamn you," the sheriff said, addressing himself to Call. "You don't come in here and order me to let criminals out of my own jail." "They aren't criminals, and you've overstepped," Call said. "Let them out." "I'll let your man go the day I hang the Indian, and I'll hang the Indian in my own good time," Sheriff Doniphan said.

Call saw a ring of jail keys hanging on a hook near the sheriff's desk. He walked over and took the ring and went to the cell where Pea Eye sat. He saw the sheriff draw his gun, but paid it no mind; he didn't expect the man to shoot. After all, he had his back to him, and there were five witnesses in the room.