A Bullet for Billy (14 page)

B
illy visibly stiffened when we he saw the town rising up before us. At this distance, it seemed innocent enough. But then lots of things, women and towns and men included, seem innocent enough if you're standing a long way away from them.

“Hold your water, kid. This might not seem as bad as what you imagine it to be.” I needed to do my level best to keep him calm, to keep the situation contained. Because if it got out of hand, it wasn't only the kid that might end up dead, and I sure didn't want to become a corpse in a place called City of Fools.

“How'd you know how bad it's not going to be,” he groused. “Anybody ever kill you before? Especially some goddamn Mescan
Ruale
.”

“You got a point, kid. I wouldn't know. But I
made your grandfather a promise, and I aim to see it through.”

“Least give me a gun, give me a fighting chance.”

“You think having a gun would give you a fighting chance against a company of
Ruales
?”

“It'd be something.”

“Something is all it
would
be.”

“How you know they're not going to kill us all, you included?”

“I don't. But if what your grandfather said about him and the General being pals back in the old days is true, maybe he'll cut some slack for your brother.”

“Yeah, and maybe that sum bitch won't either.”

“Chance we'll have to take,” I said, feeling about as uneasy as I've ever felt riding into an uncertain situation with the only promise being that there'd be some bloodletting.

I saw a man packing a burro and paused and said, “
Dónde está la oficina de los Ruales?
”

He was tying a diamond hitch on a load that looked like all the burro could stand.

He pointed up the street and said in Spanish that the Ruales were located mid-block center of town. I thanked him and spurred my mount ahead, still leading Billy's by the reins. He seemed resigned to his fate when I last looked back at him.

There were Ruales standing out front of the General's office in tan uniforms when we rode up. Billy said, “The jail's in back.”

The Ruales were smoking, talking about something, but stopped when we reined in. One of them seemed to recognize Billy and quick ran inside and returned in a moment with a rifle in his hands and the General on his heels. His hair was uncommonly black for a man his age. His mustaches guarded the corners of his mouth and down past his chin.

“What's this?” he said with feigned surprise as he stared at Billy.

“I've come on behalf of Gus Rogers,” I said. “You remember Gus Rogers, don't you, General?”

He looked at me with a baleful stare, then signaled to his men, who stepped forward to take Billy off his horse.

“Not yet,” I said, raising the shotgun from where it had been resting across my pommel to let the stock rest atop my right thigh. “Tell your men to hold off.”

He raised a hand.

“He is my prisoner,” he said. “He escaped from my jail after murdering my child.”

“He will be in your jail once again after we make the exchange for the one you're holding—young Sam Rogers.”

The General got a look on his face as if someone had just whispered something pleasant in his ear.

“Where is my old friend Gus?” he said.

“Dead and buried north of here, not far if you want to pay him a visit—little town called Gonzales. Ask for the German, he'll show you the grave.”

The smile dropped away.

“Did you kill him?”

“No, he killed himself.”

The smile that had gone away turned into a frown.

“This I find hard to believe, a man like him,” he said.

“Believe what you will. He asked me to fulfill his mission if he couldn't. That's why I'm here instead of back home in a warm bed with a full belly of beef.”

“What is your name?”

“Not that it makes any difference,” I said. “But it's Jim Glass. I'm not here for a social visit. Let's get this done if we're going to do it.”

“First you give me him, then I will give you the other one,” he said.

“No, that's not how this is going to work.”

He snorted his derision.

“Who are you to dictate the terms? I have
enough men here to kill you and take him. You're just one man.”

I leveled the L. C. ten-gauge so that the thick black barrels were aimed directly at the General's chest. And when I thumbed back the hammers, it gave you the same feeling you get when you're walking through the brush and hear the buzz of a rattlesnake real close and you're not sure where it's at, whether you've taken one step too many.

“That's true,” I said. “I am only one man, but I'm man enough to take you and some of these Ruales out with me if that's what you want. You can go get that boy or go to fighting.”

The Ruales around him shuffled their feet nervously till he waved them to stand still.

He showed me both his palms.

“I done what you asked the Cap'n to do,” I said. “I brought you this boy in exchange for the other one. Now let's trade or let's do whatever it is you've got in mind, but I'm not sitting here all day in this fucking hot sun.”

He looked at those empty black holes of the L. C. and I guess it made him rethink his plans just as it surely would mine if he was holding that bad gun instead of me. Finally he assented with the dip of his head toward one of his men.

“Go and get the boy,” he said.

“One more thing,” I said.

He held his chin at a stately angle, raised so that now he was looking down his nose at me.

“That boy needs some medical attention. I expect you to do whatever it is you're planning to do it with some sense of decency.”

“All matters will be done with proper attention,” he said. He might as well have said Queen Victoria ruled England, for all the difference it would make.

The kid they brought out was smallish, baby-faced, and in a stupor till he looked up and saw Billy astraddle the horse.

“Billy…” he uttered.

“Sam. They're swapping me for you. This fellow will take you home. You're safe now.”

“No,” Sam said. “I'm not going to leave you.”

Billy got down off his horse gritting his teeth and said, “Go on now, get away from here and this dirty business. Do it before something upsets the applecart.”

Sam began to sob.

“Be a man,” Billy said sternly. “I taught you anything, it was to be a man. Now git.”

The General and his Ruales stood watching, listening, waiting for a mistake to be made. You been doing what I've done most of my life, you can tell if a man is full of bad intentions. It wouldn't take much to start a shooting scrap that would leave the sidewalks bloody and several of us dead. But
I had no choice, I was already in it too deep to do anything other than stand my ground.

“Get on the horse, Sam,” I said.

“No.”

“Get on the goddamn horse, boy.”

“Go on,” Billy said again, pushing Sam toward the horse. “Go and tell Ma what happened here. Take care of her, Sam. I'm sorry I got you into all this.”

Sam did a slow shuffle to the horse.

“Hurry it along there, kid,” I said. The air was so thick with men wanting to let blood, you could cut it with a knife.

The Ruales took Billy in hand.

“There, you see,” General Toro said. “We are both men who keep our promises, eh.”

I gave Billy one last glance. He stared at me without a hint of worry in his gaze. I said to Sam without taking my eyes or the double barrels off the General, “Ride up the street that way, and don't dawdle. Ride fast and I'll catch up with you. Don't stop and don't turn around. And if something bad happens, keep riding till you cross the river and don't even stop then.”

“Yes sir,” he uttered and kicked his horse into a trot, then a gallop.

It left me, the General, and five of his Ruales–what you call a Mexican showdown, only I wasn't wanting to turn this into something bloody.

“Then our business is finished,” the General said.

“It's finished,” I said and backed my horse up far enough, then reined it round quick and spurred it into a full-out gallop.

Nobody took a shot at me. I was a little surprised they hadn't.

I caught up quickly enough with the little brother, whose horse was a lot less horse than the stud.

“Hold up!” I shouted, and he sawed back on the reins.

“I thought you told me to keep riding?”

“I did. But now I want you to stop a second.”

He looked at me with the confusion of a boy who'd just escaped death and couldn't understand why.

“What'd they do to you back there in that jail?” I said.

“Beat me like blue blazes…”

“What else?”

“Said they were going to shoot me, made me watch them execute the man who let Billy escape. The brought in the General's wife and she spit in my face. Kept telling me how my day was coming, how I'd bawl like a woman when it was my turn.”

“That's if they didn't get Billy back, right?”

He shook his head.

“Said they'd get Billy and kill us both, and Granddaddy too if he put up a fuss. They wasn't ever planning on letting me live.”

“You certain that's what they said?”

“I swear to God, mister.”

“One more question, boy. Did you or your brother have anything to do whatsoever with the death of the General's girl?”

“No sir. We found her stabbed and Billy and me did the best we could to save her. We had her blood all over us, but it wasn't because we were trying to hurt her none.”

It was the same story Billy had told. They could have gotten together and made it up, but I doubted it; neither of them seemed that clever.

“You think you can reach the river on your own? You just have to stay on this road and keep going.”

He nodded.

“What about you?” he said.

“I got something I need to do.” I took out Gus's watch, wallet, and badge and handed them to him along with Gus's fancy pistol.

“These belonged to your granddaddy,” I said.

“Where's my granddaddy at?”

“North of here, buried in the ground. He did what he could for you, he just ran out of time.”

“I hardly remember him,” he said.

“You have your mama tell you about him when
you get home again. First town you hit that has a train station, you sell that horse and use the money and some of what's in that wallet and buy you a ticket home. You understand?”

“Yes sir.”

“And don't ever come back across that river again—leastways till you're a man and can make up your own mind.”

“Yes sir.”

I slapped the rump of his horse, shouting, “Git,” and sat until I saw he wasn't going to stop again. Then I turned the stud back around.

Shit, I was almost forty-six years old and not getting any younger and there was this kid in a jail they were going to shoot over nothing at all.

I just couldn't ride away from that. Even though I should, I couldn't.

A
s if it were some sort of Greek tragedy, the kind I'd seen performed in Dodge City when I was a young buckaroo, the sky grew ominously dark again, and raindrops the size of silver dollars splatted down, a few at first, then more, smaller but more intense as I rode back toward the town of Ciudad de Tontos.

But I thought the only fool in this whole business was me.

I rode at a walk, steady, determined, the stock of the shotgun resting against my thigh, both hammers cocked, ready to do some mean business if required, and it surely would be this day before the sun set again beyond those stormy clouds.

The storm had chased everyone indoors, and as I rode past the business establishments I could see faces looking out—clerks, bankers, hardware
salesmen, men in the cantina standing in the open doorway under the shelter of a roof, leaning there with their bottles and glasses in their hands. Men in tall sombreros stood under the eaves with the rain dripping off, some of them held glasses of beer like it was a show.

I rode down past the first block of buildings, a stable with a corral with no horses in it; a blacksmith's whose forge showered sparks as he fired the steel; a gunsmith's with a
CERRADO
sign in the window. The old man who been packing his burro stood in the rain, his serape heavy and wet about his shoulders, looked directly into my eyes as if he knew what was about to happen. He turned, untied his burro from the hitching post, and walked the other direction.

I crossed the only intersection in town, Segunda Calle—Second Street—and kept my attention fixed ahead. I saw a kid standing under the eaves in front of a barbershop. He stared at me like I was the devil incarnate, or Jesus Christ himself. He was a kid that would someday, if he was lucky, grow to be a man, maybe even an old man. I reined in and told him to get off the street. He was hesitant to go. I gave him two bits. He ran like hell.

I tied off the stud. The
Ruale
office was just across the street two doors down. I could see
lights on inside. I didn't want to think what they were doing to Billy.

I had the shotgun and I had a pistol and either I'd get the job done or I wouldn't.

Rain fell out of the black heavens.

I crossed the street.

I didn't bother to knock. I just turned the knob and went in fast.

The General and two of his Ruales were sitting there drinking from a bottle of tequila. I leveled the ten-gauge.

They all looked surprised.

“I come to get the kid,” I said.

The General looked at me with a great amount of empathy.

“You already have him,” he said evenly.

“The other one—Billy,” I said.

“Oh, but that is not possible,” he said. I had to admit, the son of a bitch was a cool customer, showed no fear whatsoever. The other two weren't quite so calm. I could see the fear in their eyes and they had every right to be afraid.

“Yes, it is possible,” I said. “Nobody has to get killed here. That boy didn't have anything to do with your daughter's death.”

“So you say, Señor. But you see, my men here, they caught him with her blood on them. And he has confessed to as much. There is no injustice
here, no reason for you to act like this. Gus, he would have understood it—what a man must do to remove the stain of dishonor from his family name.”

“I'm saying he's innocent. Now let's go and get him out of your goddamn jail.”

Still, the General did not make any move to do as ordered. I looked at one of the two with him—the one who showed the most fear—and said. “You want to live, you son of a bitch?”

I could tell he didn't understand so I said it again in Spanish so he would understand: “
Usted desea vivir usted hijo de una perra?”

“Sí, sí.”

So I told him to get the keys and go get the kid.

He started to but the General ordered him to halt. Told him who did he think his boss was, the General or me? The
Ruale
looked caught between a rock and a hard place, which is exactly where he was.

I moved a step and put the barrels of the L. C. right against his neck.

“Do it!” I said.

“You think even if we give you the boy we're going to just let you ride across the river to del Norte?” the General said. “We will hunt you down like rabbits.”

“I'll take my chances.”

He motioned for one of the Ruales to get the keys and he opened a desk drawer, and I told him to come out easy, and he did with a large key on a metal ring. I marched all three to the back of the place where Billy lay on his side on the cot.

“Get up,” I said.

For some reason he didn't seem surprised to see me. He eased himself up holding his busted shoulder.

“I didn't think no kind of man who was a friend of my granddaddy would just ride off and let these Mescan sons of bitches murder me,” he said with a whoop as if he'd just won first prize in a pie-eating contest.

I told the
Ruale
to open the door, intending to put the three of them inside while the kid and me got a jump start on them, but just then three more Ruales came busting through the door with pistols cocked and ready and I didn't have any choice but to pull the triggers of that L. C., knocking them down like tenpins. The L. C. roared like thunder in that small room, so loud it made your ears ring. But just that quick the General and his two boys were all over me before I could pull my pistol and I knew if they got me to the ground, it was all over.

I slammed an elbow into one face and threw a crushing right-hand fist into the face of the other. But the General had a hard grip on me,
his forearm from behind around my throat, trying to choke me out. He was a strong son of a bitch, I'll give him that, and we fought out into the other room, mostly him choking and me trying to break his grip.

I heard Billy yell something and a struggle still going on inside the cell area, but I had my hands too full to help him. He was on his own now.

My wind cut off, I was starting to lose my strength, which only encouraged the General to choke down that much harder. I had maybe thirty seconds before I'd go under.

I took him out through the plate-glass window with one mighty push, hoping to break his grip.

We crash landed on the wet walk outside and rolled into the muddy street and it momentarily loosened his chokehold on me enough so I could gasp some air. I reached for my pistol, but it wasn't in the scabbard. I'd lost it somewhere in the struggle.

I heard three sharp reports from inside the office—gunfire!

It was then I looked up and was staring down the barrel of the General's own pistol—a nickel-plated Smith & Wesson Russian model, like the one the Captain carried, and I wondered stupidly if theirs had been a matched set and where and when and how they'd come by them.

Funny what a man who's an instant away from
death will think. I always heard your life flashed before your eyes and sometimes you saw the presence of loved ones who'd passed before.

But all I saw was a tall man in a muddy uniform standing there with his gun aimed at my face, saw him thumb back the hammer and thought,
Jim
,
you're going to die here in this muddy goddamn street and not in a nice bed like you'd planned.

Then an explosion caused the General to jerk like someone had snipped all his wires, and he fell face-first into the mud dead as a stone.

Standing there a dozen paces behind where the General lay was the little brother, Sam, holding his granddaddy's pistol, the one that matched the General's in every detail.

He did not move or falter.

And when Billy came straggling out of the jail holding one of the
federale
's pistols in his good hand, smoke curling from the barrel, I knew then old Gus's blood had passed on down to those boys in spite of everything else.

We rode north, the three of us, Billy, Sam, and myself.

We did not dally, for to be north of the river was to be safe again.

At least for a little while.