Lucky Billy (28 page)

Then they gave their word as men of honor to comply with these terms. Men of honor, thought Bill}'. He would give but never take that sort of security, and surely not from these men. He squirmed in his seat, refused their refreshment when Walz ordered a round, and wondered if he'd done the right thing.

"Let's celebrate," said Evans.

"How shall we celebrate?"

"We could shoot someone." This remark from Campbell set them all to laughing and stamping their feet and jumping up to hug each other, and the Kid went along with it. Soon, most were drunk and had spilled out the door and their revels could be heard, punctuated by song, gay shots fired in the air, and eternal oaths of friendship, up and down the town. Even Billy fired his gun. It's done with. Hoopee. They were heading arm-in-arm for Frank McCullum's oyster house, taking up the whole road—make way, nancies!—when in his greatcoat and wide fedora hat, James Dolan said to the Kid with a grin, "You were always a pissant."

"And you a cocksucker. I mean that sincerely."

"Then we make a pair. We're some for our inches."

"Go fall on your face, Dolan, you're shorter than me."

"Not with our hats off."

"You won't admit it, will you? Every man has his own hell. In this life, I mean, not in the next."

"In the next it don't matter if you're a pipsqueak?"

"Let's find out about this one."

They broke off from the group. The collars on Dolan's double-breasted greatcoat seemed larger than staysails on a stumpy craft, and his black hat rested squarely on his ears sharp enough to slice the fingers that dared pluck it off. He had a dragonfly eminence—the eyes topped a spine—and this disconcerted Billy. Dolan's frowning smile with its smoldering pout seemed to know that the eyes had mesmeric qualities and thought this a hilarity. The man had a certain power, no doubt about that. He had bigness in his smallness—the oversized coat emphasized this, as did, in a strange way, the pale-as-milk face. He removed his hat with two careful hands and ten deliberate stubs and the Kid whipped off his and they stood back to back in the middle of the road, but the parade had left without them and there was no one to judge. Billy felt a little foolish. The whole shebang was a charade. Finally, both hoofed it up the road to overtake the others, the raw son of Erin and the grubby horse thief with an instinct for survival and as much genius for depopulation as for seeding new replacements. He of all the company had not touched a drink and was itching to get this over with and leave.

Dogs barked. Homeowners barred their doors and closed their shutters. Sheriff Kimbrell had heard the promiscuous firing and lit out for Fort Stanton to request assistance of the military.

As the two gangs clamored toward futility, the Kid spotted in the shadows a noodle-limbed man with a lantern in his one arm dashing past beneath the trees. Billy Campbell stopped him. "Who the hell are you and where are you going?"

"My name is Chapman and I am attending to my business."

The Kid held back behind those who surrounded Sue McSween's lawyer, cringing on the man's behalf. The other Regulators lingered at the edges. Tom O'Folliard slipped away into the dark. Underlit by his lantern, Chapman looked ridiculous. He'd poulticed one side of his face with bread, the downroping bandages holding it in place lurid and loose; they resembled flayed skin. He set the lantern down with his one arm and scowled at the men, impatiently blinking.

"Well, Mr. Chapman, will you celebrate with us?" Campbell drew his pistol and pointed it at Chapman, waving the barrel in interrogatory circles inches from his chest.

"I don't propose to celebrate with a drunken mob."

"Watch how you talk. We'll make you, goddamnit." Chapman tugged his cataplasm; it evidently obscured his view. It looked hastily wrapped and the Kid guessed he'd been racing from the apothecary home to Sue's ministering arms. Campbell poked him with the gun. Chapman didn't flinch, though his eyes widened. They appeared to turn yellow in the waxy light. "You're just cake on both sides, ain't it?" said Campbell.

"You can't scare me, boys. You've tried it before. I presume your name is Dolan? You with the gun?"

"You're not talking to Dolan," Jesse Evans said. "But this man is a damned good friend of James Dolan."

Before the Kid could stop him, short-stuff James Dolan, showing his teeth, stepped forward in his oversized tent-coat and fired point-blank at Chapman, flaming the dark. Billy Campbell fired, too, the shots rang as one. Campbell's pistol downpoured smoke and Chapman cried out, "My God. I am killed!" In the moment it took him to topple over backwards his clothes caught fire from the flash of the powder. The burning wool stank. The men standing there gave him some space, all looking down at the spectacle. He burned on his back on a dark street in Lincoln, the fire already charring his flesh, and the nauseating smell nearly made Billy retch.

They repaired to McCullum's, ate oysters, drank beer. By now, all the Regulators had vanished save the Kid. "I promised my God and General Dudley that I would kill Chapman before he made more trouble, and now it's done," said Billy Campbell. He was shaking, fired up. Seated at the round table, James Dolan reached down, pulled up his pant leg, and produced a pistol. He offered it to Walz. "Go out there and put this in his hand." Walz looked disgusted and sniffed and turned his head.

"I'll do it," said the Kid.

Dolan grinned. He handed Billy the derringer and the latter jumped up, scrambled to the door, and ran out to the road. Chapman's whole body was in flames by now, lighting up the faces of children and dogs at the side of the street who had gathered to watch. Billy raced up the road in the opposite direction to where Tom O'Fol-liard held the reins of his horse. They rode out of town east, heading for San Pat. Five miles from Lincoln, he heaved the derringer in the river.

***

San Patricio
Lincoln County
Thursday 7th 1879

To his Excellency, General Lew Wallace,
Governor of New Mexico.

Dear Sir:

I have heard that you will give one thousand $ dollars for my body which as I can understand it means alive as a Witness. I know it is as a witness against those that Murdered Mr. Chapman, if it was so as that I could appear at Court I could give the desired information, but I have indictments against me for things that happened in the late Lincoln County War and am afraid to give up because my Enemies would Kill me. the day Mr. Chapman was murdered I was in Lincoln, at the request of good Citizens to meet Mr. J.J. Dolan, to meet as Friends, so as to be able to lay aside our arms and go to Work. I was present when Mr. Chapman was Murdered and know who did it and if it were not for those indictments I would have made it clear before now. if it is in your power to Annully those indictments I hope you will do so as to give me a chance to explain, please send me an annser telling me what you can do You can send annser by bearer I have no Wish to fight any more indeed I have not raised an arm since Your proclamation, as to my Character I refer to any of the Citizens, for the majority of them are my Friends and have been helping me all they could. I am called Kid Antrim but Antrim is my stepfathers name. Waiting for an annser I remain Your Obedeint Servant,

W. H. Bonney

Lincoln, March 15, 1879

W. H. Bonney.

Come to the house of old Squire Wilson (not the lawyer) at nine (9) o'clock next Monday night alone. I don't mean his office, but his residence. Follow along the foot of the mountains south of the town, come in on that side, and knock on the east door. I have authority to exempt you from prosecution, if you will testify to what you say you know.

The object of the meeting at Squire Wilson's is to arrange the matter in a way to make your life safe. To do that the utmost secrecy is to be used. So
come alone.
Don't tell anybody—not a living soul—where you are coming or the object. If you could trust Jesse Evans, you can trust me.

Lew Wallace

M
ARCH
17.
NINE P.M.
J. B. Wilson's squalid one-room
jacal
in the trees behind the courthouse. Old man Wilson sprawled on his bed, Governor Lew Wallace majestically seated in a chair beside it. The shutters clown and latched, to cut the cold. On the table by Wallace a coal oil lamp that cast a feeble yellow light. Trash on the plank floor: newspapers, oily sardine cans, a hoe, discarded shirts, one boot. Even for the governor, Wilson hadn't picked up. Why clean if it only gets dirty the next day? Wilson wore filthy pants but a fresh collar, tie, and black jacket, his marrying clothes, for he was justice of the peace.

Wallace sat there in a dark broadcloth suit with papers in his hand and glasses on his nose, a portrait of himself. The Civil War general wore a thick dark goatee shaped like an iron wedge. Heavy broad mustache, bare spidered cheeks, high forehead, a thin rage of graying hair thrown across the brow. Tall and wide of beam, he heavily stood and marched to the door and peered out into the night. When he sat down again, his piercing right eye, the black one, the sentry, stayed fixed on that door. His attention was divided; he was like two people. Wallace had a theory about our
double nature—
the real and the acquired. The latter was garniture, the former foundational. The latter was invariably the result of education, but the former, like the divinity of Christ, as his novel-in-progress dutifully explained, was what we are at the core. And at
his
core, Wallace was an artist. This could be seen in the sensuous lips barely visible through the mass of facial hair, or noted in the large Roman nose and finely drawn nostrils, gaunt cheeks, sculpted ears. The sensitive might also have detected its hint in the dreamy left eye, the bland one, like a woman's, which displayed a pregnant absence, for it did not see this world, the yellow-gray room filled with trash, the old man on his filthy blankets audibly gumming a barely cooked chicken held by greasy fingers. Instead, it inwardly surveyed a scene as exotic as a harem: the market at Joppa. It conjured up balconies, gardens, silken tents. It sketched for a rude audience the donkeys dozing under panniers full of lentils, onions, beans, and cucumbers; the sandals and un-dyed blankets of the merchants; the earthen jars of the veiled women, the produce from Galilee, the half-naked children, their brown bodies, raisin eyes, and thick black hair attesting to the blood of Israel. Plus the brawny fellows with their dirty tunics, the bottles of wine lashed on their backs, and the doves and ducks, the singing bulbul, or nightingale, perched on a fig tree—Wait. This was daylight. Scratch the nightingale. Or perhaps ... yes, a bird
market,
why not? That's the ticket, bright birds in bamboo cages. Buyers, whose purchases fluttered in their nets, scattering colored feathers, seldom failed to think of the perilous lives of the brave birdcatchers, who boldly climbed cliffs, hung by a single hand and foot from a precipice, or swung in a basket down the mountain's craggy face.

Wallace had also demonstrated in his novel, in the part he'd just begun—Book Eighth—that most of us lack hearts roomy enough for more than one absorbing passion. In one passion's blaze others may live but only as lesser lights. This came from experience. His passion lay halfway across the world, in the ancient civilizations of Rome and Judea; in Roman coliseums, chariot races, the gladiatorial combat, slave ships, pirates, the gastronomy of figs, and ultimately in the coming of the Christ. But not in this alkali wasteland of New Mexico, in these mountains grim and fixed as walls of adamant, in these horrible dust storms and hideous people, bedraggled and unfriendly, dirty, always babbling. They bent over their hoes, they ate the bitter dust, they cowered in their wagons. They found themselves at the mercy of outlaws who held life cheap and did nothing about it; instead they wanted
him
to bring them peace and order.

They judged General Wallace harshly in the war. At Shiloh, it was said, his division arrived at the battle so late the Union army nearly lost. He was relieved of his command, unfairly, unjustly, and had bristled ever since at the thought that he'd been scapegoated. He bristled now in his chair at the prospect, once again, of being blamed if the lawlessness in New Mexico continued, and consulted the scribbled pages in his hand, then pulled out his pocket watch; nearly nine-thirty. Squire Wilson, beside him, tossed his chicken bones on the floor, wiped his fingers on his blankets. Wallace fiercely reassumed his eagle look and watched the door and listened for footsteps. The mail-order kitchen chair in which he sat, with the flimsy arms, was carved with eastern squirrels. Ah, by Bacchus! he thought. Is he not handsome? And how splendid his chariot!

"He'll be late," said Wilson.

"He is late," said Wallace. From his leather portfolio, he pulled out more paper and with his Faber began a furious assault. Yes, a bird market...

When the knock finally came it was several hours later. Squire Wilson unbarred the door, swung it open. The Kid slunk in, wary, eyes searching the room. "I was to meet the governor here."

"I am here."

In Billy's left hand was his Colt's Thunderer, in his right the Winchester. "Your note promised absolute protection."

"I have been true to my promise. This man and myself are the only persons present."

Billy nodded at Wilson, who grinned, showing gaps in his nubby yellow teeth. "Squire." This was the same J. B. Wilson who'd issued the warrants the Kid and Fred served on the Dolanite faction before landing in jail; the same justice of the peace fired by Governor Axtell only to be reinstated later; the same old man wounded in the buttocks in his onion patch when the Regulators shot Brady.

Wallace stood to shake his guest's hand, who first leaned his rifle against the foot of Wilson's bed and bolstered bis pistol. He wrapped both of his hands around Billy's one, he wasn't certain why. A sudden rush of fatherly feeling for someone he thought would look brutish and imposing and instead was just a boy? He'd expected Ben-Hur, the eponymous hero of his novel-in-progress, or maybe Mallach or Messala, and got this comely-looking creature instead; got Jesus, not a hulking exotic. "You call yourself William Bonney? The Kid?"