The Kid

She smiled. “You have not been shot often, have you?”

“Just that once.”

“You’re like the cat with the nine lives.”

“I hope I haven’t used them all up.”

Celsa kissed him. “There. I am a fairy princess. And now you live forever.”

The Kid grinned. “And will you be with me all that time?”

Weeks later Celsa would be frustrated that she could not recall anything more of what they talked about. She was certain though that there were no confidences, no worries or guilt, no plans for the future except for the still-vague idea of finding a new life in Old Mexico. She told people, in Spanish, they frolicked, and that was all.

Because Saval was returning at six from his failures at silver mining in White Oaks, they hurriedly dressed and rode back to the fort in midafternoon, happening to pass Deputy John Poe as he exited Sumner. Each of them ignorant of the other.

Poe later recalled seeing a lithe, hatless man in his late teens riding a palomino with a beautiful Mexican woman hugging him, her face fondly nestled against his white, collarless, long-sleeved shirt as she rocked with the horse’s slow pace. P

oe was heading north seven miles to the post office in Sunnyside. Garrett had torn a page from his vest pocket notebook and written a note of introduction to the postmaster, Milnor Rudulph:

My dear friend. This is my deputy, John Poe. I hope you will welcome him with your usual hospitality. P. F. Garrett.

Rudulph was originally from Maryland and was fifty-six but looked far older—he would die within six years—a bald, officious man with a wide white sickle of a mustache and a hard-bitten schoolteacher’s glare of scrutiny. Upon reading Garrett’s note, he stuffily claimed, “I have a friendship of three years standing with Pat and have nothing but admiration for him. I would be very glad to accommodate any friend of his for the night.”

The formality made Poe suspicious.

Rudulph’s Mexican wife served them a dinner of red potatoes and fresh-caught cutthroat trout, and as she handled the dishwashing Deputy Poe invited conversations from her husband about general things like the mail service and gardening problems and his own viewing of the Albuquerque Browns, and once Rudulph had lit a clay pipe and seemed fully relaxed Poe asked, “You had a friendship with Billy the Kid when he was here?”

Rudulph’s wife turned from the sink in distress, but Rudulph himself just fidgeted as he said, “Well, he sent mail like people do.”

Deputy Poe introduced the topic of the Kid’s jailbreak and the report from Emanuel Brazil that the Kid was in their neighborhood.

“Excuse me,” Rudulph said as he got up from the dinner table and fiddled with things in the kitchen so his back would be shut to Poe. “I have heard that such a report was about,” Rudulph said. “But I do not believe it, as the Kid is, in my opinion, too shrewd to be caught lingering in this part of the country.”

John Poe could see the quaver in the postmaster’s hands as he put dried saucers away in the cupboard, and he told the postmaster he was convinced he was well intentioned but like so many others he was afraid of the Kid and would not hazard to say anything whatever about him. Rudulph’s wife seemed to give her husband a silencing look.

Deputy Poe continued, “I have come to you with the express purpose of learning where the Kid could be found. We believe he is hiding in Fort Sumner. Is that so?”

With a hint of embarrassment in his vehemence, Rudulph defended himself by saying, “My son Charlie, and just eighteen for gosh sakes, took it upon himself to serve on that posse that captured the Kid and his gang at Stinking Springs. We can be depended on to tell you if that murderer was around.”

John Poe stood and thanked the wife in English, saying the good feed was all he needed and instead of staying overnight he would ride back to his friends in the fresh cool of the evening.

Milnor Rudulph failed to hide his relief.

* * *

The deputy rejoined the sheriff and McKinney north of the fort at Punta de la Glorieta, where the irrigation ditch called Acequia Madre crossed the northwest road to Las Vegas and Fort Union. Poe recounted the secrecy and uneasiness in Fort Sumner and Milnor Rudulph’s odd agitation, which seemed to confirm the many reports of the Kid’s whereabouts. So they mounted up and the sheriff and his deputies rode south to Fort Sumner, with Garrett saying in his formal, Southern way, “I have but little confidence in accomplishing the object of our trip.” Without giving the name of Celsa Gutiérrez, he told them there was a rented apartment in the old quartermaster’s store that the Kid had formerly frequented. Maybe they’d see him going in or out that night. Garrett failed to acknowledge the gossip his wife had passed along, that Celsa was pregnant with Billy’s child. There were so many stories.

To avoid detection in Fort Sumner, the trio stayed on what was called the Texas Road behind the old Indian hospital, then went around Bob Hargrove’s saloon to the green and fragrant expanse of the peach orchard on the northern boundary of the fort. They staked their horses with their muzzles within reach of the fruit, but the horses lowered their heads to tear up the high grass between their hooves. Garrett left the 1873 model Winchester rifle he’d taken from Billie Wilson in his saddle scabbard, but he wore in his holster Wilson’s fine new Colt .44 pistol.

The sheriff and his deputies went forward on foot to wait near the fence around the orchard, hanging out in the night of the trees with views east to the front of the old Indian hospital in case the Kid visited Manuela, and south across the parade grounds to the old quartermaster’s store and the quarters of Saval and Celsa Gutiérrez, just left of Beaver Smith’s saloon. With the full moon overhead they could see from a hundred yards away a pretty woman in her twenties pass in front of Beaver Smith’s, hugging sheets she’d just pulled down from a clothesline. She walked farther east and inside the adobe building, disappearing.

John Poe asked, “Who was that?”

Garrett quietly said, “My sister-in-law.”

The deputies gave him a look. Kip McKinney asked, “Why not ask her if she seen the Kid?”

Wordlessly, Garrett pinched some Blackberry Long Cut tobacco from its pouch and tamped it into his calabash pipe with his thumb. His deputies waited for his rationale but finally realized he was going to say nothing more, so they went back to their lookout. Chirring insects and nickering horses were the only sounds. It was nine p.m.