The Kid
“Well, at least a few of us got through it.”
Because he thought it needed saying, George Coe added, “And the rest dint.”
Heads hung for a while. And then there was some desultory conversation about their footing from here on out.
Each recognized that the Lincoln County War was essentially over and they were on the losing side. A seemingly petty grocery store rivalry had conjoined some cattlemen’s resentment of John Chisum’s financial success and caused not only civil unrest and a number of murders but the closing of both vying stores that were at the origin of the struggle. And now the Regulators with other options were choosing to head elsewhere: the Mexican farmers to San Patricio and its outlying placitas and the Coe cousins perhaps traipsing north to farm in Colorado. Fred Waite wondered about a return to his father’s prosperity in the Indian Territories; and Doc Scurlock and Charlie Bowdre thought they might could rejoin the sisters waiting for them on the Rio Ruidoso in order to get their gatherings and hire on as wranglers on the Jinglebob.
It would be remembered as “a war pow-wow.” Franklin Coe noticed the Kid’s silence and asked, “You got plans?”
The Kid stubbed out the Pearl of the Orient cigarette after inhaling again, coughing, and disliking it. “It’s odd,” he said, “but with the gun battle and risks and all, this is the most complete I’ve ever felt. So I guess it’s not all over with me. I’m gonna steal myself a living until I feel revenged.”
* * *
Eighteen years old, rootless, and jobless, Billy Bonney fell into a drifting life of catch as catch can, with horse thievery his main occupation. But first he went to visit Carlota in San Patricio just a few hours later on July 20, finding her heating tortillas in a skillet in the family hacienda with her overweight mother, Sofia, and Aunt Hortensia. Carlota shrieked with astonishment and joy when she saw him at the front door, calling him “Chivato,” the Mexican-Spanish for Kid, and running to hug him as she kissed him over and over again.
“Así da gusto verte,” he said. So good to see you.
She said she’d heard about the killings in Lincoln; she hadn’t heard if he’d been among the dead.
“Estoy vivito,” he said. I’m very alive.
Her mother and aunt welcomed “Bee-ly” into their casa like a prodigal son but were not beyond urging some morning ablutions upon him, for he’d been a few days without benefit of so much as a cat lick. Returning from the yard pump, his tawny hair still wet, he found a feast of huevos rancheros and cinnamon churros. Carlota was as close as a coat sleeve to him as she said, “Mi madre te llama Ojos Brillantes.” My mother calls you Bright Eyes. “Ella piensa que eres muy guapo.” She thinks you’re very handsome.
“Me veo feo,” he said. I’m feeling ugly. “No he dormido.” I haven’t slept.
Sofia heavily fell into a chair at the dinner table just across from the Kid and watched him like his famished eating was merry entertainment. After he’d cleaned his plate she asked, “Ya terminaste?” Are you finished?
“Todo muy rico,” he said. Everything was excellent.
She folded her arms in front of her shelf of a chest as if in the midst of a quarrelsome transaction. “Tenemos que hablar,” she said. We need to talk. In Spanish, Carlota’s mother noted that the girl was fifteen now and therefore free to marry. She herself had married at fifteen, Tía Hortensia at fourteen. Carlota, she knew, pined for El Chivato; she no longer wanted to be just his novia, sweetheart, or even his querida, his lover. She wanted to be his desposada, bride.
Carlota softly whispered in the Kid’s ear, “Déjame embarazada.” Make me pregnant. “Quiero un Billito.” I want a little Billy.
Carlota’s mother overheard but just shrugged as she shifted to the main problem, telling Billy in Spanish that she thought of him as generous, heroic, a man of justice, the enemy of their enemies. She was glad when she heard the Kid was avenging the Spanish people even if he was not fully aware of it. She said in the English he didn’t know she knew, “We sees you one of us.”
“Pero?” he asked. But?
Well, he was encantador y atractivo, enchanting and attractive. Little wonder that Carlota was in love with him.
Carlota squeezed her arm inside his and tilted her sweet head on his shoulder.
But he would not be a good husband or father, Sofia told him.
Carlota cried in shock, “Mama, no!”
Sofia had heard he was wanted for murder in Arizona and New Mexico, so she realized Billy could never rest. Endlessly on the run and forever hounded, even in Mexico if he went there. She’d experienced American justice for the have-nots. Soon his name would be famous and rewards for him would be posted. Would he live a few years longer? Yes, perhaps. But gunmen end up in coffins so quickly. And she did not raise her child to become a widow at fifteen, eighteen, twenty.
“Lo comprendo,” the Kid said. I understand.
There was more, of course, Carlota crying in a childish, passionate tantrum and all three females yelling loudly and stomping and throwing their hands around. All during the dither the Kid found himself thinking how tired of wild emotion he was, how very much older than pretty Carlota he felt, and how piffling and unimportant the caterwauling seemed after all he’d been through, the dying he’d seen, the kill shots he’d avoided. So he got up from the table, hatted himself with his sombrero, and quietly exited the casa like his feet were on hot coals.
When she noticed he was gone, Carlota screamed “Bee-ly!” but she must have been restrained from running to him. And as he got onto his stolen cavalry horse, all that the Kid could think was Another person subtracted.
* * *
On the first day of August, Dr. Joseph Hoy Blazer got into an altercation with Morice J. Bernstein, the twenty-two-year-old bookkeeper for the Mescalero Apache Indian Agency headquarters at Blazer’s Mill. The Iowa dentist accused the Englishman as well as the Indian agent there, an Army major, of funneling food and commodities intended for the Apaches to Jimmy Dolan for reselling. Which was probably true. Hidden in Bernstein’s ledgers, Blazer argued, were faint penciled notes on the secret transactions. In high dudgeon, the feisty bookkeeper claimed he’d done no such thing and called Joseph Blazer a bloody liar.