Free Lucky Billy by John Vernon Page A

these former associates, who stared at him smugly. He felt rooted to the spot. Only George Davis nodded. George had taught Billy, when he ran with the Boys, how to breach an adobe corral and take possession of its horses by using ordinary ropes to saw through the wall of hardened mud and straw. Now the Kid worked for Tunstall, their enemy. Their contempt felt religious; he'd become a heretic. It was a matter of pride for William H. Bonney to mask his discomfort with silent arrogance. He tested a sneer but felt at the same time so conscious of himself peering out from such an unfinished body that he surely would stumble, even drop his gun, if he took another step. Some wiseacre said, "How old are you, Kid? Fourteen? Fifteen?"
    "Older than that."
    "He don't know how old he is. No one ever told him."
    Davis's voice sounded mock-friendly. "You like muscling for the Englishman, Kid? Looks like they fattened you up."
    "Mr. Tunstall does not keep a mean table."
    "We miss your smart ass."
    He'd practiced relentlessly, drawn and shot at whiskey bottles, rehearsed the insults guaranteed to spark rage and make his adversary rashly pluck at his weapon. He'd armored himself with a scowl like Fred's so no one could see the muddle inside. He'd shot a man before, he knew how it felt, and the next time he vowed to be calm as a nun. His intractable cockiness still felt oversized; he wished he'd grow into it now instead of later. He'd run out of patience. He liked to whip himself up. You sons of bitches better watch your backs. Look for a ditch you can die in, Brady. If this don't beat stealing soldiers' horses at three in the morning outside Arizona whorehouses!
    Five minutes later, Fred and the Kid led the horses and mules toward McSween's house while the livid John Tunstall strode ahead full steam visibly fuming despite his little victory. He burst into McSween's followed by Rob Widenmann with his open-ass shuffle trying to catch up. Billy and Fred stayed outside to guard the horses. Fred rolled a cigarette and lit it and drew. The Kid's eyes scanned Lincoln's shabby adobes. Even at midday the sun at a slant almost missed the town, the way its only road hid in this valley hanging halfway up the mountains on a February day, with high bare hills and higher peaks behind them upraised on either side. Snubbing posts lined the wide dirt street, stock tied to some, while behind the doby houses were crudely fenced yards with milk cows, goats, pigs, chickens, and sheep, though the fences were porous and most of these creatures had the run of the town. Across the road from McSween's, a patrol of yellow-legs from Fort Stanton had singled out a blanket-wrapped Pueblo Indian and were searching the pannier on his burro's back. Bordered by line-trees, fields climbed the stretched earth up behind the houses to the base of the hills.
    The Kid said to his new friend and confederate, "Tell me again what this is all about."
    "It's like this," said Fred. He pulled on his cigarette, blew out smoke. His voice was so deep that despite his height, five inches taller than the five-seven Billy, it seemed to well up from the earth at his feet. Fred was half Chickasaw. He'd attended not one college but three, in Illinois, Arkansas, and Missouri. His mustache, not unlike Alexander McSween's, plunged diagonally down from nostrils to chin line, though the Kid and Fred had confidentially agreed that McSween's kinky lip- and chin-hair looked like a Chinaman's—or a blanket Indian's.
    Billy ought to talk. His hp was just peach fuzz.
    Fred Waite spoke slowly but was so quick of reflex he could easily grab a squirrel off a tree trunk and whip it in circles by its long tail and fling it up dizzy into the topmost branches, the Kid had seen him do it. "Okay. This Emil Fritz was kind of a
jefe
with Murphy and Dolan. He was partners in the House. So he died. And Murphy got laid up. Laid up, all right. They told him go ahead and drink all you want, you got cancer of the stomach.