Paulette Jiles - News of the World

The sun had come out and the noon light outlined the men as they rode toward the Captain’s wagon. They sparkled with falling drops from the leaves, shake-down showers. The Captain pulled up. He gazed at them with a steady and unperturbed expression. Behind it he wondered if they had somehow got word of the Great Brazos Ten-Cent Shoot-Out.

He wondered what they wanted. Where they were from. There was anarchy in Texas in 1870 and every man did what was right in his own eyes.

One of the men with a trimmed black beard came up alongside the light spring wagon, on the Captain’s side, and his cavalry stirrup with its blunt tapadero made chunking noises against the stopped fore wheel. He looked down at them, at the cut over the Captain’s eye and the spots of blood on his shirt and the muddied wagon spokes. An old man and a girl. The girl had sunk down behind the canted dashboard and only her dirty fingers gripping the wood and her face were visible. The man on horseback was dark-skinned and black-eyed but this did not matter to Johanna, native Americans looked not at the color of skin but at the intentions, the body posture, the language of hands. That was how they stayed alive. Johanna fixed him like a print in her suspicious blue gaze.

Curative Waters, eh? He regarded the gold lettering on the sides.

I bought it from the proprietor, said Captain Kidd, who went bust. He kept his voice within the range of reasonable tones. He had the girl to think about.

Did it have the bullet holes in it already?

Yes, as a matter of fact it did, said the Captain. He tried to straighten out the wavy brim of his old hat. He had two days’ growth of sparkling white beard and knew he looked like a derelict but he sat straight-backed and tall in his canvas coat and fixed in his mind the revolver on his left on the floorboards under the bacon. He said, It came fully supplied with bullet holes.

Very curious. And so, where are you headed? said the black-bearded man. His voice was low and rasping.

Captain Kidd thought about it for a moment and decided to answer him. The scarves of smoke were coming from a campfire, one most likely belonging to these men, nearby, hidden.

Durand, the Captain said.

That your final destination?

No.

So where, then?

Castroville.

Where’s that?

Fifteen miles west of San Antonio.

That’s a long piece of travel.

The temptation was great to say Why is it your concern, you filthy ignorant brigand, but he looked down at the girl and smiled his creased smile and patted her inflexible white fingers seized on the dashboard.

He said, This girl was a captive of the Kiowa, lately rescued, and I am returning her to her relatives there.

The savages, the man said. He regarded the child, her hair stiff with dirt, skinned knuckles, and a dress smeared with dirt and charcoal and bacon grease where she had wiped her hands. He shook his head. Why they go and steal children I will never understand. Do they not have ary of their own?

I am as mystified as you are, said the Captain.

The black-bearded man said, And the Indians know as much about soap as a hog knows about Sunday. Miss? he said. Look here.

He fished in the watch pocket of his jeans and found a lump of saltwater taffy thick with lint. He held it out, bent from his saddle, smiling. Quick as a snake she struck it from his hand and dropped farther down behind the dashboard.

Ah. The man nodded. They come back wild. I have heard about this.

The others had ridden around the wagon. They sat loose and easy in their worn dragoon saddles and did not bother to unlimber either revolver or carbine. Clearly Johanna and the Captain were harmless.

The Captain then understood they had not heard of the Great Brazos Ten-Cent Shoot-Out at Carlyle Springs. It was two days behind but a good bet was that these men did not travel much beyond this area. As yet there was almost no telegraph service in most of Texas.

Who you for? The black-bearded man turned to the Captain. His manner had changed. Who’d you vote for? Davis or Hamilton?

The Captain now knew that disaster awaited any reading of the news in Durand, but they had shot themselves into poverty and had a long way to go. The only other thing he could think of to do was to sell the wagon and proceed on horseback. But his back and his hip joints were not strong anymore and long distances on horseback had become increasingly painful.

He said, I am deeply offended that you would dare to ask who I voted for. We are guaranteed a secret vote. I am a veteran of Horseshoe Bend and Resaca de la Palma and I did not fight to establish a sleazy South American dictatorship. I fought for the rights of freeborn Englishmen.

There. That should confuse them.

I see. The black-bearded man thought about it. Are you English?

No, I am not.

Then this is not making sense, here.

Never mind that, Captain Kidd said. Are you stopping me in some kind of official capacity? I am about to lose my patience.

One of the others in a hat with a very tall crown said, Nobody who voted for Davis is getting into Erath County.

Is this an official decision by the local administration?

The black-bearded man smiled. He said, Sir, there isn’t any local administration. There isn’t any sheriff. Davis’s men turfed him out. There isn’t any JP, there isn’t any mayor, there aren’t any commissioners. Davis and the U.S. Army threw them out. They all had been in the Confederate Army or they were public servants under the Confederacy and so that was it for them. But he won’t send anybody to replace them. So we took on the job. You are accountable to us.

Captain Kidd glanced down at Johanna, who listened intently with her eyes blue and wide. He patted her fingers. For how much?

A long pause.

Ah, just give us a half-dollar.

THEY PULLED INTO the loading yard of a big broom and stave mill at the edge of the Bosque River. There were cottonwoods along the river and their tiny new leaves shivered even without a wind and dripped rainwater in pinhead glitters. It was the first cottonwoods he had seen in a long time. The Bosque was shallow and they had no trouble with the crossing.

The undershot wheel that powered the machines turned and brought up bright squares of water and spilled them into the river. A man looked up from his binding work. He sat beside a broom-making machine amid a heaping of broom-corn sheaves. A pile of handles lay nearby. He and his brooms were in a big cavernous building, open on the sides, with a shingle roof. It gave some protection from the sun and rain. The sky was laddered with passing waves of low clouds. Chickens stalked around and surveyed their world with calm yellow eyes.

The Captain asked if they could shelter here for the night.

The man said, They’s a hotel.

I see, said Captain Kidd. But I can’t afford one right now.

They’s a wagon yard.

It seems safer here. I have this child, you see. I can offer fifteen cents for the night. The Captain leaned forward and fixed the man in his old hawk’s gaze.

I ain’t that hard up.

How hard up are you?

Fifty cents. You’ll want to use the pump and give your horses some forage, plus these wood scraps to cook with and some of my straw to sleep on.

Good God, said Kidd. And cotton’s going begging for seventeen cents the pound.

I ain’t buying no cotton.

Captain Kidd turned to Johanna. My dear, he said. Five dime-ah.

She dived into the shot box and found a shotgun shell, broke it open, and poured out the money.

CAPTAIN KIDD WASHED up as best he could, tapped the cut over his eye with a wet cloth. He dusted it again with the gray wound powder. Then he tried to show Johanna on the hands of his watch when he would be back. She stared at the dial face intently and put her fingertip on the crystal, first over the hour hand and then the minute hand, and her eyes moved as she watched the second hand jumping forward like an insect.