Billy the Kid Read online

Dobbs turned foggy eyes to Willie. With a whimper he nodded.

  "Did Wilson have a land deal with Cole?"

  "I ... don't..." The rest was a red wet sigh, and Dobbs relaxed completely.

  Willie looked up the slope but couldn't see the rifleman. He rolled away from Dobbs's body and stood up, ducking behind a trunk. There was no movement on the upper slope. He looked downriver.

  Billy was still standing in the same position by his trunk, biding his time It suddenly struck Willie that Billy, at this moment, was as nerveless as the charred bark beside him. Billy had lit up, and was puffing fatalistically. He called over casually, "You git that feller?"

  "I did. Trip was worth it, Billy. How you doin'?"

  "Jus' waiting. Papa Art hasn't come to call yet. Pretty soon he's gonna run out o' guts."

  Art's voice crossed the flecked wastes. "Don't count on it, Billy Boy."

  Willie decided to go to Billy's side. In a low crouch, he began weaving from trunk to trunk and was within five feet of his first position when the ground went sickeningly out from under him. Almost simultaneously he heard the rifle cracking. A moment of blackness hit him, then passed. He knew he was down, and from racking pain in his left leg, knew also that a heavy bullet had smashed it. He twisted in the ash and groped forward, lifting his head as Billy's .45 spit flame up the slope. Vaguely he heard a scream from up there.

  Then stillness settled again.

  He felt Billy tugging him against the trunk. Billy said tersely, "Hang on; it's two to one, I think."

  Art's voice probed the dead air. "You hit, Kelcey?"

  "I'm hit but not bad," Kelcey yelled.

  Billy shook his head disgustedly. "Still two to two."

  Willie sat with his back against the trunk, groaning. He felt weak and sick. He looked down at his leg. Cloth was ripped on the thigh top; blood seeped through the white powder that covered his pants. "I think ... those friends of yours ... are usin' bear guns..."

  "They're not close friends," Billy said, trying to hide worry. He peered upslope, then toward where he thought Art Williams might be.

  Willie gritted his teeth and then tightened the cloth of his pants leg to stop blood flow. "We sure as ... hell ... need their horses."

  Billy was kneeling beside him, trying to make up his mind. With Willie crippled, and gun loads running out, Art, and whoever else was up that slope—Kelcey, Art called him—could move in. "I've got four shots left. Hope it's going to be enough," Billy said.

  Willie reached out to pull the Winchester to him. "I can give you two from this." He thrust Pine's gun toward Billy. "Three in here."

  Billy nodded as Art confidently shouted out again, "Sheriff, you ready to send him over?"

  Billy shouted back, "Sheriff's not feelin' very good jus' now." He paused. "Art, I'm gonna throw the saddlebag. Be my guest. But leave us a horse."

  Art's grim laugh came back. "You are my guest, Billy! I want the saddlebag an' you. You deprived me o' two sons, God rest their souls."

  "You're still greedy!"

  There was movement from Art's direction. The squat body lunged forward to the protection of a trunk, closer now. He was moving in for the kill, Billy knew.

  Willie said, "Throw the saddlebag."

  Billy muttered, "Wish I had some dynamite to put in it." He craned his head around to look toward Art.

  Then he turned back, saying softly, "He's not leavin' me much choice, Willie" His eyes had great warmth in them. "You think you can shoot that thing to hit?" His head indicated the rifle.

  There was now a quality of surrender in his voice Willie heard it and fought back emotion. Billy will be dead in a moment. He didn't know how he knew that. But it was there. Billy would be dead.

  Billy seemed to know it, too. It was on his face.

  Fighting a lump, Willie answered, "I can still make some noise What do you have in mind?"

  Billy laughed softly. "Why, I'm goin' out an' shoot the man down. No sense both of us dyin'...I want you to go back to Kate."

  He reached over to punch Willie's shoulder. Their eyes met, saying more to each other about years of love and friendship than words could ever say.

  Billy rose to a crouch. "Jus' remember, cousin Willie, if you shoot toward Art, I'm the one with the glass head."

  Willie saw a reckless grin break out on the smudged face. Then Billy turned, lifted both guns, and murmured, "Make a lot of noise."

  He began running on an angle toward where he thought Art stood.

  From the corner of his eye, Willie saw Kelcey step into the open, raising a rifle He pulled the trigger on the .70. Kelcey spun and went down.

  His vision flicked back. He saw Billy stop and fire as Art Williams pulled both triggers on the ten-gauge at short range. The deafening scrap-iron and glass load hit Billy in a circle of fiery orange. His head exploded in blood streamers, going backward.

  Gawking, Williams kept his squat, forward-stanced body erect a few seconds longer, as if he didn't believe his own death could ever happen. Willie's two holes had been drilled cleanly over Art's eyes. Then he crashed.

  Only Willie was alive.

  Once again quiet returned to Benediction Valley. The only sound was the sobbing from the big man, Sheriff Monroe, who sat by the trunk of the charred pine. The sobbing was contained, the wrenching, hurtful kind that is inside. It went on for an hour.

  Soon buzzards began to circle above the charred pine sticks, seeking Billy's body, among others.

  Nearing two o'clock Willie painfully dragged Billy Bonney, dead at nineteen, down the bank, keeping his eyes away from what had been young Billy's often-grinning face. Willie could not bear the thought of carrion seekers landing and waddling over, cruel beaks ready to rip and tear flesh.

  He had bandaged his wounded leg. There was dull but sufferable pain in it. He could still move.

  He slid the barrel of the Winchester behind Billy's gun belt to weigh him down, and finally he reached water's edge and waded out a few feet, tugging Billy behind him. He stood a moment weeping, then let out a long sigh and gave the silent form a shove into deeper water, temporarily away from the buzzards.

  He took Billy's saddlebag, with the holdup money, rings, and watches still in it, resting it on the sand. When he reached home, he'd turn the loot over to the court.

  He planned to find a nearby ranch and borrow a mule and wagon. Then he'd return Billy's body to Polkton for a decent burial, Kate's preacher brother presiding. Billy, who'd rid humanity of five outlaw types, deserved that. Then Willis Monroe would re-sign as sheriff and never pull a trigger again as long as he lived. He'd be a true rancher. Billy Bonney would like that, he knew.

  He sat down on the bank of the Benediction, looking at a red streak in the brown water, Billy the Kid's blood, and could not help but remember another day on another river, long ago.

  "Willie, lookit me, I'm a goldurned frog."

  "Billy, frogs don't belly bust like that."

  "Then I'm a goldurned fountain, a-spittin' at the world."

  Willie began stiffly and slowly hobbling downriver with Billy's saddlebag, hoping to soon find help.

  Author's Note

  As a boy in short britches, I could be found almost every Saturday afternoon in the Statesville, North Carolina, picture show, watching black-and-white Westerns, admission ten cents. Cowboy stars of the day were Buck Jones, Jack Holt, Tom Steele, and Tim McCoy—hard-ridin', rootin'-tootin' horsemen with six-shooters. Note the masculine names. Our smelly theater was filled with boys. No girls. The thrills came every few seconds—cowboys always the heroes, bad men bleeding to death in the dust. No wonder at ages six and seven, we played cowboys and Indians, going pow-pow-pow for gunshots. Years later, exploiting a modern Western starring Henry Fonda, I threw a big barbecue for the press on the back lot at Paramount Pictures and invited still-living cinema cowboys—a dozen or so, all in their cowboy suits. Buck Jones and Jack Holt were there, as I remember. Quite a night. I even rented some horses as the final touch.

&nb
sp; Remembering those exciting Saturdays of my childhood, I finally decided to write my own novel of the Old West. I chose to fictionalize a real "bad boy," William H. "Billy the Kid" Bonney Jr., also known as Kid Antrim, whose life was so lurid as to become living fiction. He was born in New York City sometime between 1859 and 1861, and the stories of his short life are almost totally unreliable. Did he commit his first murder at age twelve, or was he fourteen at the time? Details about his father are sketchy and controversial, but it is known that his mother, Catherine, remarried and the family moved to New Mexico. His prospector stepfather, William Antrim, was seldom home. Catherine died when Billy was a young teenager, and he was suddenly on his own, inhabiting saloons and gambling. What might have been a productive life turned into guns, killings, and jail escapes.

  Billy quickly became known throughout the legendary Old West as a dangerous, quick-triggered youngster. He broke out of jails one after another, even climbing up the inside of a chimney in his first encounter with the law. The more I learned of him, truth or tall tale, the more I knew he was my kind of character.

  Although the exact date is disputed, in the mid-1870s Billy shot a blacksmith after a fistfight; it was his first killing. Rather ugly and scrawny, Billy has been credited with more than twenty victims, also a suspect number. The real Billy the Kid, a shocking study of a gunslinger out of control, came to an end on July 14,1881, when famed sheriff Pat Garrett killed him in Fort Sumner, New Mexico. Garrett had a big motive for shooting down Billy Bonney: Billy had killed another lawman in a gunfight, Sheriff William Brady of Lincoln County, New Mexico.

  Except for his gun-handling skills and age, my fictional Billy the Kid bears little resemblance to the cold and ruthless Billy of legend. I tried to give my Billy a charming personality and a zest for life, making him a sort of "heart of gold" outlaw—as well as a young man destined for a gunslinger's death.