Going back through the streets past the yellow windowlights and barking dogs he encountered a detachment of soldiers but they took him for an older man in the dark and passed on. He entered a tavern and sat in a darkened corner watching the groups of men at the tables. No one asked him what he wanted in that place. He seemed to be waiting for someone to come for him and after a while four soldiers entered and arrested him. They didnt even ask him his name.
In his cell he began to speak with a strange urgency of things few men have seen in a lifetime and his jailers said that his mind had come uncottered by the acts of blood in which he had participated. One morning he woke to find the judge standing at his cage, hat in hand, smiling down at him. He was dressed in a suit of gray linen and he wore new polished boots. His coat was unbuttoned and in his waistcoat he carried a watchchain and a stickpin and in his belt a leathercovered clip that held a small silvermounted derringer stocked in rosewood. He looked down the hallway of the crude mud building and donned the hat and smiled again at the prisoner.
Well, he said. How are you?
The kid didnt answer.
They wanted to know from me if you were always crazy, said the judge. They said it was the country. The country turned them out.
Where’s Tobin?
I told them that the cretin had been a respected Doctor of Divinity from Harvard College as recently as March of this year. That his wits had stood him as far west as the Aquarius Mountains. It was the ensuing country that carried them off. Together with his clothes.
And Toadvine and Brown. Where are they?
In the desert where you left them. A cruel thing. Your companions in arms. The judge shook his head.
What do they aim to do with me?
I believe it is their intention to hang you.
What did you tell them?
Told them the truth. That you were the person responsible. Not that we have all the details. But they understand that it was you and none other who shaped events along such a calamitous course. Eventuating in the massacre at the ford by the savages with whom you conspired. Means and ends are of little moment here. Idle speculations. But even though you carry the draft of your murderous plan with you to the grave it will nonetheless be known in all its infamy to your Maker and as that is so so shall it be made known to the least of men. All in the fullness of time.
You’re the one that’s crazy, said the kid.
The judge smiled. No, he said. It was never me. But why lurk there in the shadows? Come here where we can talk, you and me.
The kid stood against the far wall. Hardly more than a shadow himself.
Come up, said the judge. Come up, for I’ve yet more to tell you.
He looked down the hallway. Dont be afraid, he said. I’ll speak softly. It’s not for the world’s ears but for yours only. Let me see you. Dont you know that I’d have loved you like a son?
He reached through the bars. Come here, he said. Let me touch you.
The kid stood with his back to the wall.
Come here if you’re not afraid, whispered the judge.
I aint afraid of you.
The judge smiled. He spoke softly into the dim mud cubicle. You came forward, he said, to take part in a work. But you were a witness against yourself. You sat in judgement on your own deeds. You put your own allowances before the judgements of history and you broke with the body of which you were pledged a part and poisoned it in all its enterprise. Hear me, man. I spoke in the desert for you and you only and you turned a deaf ear to me. If war is not holy man is nothing but antic clay. Even the cretin acted in good faith according to his parts. For it was required of no man to give more than he possessed nor was any man’s share compared to another’s. Only each was called upon to empty out his heart into the common and one did not. Can you tell me who that one was?
It was you, whispered the kid. You were the one.
The judge watched him through the bars, he shook his head. What joins men together, he said, is not the sharing of bread but the sharing of enemies. But if I was your enemy with whom would you have shared me? With whom? The priest? Where is he now? Look at me. Our animosities were formed and waiting before ever we two met. Yet even so you could have changed it all.
You, said the kid. It was you.
It was never me, said the judge. Listen to me. Do you think Glanton was a fool? Dont you know he’d have killed you?
Lies, said the kid. Lies, by god lies.
Think again, said the judge.
He never took part in your craziness.
The judge smiled. He took his watch from his waistcoat and opened it and held it to the failing light.
For even if you should have stood your ground, he said, yet what ground was it?
He looked up. He pressed the case shut and restored the instrument to his person. Time to be going, he said. I have errands.
The kid closed his eyes. When he opened them the judge was gone. That night he called the corporal to him and they sat on either side of the bars while the kid told the soldier of the horde of gold and silver coins hid in the mountains not far from this place. He talked for a long time. The corporal had set the candle on the floor between them and he watched him as one might watch a glib and lying child. When he was finished the corporal rose and took the candle with him, leaving him in darkness.
He was released two days later. A Spanish priest had come to baptize him and had flung water at him through the bars like a priest casting out spirits. An hour later when they came for him he grew giddy with fear. He was taken before the alcalde and this man spoke to him in a fatherly manner in the Spanish language and then he was turned out into the streets.
The doctor that he found was a young man of good family from the east. He cut open his trouserleg with scissors and looked at the blackened shaft of the arrow and moved it about. A soft fistula had formed about it.
Do you have any pain? he said.
The kid didnt answer.
He pressed about the wound with his thumb. He said that he could perform the surgery and that it would cost one hundred dollars.
The kid rose from the table and limped out.
The day following as he sat in the plaza a boy came and led him again to the shack behind the hotel and the doctor told him that they would operate in the morning.
He sold the pistol to an Englishman for forty dollars and woke at dawn in a lot underneath some boards where he’d crawled in the night. It was raining and he went down through the empty mud streets and hammered at the grocer’s door until the man let him in. When he appeared at the surgeon’s office he was very drunk, holding onto the doorjamb, a quart bottle half full of whiskey clutched in his hand.
The surgeon’s assistant was a student from Sinaloa who had apprenticed himself here. An altercation ensued at the door until the surgeon himself came from the rear of the premises.
You’ll have to come back tomorrow, he said.
I dont aim to be no soberer then.
The surgeon studied him. All right, he said. Let me have the whiskey.
He entered and the apprentice shut the door behind him.
You wont need the whiskey, said the doctor. Let me have it.
Why wont I need it?
We have spirits of ether. You wont need the whiskey.
Is it stronger?
Much stronger. In any case I cant operate on a man and him dead drunk.
He looked at the assistant and then he looked at the surgeon. He set the bottle on the table.
Good, said the surgeon. I want you to go with Marcelo. He will draw you a bath and give you clean linen and show you to a bed.
He pulled his watch from his vest and held it in his palm and read it.