“I’ll push his fucking luck,” Marty says. All right, he says, it’s a deal—only he ain’t giving Scarborough a nickel until after Hardin’s taken care of. “Sure,” Scarborough says with a big phony smile, “I trust you. Just don’t forget to bring the money.” Marty gives him a go-to-hell smile back and says, “Don’t worry about that, George. I always keep my money on me—all of it. It’s the safest place.” Scarborough says, “All right, then—the rail bridge at midnight,” and heads back to El Paso to set the thing up.
That night, Marty posted me at our end of the bridge with my Remington repeater to cover their retreat if they had to make a run for it back to our side. Then him and Vic and Tom went out to the middle of the bridge to meet Scarborough. There was a mist on the river, but the other side was lit up by a streetlight good enough for me to see everything. At the far end of the bridge, a pair of ice wagons stood on one side of the tracks. George Scarborough came out from behind one of them.
They met out on the bridge and talked for a minute. Scarborough pointed to the wagons like he was saying that was where Marty could lay for Hardin. Marty nodded and they all headed that way.
As soon as they got to the end of the bridge, Scarborough pulled his gun and shot Marty twice in the head and jumped off to the side just as rifles opened fire from one of the ice wagons and a shotgun blasted from the other. Vic and Tom went down before they could clear their holsters. I ducked behind one of the bridge posts and watched from the shadow. Hell no, I didn’t shoot. It wouldn’t of helped Marty and Vic and Tom one bit, but it likely woulda brought the shooters running over to kill me too.
All that shooting didn’t take five seconds. Then Scarborough scoots out and takes out Marty’s gun, fires it in the air and drops it on the ground, then quick cleans out Marty’s pockets. The police captain, Milton, and a man the next day’s newspapers said was a Texas Ranger came out from behind one of the wagons, both of them with carbines—and from behind the other wagon comes Wes Hardin with a shotgun. I’d always figured Milton was in on the deal for those cows we rustled in Little Texas. The Ranger too, I guess. Lawmen—Christ! A dog’s hind leg ain’t as crooked as a lawman.
Hardin gave the scattergun to Milton and hurried off down the street, but Scarborough, Milton, and the Ranger stayed and smoked cigars while a crowd of excited sports came out of the nearby saloons and gathered to gawk at the bodies.
The newspapers said they were shot for resisting arrest on warrants of cattle rustling, but the talk in the saloons was that Hardin had paid Scarborough and Milton to kill Marty so he could have Beulah McRose for himself. Well, he wanted the bitch, all right, and he got her—but he did his own shooting, like I said. The others were just paying Marty back for crossing them. While they were at it, they crossed Old Man Selman too, for some damn reason. Hardin musta been behind it, though—because just look how Selman got even with him.
Early that summer, my husband made a deal with some people in El Paso to move a herd of cattle down from New Mexico. Two of those people, he said, were George Scarborough and John Selman. He didn’t mention Jeff Milton—maybe because Jeff wasn’t in it, maybe because Martin didn’t know he was. Anyhow, they told Martin they had a buyer out at Van Horn all ready to take the cows off their hands at a real nice profit. They were stealing the herd, of course—that’s why they contracted Martin to move it for them. He had a reputation for expertise in that regard. I once heard him describe his profession as the low-overhead approach to the beef business.
I married Martin because I was young and bored and didn’t know much except that I wanted some excitement in my life. My brothers taught me to ride and shoot when I was still in pigtails, and I always envied them their freedom to roam and take their pleasure where they found it. I won’t be stupidly coy and deny that I’d known men before Martin, but they were mostly dullards of the sort to be found by the bushels in small towns—clerks and druggists and drummers. Men with stiff collars and soft hands and eyes as oily as their hair. Now and then I’d fool with a farmboy. Their muscles were hard, but I wanted no part of their sweat-and-dirt futures. I’d never known a truly exciting man until I met Martin. He took me away to the bright lights and loud music and fast smoky pleasures of Galveston and San Antone. He taught me the mean comforts of whiskey, and many of men’s secret sexual delights. Before long, however, I found out he was not the man I thought he was. I began to suspect that he was afraid of losing me, and one dark night, when he whispered that I was the only one he’d ever trusted, I knew I was right. I realized how much stronger than him I was, and I couldn’t help but hate him a little for disappointing me so bad.
Scarborough gave Martin half his fee before he left for New Mexico and promised to pay the rest on delivery of the herd to a small ranch just east of El Paso. Martin took Vic Queen, Hector O’Keefe, and Tom Finnessy with him and went up to Little Texas to get the cows. Two weeks later he got back to our rented house in town and woke me in the middle of the night, still smelling of dust and horse sweat. He said they’d run into some hard luck on the way back with the herd. They were attacked by rustlers just a few miles north of the Texas border and had the cows stolen from them. “We were lucky to get out of it alive,” he said, and I heard the lie in his voice. That’s the trouble with a liar: he even lies to the people he doesn’t have to. He undressed in the dark, saying he was worried because he didn’t think Scarborough and the others would believe the herd had been rustled. “Guys like them,” he said as he got in bed and ran his hand over my breasts and down my belly, “think the whole world’s as crooked as they are.” Both of us laughed, only he didn’t know we were laughing at different things.
The next day he telephoned Scarborough and set up a meeting with him and Selman in Juárez across the river. Before leaving he gave me an envelope full of money for safekeeping. I saw him put another thick envelope in the inside pocket of his coat. Then he kissed me and left. As soon as he was gone I counted the money. It was more than four thousand dollars. I knew he was in over his head trying to cheat men like them.
That evening Hector O’Keefe came to me from Juárez with a message from Martin. He was one of Martin’s best friends. He’d had most of his nose bitten off in a fight when he was a boy, and I could never look on him without a little shudder of repugnance. The damn fool would actually make eyes at me. He told me Scarborough and Selman hadn’t bought the story about cattle rustlers. They accused Martin of selling the herd himself and pocketing the money, and they had demanded their share of the take. Martin swore to them he was telling the truth and said the best he could do was return what was left of the advance payment they had given him, though he’d had to use most of it to pay his hands and buy supplies. The meeting broke up in a flare of bad tempers. Scarborough said he’d arrest Martin on any one of several rustling warrants if he crossed back into El Paso before giving them their money. Selman said he’d shoot him on sight and charge him with resisting arrest afterward. Martin wanted me to see a lawyer first thing in the morning and find out what legal protection he could count on if he came back to town. If nothing could be done, I was to pack our bags and join him in Mexico.