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“You’re about to find yourself in a jail cell, Mr. Holland.”
“Judge, my poor skills with language are not allowing me to adequately convey my history with Maggie Bassett. Allow me to illustrate, Your Honor. I realized Maggie had eccentric tendencies when I found her in our bed with the Chinaman who was her opium supplier. When I expressed my puzzlement, she introduced me to the Chinaman and asked me to fix them a sandwich, since she was not disposed to go into the kitchen and do it her own self.”
The judge touched his forehead like a man teetering on an aneurysm. “Mrs. Holland, would you care to address some of the statements your husband has made?”
She rose demurely from her chair. She was wearing a dark green velvet dress with a bustle and a fur collar, and boots that laced up to the knee. She had pale skin and soft brown hair she wore in swirls piled under a wide-brimmed straw hat. Her fingers were clamped on a small black cloth purse she held in front of her. Who would have believed her background? Not even Hackberry did.
“For a short time, I used a medication to control a nervous condition,” she said. “The gentleman with me is Dr. Romulus Atwood, a specialist in these matters. He will testify that I consume no sedative stronger than warm milk.”
“Romulus Atwood implants people with animal glands, Judge,” Hackberry said. “He’s sewn goat testicles on impotent men. The ones who have survived his procedures don’t know whether to bleat or yodel.”
“Be quiet, Mr. Holland,” the judge said. He studied Atwood. “Were you ever a resident of El Paso?”
“Briefly.”
“Rise when you address the court.”
“Yes, sir, Your Honor.”
“Were you ever known as ‘the Undertaker’?”
“On occasion.”
“For the four or five men you killed?”
“Those shootings were in self-defense and adjudicated as such, Judge.”
“You were an associate of John Wesley Hardin?”
“I played cards with him. I wouldn’t call him an associate.”
“You wouldn’t? What would you call him?”
“I’d call him dead.”
“You think that’s witty?”
“No, I would not try to be witty, Your Honor. I think Mr. Holland has sullied this lady’s name. I think she’s a good Christian woman, not an addict, and certainly not a miscegenationist.”
“I don’t like you,” the judge said.
“Sir?”
“A killer carries his stink everywhere he goes. I want you out of my courtroom,” the judge said. “As for you, Mr. Holland, I find against you. I think you’re a dangerous, incorrigible man who has outlived his time and has no business carrying a badge and will probably come to a bad end. That said, I’ve heard you’re a good father to your son. For that reason and that reason only, I’m not locking you in jail. I recommend that you care for your son and raise him right and forget all this silliness.”
“I don’t quite know how to take all that in, Judge.”
“You can take it any goddamn way you want.”
“Can I buy you a drink?”
“Not at gunpoint,” the judge replied.
Hackberry went outside and stood a long time under a dripping mulberry tree. Across the dirt street, Maggie and the gunfighter who called himself a doctor entered a brightly lit café that glowed with warmth. The light had gone from the sky, and the sleet running down Hackberry’s skin and bare head was cold and viscous and left a dirty purple smear on his face when he tried to wipe it off. Where was his hat? Had he left it in the courtroom? No, it was in his buggy. With his 1860 Army Colt revolver that had been converted for modern ammunition. How could he be so forgetful?
Those were the thoughts he was thinking when he retrieved his hat and wiped his face and hair with a clean rag and put on his hat and strapped the Army Colt on his hip and dropped his coat flap over the revolver’s frame and the tiny notches filed in the wood grips. Then he crossed the street, never glancing down at the puddles he stepped in, the sleet hitting his face, his right hand opening and closing against his thigh.
HE SAT AT a table covered with a checkered cloth and ordered a pot of coffee and a plate of hash browns and two fried eggs on top of a pork chop. While he cut his meat and speared it with pieces of egg into his mouth, his gaze stayed locked on Maggie and her companion, both of whom were sitting at a wooden booth no more than fifteen feet away, both trying to ignore him. Romulus Atwood had hung up his slicker, exposing his white dress shirt with balloon sleeves and a neckerchief a dandy might wear and a vest as bright as a freshly sliced pomegranate. Atwood glanced sideways just briefly, no longer than it takes to blink, and pulled the cuff of his right shirtsleeve down to the knuckle on his thumb.
