I had been with Michael four years, close to five, and I thought that he was a good man. He had done a lot of bad things, but I thought that his heart was good. That was enough.
He rode from town to town, and I went with him. I helped him when he needed it, and I carried the things we took. I made the camp and I took it down in the morning, when we rode to the next town. When he fought, if I had to, I fought, too. Father Paul told me it was not a sin against God to kill a man who wanted to kill me, and I had to believe him, for Michael.
Michael. Miguel. He was a bounty hunter, or a police, I do not know which. I do not know there is a difference. If there was a bad man, then he must pay, and Michael made him. If someone paid Michael, he made men pay if they were bad or not, but he did that only a little.
Here, listen: This was two years ago. I was paid twelve dollars a month for my time with Michael. It was good pay, and I was thankful, I thanked him, and I thanked the Lord. Each time we came to town, I took the money, which was in a brown envelope in my saddlebag, and I put it in the mail and I sent it home. My wife, my daughter, they lived in Mexico, a bit south of the border. I sent them money to live. I sent them all of it. I needed no money. Michael took care of us well.
I would give the money to the man in the office, and I would tell him to be careful, that it was feeding my daughter, my wife, and he would laugh. “Lotta tortillas for twelve dollars, amigo?”
And I would say it was so, because I did not want to fight. Probably, it fed them beans and water. I do not know.
Sometimes, I would worry. I would wonder if the money would go home.
I told my worry to Michael one day. He looked at me, and I don’t know what he was thinking. There was a lot of pain, I think, in him and it was all on his face. Under the rim of his hat, it was all there, and you could not see the emotion through the pain.
But Michael, he thought a while, and he said to me, “This worry you a lot, Sancho?”
I nodded. My name is not Sancho. My Christian name is Peter, and I like the sound of Pedro, but he called me Sancho. It was a joke, he said, from a book. He smiled when he said it, and he did not smile much, so I did not mind.
We were heading north. He turned his horse around. He nudged her into a canter. I followed him.
“We’ll have to put your mind at ease then, won’t we?”
I tried to tell him it was just fear. It was probably nothing, I was sure things were fine, but Michael would not listen. He never listened when he didn’t want to. We rode south a while and we went to the town where we had been. We went to the post office. It was a shed, next to the tavern. I think it used to be a stable.
Michael got off his horse. He gave me the reins, and said, “You wait here, Sancho. I’ll have a talk.”
He went inside. I tied the horses outside and I pet them as they drank from the trough. The land out here was harsh. It was all desert and it was not a good place for men to live. They said to me in taverns, “It ain’t no different than Mey-hee-co, si?” And then they laughed. I did not want to fight, so I said nothing. It is different. There is no pretty flowers in the desert here, no grass, no life. There is nothing but space. Father Paul said there is too much space out here, on the frontier, and it drove men mad. I believe him. I think that too long out there, and you forget you are a man.
Michael came back out, and he had the post office man with him. He was dragging him by the back of his shirt. The other man swore a lot, at Michael, at me. Michael threw him to the road, and dust came up around him.
“You were right, Peter,” Michael said. He did not call me that often, and I knew it was bad when he did. He handed me a very thick envelope, and I opened it. It was full of money. I counted it later, and it was five hundred and seventy-six dollars. That was forty-eight weeks of my pay. My family had no money for forty-eight weeks, and with no one to turn to, I did not know what could have happened to them. I found out later they died.
Michael had a rifle. It was a long rifle, gold plated, old and beaten. He had it on his shoulder, and he looked down at the man in the dust. The post office man, he tried to get up, but Michael put a foot on his chest. I knew that his foot was tilted back and the spurs were digging into the man’s stomach. I said nothing. I just stared at the money.
“You can kill him, if you want,” Michael said. “You got the right, for what he done to your family.”
Michael does not joke about that. He believes you hurt a man, you hurt his family, you die. He was sixty-eight years old, and I think he had seen so much hurt, it was all he knew.
He even offered me his rifle.
I shook my head. I said, “I cannot kill him. It would not be right.”
Michael said, “It would be right. It’s justice, is what it is.”
I just shook my head. I put the money in my saddlebag with my other twelve dollars. I got back on my horse, and I turned toward the street.
Michael kicked the man in the ribs. The man stood up, I could hear him do it. I looked over my shoulder at him, and I could see his hand behind him, pulling a knife out of the back of his pants.
I wanted to shout, but Michael swung his rifle forward. It hit the man on the head, and he stumbled back. Michael pointed his rifle at the man’s chest, and he pulled the trigger.
The sound startled the horses a bit.
That was Michael. He was a good man. He did bad things, but his heart was good. Father Paul said I should pray for him, and I did. That night, I said Our Father for him. I think it helped.
The two years went fast. We worked a lot. Michael fought. He made money. He was very good at fighting, at killing. I thought he was in a war, and I asked him about it, but he yelled at me and then would not say. I still think so.
Michael was sixty, and he moved slower. So many fights, I killed more men then he did. The fights were over so fast, I could not be sure, but I think it is true.
When we went after Bill Dunaway, I was worried. Dunaway, he took advantage of a woman, and then he beat her badly. Michael went after him, and I said good-bye to Father Paul, because we were near his town, and I went with Miguel.
Dunaway ran into the desert. No man could escape that way, with no horse, no water. There was no chance. We caught him on the second day. He had gone very far for being on foot, but we had brought a spare horse, so the trip back would not be so long.
That night, I made camp and a fire. I cooked beans, and listened to Dunaway. He was tied up, hands and feet, and lying in the dirt. Sometimes, he would shout at Michael, at me, but the cabron was face-down, and he got dirt in his mouth when he spoke.
Michael sat on the ground, and he looked at the fire. I could not understand his face. I wished I knew what he was thinking.
Michael said, “Sancho, you’re twenty-eight?”
“Thirty-one, amigo.”
“Thirty-one.” Michael whistled. “Damn, don’t the years go by.”
It was not a question. I nodded, and I stirred the beans. I put a little whiskey in them, for flavor.
Michael did not speak for a bit. Then he said, “I’m sixty, Peter. Sixty damn years old. I seen a lot.”
“You should tell stories,” I said. “Everyone would listen.”
Michael laughed. It was not a sound to make people happy.
“I tell stories, my stories make people sick. I ain’t seen nothin’ make people want to listen, want to be happy. I got nothin’ but gristle.”
Maybe that was true. I did not know. He did not tell any stories, not even to me, not even when he had too much to drink.
He pulled out his pistol from its holster. I looked at Dunaway, but he was not escaping, only sleeping and snoring. Michael just looked at the pistol. He turned it over and over, like it was new to him.
“I notice it’s gettin’ rusty.” Michael said. “Rain’s eatin’ away at it.”
I spooned beans onto plates, and I set one in the dust beside Michael. He didn’t notice, he just turned his pistol over and over.
“We can get you a new one. A better one.” I smiled. Michael didn’t look at me. He was somewhere else, I think.
“Had this one a long time. Killed my first man with this pistol, made my first bounty.” Michael said. He held the pistol out and sighted along the barrel at Dunaway. I held my breath, but Michael did not shoot him. He lowered the pistol and looked at it again.
“You believe in signs, Sancho?” Michael asked. He looked at me then, and I wished he would look back at the pistol.
“I believe in God.” I said, and I did. “I believe God shows us how things can be better, yes? I believe God makes us know how to be better. He shows us things.”
“I’m thinkin’ so, too.” Michael said.
Then he put the pistol away and picked up the plate of beans. He ate them without saying another word, and I ate mine. I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what we had already said.
We got to town, and I started to go to the Sheriff, but Michael, he stopped in the street. People were coming out to look, to swear at Bill Dunaway. He was a bad man, and all the things they said about him were true. They say God can forgive so much…I do not know how He forgives a man like Dunaway.
Michael got off his horse, and he got Dunaway down. He untied the man. Everyone went silent. I got off my horse. I was very scared. Michael had not said a word to anyone all day, nothing since the night before, and I did not know what he was thinking.
“Bill Dunaway, you pretty good at beatin’ on women, I hear,” Michael said. He was a lot taller than Dunaway, a lot bigger, a lot harder. “You ever beat on a man?”
Dunaway, he looked scared. He said anyway, “I beat plenty of men.”
His knuckles were scarred. So was his face. I think it was probably true.
Michael said, “I give you a shot to beat a man for freedom, you think you’re gonna take somethin’ like that?”
Dunaway didn’t say nothing. He looked around. He looked at me. Me, I looked at Michael, who stared at Dunaway.
“I ain’t brawlin’ with you,” Dunaway said. “Sheriff will make it worse for me.”
“Sheriff won’t do nothin’, and I ain’t talking about brawling.” Michael said. “And we ain’t doing nothin’ tonight. We’ll do it at dawn. That’s how they do things here, innit? Draw at dawn. Proper.”
Dunaway protested a bit. It was a chance for freedom, I think that was all he needed. Michael put him in a stable and told him to stay there that night, and then he told me to go back to Father Paul and get some sleep. I could not refuse, so I went. Michael went into the tavern.
That night, I was outside, because I could not sleep. I watched as Dunaway slipped out of the stable and started running his way out of town. Michael came after him so quick, he must have been waiting on his horse. He roped Dunaway like a calf, and he hauled him back by his ankles. Left him in the stable again. This time, Dunaway didn’t go anywhere.
Michael stayed outside the stable all night. Sometimes he smoked, sometimes he drank, and a lot of the time, he looked at his old pistol. I came to sit with him when the moon was high and bright. I wrapped a blanket around me, because the night was cold.
He refused the blanket I brought for him, but he didn’t tell me to go away again, so I sat down.
“World’s changing,” Michael said to me, after a while. “Did you know they’re running railroads out here? Can you imagine? From east coast to west in a week, if things are runnin’ good. It’s almost too strange.”
I said: “I have a cousin, and he works on the tracks. He lays them down. He says it is slow, and it takes a long time. There is so much to blast. Change comes, señor, but it comes slow.”
“Yeah, but it comes,” Michael said quietly. He looked at his pistol.
“Why did you put Dunaway there?” I asked. “Why not in jail? Where is the Sheriff?”
“Sheriff’s got no room, no time, no men,” Michael said, “And he don’t have an interest. I asked him for this’n, and he obliged me. I conjure he thinks I’m doin’ him a favor.”
“What are you doing, Miguel?”
Michael looked at me. I could never read his eyes, and I still could not read his eyes, but they scared me now. They had never done that before. He grinned. It stretched the scars on his lips, his cheeks. It wrinkled his eyes. I guess I never saw him as an old man before, but he looked like one that night.
“I’m doing what I can, Sancho.” He said. “Go to bed. Father Paul will wonder what happened to his faithful compañero.”
“I am your companion,” I said softly. “Not Father Paul’s.”
Michael said nothing, and what could I say? So I went back to the church and I went to bed. I did not sleep at all. I think that Michael did not sleep either. I could imagine him still sitting there as the night went by.
Dawn came, and so did a crowd. It was something to see, something they all had to see. Everyone came out. Even the girl that got beat by Dunaway, she came out. She had been beat so bad, it scared me to look at her. She sat on the steps of the tavern and shivered a lot. She was so pale. She didn’t leave.
Michael let Dunaway out, and he handed him the long old rifle that he’d carried for years. I did not like that, and I wanted to go to Michael, to stop him, but Father Paul said to stay, to watch, to wait. He said that sometimes, a man’s soul does what it must, and there was nothing I could do. I stood there and I did not like myself any more than Dunaway.
“Now,” Michael said, “We stand back to back. Do it, Dunaway. Good. Then, we march ten paces, we count ’em off loud. At ten, we turn and fire, we see who’s the better man. You get your fair fight. You win, you walk away, Sheriff ain’t doing nothing. I win, I win.”
Dunaway was shaking, and he looked like a scared boy. Michael stood very tall and very straight, and he looked like he was in the army. He had his pistol out. It glittered in the rising sun in patches, where it was not rusting. I had not realized how old it was until then. How it had decayed.
They marched ten paces, and they called out all the steps. I wanted to close my eyes, I wanted to rush at them, to stop them, to beg Michael to run. I wanted to just pull out my pistol and shoot Dunaway in the back and be done with it.
I held rosary beads, which Father Paul put into my hands. I sweated onto their wood, and I squeezed them very tight.
Michael marched straight-legged, and he was looking straight ahead. Whatever he was seeing, it was not right in front of him. He called out the numbers loud and clear, and he marched to them. Dunaway said the numbers too, but you couldn’t hear them over the sound of Michael.
He wasn’t sixty. He was thirty. He was twenty. You could have put men behind him, and they would have marched along to his numbers, because that was what you wanted to do.
They reached ten.
They turned.
Dunaway fired the rifle once, cocked it, fired twice. Both times, he hit Michael. Michael fell back, and the pistol fell from his hand and into the dust.
I ran to Michael, though Father Paul tried to hold me back. I was scared and I was angry all at once. I wanted to pull my gun and shoot Dunaway, who was turning to run, who didn’t care that he had shot a man.
I fell down next to Michael, who looked at me. He smiled, and his eyes didn’t scare me anymore. His hand fell open in the street, and the blood that was on it was caked with dust. I picked up his old pistol, and I put it in his hand. I pressed that hand against his chest, though there was blood pooling.
Michael said something to me, before he died. He said, “Windmills, Peter.”
I do not know what he meant.
Then, he died.
I heard folk say that if he had slept that night, instead of watching Dunaway, he would have killed the man. Folks blamed the Sheriff for not keeping Dunaway in his jails, but the Sheriff did nothing wrong. They blamed his old pistol too, said the old rusty thing wouldn’t have fired, couldn’t have saved him
I buried Michael out here, in the desert, because he was out here a lot. Father Paul said kind words over his grave and then went away. I waited until he was gone, because I did not know what to say.
Dunaway died anyway. The woman who he beat, she had a brother who rode out after Dunaway and left him hanging from a tree. I think the birds got him. I think that is fine, Lord forgive me.
I think that sleep would not have made Michael win. I do not think his pistol would have fired, because I do not think the man would have fired it. Sometimes, I think that he was just afraid of change, but then I remember the man, and I know he was not afraid of anything.