The news of his death made Maria feel light. That night, she danced in the cantina, and several vaqueros fell in love with her. When she danced, she often became happy, became welcoming, and men fell in love with her. It was the death of the German that allowed her to feel light.
If he was dead, she was safe from his vengeance.
Only when men were dead could she feel really safe from their vengeance. If he were alive, old Lichtenberg might ride in someday, with Doniphan to back him up, and beat her half to death, because Joey had stolen those coins.
In the City of Mexico, Joey Garza felt at home for the first time. He felt that he had come to the place where he belonged. All night there were people in the streets. The air was soft, the ringing of the church bells beautiful. Young priests went barefoot in the street, particularly around the great cathedral. Joey was not a worshiper, but he loved the great cathedral. Several times he came back to stand inside, happy just to look at the high ceiling and the great space it contained. In Ojinaga all the ceilings were low. As he walked in the night, whores followed him, because of his horse.
They thought he was rich, for in the City of Mexico not many boys his age had fine black geldings.
Joey ignored the whores, and didn't frequent the cantinas. He had come for a gun-- if possible, one with a little spyglass on it. It took him three days to find the gun he wanted.
An old trader had it, a Frenchman, a man with a vast belly and empty eyes. Joey had the urge to stick a knife in the man's belly, to see if he could cause the emptiness to leave his eyes. Perhaps as he died, the man would look alive for a few moments. When Joey showed him the five coins--he had spent one on the gelding--the man didn't say a word. He just put the rifle away and nodded for Joey to get out of his shop.
That night, Joey walked the cantinas, looking for card players who were winning. In a cantina not far from the great cathedral, he saw a small man with quick hands who had many gold coins.
When the man had enough of the card game, he put the coins in a little sack and had a whore carry it.
When a second whore wanted to go with him, he shoved her away. Joey followed the man for a while, as he lurched along. He kept sticking his hand under the dress of the young whore. It reminded Joey of the way Benito had behaved with his mother; of how all men behaved with his mother. All her husbands put their hands on her, in the house.
They didn't care who saw them.
Joey followed the man and the whore until they were well away from the cantina. As he was walking along a cobbled street, he saw a cobblestone that had come loose. Joey believed in omens. The loose cobblestone meant that it was time for him to act.
He picked up the cobblestone, came quickly up behind the small man, and smashed his head with it. He grabbed the whore and took the sack of money from her. The whore became frightened, and fled.
Joey did not check to see whether the small man was dead. He took the sack of coins, got his horse, and rode to the edge of the City of Mexico, where he slept. The next day, he walked into the fat Frenchman's shop, jingling the coins. The fat man didn't change expressions, but he sold Joey the rifle.
Later, Joey bought some bullets, two pistols, and a fine saddle. He went to stand in the great cathedral once more, and then rode north, out of Mexico.
Ten days later, on the Texas border west of Laredo, Joey robbed his first train. The robbery was an accident, in a sense. The train was stopped at a water tank. It was a train carrying sheep. Two sheepherders and the four men who ran the train were standing around the water tank, smoking. Joey was three hundred yards away.
The heat was so great that it cast a haze. No one from the train crew had seen him. Joey decided it was an excellent chance to practice with his new rifle, so he tied his horse and crept a little closer to the men. He shot the two sheepherders first; it was easy to tell they were sheepherders because they wore huge sombreros and looked shaggy, like the animals they cared for. Joey then shot two of the railroad men, the two fat ones. He didn't like fat people, there were too many of them in the world. Juan Castro and Roberto Sanchez, two of the husbands his mother whored with, had been fat.
As a child, he had often wakened to see a fat body on his mother's. Her husbands grunted like pigs, when they were on her. Shooting the fat railroad men was only a small revenge, for the pain his whoring mother had caused him.
The two other railroad men began to run, not into the train, but down the river, toward Laredo. Joey watched them run. He was trying to judge what would be a fair distance to shoot, a distance that would allow his rifle to perform at its best.
When the man in the lead was about four hundred yards away, Joey looked through the spyglass and shot. He aimed for the neck, but the man was running downhill and his aim was a little high. The bullet blew the man's face off. Joey rode over later to inspect the body, and most of the man's face was gone.
The sixth man ran for his life. He sped along the river so fast that it annoyed Joey.
Joey loped away, on the black gelding, letting the man see him, letting him think that he had abandoned the hunt. The man slowed to a trot, and then to a walk. Joey loped down the river, until he was well in front of the man. He was satisfied with his rifle; now he wanted to try his new pistols, and at close range.
The man from the train finally stumbled out of a gully, not thirty yards from where Joey sat on the black horse. The man was terrified. He began to plead, and name the saints.
Hearing the saints named only angered Joey.
A priest in the village had the habit of twisting his ear cruelly, while talking to him about the saints. Joey began to shoot at the weeping, pleading man, but, to his annoyance, shooting a pistol proved far more difficult than shooting his fine rifle. He emptied the two pistols, twelve shots, and did no more than nick the man's arm. Joey threw the pistols away, disgusted. They were poor weapons. He was not ready to admit that his aim was bad.
Joey rode to a little rise, overlooking the river. When the man was about seventy yards away, Joey took out the great rifle and shot the man twice, aiming for his knees. He did not mean to cut the man's arms and legs off, as he had Benito's, but he did mean to cripple him. The man's knees were shattered, and he writhed on the ground, screaming. When he passed out, Joey rode close to look at him. His legs were leaking a pool of blood. Probably the man would bleed to death, as Benito had. Benito had made his mother whore like a beast, on all fours. Joey had seen them in the bed, many times, in the early morning. Benito would be behind his mother, prodding her as bulls
