But he didn't want to kill the man, and he also knew it would not be wise to underrate him, just because he was a scabby old gringo. Wesley Hardin had killed many, many men; the fact that he had been a little slow with the blacksmith didn't mean he would be slow if his own life was really at stake. The blacksmith had posed no threat. But Hardin was a killer, like himself. He should not be underestimated.
Wesley Hardin got up, picked up the blacksmith's legs, and slowly dragged him outside. The crows set up a cawing the minute the door opened. The blacksmith was a heavy man. Hardin had to stick his revolver back in his belt and use both hands, in order to drag him out.
'O'Brien, get your donkey and drag that heavy bastard off,' he said, when he came back. He was winded from his effort, and his face had gone pale.
'Wes, you need to hold your temper,' Patrick O'Brien said. 'That was the only blacksmith within a hundred miles.' Wesley Hardin didn't take kindly to censure. He frowned at the Irishman.
'I might shoot every man, woman, and child in this stinkin', nigger-bird town, and then you wouldn't need a goddamn blacksmith. How's that?' he asked.
Wesley Hardin turned to Joey with an angry look.
'You could help me wipe this nigger-bird shithole off the face of the earth, if you're such a killer,' he said to Joey. 'You kill the men, and I'll take care of the women and the brats.' 'Wes, there's only two children in town, and they're mine,' Patrick O'Brien said. He had meanwhile taken the precaution of arming himself with a shotgun. When Wes Hardin was in one of his irritable moods, it was wisest to be armed.
'I wasn't speaking to you, you damn pig!' Wesley Hardin said, giving the man a violent stare. 'I was speaking to the notorious young killer, here.' For all Hardin's jumpy manner, his eyes, when he looked at Joey, were clear. He might twitch, but he wasn't really agitated, not in the part of himself that sized up men and situations.
The boy, the g@uero, gave back an empty gaze. Joey let his eyes meet Hardin's, but in Joey's eyes there was nothing.
Only distance, a distance deep as the sky.
'Why would they send Woodrow Call after a pup like you?' Hardin asked. But he let no insult into his voice.
'Because I steal money from Americans,' Joey said.
'You're right--it's the money, not the killing,' Wesley Hardin said. 'They don't care who gets killed, out here in the baldies. It don't cost the damn pigs a cent for us to kill one another out here. Why would they care? Out here west of the Pecos, it's fine to kill, but you better not steal from no trains coming from the east, where the damn Yankees keep their money.
'How much did you get?' he inquired, in a calmer tone. 'I heard it was a million, and I heard it was the army's money.' Joey looked at the man coolly, with his distant eyes. Did the old killer really expect him to tell how much money he had stolen?
In fact, he had buried the payrolls only a few miles from where he stole them. He didn't know how much he had taken, he just knew that the money was too bulky to carry very far. He was not such a fool as to bury it all in one place, either. He hid it in snake dens; the Apaches had taught him how to find them. They often ate snakes, when they could get nothing better.
He didn't have the time to carry so much money to his cave, nor did he want to. The money was not very interesting to him. His cave was for beautiful things. Everything he stole, he wrapped well.
He had taken two hundred gunnysacks from a hardware store in Piedras Negras, to the puzzlement of the man who owned the store. The man could not understand why anyone would take gunnysacks, when there were guns and axes to steal.
Joey took the sacks because he needed them to wrap his treasures. That was also why he had taken the fancy sheets from the rich man who had the fur coat. He didn't want to sleep on the sheets; he wanted them for wrapping, so that his many silver objects would not grow dingy in the cave.
At another hardware store in San Angelo, he found some excellent wooden barrels, and he hired an old man named Jose Ramos to help him take the barrels on donkeys into the mountains. He left them in one cave, an empty one, to fool old Ramos, and later came back and carried them, one by one, to his own cave, which was three days away.
Then he packed his well-wrapped treasures in the excellent barrels, where they would be safe from rats and varmints. He already had more than one hundred watches, and nearly as many rings. One of his regrets was that there were so few women on the trains, because women had nicer things than men. They had beautiful combs of ivory, and necklaces and bracelets, even jewels to hang in their ears.
Joey kept all the women's things together. When he went to his cave, he would spend whole days unwrapping his treasures, one by one, holding them and letting the light play on them. They were far more interesting than the money.
Knowing that he had the treasures and that he could go there and enjoy them, was a deep satisfaction to Joey. Lately, he had begun to steal things with little value--ladies' hairbrushes, or letter openers--simply because he liked to touch the ivory or shell that they were made from.
The quality of his treasures was not something he intended to talk about to a killer such as Wesley Hardin, though. He decided he didn't like the nosy old gringo, who asked the kind of questions his mother asked. The killer was a man to be watched, that was all.
'I guess you're feeling closemouthed today, are you, boy?' Wesley Hardin asked. Of course, he had not expected the g@uero to tell him how much money he had taken from the trains.
'You'd do better to talk to yourself, Wes,' Patrick O'Brien said. 'My ears get tired, just from listening to you cuss, when you're in a temper.' 'Be glad you can hear me--it means I ain't shot you yet, Pat,' Hardin said. 'I can cuss old Lordy now, as much as I want to, but he won't hear a whisper.' Joey picked up his rifle and started to leave.
He would rather look at the pretty young whore, Gabriela, than at the scabby old killer with the splotchy face.
'Hold on, I'll offer you a little free advice,' Wesley Hardin said. 'They say you have a tendency to steal, which
