is a more dangerous habit in these parts than the habit of killing.
One thing you ought to be careful of, when you're out stealing, is to stay clear of Roy Bean. He can't abide a thief. If he catches you with money on you, he'll hang you promptly and keep the money. He's hung five men that I know about, for no better reason than that they had money in their pockets, and he wanted it.' 'He won't hang me, but I might hang him,' Joey replied. He said it merely to meet the challenge in the old killer's voice.
But once he began to consider it, the idea grew on him. Roy Bean was known to be a hanging judge. Roy Bean cared little for justice, or so Joey had been told by Billy Williams.
Joey cared little for justice, himself. He couldn't blame the judge for that, and he didn't care that the judge wasn't fair.
'I think I will hang him,' he repeated.
'It might be pleasant.' John Wesley Hardin was startled, and he wasn't a man who startled easily. This pup of a boy had just had an idea that he should have had himself: hang Roy Bean. That old fart had it coming to him, had for years.
'Why, that's original,' Wesley Hardin said. 'I expect that would make the newspapers.
Old Call might get fired, for letting it happen.' 'Do you know Famous Shoes?' Joey asked.
The old man was a tracker, a Kickapoo.
No one knew where he lived; somewhere in the Sierra Madre, it was thought. Billy Williams had known Famous Shoes for many years and thought him the best tracker who ever lived.
He even knew how to track birds, as they flew. Even the Apaches respected Famous Shoes, and the Apaches yielded up little respect when it came to tracking. They considered themselves the best, but admitted that if anyone was better than they were, it was Famous Shoes. Some Apaches thought that the reason Famous Shoes was such a brilliant tracker was that he was part eagle.
Someone had seen him bringing the eggs of an eagle down to his camp, where he ate them. It was because of the eagle's eggs, some thought, that Famous Shoes could see so well. No one in the West could see farther, or more clearly, than the old Kickapoo. In earlier days, he had been employed up and down the border by whites, Mexicans, and Indians alike, to help recover children who had been stolen, or sold into slavery. Famous Shoes never failed to find the children, even when he was put on the trail months late. He could not always recover the children, for his skill was only in tracking. But he always found the children. A man who could track the flight of birds and even follow eagles to their roosts, in order to take their eggs, would have no difficulty in tracking a raiding party that had come to take slaves.
'I have seen Famous Shoes a few times,' Wesley Hardin said. 'If I see him again, I'll kill him, and if I'd known he was around I'd have been out hunting for him yesterday.' 'Why?' Joey asked. 'He's an old man. You wouldn't need to fear him.' 'He's an old man, but his eyesight ain't failed him,' Hardin said. 'Suppose I kill the wrong fellow, someone who ain't just scum, and the law comes after me again? If they hired old Famous Shoes, they'd find me, too, and if there's more of a damn posse than I could shoot, I'd be back in prison again. And next time, they'll beat me to death.' He suddenly turned his back to Joey and pulled off his coat and shirt. His back was crisscrossed with scars, every inch of it.
'The time I went for the warden and tried to knock the sonofabitch's head in, they gave me five hundred lashes. I wasn't awake for but about two hundred of them, though.' 'They will not do that to me,' Joey said.
Wesley Hardin stuffed his shirttail back in his pants. He turned to Joey and smiled.
'If they get you in jail, then they can do anything they want,' he said. 'If they want to beat you with a damn whip, they will.' 'They won't get me in jail,' Joey said.
The sight of the man's scarred back had impressed him.
'Then you better kill Famous Shoes, and kill him next,' Wesley Hardin said. 'That's my recommendation.' 'Why him? I don't even know him,' Joey replied.
'He's a hired hand. He tracks for anybody that'll pay him,' Wesley Hardin said. 'Woodrow Call might pay him to find you.
If he's set to find you, he'll find you.
Famous Shoes don't miss.' Joey Garza smiled. 'I don't miss, either,' he said. Then he took his fine rifle and left.
When Famous Shoes decided to take a walk, it was usually a long one. He didn't like to walk where there were Federales, because the Federales killed Indians. The presence of Federales distracted him, and took away some of the pleasure of his long walk. To avoid them, he walked north through the Madre until he was out of Mexico, before turning east. He had decided to go to the Rio Rojo and live on it a few weeks, as his people had once done. He was an old man, and one day soon, he would have to give up his spirit. He thought it would be fitting to go to the Rio Rojo, where his people had once lived. It was his view that the Kickapoo people would be living along the Brazos and the Rio Rojo still, if the Comanche and the Kiowa had not been so hard to get along with.
But the Comanche and the Kiowa did not like the Kickapoo people, or any other people, and it was not easy to live with the Comanche or the Kiowa if they disliked you. They killed so many Kickapoo that the old men decided the tribe had better move, or soon there would be no tribe.
Now the Comanche were gone, and the Kiowa, too.
Famous Shoes could go visit the land of his fathers without unpleasantness. He walked east, toward the pass of the north. In a few days, he would be on the great plain. He wanted to visit the several forks of the Brazos--the Salt, the Clear, the Double Mountain fork and the Prairie Dog fork-- to see if the river had moved far from where it had been when he was a boy. He had known the Brazos when he was young. He liked to watch it wander, and make itself new channels.
While Famous Shoes was walking east near Agua Prieta, he crossed a track that frightened him so much that he wanted to crouch down. It was a track he had not seen in many years: the track of Mox Mox, the manburner. The Apaches called him The Snake-You-Do-Not-See, for his habit of catching people unawares, and burning them.
Particularly, he liked to burn young children, but he would burn anyone he could catch, when he wanted to burn.
