else dumb, that would cause them to lose the fight.
Mox Mox killed short people because they reminded him of himself--that was Jimmy Cumsa's theory.
He killed tall people because he envied them. He could be a killer, but he could never be tall. He could never be blond, because he had red hair; and he could never look you straight in the eye, because one of his eyes was pointed wrong. It looked out of his head at an angle. Mox Mox hated being short, regretted that smallpox had scarred his face, and was sorry that he was not blond, but the thing he hated most about himself was his crooked- looking eye. His greatest, most elaborate cruelties were reserved for people with well-set, bright blue eyes.
When Mox Mox caught such a person, male or female, he tended to do the worst things to the eyes. If the person with the perfect blue eyes was tall and blond, then so much the worse for him or her.
Jimmy Cumsa wondered if fire was so hot that even dead people could feel it burning them. He had seen corpses twitch, while Mox Mox was burning them. It seemed to Jimmy that might mean even the dead had some feelings, enough feelings that they could respond to the heat of a fire.
Mox Mox had probably killed the old Comanche woman because she was short. She was about the same height as Mox Mox himself. Burning flesh smelled sweet--that was a fact soon learned, if you rode with Mox Mox. It didn't matter why he had killed the old woman; she was definitely dead. The flimsy branches of her little hovel didn't make much of a funeral flame. She wasn't going to be burned very completely, Jimmy knew that.
Mox Mox didn't seem to be paying much attention to this fire, or to the old woman's burning. Most likely, that was because she was dead, and couldn't scream and plead. When people screamed and pleaded, Mox Mox got icy cool. He was like the sleet at such times. Never once had he spared a person he wanted to burn, not since Jimmy had ridden with him. It didn't matter how loudly they pleaded, or how much money they offered him.
Peon got off his horse and began to piss into the flames. Peon was another runt, a little taller than Mox Mox, but not much. He had grown up in a swamp in Mississippi, and he slunk along, looking furtive and dirty, like some old swamp dog.
The two Mexicans were anxious to get the burning over with, so they could go to the cantina and drink. Oteros kept looking at the horizon, as if he expected to see a posse coming for him, with their hang ropes out.
Oteros was not afraid of Mox Mox, either.
He was with him because he admired his business sense.
He had met Mox Mox in jail, in San Luis Obispo. Mox Mox was about to be hung, for killing a boy. Oteros had very long arms and managed to reach out of his cell with one of his long arms and catch the jailer as the man was walking past with a plate of beans for an old bank robber who was being kept in the jail. Oteros held firmly to the jailer's collar until he could get his pistol and beat his head in. Mox Mox got the jailer's keys, and the two of them left.
Oteros had been with Mox Mox ever since.
'I don't like these crows,' Oteros said.
'Why did we come here? There are too many laws in Texas.' 'He means lawmen,' Peon said. He understood Oteros and liked him, although Oteros was the most violent of the seven men and as likely to kill friend as foe when his temper was up, as it often was.
'He thinks there are too many lawmen in Texas,' he repeated, in case Mox Mox missed his point.
'There may be too many lawmen in Texas, but there's still too many Apaches in New Mexico,' Mox Mox said. 'I'd rather fight any lawman in the world than some old Apache with one eye and a weak bow. I'd kill the lawman, but the one-eyed Apache would probably kill me.' 'You, but not me,' Oteros said. 'I have killed many Indians and I will kill more if I see any.' 'Go kill Goodnight, if you want to kill a tough old wolf,' Mox Mox said.
'The sonofabitch chased me a thousand miles, and he'd do it again if he knew I was alive.' 'Well, he'll find out, if we come over here and start cooking people,' Jimmy Cumsa said.
'We won't be cooking too many until Goodnight is dead,' Mox Mox said. 'I do want to kill that Mexican boy who robbed those trains with the payrolls on them. We've robbed three trains and ain't took a payroll yet.
That boy's beating us to the money. If we could take a payroll, we could hire enough men to clean out a state.' 'A state?' Jimmy asked. 'You want to kill all the people in a whole state? I never knew you had that kind of ambition, Mox.' 'Which one would you take, if you was to take a state?' Peon asked.
Mox Mox had given no detailed thought to the conquest of a state. He'd merely been reflecting on the army he could raise if he had a million dollars to spend. It was rumored in Juarez that the Garza boy had taken a million dollars in payroll money off the trains he had robbed.
'I might take Wyoming,' Mox Mox said.
'I could take it and be governor of it. Then, I'd hang all the dirty sonsabitches I didn't like.' 'There wouldn't be a soul left in the state, if you hung all the people you didn't like,' Jimmy Cumsa said. 'I don't notice that you like too many people, Mox.' 'I don't, for a fact, and you're getting to be a prime candidate for hanging yourself,' Mox Mox said. Sometimes Quick Jimmy let a little too much contempt leak into his voice, when he spoke to his boss. Jimmy didn't like very many people himself, but he paired up with Pedro Jones when they hit a town and decided to seek women.
Pedro Jones had a Yankee father and a mother who came from far down in the Indian country below the City of Mexico, by the ocean. Pedro carried a seashell with him, in his saddlebags. At night, by the fire, he would often sit holding the shell to his ear. He liked to listen to the sea, for he had grown up by it. Listening to its faint echo in the shell reminded him of a time when life had not been so harsh.
Pedro had become a criminal by accident, at a time when he lived in Vera Cruz.
He was very tight with his money and had begun to strangle the whores he went to see, in order to save what they cost. It seemed to him a reasonable practice. There were many, many whores in Vera Cruz, and he had only strangled a few and beat in the heads of one or two more. He had only killed the last few because of drink, but the authorities had not accepted his excuses. A whore who was in love with him helped him break out of jail and he went west, across Mexico and then north into Arizona Territory, where Mox Mox found him. Pedro had killed an old woman who wanted to charge him too much for his supper. Old as she was, the authorities still took offense, so that Pedro was forced to flee along the Gila.
Manuel had been in jail with Pedro, and fled with him when he escaped. Manuel was a simple horse thief who was too lazy to run as far as it was necessary to run when he stole horses from the gringos. He stayed with Mox
