'Let's go.' Deputy Plunkert, who had spurred his horse onto the porch of the jail with no difficulty in response to Brookshire's plea, had great difficulty getting the horse to go back down the steps. Pea Eye finally whacked the animal a time or two, and the horse jumped as far out into the street as it could, nearly knocking down one of the waiting pack mules when it landed.
Call was composed by this time. He wanted to get started, and not waste an afternoon. The men were all subdued, all except Famous Shoes, who was already half a mile ahead of them, proceeding at his customary rapid pace.
Brookshire felt so weak that he could barely mount. The shock of seeing Captain Call suddenly hit the sheriff with the rifle, and then continue to hit him, had been almost too much for his system. He felt very tired, and once more thought wi/lly of how nice it would be to spend the night in a decent hotel. That was not to be, though, not for a while. They had already left Presidio behind them.
The thing that troubled Brookshire most was that his memory of the incident was incomplete. He had been watching the Captain carefully, hoping Call was not misjudging the sheriff's temper; yet, somehow, his eyes had failed him. He didn't see the Captain walk from the cells, past the sheriff, to the rack of rifles. Whatever happened had happened too fast, or else his brain had cut off for a moment, or something. One minute the Captain was releasing Famous Shoes; the next, there was the sound of the rifle barrel hitting the sheriff. Brookshire considered it spooky. He couldn't explain it.
He had no doubt about one thing, though: Colonel Terry, in his wisdom, and he did seem to have wisdom, had clearly chosen the right man for the job at hand. The Garza boy would need more than a German rifle with a telescope sight when the Captain caught up with him. If the boy was smart, he would just surrender, and not let himself in for the kind of punishment that had just befallen the unfortunate Sheriff Doniphan.
It took the one-eared deputy, Tom Johnson, and such townspeople as gathered to help, over three hours to fish the jail keys out of the cistern. Fortunately, the hardware store had a big magnet that was used to sort nails, and with the aid of the magnet, tied to three lariat ropes, the keys were finally brought up.
Sheriff Joe Doniphan was still unconscious when they opened the cell. He was conscious only fitfully for the next several days. His right jawbone was broken in seven places, and his palate damaged. He lost all his teeth on that side of his mouth, and eventually had to have his other teeth pulled in order to bring his bite into balance.
Also, three ribs were broken, and one leg. The leg was set improperly. The local doctor was so worried about the jaw that he made a hurried job of the leg, the result being that Sheriff Doniphan limped for the rest of his life. He resigned as sheriff a month after the beating. No one, including his wife, could stand to see his mashed-in face. He retired to his house and sat in the bedroom most of the day, with the shades pulled, whittling sticks. He didn't whittle them into any shape, he just whittled them away. The memory of his own inaction, at the fatal moment, was what haunted the ex-sheriff most. He had been holding a pistol, cocked and pointed right at the old man. He could have shot him at any moment, and justified it on the grounds that Call was helping a known criminal escape. Of course, the telegram from the governor was awkward; Deputy Johnson had preserved it, for the townspeople to see. But Doniphan could have argued that he never saw it, and had reason to suspect its authenticity.
The point was, he hadn't shot. He had let an old man whip him nearly to the point of death, with one of his own guns, in his own jail, in front of five people. He hadn't shot; he had just stood there.
It was a failure the former sheriff, Joe Doniphan, couldn't live with. The next time he lifted a gun to shoot, a little less than a year after the beating, but long after the pursuit of Joey Garza had ended, it was to put a .45 caliber bullet into his own brain. His wife, Martha, was in the kitchen, rolling biscuit dough. When she heard the gun go off in the bedroom, Martha was glad.
Doobie Plunkert had only gone by the jail to see if there was any news of Ted; after all, Sheriff Bob Jekyll was known to be lazy.
He didn't care whether Doobie had any news of Ted, or whether Ted was alive or dead, for that matter. He wouldn't walk up the street to her house to bring her news, even if he had any.
Doobie knew there probably wasn't any news, though; there hadn't been a word, since the day Ted left. It seemed to Doobie that he had now been gone most of the time since they married.
She had even begun to forget bits and pieces of her early married life, though her early married life had happened less than a year ago. It was just that the terrible loneliness she felt, now that Ted was gone, had cut her off from her own good memories.
Doobie knew that when Ted finally came home, they would be the happiest couple in the world.
And she would know what to do the next time some old sheriff rode into town and tried to take her husband away. Next time, Doobie was determined to fight, and she meant to win, too. Next time, she wasn't going to let her husband go.
But chill day after chill day passed, with no word from Ted at all, or of Ted, and Doobie had become a little desperate. Every day, she went to the little post office in the back of the hardware store, hoping there would be a letter. She knew Ted wasn't much for writing, since it was all he could do to make a sentence. But still, he might pass through a town that had a post office, and he might be tempted to write her at least a note, so she would know he was alive.
She knew Bob Jekyll didn't really want her coming around the jail, whether Ted was on duty or not, but the jail was the place news would be most likely to show up. The hunger for at least some word of her husband gnawed at Doobie so deeply that she couldn't stop showing up at the jail, just to peek in and ask Sheriff Jekyll what he had heard. Captain Call was a famous man; surely there would be some news of the Captain and his party, sometime.
In the nights, Doobie began to be prey to even more terrible fears. What if Ted was lost?
What if the whole party had starved, or been killed by Indians? She knew there were still wild Indians in Mexico--what if they had killed Ted in a place where no one would ever even find his body? What if she had the baby and it grew up and neither of them ever heard another word about Ted Plunkert in the whole of their lives?
Doobie tried to make herself stay away from the jail, but on days when she was particularly worried, or had had a particularly bad night, it was hard. Her feet just seemed to take her in the direction of the jail, the one place where there might be news.
Doobie never supposed, not for one moment, that Sheriff Jekyll might take this wrong. She felt he must know that the one and only reason she pestered him was because she loved her husband so much, and was desperate for news. Everyone in Laredo, Texas, knew how much Doobie Plunkert loved her husband. They were the happiest young couple in the community. That was common knowledge.
