El Huerfano by Shanghai_jim (R) - Part 6 (end)

[gryvon]

Title: El Huerfano
Author: shanghai_jim
Fandoms: Newsies
Pairing: David/Jack
Genre: Drama

Summary: Jack struggles to reconcile his dreams with the expectations of his friends. A bequest brings opportunity but also danger.


6. Not Just Air

Jack woke up after a few hours with the sun already battering the canvas of the tent. He glanced to his left to David's bed. It was empty and made. Jack got up. He stretched, rubbed his eyes, and went to see what was going to happen.

Grayson was sitting outside waiting for him. The young hand looked over his shoulder, stood up, took his hat off. The skin of his crown was far paler than the tanned skin of his face.

"Mister Jack," said Grayson, "I'd just like to say--"

"Did you know David's just seventeen?" Jack interrupted. "That's right. I guess the law would say he's just a kid. You fucked a kid last night, Grayson. How'd you feel about that?"

"I didn't know," Grayson mumbled. Then he said, "But sodomy's a hanging offense for both, so it don't really matter." He lifted his chin up with defiance. "Jack, I just wanted you to know that what happened was all on me. I'm ... wrong like that and my parents always knew it and that's why they left me here and moved back to Texas. I had the idea that maybe David was maybe someone like me and I made a try for it and that's how it went. If you want me off the ranch I'll go, but I'd beg you for mercy and not to tell on me to the authorities for sodomy or anything. I'll gladly hang for killing a man what needs killing, but not for a night with a boy I liked."

Jack listened, then said, "I'll tell you what, Ned. I liked you too. Not that way, but that's my lookout. We're six men and one girl up against ten thousand acres and one mean son of a bitch who wants part of it. I need you. So you can stick around. But don't speak to me again unless you're spoken to. You got me?"

Grayson nodded. "Yes, sir," he said.

"Good. Who's with the herd today?"

"Parsons and Rey."

"Then you go to the river bottom and watch for trouble."

"Yes, sir," Grayson said again, and went quickly to do as Jack bid. Jack walked straight to the corral, got out his horse, and went riding the southern bounds, towards Texas and old Mexico. He was gone two hours.

Upon his return Jack went to the Suarez shack for some food. The three boys were doing their lessons, and David was helping them. He looked up as Jack's shadow darkened the doorway.

"We got to talk," Jack told him. With a glance of permission from the senora, he filched a coffee cup of agave juice and a leftover bean tortilla, and walked out eating his breakfast.

David joined him soon. "Jack--"

"It's okay, Dave, I know you been mad at me and I know I been turning you down," Jack said. He ate the little burrito in five bites and drank the coffee. "I'm not mad about that. Ned's a nice guy. Got a nice sob story to break your heart. Bet he's hung good too. Did he do you good last night? Better'n me?"

"Jack--"

"Goddammit Dave!" And Jack hurled the tin coffee cup far and clattering into the dust. "You been on me since we got here about Annalisa, when nothing has happened, and then I come back and find you with him? What? Did he sweet talk you? Or did you get to him? Or is this just about getting back at me for something I never did?" Before David could respond Jack cut his hand through the air between them. "Nevermind. Forget it. We've got bigger problems. I sent Grayson down to watch for Coningham's goons at the river bottom. You want to get some quality time with him, you saddle up old Misty and trot on over there. I'll ride into town with Suarez and see if--"

They herd the gallop coming from the east. It was Rey. The halfbreed Navajo's shirt was stuck with sweat and he was holding onto his rifle with one hand. He pulled up so sharply the horse reared. He wheeled around.

"Bandits hit the herd," he said. "Four head shot, including the old bull. Grayson came riding through from the bottom land and we tried to drive 'em of. They're still back there. I got to get back--"

Jack was already moving. "Juan!" Suarez came running out. "We got trouble! Get the rifle and bring ammo!" He whistled for his steed. The appaloosa whinnied back and leapt the corral to come to him. Jack didn't wait to saddle him yet again, just leapt bareback onto the horse and worked his rope halter. Suarez came out and threw a bagful of cartridges to Rey. "Go ahead!" Jack ordered Rey, who nodded and galloped back the way he came.

Annalisa came running out. "I'm going with you!"

"No!" said Suarez.

"Your father's right," said Jack. "You got to defend the homestead in case somebody comes here."

"But--"

"It's either you stay, or David," Jack said. "Who'd you rather have?"

David in fact came riding up now on the gray mare. "I'm going with you."

Jack gave him a look. David met it defiantly. Just like old times. A year before.

"You stay," he repeated to Annalisa. "Shoot anybody who don't identify themselves. If they identify themselves as with Coningham or goddamn Texaco shoot 'em anyway. C'mon, Dave! Suarez!" He spurred his horse and they rode.

They got to the scene and Jack dismounted. Grayson was lying hurt on the ground. Ten head of cattle lay dead or dying nearby, and the rest of the herd was close to stampede, Rey circling around trying to control them. Parsons was tending to the wounded younger hand as Jack and David fell to next to him.

"What happened?" asked Jack.

"It was Coningham's men," Parsons said. "Clear as day and not even hiding it. They came up in the damn motorcar and just started shooting. We fired back and tried to hit a tire, but they got the herd all worked up something crazy. Then they started firing at us and for a moment I thought we'd buy the ticket right there. Then Grayson here comes thundering up from the bottomland firing. He got a couple of them, kill or wound I don't know, but we gave as good as we got so I sent Rey running for you all. Not right after that Ned here took one in the arm."

"I'm--I'm all right," said Grayson. "Ain't my--gun hand."

Jack looked at David. "What do we do, Dave?"

"Me?" David exclaimed.

"You're the brains of this operation."

"No. Not this. Not here. I'm way out of my element out here--"

"Dave," Jack repeated. "What do we do?"

He watched the wheels click and whirr in David's clever head. "Get Ned back to the ranch and help the wound," David finally advised. "Forget the car and the thugs. The problem is Coningham and he good as announced himself by letting his men use his car. It's always the pride that undoes the arrogant."

That was all Jack needed to hear. "Okay," said Jack. "Suarez, you and David take Grayson back to the casa and get him comfortable. Parsons, you and Rey calm the herd and shoot anybody who don't look like law. I'm going to town."

David looked at him in fright. Jack shook his head and went back to his horse.

David tried to catch up with him. "What are you going to do?"

"Stop this from getting any worse," Jack replied.

"You're going to see Coningham?"

"Yup."

"What will you say to him?"

"You figure it out."

David tugged at his sleeve.

"Jack," he pleaded, "don't do anything rash. You're not your father. You're not Billy the Kid. This was your fresh start. Don't throw what you have away for rage."

Jack gripped David by the wrist.

"Trust me, Dave," he said.

Grayson pushed himself up as Suarez cursed affectionately at him. "Senor Sullivan--" he called, "Jack--usa mi silla."

Jack nodded. "Thanks." Suarez moved the saddle from Grayson's horse to the appaloosa. Jack mounted. Suarez offered him the Winchester.

"I won't need that," Jack said.

"You got enough for your pistols?" asked his foreman.

"If I do this right," Jack said, eyeing David, "I won't need 'em." With a crack of the reins and a prick of his spurs, he was off for Las Cruces.

"What he mean ... by that?" asked Grayson as David knelt next to him and worked the tourniquet on his wounded arm.

"He was The Cowboy long before he ever crossed the Mississippi," was all David could think of to explain.

***

The traffic and people on the main street of Las Cruces parted at the boy in the black Stetson on the painted colt tearing in from the southeast. For a moment it seemed that a ghost of twenty years ago had come upon them as Jack pulled up in front of the county jail and marched straight in.

He brushed aside the deputies with a toss of the hat. One tried to stop him and he leapt up onto a hanging sign and vaulted over him, tumbling and rising right at the entrance to the sheriff's office. "Stay outta this," he shouted, and walked in and shut the door.

Pat Garrett stood behind his desk with a rifle pointed at Jack.

"You better have a good reason to come barging in here like this, son," said the sheriff of Dona Ana County.

"I do," Jack said. "I'm Jack Sullivan."

"I know who you are."

"You also know Ed Coningham wants my ranch?"

Garrett was unimpressed. "Coningham wants everyone's ranch."

"Well he sent a bunch of galoots over there this morning. Shot up my herd and wounded one of my hands."

"You got proof it was Coningham?" asked Garrett.

"I got the tire tracks of his motorcar," Jack replied. "There more than two or three in this whole county?"

Garrett glared hard at him. Jack looked at the rifle pointed at his chest.

He asked, "Is that the gun you shot Henry McCarty with?"

The graying lawman's eye twitched. "Nobody calls the Kid McCarty."

"I do," Jack said. "Henry McCarty and I come from the same place in New York City. My father William knew him when they were little. I read your book, and the ones that ain't as heavy on him. You're all legends to me, Sheriff Garrett. I'm really obliged." Jack said all this in an easy, low voice, that seemed to mollify Garrett.

"All right," said Garrett. "I'll give you an autograph later. Now, this is what I'll do. I'll send a posse after these men in Coningham's Winton. I'll take the word of your hands that they shot up your cattle, and that's trespassing and property damage to begin with. Then we'll go see Mr. Coningham at his store and hear his side of the story."

Jack nodded. "You do that. But I'll go ahead if you don't mind."

"I do mind," said Garrett, leveling the rifle. "Son, I don't know what you've read in the dime novels and pulp rags back East. But we don't settle things like that anymore in New Mexico. That way of doing things is over. I ended it when I killed the Kid."

"Sheriff," Jack said, "the Kid will never die."

Suddenly he dropped to the floor and kicked the desk hard into Garrett. Garrett fell down awkwardly and dropped the rifle. Jack rolled backwards onto his feet and slipped under the legs of one deputy, skittered upon a desk past two others, and was out the door before they could cock their pistols. Behind him he heard Garrett shout, "Don't shoot unless he starts it, imbeciles!"

Jack grinned. He ran down the street and then ducked into an alley. Garrett and the deputies came after him moments later.

Garrett pointed at the newsie on the corner. "Boy! Where'd he go? The kid in the black hat?"

The newsie shrugged. "I didn't see him, sir," said Ralph, as Jack took to the rooftops, shimmied down the back of the other block, and crossed the street under the cover of a passing wagon. He was back on the roof, this time of Coningham's store. He made his way to the skylight, taking his trusty old cotton rope from New York from his waist and fixing it into a lasso, making sure the knot was right. He listened for the sounds of Garrett and his men storming into the store, coming up to the office. Then he peered in through the open skylight.

Coningham was bent over a ledger, tapping his pen anxiously, as the noose descended from the roof. He didn't move for a long time. Then Jack whistled, a soft, mournful tune.

Coningham sat straight up.

With a yank and a jump Jack leapt in through the skylight, rope wrapped tightly in his wrist. Held by one of the steel bars of the skylight, Coningham now hung in midair by the neck, a hand caught between the rope noose and his jaw, his boots struggling to keep a footing on his desk.

"What--Sullivan--!" Coningham gasped.

"Extry, extry, Ed," Jack teased.

Garrett and his men burst through the door. Garrett now had a pistol and pointed it at Jack.

"Let him go, son," he ordered. "This ain't the way to get justice."

"No?" Jack said.

"Shoot him!" Coningham cried.

"All I got to do is fall," Jack threatened, showing off his grip on his rope.

"Shoot ... the rope ..." begged Coningham.

"Start talking, Ed," Jack said. "Tell 'em what you did."

"I'm ... not ... the criminal here ..."

"Yes you are!"

Jack leaned into the rope. "I been around your kind of criminal all my life. The kind that never gets caught until somebody figures out you ain't all you think you are. Now tell 'em. If they shoot me, I fall, your neck breaks. If I get mad, I tug, your neck breaks. Tell 'em the truth, and I let go, and everybody's happy." He added, "Well, except maybe you. But you'll be breathing, which is more than you can say for yourself right now."

He looked at Garrett, hoping the lawman would understand. He couldn't be sure, but Garrett did say, "Ed, you better do as the boy says. He already told me he has proof you were involved in an attack on the Animas Ranch."

"Lies!" rasped Coningham.

"My fingers are getting sweaty, Ed," Jack warned. "And you're kinda heavy. I am only a kid."

Coningham raged and fought. But his own struggles made him almost lose his footing on his desk, and that seemed to be the limit.

"All right," he sputtered, "all right! I sent five men to your ranch, I told them to take out a few of your cows, I was going to harry you out of business you skinny little shanty trash, nobody was supposed to get hurt--"

"My man Ned Grayson got shot in the arm," Jack said. "And who knows if your guys got hurt too. That ain't the way they do business in Dona Ana County now, right, Sheriff?"

"No, kid," said Garrett. "Not anymore."

"All right, all right, I admitted it!" cried Coningham. "Now let me go and I'll have you hanged for attempted murder!"

Jack thought for a moment.

"No," he said, and yanked.

With a scream of fright Coningham fell in a heap on his carpeted floor. Jack fell back gasping heavily. For a moment, he felt perfectly happy. God, he loved this stuff. Then he saw five pistols and a shotgun on him and slowly he sat up, hands in the air.

Coningham was picking himself up off the floor with Garrett's help. "Shoot him!" the businesman cried. Something stank. Coningham had soiled himself. "Shoot the murderous rat bastard now, Garrett!"

But Garrett, ignoring Coningham, bent down and picked up the rope Jack had used. The noose had vanished. He looked at Jack.

"Trick knot?" he asked.

Jack nodded. "Just like me father taught me."

"He was never in any real danger?"

"Not unless he kicked himself free and hit his head somewhere," Jack replied.

Garrett smiled. "You were never going to kill him, were you?"

Jack shook his head. "Just wanted the confession," he said. "I ain't no murderer, Sheriff. I'm just a kid from New York."

***

"Jack!" David was the first out the door as Jack, with Garrett and a doctor driving a cart, arrived at Las Animas late in the day. Close behind him were Annalisa and Suarez.

Jack hopped off his appaloosa and clapped David on the back. "How's Ned?" he asked.

"He seems all right," David said, looking at the doctor.

"I'll go check on him," said the doctor, and entered the house.

"What happened in town?" asked David. "I was going to ride in after--" He looked at Garrett, sitting in his horse, the star gleaming at his breast. "Is everything--"

"All straightened out," said Jack.

"But how?"

Jack shrugged. "Coningham confessed."

"What?"

"Why would he do that?" Annalisa asked.

Garrett answered. "Jack's a very persuasive fellow."

Confused, they turned to Jack.

"Yeah, well, he's in jail and Sheriff Garrett here says no matter what happens he ought to learn his lesson."

"Not only that," said Garrett, "but I suppose Texas Oil will be looking for a more direct approach this time. Perhaps this time they'll be more flexible."

Jack shrugged. "I dunno," he said. "I'm pretty sure they won't find nothing."

"Well," said Garrett as the others looked at them in bafflement, "I'd like you all to come to town at your earliest convenience--not all at once of course--and file some witness reports about what went down today. If we're lucky, Coningham will either find himself in jail, or out of business and out of the county."

"And what about the other honchos in town?" asked Jack.

Garrett thought about it. "Even if they wanted to start something with the boy who's friends with Theodore Roosevelt," he said, "they'll think twice about starting something with the boy who escaped Pat Garrett and nearly hanged Ed Coningham in his own office."

David, Annalisa, and Suarez gaped at Jack.

Jack grinned.

David had the quickest words. "What did you do now?"

Jack waved him off. Later.

The doctor emerged and reported that Grayson would recover. "I'll stop by in a couple of days to check on his wound," he said, "but with regular changing and cleanliness he'll have full use of that arm in a month or so."

"Thank you, Doctor," said Garrett. "Well, then, I'll be off."

"I'll walk you out," said Jack. He did, pacing Garrett's horse on foot as they walked up the trail to the homestead fence.

"That was real risky, son," Garrett said. "The whole caper you pulled."

"Yeah, I know," Jack said. "Sorry if I broke anything in your office."

"Nothing important." Garrett kept walking. "Speaking of which--the answer's yes."

"Yes?"

"Yes. The rifle I was pointing at you, was the rifle with which I shot Henry McCarty." He pulled it out of his saddlebag. "Here."

Jack caught it. It was a Sharps Contract #2 falling-block rifle with pellet percussion. He studied its bore and its stock and felt its trigger. He pulled it to his shoulder and aimed it at the reddening sun between the pipes of the Organ Mountains.

He let it fall to his hips, then handed it back to Garrett and asked, "Did you really shoot him in the back?"

"It was dark and quick. I wasn't even sure it was him. Simple instinct and self-preservation."

"Were you really friends before it all went south for him?"

Garrett smiled thinly again. "We were acquainted socially. But I could never count as one of his pals. That was a special honor he reserved only to those he trusted with his life. Often because he had to do just that."

"I don't think he was anywhere the monster you made him out to be," Jack said.

"That's up to you," Garrett replied. "I have my story. Everyone does here in New Mexico. Everyone has something to do with the Kid. Apparently, even you." Garrett paused for a moment, and then said, "You do remind me of him. You have the same look, the same eyes. You have slightly better teeth."

"Gee, thanks. Colgate Dental Cream. It comes in tubes."

"I'll remember that." Garrett chuckled. "Let me tell you something I heard, from a friend of the Kid's back in Silver City, when he was your age, or a bit younger, and first got into trouble. This was a true friend of Billy's and he never told this to me, obviously. But I heard it from someone he did talk to. This friend's name was Louis Abraham, a Jew from the same poor neighborhood. He said that 'Billy never was in any trouble at all; he was a good boy, maybe a little mischievous at times than the rest of us, with a little more nerve. When the boy was placed in jail and escaped he was not bad, he was just scared. If he had only waited until they let him out he would have been all right, but he was scared and ran away.' Apparently it was the running away that led Henry McCarty to become the Kid and ultimately meet the end of my rifle."

Garrett tipped his hat brim. "I'll see you around, son," he said. "Hopefully, in only social encounters." He kicked his horse into a trot, leaving Jack to ponder his message.

***

Annalisa was alone in the house when Jack got back. Before he could say anything, she had thrown her arms around him and kissed him.

He slowly, regretfully pulled away. She let him go and shook his head.

"I know you like me," she said.

"I do," Jack said. "But I ain't free to have."

She folded her arms petulantly. "What is the source of your bond with your David?" she wanted to know.

Jack didn't have to think about it very long.

"We're pals," he said, and went off to find him.

***

David was coming out from the bunkhouse with a pail of water. He saw Jack and explained "I was giving Ned a spongebath."

"Hope you did it in privacy, unless you want Rey and old Packard in on the action," Jack said. He was kidding, but David was not.

"You scared the hell out of me today," he said.

"When I left to go get Coningham?"

"When you left me in charge of things back here! Jack, this is your dream. I'm just here for you."

Jack folded his arms and stood his ground. "I thought you couldn't wait to leave home."

"And I was stupid to say so!" David said. "I don't know, Jack, maybe ... maybe I shouldn't be making so many decisions so soon."

"Yeah, you're probably right," Jack agreed. "You're only seventeen."

David stopped what he was doing, which was refilling the bucket, and looked at Jack.

"Why are you humoring me?" he asked.

"I'm a good mood," Jack said. "I had a hell of a lot of fun in town today. You know, if you want to go back to New York, Dave, I better go with you. Because I enjoy all this real-life Wild West crap too much for my own good."

David scratched his head. "I can't ask you to give this up," he said.

"Who said anything about giving it up?" Jack retorted. "Jesus Christ, Dave, I nearly got myself shot by Pat Garrett for this ranch. I'll sign over control of the land to Suarez because they deserve it, and I'll go back and forth."

"Between New York and here."

"It's only four days!"

David had started to smile. "You--" he started to say, then didn't finish. He didn't have to.

Jack smiled himself. "Well," he said, "I'm gonna go get something to eat. I'm starving. You?"

"I'll be right there. Just have to finish with Ned." David paused, considering, and then dared to say, "Jack--about what happened with me and Ned last night--"

Jack stopped and looked at his friend, knowing this was important.

"I just didn't want to be the one who got left," David said. "It was stupid of me, but I wanted to be the one to end it. To give you a reason to walk away. So I could feel like I was justified."

They were almost the same words Jack had said to Medda the night his father died and the deed to Las Animas came to him. The night he and David first came together. The eighth night of Hanukkah, December of the last year of the last century.

He walked back up to David. Took him by the arms. Held him there, with his hands, and with his eyes.

"David," he said, as he'd said before, "you changed me more than you know. I won't leave you. I told you--I don't want to go anywhere that doesn't have you."

David looked embarrassed and thankful.

"I'm sorry, Jack," he said, looking down.

Jack stroked the back of his neck. "Me too," he said. He looked around the evening ranch, the rolling desert, the yuccas buzzing with insects, the creosote marching one after the other in rows so ordered by nature into the distance, the sunset zephyr caressing the desert grasses and rustling in the acacia thorns. He said, "Maybe we shouldn't of went there, y'know? It was my fault anyway, that first time. I don't want to ruin what really counts."

"What's that?" asked David very lowly.

"Friends," Jack replied. "Brothers."

David slowly smiled.

"Pals," Jack added. He spat in his palm.

David did the same. They shook hands. "Pals," David said.

***

At the end of the summer Jack and David were back in Santa Fe, waiting for their connection to New York.

Jack was looking at a photograph. David looked at it too. It was of Annalisa in a traditional dress, unsmiling. On the reverse she had written, "Next summer."

"Oh Lord," David sighed. "What is it with you and girls like that anyway? My sister, Annalisa--"

"I need a tough girl in my life," Jack said. "Balances you out."

"Thanks," said David. Then: "Excuse me?"

Jack had done as he had promised, giving control of Las Animas to Suarez, though he kept the deed with him. He still did not know how his father had come to have it from Richard Dohringer and he didn't want Suarez to have any trouble with that. Representatives of Texas Oil had indeed shown up at the ranch some time after Edward Coningham was sentenced, and Jack and David had negotiated minimal exploration rights in the river bottom, to be suspended during the summer rains when the mustangs came to drink. Jack introduced Garrett, by way of letter, to Theodore Roosevelt, which put the legendary lawman in something of a debt to yet another kid from New York.

Jack and Annalisa were not in a relationship. Despite Annalisa's brazen nature, they were in the process of slowly testing each other for the prospects of a relationship. Meanwhile, David finally learned how to ride well, and shoot well, thanks to the close personal attention of young Ned Grayson. Jack and Suarez offered Grayson the foreman's job, but Grayson refused; all he wanted was a bunk and a meal and the chance to ride and shoot. Jack liked him immensely, although he planned never to forgive him for being with David.

Across the platform another train had arrived and was taking on passengers. Jack sat slouched in the bench watching it, hands idly fiddling with his harmonica.

"Dave?" he asked.

"Yes."

"When's our train get here?"

David checked his pocketwatch. "Four-thirty."

"What time is it now?"

"Three."

Jack uncrossed and recrossed his outstretched legs. He put his harmonica up to his lips and blew out a few chords. Then he said, "Where does that train go?"

"California."

"San Francisco?"

"Probably Los Angeles or Monterey."

"Huh." Jack tucked his harmonica in his pocket. He got up.

"What?" asked David. Then he knew.

He stood up too. "Jack, no."

Jack started to smile.

"No, Jack! I have a week before school starts and my mother will kill me where I stand--after she kills you and has your heart on a cracker!"

But Jack was grinning now.

"No, Jack!" David flailed.

Jack turned to his pal, the western light behind his eyes and the desert wind in his hair.

"Aw, c'mon, Davy!" he said. "Where's your sense of adventure?"

THE END