Chapter 11: Juvenile Justice

“Second degree murder?” I exclaimed. “It barely rises to the level of manslaughter, if even that. Neither had been drinking since the first day they arrived and they thought they were shooting at an elk.”

Marshal Garrison said, “Ain’t nothin’ we can do about it. Mister Ferguson has the bit in his teeth.” Peter Ferguson was the United States Attorney for the Territory of New Mexico. According to the Marshal, Ferguson was one of a number of vocal opponents to Governor Sheldon and had been so since Sheldon’s appointment in ‘eighty one. According to rumor, Ferguson felt he should be Sheldon’s immediate replacement.

Charlie Hackett, the senior deputy said, “Ferguson wants to stir up the pueblos, make the Governor look bad.”

That didn’t wash. “Why should it make the Governor look bad?”

Garrison said, “Because most folks don’t know the U.S. Attorney from nothin’, but everybody knows the Governor. He’s the one that’s sent the new militia to keep the pueblos peaceable and he’s the one built the penitentiary. To the Indios and Mexicans, all law enforcement comes from the Governor.”

I said, “Well the folks in Mora sure know the difference between the Governor and the prosecuting attorney.”

“But Ferguson doesn’t know they know. He figures ‘em all for little more than a flock of unruly sheep,” Hackett said.

“For pity’s sake, does that mean these two boys have to suffer for it? They’re actually nice kids.”

“Ba-a-a-a,” Charlie said. “‘Kids’ is right. Young goats to the slaughter.”

“And your Sheriff Burns, from over in Springer, is of a mind with Ferguson,” Garrison added. “He’s trying to paint the shooting as a feud between pueblos.”

“A feud between pueblos? Ernesto Guerrero and Amador Cabal were both from Mora. Besides, the people up in Therma know it was an accident.”

“No one is going to be asking them.”

I wish I could have called it unbelievable, but I’d seen plenty of examples of similar bigoted disregard in the past twenty years. Hell, I’d felt its sting myself.

“But it may not be all bad news,” Charlie said. “Both the boys’ fathers had already been to see Senator Ross two days before you got back with the prisoners, Judah.”

“Senator Ross? He in the legislature?”

Charlie said, “Senator Edmund G. Ross, of Kansas, late of the United States Senate.”

“Oh,” I said. “The Republican who voted against President Johnson’s impeachment conviction.”

“One and the same, though, to be fair, eight other Republicans joined him in that vote. Even so, he was all but drummed out of the Republican Party. And then he proved not to be popular with the Democrats, either. After he lost the governor’s race in Kansas, he studied the law. He moved to New Mexico and hung out his shingle in Albuquerque.” Charlie was assigned to Albuquerque, the third biggest town in the Territory, after Santa Fe and Las Vegas.

“Does he know the law?”

Charlie said, “He knows better ‘n the law: he knows politics.” Then Charlie looked at me sideways and asked, “What kept you so long in Mora, anyway?”

“Uh, my, uh, horse, Roscoe, looked to be developing a swollen fetlock. I wanted to rest him a couple days.”

I went to visit Hector Guerrero at the Santa Fe County Jail.

“How are they treating you?”

He shrugged. “Fair. It is not the La Fonda Hotel, after all.”

“What about the other prisoners? Anyone giving you trouble?”

The Santa Fe jail held as many as thirty-five prisoners, two to a cell, with one isolation cell. We were seated at a table in the jail’s mess hall, as were a number of other prisoners, visiting with family, friends, or attorneys. Hector and I were smoking cigars that I had brought, decent cigars.

“There have been a couple men who felt I should pay them something to maintain my health,” He shrugged. “But one of the jail guards is a cousin to my wife and he talked them out of it.”

I chuckled. “Harsh words?”

“Hard words, as hard as an oak truncheon.”

“Ouch.” Then I asked, “Is there anything you need, I mean, besides out a’ here?”

“My wife sees to the niceties.”

“Then let me ask you a question: if you didn’t stab William Stillwell to death, who did?”

He was thoughtful for a minute, then he said, “I attended what was then the Colegio Civil del Estado (State Civil College) but what is now the Instituto Juarez (Juarez Institute), in Durango, in Mexico. I took subjects that would be helpful in business. Ernesto went there, too, a few yeas ahead of me.”

He leaned back a little and looked up, but I suspected his vision was not onf the hall’s interior, but on a classroom in Durango. He said, “One of the instructors in accounting had worked with the police to help resolve who might be the murderer of a man who was very wealthy. The instructor said he told the federales to ‘follow the money.’” Now Hector brought his gaze back to me. “What he meant, of course, was to see who benefited from the murder, and start the inquiry there.”

I thought about that notion, but had a hard time applying it. I asked, “Are you saying someone might have...? But the only people that got something out of William’s death were his brother, Edward, and maybe McMillan, from William’s life insurance, yet Mannie Gonzales makes a good case for them not being involved.” I shook my head, frowning. “Besides, that money went right back into the business, to pay off a loan. It’s not like someone bought a race horse or a castle in Europe.”

Hector was shaking his head. “I don’t mean that money, I mean the money from the shortages in the sales receipts.”

“But no one knows where that went, though the most likely suspect is William, himself.”

“No,” he said, shaking his head again. “I don’t think William was embezzling money from their business for the same reason Mannie doesn’t think Edward is the murderer. Those two men saw themselves as battling the world, together. They were truly brothers and I believe they loved one another, the same way I loved Ernesto.” The thought of his brother seemed to sadden him.

After a moment, I asked, “So, what do you mean? How do I follow money that has disappeared?”

He looked at me, his eyes in a skeptical squint. “Do you think the money actually disappeared into thin air?”

“Well, no, of course not.”

“Then someone took it.”

“But William...”

“Why do you even mention William?” he asked.

“Because he handled the money.”

“But was he the only one who handled the money?”

Damnation. There it was, decorated like a Maypole, and I didn’t see it. I just looked down at the table and shook my head ruefully. I looked up at him and said, “I’m sure I would have thought of that, within just a few years.”

His face took on an innocent air. He said, “Perhaps you have been distracted.”

I shook my head, unsure of his meaning. “I, uh don’t know...”

“I have heard that you had two meals at my brother’s home and that you have become friendly with his son.”

Oh, hell. The chickens had come home to roost.

“Ah, Hector, I apologize for any thing that might look improper, I mean, I went there with Matias and Sofia.”

The laughter first showed in his eyes, but the rest of him quickly followed. “Relax, my friend, I am teasing you. My brother, God love him, is dead and buried. He lives only in memory.” Then he became serious, again. “But tell me, Judah, what are your intentions?”

Immediately, I felt defensive, but then his eyes betrayed him and I knew he was poking fun at me again, so I said, “For the foreseeable future, my intentions are not to make a fool of myself or dribble soup on my shirt.”

He laughed. “That is good, Judah. Take it in small steps. These that you have mentioned you could likely master within but a few short years.”

Then I turned serious. “Truly, I have no intentions that I am aware of. I am surprised that I find her company ah, enjoyable.” I shrugged.

Then I sighed, and decided to lay my cards on the table. “I was married before, when I was with the army in Texas. Janie was a colored woman, the sister of a man I’d grown close to, as we’d been scouts together since The War. We had to keep the marriage secret, as it was against the law, but our story was that I was renting a room from her and her brother, with whom she lived.” Now I sighed heavily. “We were married barely two years when she was ... killed by Comanches. That’s when I quit the army and went to work for the Pinkertons.”

He reached across and briefly gripped my wrist. Then he sat back and said, “I read somewhere that our knowledge of death made us appreciate life all the more.” He shook his head. “The way I see it, our awareness of death makes us frightened and thin-skinned, wary, distrustful, and greedy. The length of our life allows us to accumulate more sorrow, with just enough goodness occurring to keep hope alive.”

He sat up straighter and had to re-light the cigar. He said, “I am reading a book, a novel, written by our former Governor, Lewis Wallace. His book is called, Ben-Hur: a Tale of the Christ. It is an adventure story of ancient Rome and the Holy Land, set in the time of Christ. The lead character shares your first name, as he is called Judah Ben-Hur.”

“Is it a good story?”

“It is. It’s serious, though. Not as much fun as Mark Twain’s novel about Tom Sawyer, but more meaty, perhaps, though Twain makes his opinions known. Have you read it?”

“The Adventures of Tom Sawyer? Yes, when I was a deputy town marshal in El Paso. There was a bookseller there who stocked only second-hand books, which he then sold at a discounted price. Then he would buy it back, at half the price he sold it to you.”

“Nice, simple business. That is what you can do when you retire from marshaling.”

I rode the stock car with my horse, Roscoe, along with Hector’s horse, on the Denver and Rio Grande train up to Embudo Junction, fifty-one miles north of Santa Fe, near the southern end of the Rio Grande Gorge. When we got there, I took a room in the railroad’s hotel. The next day I rode Roscoe the twenty seven miles north to Taos, leading the other horse.

Just before noon I’d stopped for a quick lunch at a cantina in the pueblo village of Ranchos de Taos, four miles south of Taos. The trail from Embudo was a stage-coach route and fairly well maintained, so traveling was not too difficult for the horses.

Saying “pueblo village,” as I did in referring to Ranchos de Taos, is like saying “village village,” but I stated it that way to clarify the word “pueblo.” Many people think of a pueblo as multi-story, joined adobe structures, such as that at the Taos Pueblo, just north of town. However, pueblo simply means village or small town, not a type of structure. Granted, most buildings in this part of the country are adobe, but not all villages are of connected, two- and three-story buildings, which high structures were built in most instances as defensive ramparts for the village. In fact, most pueblos are collections of freestanding homes and businesses built along streets and lanes.

At Taos, I turned Hector’s horse over to his uncle and then tended to Roscoe, making apologies to him for suggesting to Charlie Hackett that Roscoe was at fault for my delayed return from Mora. “But,” I whispered to Roscoe as I brushed him, “she makes my heart feel lighter. And she seemed happy to see me, though heaven knows why. I imagine she just may be the type to offer a friendly smile to strangers. In any case, she lives on the other side of the mountains, so there is not any future in that.”

Oddly, I found myself speaking Spanish to Roscoe. I had no idea Roscoe understood Spanish.

On Sunday, I went fishing. The next morning, I headed in to the Taos County Courthouse early.

“How are the boys?” Mannie asked me, when I got to the Sheriff’s officeat half past seven.

I said, “Ambos se sienten tan culpables que no les importa dónde están.” (They both feel so guilty that they don’t care where they are.)

He said, “You don’t want to speak in English?

“¿No estoy hablando inglés?” (Am I not speaking English?)

“Are you crazy? You are speaking to me in Spanish. I am speaking English.”

“Lo siento mucho.” (I am so sorry.) Then I realized I was still not speaking English. It was a strange feeling. “Damnation! I’m sorry, Mannie. I couldn’t remember how to speak English for a few seconds.” I shook my head. “This is so odd.”

He shrugged. “Maybe not so much. Sometimes it happens to me when I am talking to an Anglo who doesn’t have Spanish. I don’t even realize I’ve switched from English. It seems to happen when I am angry or worried, and I am with a man with whom I am comfortable. So are you angry or worried?”

I snorted. “You mean more than usual?”

“I suppose I do.”

I figured I knew what had me distracted, but I was reluctant to say anything about Mora.

Mannie said, “Word has it that you’ve taken an interest in Hector’s nephew.”

“The de Lorenzo sisters must run up a hell of a telegraph bill,” I groused.

“Not at all,” he said.

“Then I don’t understand how such information makes its way so quickly from one place to another over such distances. Is it witchcraft? Or do they use smoke signals?”

“Did you not receive a telegram where there are no telegraph lines?” he asked.

“You mean in Therma? The owner of the cantina brought it.”

“At whose request?”

I sighed. “Are you telling me they get people to carry notes for them?”

“Fairly often. There is a great deal of local commerce between the Rio Grande valley and the other parts of the state. Most of the crop land is in the valley, as well as the government center in Santa Fe. There are many regular visitors between Mora and Santa Fe and Taos and Santa Fe, and even Mesilla, where de Lorenzo retired. His granddaughters know them all.”