Chapter 3

1883: El Paso

I was at my desk in the Sheriff’s Office in the Taos County Courthouse when an adolescent boy knocked on the door frame and then waited at the door, looking at me.

Manuel Gonzales, the sheriff, asked him, in English,”Are you here to see Deputy Marshal Becker, Rodrigo?”

Rodrigo nodded to Mannie, “Si, Señor Sheriff. I have a note for him from Señor Stillwell.”

“Come on in, son, and deliver your note,” Mannie told the boy.

The youngster, barefoot and in unbleached white cotton trousers and shirt, came into the office, walked over to my desk, and held out a folded sheet of note paper. “From Señor Stillwell, Señor Marshal.”

I reached into my pocket and pulled out all the coins, separating three pennies, which I handed to Rodrigo in exchange for the note. Mannie had warned me not to inflate the going rate for messenger tips, which was three cents.

“Thank you, Rodrigo. Did Señor Stillwell tell you to wait for a reply?”

“No, Señor.”

“Good enough, then, thanks, Rodrigo,” and I held out another penny.

“Oh, thank you Señor,” the boy gushed, and he hurried off, looking at the four coins in his hand.

“You just had to do it, didn’t you?”

“Hazardous duty pay,” I said.

“What hazards?” Mannie demanded.

“He had to deal with the High Sheriff of Taos County.”

“Bah,” he grumbled, good-naturedly. “You’re going to drive up the custom.”

“No, I’m just going to assure that I always get premium service.”

Mannie chuckled. “Maybe so. So what’s the note say?”

It was brief. “He wants me to come see him.”

“Have you talked to him since the hearing?”

I shook my head. It had been nearly two weeks since the murder charge against Hector Guerrero had been dismissed. Since that time, Hector and his cousin had helped move his mother, his widowed sister-in-law, Feliza, and his deceased brother’s son, Neto, from Mora to a small house near the Guerrero trading post in Taos.

“No, I haven’t even seen him.”

“He has probably been busy. When Logan McMillan pulled that stunt and got himself killed, it put his bank customers in a fix. Even with the Bank of New Mexico as the receiver, it is still a slow process. What happened to your account at McMillan’s?”

“I had closed it right after I collected the evidence from his son’s home. I was worried the old man might abscond to Mexico, too. I opened an account at the Bank of New Mexico, instead.”

“‘The old man’? Since when do we describe the late Speaker of the Territorial House of Representatives in such disrespectful terms?”

“Since the sonuvabitch tried to kill me.” Logan McMillan had shot at me while I was in the witness chair at Hector Guerrero’s hearing.

I was about to give testimony implicating McMillan’s son. The next thing I knew, there was a pistol shot and a bullet hit the edge of the back of the witness chair. Scanning the room as I reached for my sidearm, I saw McMillan, halfway out the door, aiming his pistol my way. My boss, Federal District Marshal Albert Garrison, had been watching the Speaker leave and he shot and killed McMillan before the Speaker could fire a second round.

“Are you going to see Mister Stillwell?”

I stood from my chair. “No reason not to. In a way, I feel sorry for him.”

Mannie nodded. “If you are not back by dinner time, I will send Rodrigo to rescue you.”

“Come in, Deputy. Please sit down. Thank you for coming. Can I pour you some coffee?” He indicated a napkin-wrapped carafe on a credenza behind his desk. We were in his office at the Stillwell Brothers Home & Farm Supply store.

“Yes, thank you, if it’s no trouble.”

“None at all.” He brought a clean cup from inside the credenza and set it on the desk, then filled it from the carafe.

I took a sip; it was good coffee.

He said, “I wasn’t sure you would come. I made such a mess of things in my persecution of Hector. I was so blind.”

“I won’t deny you may have gone overboard, but at least it was an honest mistake. You had been in shock at the time, having just found your dying brother. You made good on things as soon as you realized the truth. It’s only a shame that the wrong man ended up dead.”

He shook his head. “I feel no regret about Logan. I mean, I can imagine a man trying to protect his son, but to accuse an innocent man, and to enlist my misguided help? That was unconscionable.”

He tented his fingers and pressed the forefingers to his lips. Then he looked up and asked, “You can’t pursue Jeffrey in Mexico, can you? I mean, as a Deputy US Marshal?”

I shook my head. “No. We have no jurisdiction in Mexico.”

“No special arrangements?”

“I asked Marshal Garrison about that when I first learned where Jeffrey had fled. He said there wasn’t any procedure he knew of. Then Mister Dahl told me that US courts might be able to extradite Jeffrey from Mexico, but first the Rurales would have to be convinced to arrest him. Marshal Garrison said convincing usually meant bribing.” Rurales was the casual term for the Guardia Rural, the Mexican mounted rural police.

I compressed my lips and raised my eyebrows, giving my head a speculative tilt. “However, the Pinkerton Detective Agency might be able to extract him. They have their own ways.”

“I know,” he said. “I’ve been in touch with them. They want five hundred dollars, plus expenses.”

“That sounds about right.”

“You used to work for them, didn’t you?”

“For five years, over in Texas, mostly.”

“Would you know how to get Jeffrey back in this country so he could be arrested?”

Oh-oh, I thought.

He said, “I’d pay you five hundred dollars, plus reasonable expenses, with half, two-fifty, just for trying, in case you don’t get him.”

“Why not just hire the Pinkertons?”

He sighed. “I know you. I know how you work. The man I talked to from the Pinkerton Agency was very professional and businesslike, but he seemed more like a salesman than a detective, and he kept pushing me to sign a contract. I don’t mind paying but I want someone who cares more about what they’re doing than about getting paid. I know that you do.”

I did know several ways to get someone back across the border, even some that were legal.

I said, “The expenses could amount to another couple hundred dollars, though it might be more or less.”

“Just bring me receipts. So you’ll do it then?”

“I’ll draw up a contract.” I had a copy of a Pinkerton contract in my room.

A week later, I was in El Paso, Texas. I’d served as a deputy town marshal there for a couple years, and had only left about a year ago, after I was involved in a tragic incident.

One summer afternoon, Town Marshal Juan Artigas and I had been responding to gunfire from somewhere near the rail yard down near the rio. It sounded like two different pistols. We had jogged down Santa Fe Avenue and were near the Customs House when he and I came under rifle fire.

El Paso was, first and foremost, a Mexican town straddling the Rio Grande. But El Paso, along with many other towns and villages north of the Rio Grande, had been claimed in the land acquisition that followed the eighteen thirty-six Texas war for independence from Mexico. Then Texas had been admitted as a state in eighteen forty-five. The claim for the land north of the Rio Grande was formalized in the eighteen forty-eight Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, following the Mexicans’ defeat in our war with them. Still, even after the Rio Grande became the border, El Paso’s population remained largely Mexican.

That gradually changed. After the Civil War, more whites -- who Mexicans referred to as “Anglos,” meaning English -- began to settle the area, and the Anglos finally became the majority. Not surprising, many Anglos resented the Hispanic influence, especially as many Mexicans were still being elected to public office.

Perhaps this might be a good time to define some terms as used herein.

Anglo, gringo, yanqui, and norteamericano are non-specific references to so-called white people, mostly in regard to European Americans, other than those from Spain and Portugal. While all of those terms carry a certain degree of disregard, the term gringo usually references a man in a more specific application, and its use has a rougher edge of resentment.

Generally speaking, within our southwestern context, the terms Mexican, Latino, and Hispanic are used to indicate people of Mexican extraction, keeping in mind that California and the American southwest was originally part of Mexico, with most of that region’s Mexican population becoming American citizens when the area’s sovereignty was assumed by the United States. It might also be worth noting that the people known as Mexicans are generally, though not exclusively, Mestizo, or mixed race. For the most part the mixture is European Spanish and American Indian, but the mix also can include Africans as well as other European stock, especially French and German. There were also, at this time, some present and former citizens of Mexico who claimed, perhaps legitimately, to be of unmixed European Spanish extraction; there was some classism associated with that distinction, with such “pure” Spanish descendants being of a presumed higher class than Mexicans of Mestizo ancestry.

While on the topic, the terms Indio, Indian, native, and native Indian are used interchangeably to describe people belonging to ethnic groups of the aboriginal inhabitants of the American continents. Indio is a Spanish term, used here because of the Spanish language influence in the region. Many Indios had Mexican Spanish names, usually due to intermarriage, which, though not the rule, was not uncommon, but also due to Roman church affiliation, in which names might be assigned to the natives when they were baptized, often a consequence of Indian slavery to the Spanish invaders, including their accompanying clergy.

Finally, the Spanish term pueblo is used primarily in its meaning of village, usually a farm village. However, when speaking of the Puebloan People, it refers to several specific clans of native Indians of the southwestern American states whose ancestors were sometimes referred to by the Navajo term, Anasazi, which meant “ancestors of our enemies.” These clans sometimes built multi-story adobe villages, hence the association of the term pueblo with that type of structure. As used here, the term pueblo means a village of farmers or stockmen on small or shared landholdings, of mostly Indio or Mexican ethnic groups, who may live in villages which may or may not be of multi-story adobe construction. The Taos pueblo is but one example of such a multi-story adobe structure then being occupied. However, the later expansion of the town under Anglo influence took place near that structure, not as part of it. That newer part of town is where I lived and where the sheriff’s office and the courthouse stood.

Rather than live in such an adobe pueblo structure, which were more communal in nature, Anglos tended to concentrate in the more traditional European-style towns, in mining camps, or in association with commercial centers, such as the small town of Lincoln, New Mexico Territory, epicenter of the so-called Lincoln County War, which occurred between eighteen seventy-eight and ‘eighty-one.

What I came to realize is that the Mexican and Indian cultures played a much larger role in the Territory of New Mexico than they did in Texas or in any of the other border territories and states of the former Mexican dominions. While the American native and the Mexican people themselves may have sometimes been segregated, their cultures were deeply integrated into the weft and weave of New Mexico itself.

But, back to my time in Texas.

In the street by the Customs House, a bullet had caught the heel of my work boot, making me stumble, but Marshal Artigas had been hit in the stomach, and he fell to his hands and knees. Quickly pulling his arm to my shoulder, I lifted him and helped him to take cover in the alley behind the Customs House. The Marshal had turned an ashen color and was holding his hands over the wound in his upper abdomen. When I tried to prop him against a wall, he groaned in pain, so I laid him flat on the alley’s dirty sand, in the shade next to the wall. I folded his straw hat as cushion under his head.

He made eye contact with me and gave his head a slight shake as he continued to breathe in gasps.

I heard voices out in the street. I lightly squeezed the Marshals hands and turned to watch the end of the alley where we’d entered.

“They went in that alley, but they’re both hit,” one voice said.

I moved an empty barrel closer to the wall to shelter us from easy view, then crouched behind it.

“Be careful, anyway. A wounded coyote can still bite,” said a second voice, a voice that sounded uncomfortably familiar.

The shotgun that the Marshal had been carrying was still out in the street, pointing directly to our refuge. I slid a sixth cartridge into the empty slot in thee cylinder of my Army Colt and then I turned around and reached for the forty-five from the Marshal’s shoulder holster and tucked it behind my belt in the small of my back. Both he and I had only been in shirtsleeves and waistcoats when we’d run out of the office.

“Slow down, Marcus,” the familiar voice called.

I watched through the narrow space between the barrel and the wall. A man came into view, out in the middle of the street, carrying a pistol. His neckerchief was pulled over his lower face and nose. He was craning his head forward, looking down the alley.

“See anything, Marcus?”the familiar voice called

“No,” the man in the middle of the street said, “but they could be hiding. Pick up that shotgun, Jimmy.”

I stretched out on the sand, cautious to not kick the Marshal, then I pushed my own hat off my head and tried to line up a shot with my left hand, between the barrel and the wall, but the space was too close to take accurate aim.

A second man, also masked, who I presumed was “Jimmy,” came into view and leaned down to pick up the shotgun. He, too, had a revolver in hand.

I chose that moment to shift my pistol to the other side of the barrel, away from the wall, so I could hold the Colt in my right hand where it would have more play.

Jimmy took a shot with his revolver, then scrambled back around the corner of the building. The bullet tore through the barrel above my head and wood shards sprinkled my backside.

Marcus ducked back out of sight, too.

“What was it, Jimmy?” Marcus called.

“I thought I saw something movie.”

“Where? I didn’t see anything.”

“On the ground, next to that barrel.”

The familiar voice, still from a distance said, “You’re shooting at rats. Is there a blood trail?”

Jimmy said, “Yeah, going down the alley.”

Familiar voice said, “Marcus, get over there. Both of you check which way the blood leads. I’ll watch for them to circle around.”

In the meantime, I’d crumpled my hat and lay it over my arm and pistol.

Marcus said, “When I cross to the other side, you start walking down this side.” After a silent moment, Marcus, annoyed, said, “You got that, Jimmy?”

Voice said, “Get movin’, Jimmy.”

“Yeah, okay,” Jimmy finally agreed. “But I’m gonna use this coach gun.”

“Just make sure it’s loaded,” Marcus said.

I could hear the breach being worked, and Jimmy said, “Double aught buck, up both pipes.”

“Then cover me,” Marcus ordered, and I saw the shotgun barrel poke around the corner, just as Marcus dashed across the alley’s entrance, revolver in hand, to press against the other building’s wall.

“I can see one of ‘em down, nothing in his hands.

Voice called, “Jimmy, see who it is.

Jimmy squeezed around the corner while Marcus stepped out to provide cover.

I steadied my pistol against the barrel, waiting my moment. As Jimmy walked down the alley and was about to obscure my view of Marcus, I shot Marcus, then adjusted the angle and shot Jimmy, who had frozen in place. Scrambling to my feet, I ran to the end of the alley, in time to shoot a third man, carrying a rifle, who was just turning to run away. Though masked, I was pretty sure it was Zachary Albertson, Marshal Artigas’s former chief deputy and Artigas’s unsuccessful rival in the Democratic primary election for town marshal.

I took a second glance at each man, and none of them seemed about to move, so I hurried back to Marshal Artigas -- but he was dead.

While I had killed Jimmy and Marcus, and had intended the same for Albertson, he had survived. I’d aimed for his head, but hit his shoulder, even that a lucky shot at that distance. Albertson had received a wound from which he’d likely recover. His story was that he’d been pursuing the two shooters who had ambushed Marshal Artigas. The County Prosecutor, an Anglo Democrat, declined to file charges, possibly because that would have left only a Republican on the ballot for town marshal. As the runner-up in the primary, Albertson would stand for town marshal in the general election. Which meant Albertson, being a Democrat, would be the next town marshal.

How was that assured? Local politics.

It was explained to me by the county clerk when I went to register to vote after I moved to El Paso. If I wanted my vote to count in elections, I needed to register as a Democrat. Up to that time, I had always registered as a Republican, the lingering effect of my admiration for President Lincoln. But the El Paso County Clerk had explained to me that the overwhelming majority of El Paso County residents were Democrats and that only Democrats were elected to local office. Therefor, the only meaningful elections were the choices offered in the Democratic primaries and, if you weren’t a Democrat, you couldn’t vote in that primary. For me, the election process was the important part of being an American citizen, so I registered as a Democrat.

But that also meant that Zachary Albertson, a man who I knew to be a liar and a murderer, a man who I had shot and attempted to kill, but who was the Democrat runner-up, was about to become my boss. I turned in my badge and left town to become a Deputy U.S. Marshal in New Mexico.

And now I was back.

From the train station I walked the two blocks to the second story office of Anderson Etheridge, Attorney at Law. It was already after six, so I didn’t expect the office would be open. However, Andy lived in the rooms behind his office, which was above a barber shop and a working man’s lunch counter that comprised the other tenants of the two-story adobe building.

My determined knocking at the first floor front door finally brought a response, but it was a young, pretty Mexican woman who answered the door.

“Si, Señor?” she inquired.

I answered her in Spanish. “I’m here to see Señor Etheridge. Could you tell him Judah Becker is here to see him, please?”

Andy must have been listening, because he poked his head out the upstairs doorway and called down the stairs, “Judah, you son of a gun, come on up,” adding, “Déjalo entrar, Marcela.” (“Let him in, Marcela.”) She stood aside to let me by, then closed and latched to door to follow me up the stairs.

Etheridge was a bull of a man, if of modest size, ruddy-faced, with black hair and full beard. He was a few years younger than me. I met him when working for the Pinkertons.

“What’s this?” he said in English, eyeing my badge. “Who are you working for now?” I’d meant to take the badge off and had forgotten. After a closer look he said, “Oh, back to working for Uncle Sam, huh? Here in Texas?”

“New Mexico Territory. I’m posted to Taos.”

“Some serious mountain streams up that way. Getting any fishing in?”

“Some, but never enough.”

“There can never be enough,” he said, then he noticed I was tipping my head toward the young woman standing next to me, reminding him of his manners.

He said, “Oh, yes,” then in Spanish, “Marcela, this is a fellow angling enthusiast, Deputy US Marshal Judah Becker, from Taos, Territory of New Mexico. Judah, may I present Señorita Marcela Ortiz.”

She offered her hand, saying, “Señor Becker, mucho gusto.” (Mucho gusto is an idiom meaning, “Pleased to meet you.”)

I bent over her hand in a faux kiss and said, “Mucho gusto tambien, Señorita Ortiz.” (I am pleased to meet you, too, Miss Ortiz.)

“Come, Judah, sit down” he said. Then he looked at Marcela and he said to her, in English, “Marcela, honey, would you be good enough to take the bucket down to the corner and get us some beer? I’d take Judah for a drink, but I don’t think he should be seen on the street. And don’t tell anyone he’s here, my love.”

She replied, mostly in English “But of course, mi amor.” (“..., my love”).

He handed her some coins and she picked up the covered beer pail from a shelf by the door as she left.

I asked, “Why shouldn’t I be seen on the street? What’s that all about?”

“Seriously? You don’t know? Judah, there’s a warrant out for your arrest. You hadn’t heard?”

This was a major surprise. “No. Whatever for?”

“The murder of Town Marshal Juan Artigas.”

I felt like I’d been kicked. “You’re serious? I’ve been accused of Marshal Artigas’s killing? By who?”

“Who d’ you expect? Town Marshal Zachary Albertson and one of his deputies.”

“What deputy?” I’d gotten along well with the other deputies, except for Albertson. As far as I knew, there had been no other surviving witnesses to Artigas’s murder other than me and Albertson, let alone anyone to say I’d done it.

“I believe you may know him: Quick Dick O’Flaherty?”

“Ricky O’Flaherty? Quick Dick Rick? That Ricky O’Flaherty?”

O’Flaherty was an ill-famed layabout and scoundrel. He had come by the nickname Quick Dick after being accused of rape by a women who testified that he ejaculated as soon as his member touched her thigh, thus bringing into question the specific charge of rape. Even so, he spent six months in the county lock-up for the crime of assault and battery, since he had broken her cheekbone and eye socket, among other injuries. I was the one who had arrested him while on routine foot patrol, when I had responded to the woman’s screams. I had subsequently testified at the trial as to the woman’s injuries. Truth was, I’d also been the one to come up with the nickname Quick Dick and to mention it around until it took hold.

“Ricky O’Flaherty’s a deputy town marshal? Since when?”

“Since a couple of the other deputies quit shortly after you left, specifically those deputies with Mexican surnames.”

I sighed. “So my name’s on an arrest warrant, huh? No, I had no idea. It sounds like things have turned out even worse than what I thought might happen with Albertson as town marshal. I wouldn’t have come if I knew about the warrant.” I just shook my head, uncertain what to do.

“Well, you’ll have to stay here tonight. I’ll fix up a palette.”

I said, “A couple blankets will be fine. Thanks, Andy.

Then he asked, “So why did you come?”

“I came to ask your help in trying to capture a fugitive who’s fled to Mexico. I’m hoping you can provide me the same service you did for the Pinkertons.”

That procedure would have Andy, as an attorney, write to the subject fugitive, who was known to be in Mexico, purportedly in regard to a sizable bequest in the fugitive’s name, available at Andy’s office. In fact there was such a bequest in the man’s name, but the recipient was Andy himself, who had received a fifty dollar “bequest” as the fee he was paid by the Pinkerton Detective Agency to help capture the fugitive.

His expression remained quizzical. “For the federal marshals? That seems odd.”

“No, it’s a private matter.”

“Can you afford the fee?” he asked.

“I can, but the money lure is much bigger than just the fee. The man’s father was the House Speaker in our legislature and he owned a bank. His will leaves all of his assets to the son. I’ve brought a copy of the will with me. What the son doesn’t know is that the bank’s assets were assigned to the Bank of New Mexico as receiver.”

“The Speaker of the House? I think I read about him in the papers. Was he the man who tried to kill a-- Damnation! Was that you he shot at, Judah?”

“Yeah. Unfortunately, for him.”

He shook his head. “Well, at least your enemies are from a higher class in New Mexico. Tell me more about your fugitive.” So I filled him in on the details regarding Logan and Jeffrey McMillan.

He said, “Okay, but, listen: as far as the cross-the-border traps are concerned, I now have an arrangement with colleagues in Nogales (no-GAH-les) and Yuma (YOO-mah), in the Arizona Territory, and with attorneys in Del Rio, Eagle Pass, and Laredo, here in Texas. The attorney in Del Rio is a woman, if you can believe it.”

“I can believe there’s a female attorney in Del Rio; what I find remarkable is that she signed onto your scheme.”

“Hey, I didn’t ask her to marry me, just to accept case referrals.”

“Either way, you’re safe; I don’t see myself heading for Del Rio.”

“Well, we all still charge the same fifty dollars, but it’s split with ten to the referring attorney and fifteen to the attorney who handles the case. In the long run it’s even better, since my income from this type of service has increased by more than half, with less actual casework.” He seemed rather pleased with himself.

“And you set that up in a year?”

He shook his head. “No. I started putting it together while you were still here working for Artigas, but we didn’t get it formalized until about six or seven months ago.”

In fact, I liked Anderson Etheridge. He was one of the reasons I chose El Paso after I left the Pinkertons. Another reason I located in El Paso had been Juan Artigas, with whom I’d also had occasion to work.

There was a noise from the kitchen and Marcela soon appeared, the beer pail leaking foam from under its lid. But she looked distressed.

“Que pasa?” (What’s going on?) Andy asked her.

In Spanish, she replied, “There is a town deputy in a doorway across the street, watching this place. That is why I came in the back.”

He smiled and touched her cheek. “Mi chica astuta,” (My clever girl.) he said.

Turning to me, he said, again in English, “If they decide to barge-in looking for you, there’s no place to hide up here.”

“Does this building have a basement?”

“No. There’s a hatch to the roof, but it’s all open, with the chimneys in the corners. There’s nothing to hide behind. I think your best bet is to cross the Rio and follow it back north. It’s only a few miles until it crosses back into New Mexico. Then maybe you can hop a freight train or something. Just take off the badge while you’re in Juarez.” I immediately pocketed the Deputy U.S. Marshal star, securing it in its leather wallet.

He went to a sideboard and rummaged in a drawer. “Here’s a card for the attorney in Nogales; his name’s Haas. He’s new, but seems dependable. I think Nogales is your best bet for what you’re trying to accomplish; that’s where the Santa Fe tracks cross into Mexico. I’ll wire him to expect you. Pay him fifteen dollars and I’ll bill you for my ten. And take this copy of the old man’s will with you to let Haas use it.” I put those pages back in my coat pocket.

Then I pulled out my shirt tails and pulled a money belt from around my waist. “The fifty bucks is in here. You send him his cut. I don’t want this money to fall into the wrong hands in case I get caught.”

He accepted the belt, but shook his head. “I doubt you’ll have to worry about getting caught. Most of the men Albertson has warrants for end up getting killed resisting arrest, so I wouldn’t even consider surrendering.”

I gave him a sour look. “That’s not exactly reassuring,” I groused.

He reached out and shook my hand, gripping my shoulder at the same time. “Be careful Judah. And write me.”

I grinned. “Send me a receipt for the fifty. Send it in care of the Sheriff’s office in the Taos County Courthouse. That’s where I work from when I’m in Taos.”

He’d been leading me to the back door, which he opened for me, saying, “Take care, Judah.”

He watched as I crept down the stairs and stopped at the back door, which had a small opening with a hinged cover, allowing one to see who was outside the door. I eased the cover open and looked out into the evening dusk and saw Ricky O’Flaherty’s red hair. He was sitting on the step, leisurely leaning back on his outstretched arms, his back to the door, a smoking cheroot dangling from his lips.

I pulled my big, patterned, red kerchief from a hip pocket and tied it over my lower face. I drew my pistol from the shoulder holster with my right hand and slowly began to turn the door knob with my left.

As soon as the turning door latch produced the first audible clicks, I quickly turned the knob the rest of the way and jerked the door open, pulling off my hat to wave it in Ricky’s face while I took a roundhouse swipe at his temple with the thirty-eight in my right hand. It connected hard and Ricky fell off the step, landing in an awkward heap. I doubt he had even seen anything past the waving hat.