Nobody Rides Forever

By Craig Strete

The even more authentic life of Billy the Kid.
Being the secret death bed confessions of Pat Garrett, one time sheriff of Lincoln county, New Mexico, by whom Billy the Kid as such he was known was finally hunted down and personally rendered deceased which ended up his foolishness in no uncertain terms.
Including desultory facts about the mysterious killer of said Pat Garrett as revealed from the lips of the dying Pat Garrett himself, as told to Puking Bird.
Translated from the original vapourous Indian language
and edited and corrected for general drunkenness
by Craig Strete, himself the unnoted author of other unrelated literary droppings.

• Language: English
• Publisher: ReAnimus Press
• Release date: Aug 10, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463645475

Craig Strete

Craig Kee Strete is a Native American science fiction writer, noted for his use of American Indian themes.Beginning in the early 1970s, while working in the Film and Television industry, Strete began writing emotional Native American themed, and science fiction short stories and novellas. He is a three-time Nebula Award finalist, for Time Deer, A Sunday Visit with Great-grandfather, and The Bleeding Man.In 1974 Strete published a magazine dedicated to Native American science fiction, Red Planet Earth. His play Paint Your Face On A Drowning In The River was the 1984 Dramatists Guild/CBS New Plays Program first place winner.

Book preview

INTRODUCTORY MUSINGS

Pat Garrett was flat on his white ass with a bullet wound in his stomach and that bullet lodged in him somewhere like a roosting bird. I thought he was dead when I first laid eyes on him and I personally was immensely cheered by the prospect. I am not over fond of white people in the first place but I am especially not fond of loud-mouthed ignorant bigots like Pat Garrett who kill people for a living. I had known him since I was a boy when he was back in Lincoln County pretending to be a sheriff and collecting graft for it. I never liked him one minute ever.

Now he was gut shot and dying and I was admiring the gunman’s handiwork.

It was out in the middle of nowhere. It was so far from anywhere the buzzards hadn’t even found him yet. I came up on him sudden like and was glad for it for the sake of unexpected entertainment. Indians need all the fun they can get.

Pat opened his eyes and squinted at me in the sun. I crouched down next to him and tipped my hat at him and gave him a stunner of a grin that was pretty near a laugh.

I know I’m in hell. Is it really you, Puking Bird? asked Pat.

I was never really me even when I was me, I admitted. My college education at Dartmouth under the pretend-Indians-are-people-too policy had made me full of self-doubt and little else. I was wearing a suit with a starched shirt and one of them little four in one ties around my neck to remind me that white people are always dressed up for a funeral.

I was expecting somebody else. I heard your horse and thought you were coming back to finish me off, said Pat and he looked kind of disappointed.

Indians are always unexpected. That’s what white people always say.

And they always mean it too.

I bent over and took a close gander at his wound. It was a nasty one. Being gut shot is just about the worst way to buy a dirt sleep.

You are pretty well shot up ain’t you, white man, I finally said. I was sure he was measured for a grave but he was mounted on a mighty slow horse for the getting there. I guess the famous killer of Billy the Kid is himself killed. Or at least is heading that a way.

Some white people are pleasing to the eye and some of them are Pat Garrett, legendary trampler of Indians, loose women, orphaned children and spotted yellow dogs. If there is some class of people old Pat hasn’t tried to kick the crap out of, I’d be very much surprised. He was a legendary law dog who had a kick of kindness for every backside he had ever met.

Are you here to rescue me? asked Pat.

Hell no! I was just passing by. I saw you passing away and thought I’d just sit a bit and watch for fun. I don’t think rescuing is my forte.

What the hell is a forte? Pat winced. He seemed to be in considerable pain.

One of them nine dollar words I learned at Dartmouth college, I said by way of not explaining it. It means I like you dead more than I like you rescued.

Reckon I kicked the shit out of you a time or two in the past, as I recall, said Pat Garrett. Had I been more proficient at it, ya little Indian shitbird, you wouldn’t be sitting here gaping and enjoying my eternal ruination.

There’s that, I allowed. How’d you end up here, Pat Garrett, and who shot you? Seems to have done a half assed job of putting you in the dirt, if you ask me. Could take the whole damn day to die the way you’re going.

I’d be dead all the way and not creeping along if my sorry ass killer had had enough sense to remember to reload his weapon or buy ammo. The bastard shot me in the stomach. That bullet plowed its way up and is lodged up in my shoulder and it hurts like a son of a bitch, pardon my English! It shit hurts!

So where is your killer now and who was it that done it?

Who it was don’t matter. As to where he is, the ass canker has gone to town to buy another bullet to finish the job. Cheap bastard! Tossed my gun bullets out last night while I slept and like an asshole plinked away at coyotes on the trail. By the time he got around to the killing, the brass assed idiot only had one cartridge left.

And he near wasted that one. Why it’s even remotely possible you could not die. That’s just downright irresponsible shooting if you ask me, I said, adding my two cents. If a man going to kill somebody he has to be exact. Close don’t hardly count on a thing like that.

Nobody is asking you. Say there, you pestilent no count Indian swine, you wouldn’t happen to have a smoke on you would you? I have a powerful yen.

I do have some hand rolled smokes in my poke, I said. But to be fair, Pat, giving you one seems like a waste of tobacco.

You are one unforgiving prick, I’ll say that, said Pat. I have always maintained Indians are as useless as tits on a boar. And you by god are the truth of it.

Pat rubbed his face in a sort of dazed twitchy way and then he coughed up a little blood on the back of his hand.

Now that can’t be good, he said, wiping the blood off on his shirt. Still and all, it was shoddy shooting, with that I have to agree. The man who shot me up has mud for brains and that’s a fact.

If I had been shot I sure would be telling the world who did it but old Pat Garrett seemed hunkered down on the fact as if saying the name would somehow make it more real.

So your killer is just about as smart as a tree squirrel. That narrows it down to about all the white men in New Mexico. So who done it?

For me to know, and you to find out, said Pat. You are all fired curious. If I tell you his name, is it because you want justice done?

Him shooting you is pretty much all the justice I need. I’d just like to know who to thank.

I’d like to go up your ass with a saguaro cactus, said Pat.

Looking forward to it. The gifts that white people give are a lasting treasure. I acknowledged with a shit eating grin.

I suppose you’re giving me the short sharpened stick because you think I am a bad man, complained Pat, looking mighty peeved.

I don’t think you are a bad man Pat. I KNOW you are a bad man.

Shit, said Pat and he actually smiled. I don’t deny it. Ain’t a good bone in my body or a bad deed I haven’t left undone. Guess there is something to calling them like you see them. No sense lying to make it all prettied up. It’s the raw scrape on the bone at the end of the trail and it might as well be the way it is and not the way we lied and said it was.

Pat seemed to look far away and then he looked over at me in a kind of wonderment. His eyes widened and he looked wary and then surprised as if he had figured something out that he had never known.

You’re educated, ain’t you? College-irized right down to the shit howdy!

Dartmouth college back East says I was. But they have been known to lie.

Quit fooling. I heard something about you... What was it... Yes... I reckon it’s a thing ain’t never been done. They say you writ a book! Is it true or just jawing?

To be accurate, I wrote two books, I confessed and was saddened by the fact of it.

Gawd Almighty if that don’t beat all! And you as Indian as they come! Was they published?

By Harper and Brothers in 1903 and 1904.

Actual books you say, muttered Pat, looking plainly stunned.

I got copies in my saddlebag. You want to see them?

Hell no.

That’s what the buying public said about my books too. Hell no.

How’d you like to write another one? Pat said it with such a wistful expression on his face I thought he had gone soft in the head.

I wouldn’t like it at all. I wasted too much paper with the last two. I think I sold four copies and two of them are the ones I bought.

He thought for a moment. Say, you seen how I’m all shot up. I can handle it straight. Any chance in hell I’m going to live, Chief?

I wouldn’t put money on it.

Me neither. How long do you think it would take to ride into town from out here, buy bullets and ride back?

About six hours if you had a good horse. Longer if it’s scrub horse and you need a drink.

Oh, he’ll need lots of drinks. And his horse is a spavined misery that makes a turtle look like a money racer.

So you got lots of time to die slow, I said calculating the distance in my head. Likely you’d be dead before he got back to finish you off anyway. Be a waste of bullets.

I figure it the same. I’m piss fading on a wall is all. But maybe we can make use of the time. You ain’t otherwise engaged are you, chief? I mean you don’t have to be somewhere do you?

No, not so much. I thought maybe watching you die by inches was a good use of my time. Us Indians, specially the ones of us who don’t like it when some asshole calls us Chief, have to find our amusements where we can.

Glad to oblige. Taint every day a man get to be an object of fun and a coffin crawler all combined in one shot. But seriously, this book thing, there’d be money in it, if you had a good enough story. Say for instance, the real story about the life and death of Billy the Kid. I mean the actual truth this time and not a stinking lie that’s bullshit from one end to the t’other.

Didn’t you already write that? I think I seen the book. The authentic Life of Billy the Kid by Pat-I’m-an-Indian-beating-asshole Garrett.

I had even tried to read it once which I wasn’t going to admit out loud but I never got past the first page. A monkey could have written a smarter book.

I did and I didn’t.

What the hell is that supposed to mean? I asked, feeling confused.

There was a book. It had my name on it. I told the story to somebody else and they writ it for me.

So your name being on the book was a lie because you didn’t write it.

That’s right. I never had the smarts to write no book. And the whole book was a lie because almost none of it was true neither.

So what’s the point.

The point is I had the first book written cause all these sanctimonious bastards was pissing on my name, shoveling shit on my reputation.

And this new other book would change what? Why bother, I mean, you won’t be around beyond maybe even the end of the day, so what’s in it for you?

I get the satisfaction of shoving my fingers in the eyes of a bunch of bastards. I’ll put the telescope on their miserable lives. Strip them naked for the liars and cheats and perverse assholes they all are and let them choke on it.

So what you are saying is, you have this story, which written in a book, is a whole lot of dirt on a bunch of white assholes and if published it will hurt them pretty good?

Like a hot branding iron up the ass, it will do just that, said Pat and he laughed at the thought of it. A little blood bubbled out of the corner of his mouth when he did it. He stared at me, waiting for an answer, for some kind of sign yeah or nay. I put on my best poker face. The silence stretched between us.

I reached behind me for my poke. I hauled out a couple of rolled handmades. I bent over and stuffed one in his mouth. I used a safety match on the bottom of my boot and lit it for him.

He took a huge draw on the cheroot and smiled.

I’d thank you from the bottom of my heart if I had one, he said as he exhaled a stream of smoke. A good smoke is better than a woman, even a high titted one.

I looked up at the sun figuring the time.

I wasn’t exactly in a busy part of my life. I was drifting along like the idle poor. A fellow once told me that teaching an Indian to read and write was like teaching a dog to dance. It’s amusing for a little while but the novelty always wears off. I calculated I had pretty much reached the exact same moment in life. I was a novelty that nobody could see any use for. On that note, I made my decision, stupid as it seemed to be on the face of it.

I don’t have paper or pencil. You’ll tell me as much as you can, I’ll remember it. Maybe not exactly but near enough. This time it will be all your words, not mine, not somebody else pretending to be you. I got a good mind for words. I tend to remember more than I forget. I may not get all the details just as they should be but I will get near enough so that whatever the big facts are, those I mean to put down.

Hell don’t be coy with it. Don’t circle around now, you just put ‘er down like I spit it out. We’ll fry them bastards in their own hair oil! Pat Garrett’s face was animated with a kind of wild glee that I had seen before. It was his official sheriff’s face when he had his foot on some poor bastard’s face and was hurrahing him to within an inch of his life.

Pat puffed on the gasper with evident enjoyment. A man in his indelicate condition was none too picky.

I had paid 2 cents for that cigar and had been severely cheated. They weren’t so much cigars as such as they were insect discouragers.

I’ll say this for old Pat, what I recalled most when I thought about the times he kicked the stuffings out of me, was that he was a cheerful and sunny punisher. He was forever smiling the hardest and looking the most affable when he was kicking the shit out of someone. I always wondered if he was as cheerful after the work was done when he was trying to get the bloodstains out of his boots. Doubtless, it was the only downside to his fun.

Hard truths boy! We’ll give ‘em hell. The whole slime of it! Rotted egg breath and all. Be a whole slew of pewling moonlings not fit for society after we dust ‘em off. Are you with me son? Do you care for a last gallop?

Pat was regarding me with what might clearly be fiendish glee. He was hot on the trail for last minute revenge and apparently I was now his asshole buddy and partner in crime. What the hell was I getting myself into? Lot of work just to stick it to a bunch of white folks I don’t even know.

But then I thought about it. What better use of a whacking dollop of book learning if not to give some good old white biscuit boys the screaming fantods!

So that’s how it all began and here it continues for what it’s worth.

My name is Pat Garrett and this is by god the for real sure story of William Bonney, the asshole folks call Billy the Kid. This is the true story, warts and all, unprettified. Read it and weep you sons of bitches.

Now listen here, it just plain ain’t savvy to call BILLY THE KID the most noted desperado of the Old West. Too feeble a description.

It’s just too limiting. He spilled out all over the place being the pure and natural terror he was and I’d venture to say only Satan makes a bigger land grab on being a villain.

Various sparrow farts have tarnished his memory and mine. Them damn yellow novels have depicted me and Billy so wildly and so without regard to actual facts, that neither one of our mothers would know it was us.

I writ a book about it once before and you would have thought my true and authentic account of the tragic life and death of William Bonney would have put a sock in it, but the truth is, I was for certain lying right out of my ass the first time through too. I’m aiming to fix that mistake once and for all.

Oh sure, hurl rocks at me for past transgressions but the thing is If I had told the truth the first time I sauntered up the canyon, people would have thought I had turds for brains. They would have thought I was the product of a cow pie eating contest and clearly not in my right mind.

The braying public wanted a story with ribbons and bows. Whatever patience they had for sin or depravity was absent by the bucket full. Had I assayed to plainly say how the whole damn sorry business had played out, likely they would have used me for target practice. But shit, I’m gut shot and dying so this is my chance to set the record straight.

So tighten up your bibs and keep the smelling salts handy cause the real truth is strong enough to knock a dog off a gut wagon.

Them other bastards who writ about me and Billy Bonney made it seem like he was an angel from above and I was some kind of fiend and assassin. If ever a man deserved killing, I’d say Billy was it.

Me myself, seems a waste to have shot me, but there you have it. It’s been done and right near the end, when the dark mystery is panting down my neck and I am about to go, I am going to name my killer and I hope they hang the sorry son of a bitch with a scratchy rope.

I get to tell this story because I am gut shot, and dying slow, and there is an educated Indian who found me. Puking Bird done got himself a college education so he’s gonna put down the words as near exact as I say them. I don’t like him much and he hates my guts. I never treated Indians much like people and that’s just a fact. How I was and am.

As a high and mighty sheriff I thumped Puking Bird’s ass a time or two in the past when there was no reason to do so and he rightly resents it and should. I am in no ways a good man and I have worked evil on him and many others I could name. Puking Bird can be counted on to tell it just like it is because he don’t like me much and the story makes me look like cow shit on a sandwich. He ain’t going to pretty it up with lies or a happy ending. I don’t suppose the world is crowded with educated Indians or such like and I am sure I don’t see the use of it. But for what it is, I am glad he is here and this is my story.

I am stomach shot and the bullet has traveled through me and is festering in my shoulder. So I need to talk quick and die slow.

CHAPTER ONE

An asshole is born and the legend begins

William H Bonney probably was a normal baby. I mean he wasn’t raised by wolves and I doubt he strangled some other infant with a teething bib or stabbed his mother in the tits when she tried to nurse him.

It takes a while to develop a nose for evil deeds. You can’t expect a newborn to plot ruin right there in the crib.

Billy was born in New York on November 23rd in the year of probably not the Lord as Billy would have said, 1859. Billy wasn’t much for religion. I never knowed his exact views on the subject but he shoved a burning log of pitch pine up an itinerant sky pilot’s ass because Billy claimed the man ate with his mouth open at the boarding house that Billy stayed at.

I always thought that was only half the truth of why Billy gave the preacher man such a blazing hazing. I think it was the overlong prayer at each meal that held up the eating that was the real itch that led to the fiery scratch.

Billy was never much on patience, he liked his whores hot and quick and his food likewise. That I know for a fact.

Billy’s father shucked his mortal coil while Billy was just still a peeing pooping toddler so whatever influence the father had must have been no bigger than a whore’s twat at best. Billy claimed to have no memory of him so that pretty much settles it that whatever blackness would be in Billy, it wasn’t coming from his actual father.

His mother, dare we say it, was a piece of work.

The family moved to Coffeyville Kansas in 1862 and the father promptly died, leaving the grieving widow with a raft of unpaid bills and a live-in man friend.

The father’s death was fortunate because Billy’s mother had taken up with a man named Antrim, which is what prompted the move to Kansas in the first place although it was a fact known only to Billy’s mother and not to his father. There was nothing suspicious about the way Billy’s father died.

Most men when they reach a certain age have spontaneous bleeding episodes which look like stab wounds to the untrained eye.

Billy’s father died early one Monday morning and was buried later on the same day he died. Antrim’s own personal physician who happened to be his elder brother, wrote the death certificate. Because of a risk of infection, the hasty burial was a concession to public safety.

Antrim was a very solicitous suitor and although he and Billy’s mother spend time in a variety of rented rooms before Billy’s father actually died there was little that was scandalous about that.

In the beginning they was probably just friends who needed the comfort of a hotel room. Police reports about noise complaints, mainly screaming and episodes of drunken rage, were how Billy eventually discovered these hotel visits. A number of incidents of violence had been reported by other hotel guests which prompted a number of disturbing police visits to the house.

Antrim moved in lock, stock and barrel about twenty minutes after Billy’s father was pronounced deceased. Billy said Antrim had thought about waiting longer out of respect for the dead but he was already in the neighborhood and needed to use the chamber pot something fierce so what the hell, he just took the plunge.

Having a new man in the house meant there was a period of adjustment. Antrim was a man who took considerable getting used to.

Billy often recalled with some shock that he often found Antrim wandering the halls of their rented house late at night dressed in his mother’s finest dresses. As Billy recalled it, Antrim wasn’t much to look at as a man and he was dog’s breath unseemly as a woman.

Antrim always carried a buggy whip with him wherever he went and he drank a quart of strong whiskey every day. Billy used to suspect this man of the most vile deeds and he often said that he feared that his mother would come to some grievous harm at the hands of this black villain. Did he beat Billy’s mother when no one was there to defend her? Such were young Billy’s earliest fears and recollections.

The truth of the matter, as it later developed, was that the buggy whip Antrim so frequently flourished was little more than a feeble defense against the attacks of Billy’s mother.

Billy made many trips to the hospitals and doctors with the shattered and bruised creature that was Antrim. Often in the morning, Antrim emerged from their conjugal bedroom with open wounds and massive bruising about the face and neck. Many a night young Billy lay awake in his bed, kept awake by the sound of hard