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Surviving Santa Fe

Bob Johnston

    Here we were, four Jacks at an AA meeting. That seemed like a pretty weird coincidence, even in Santa Fe in 1976. To tell us apart, we all got different handles. Boston Jack came from Boston and never let you forget it. Triple-X Jack worked in the local porno theater. They called me Frenchy Jack because of my last name, Lafayette, and my two percent or so French—which came down along with my name from a randy fur trapper about eight generations back.
    Cowboy Jack was—or had been—a real working cowboy, complete with a West Texas twang, faded Levis, scuffed boots, and a sweat-stained Stetson that stayed on his head most of the time. When he did take it off, you could see that his leathery face extended only up to the middle of his forehead, where it changed abruptly into dead white. Probably in his sixties, he was still lean, wiry, and fit; but he walked with a limp. His eyes were set in a permanent squint, as if looking into the sun. It wasn’t hard to imagine him riding the dusty range for hours or camping out at night with a little fire and a pot suspended over two forked sticks.

    Even without romanticizing the cowboy life, I could see that Cowboy Jack was special. He didn’t talk much in meetings and he obviously wasn’t well educated, but his few words always made sense. Listening to him, I picked up a lot of good tips on how to stay sober. It was more than ten years since his last drink, so I figured he must be doing something right.
    My sobriety was pretty shaky then, and I needed all the help I could get. Only six months sober, I’d just broken up a ten-year marriage and moved to Santa Fe. The job prospects for a mathematician weren’t good, and I’d been scraping along on what I could make as a court interpreter. I was staying sober, thanks to AA, but I was having serious trouble with the spiritual side of the program. I just couldn’t understand the concept of a Higher Power that I could rely upon to keep me sober. Cowboy Jack told me that I didn’t have to understand this Higher Power, or God, or whatever, but just accept it. “Shoot,” he said, “I never will understand what’s goin’ on. But when I’m lookin’ at a whole mess of stars up there, I know that somethin’ has to be runnin’ the show, and all I have to do is tap into it.”
    I’d thought of asking him to be my AA sponsor, but something held me back—misplaced intellectual pride, I guess. Even so, we had some good talks after the meetings, and I think he opened up to me more than to anyone else in the group. He never said much about his “before AA” days, but he gave me straight talk on how he worked the AA program: “I figgered out early-on that I had to take Step 1 right away, admit I couldn’t handle the booze and that my life was unmanageable—a pile of crap, really. And then Step 2, where I caught on that somethin’ bigger than me could get me back to sanity. Oh, I was doin’ a lotta weird things when I was drunk, so the idea I’d been insane never bothered me none.”

    One night before our meeting started, C-Jack and I were standing outside for a last-minute smoke. I asked him if he had ever hit the rodeo circuit. He said no, he’d worked twenty years on a ranch south of Santa Fe, right up to a year ago. “Besides me, there was only Joe and Ole. Now Joe’s a Mexican, but a helluva good guy and smart too. Ole’s a big Swede, heart the size of a barn, and real good at handlin’ cattle. Just us three, and we had to ride thirty miles of fence and check the stock tanks. Break the ice in the winter and take out hay to them dumb critters. At brandin’ time, we stayed out there for however long it took to round ’em up. Pretty hard life but I was used to it, and I didn’t know nothin’ else. Prob’ly woulda kept goin’ till I died, but then I got busted up, and that’s why I’m here in Santa Fe, workin’ at a lousy job.”
    This was the most he’d ever talked about his past, and I wanted to hear more. I waited, but he just stomped out his cigarette and started to roll another, without saying a word. He concentrated on the cigarette while he tapped tobacco into the paper, rolled and licked the paper to seal it, looked at it critically, and finally struck a match on his jeans and lit up. He seemed to be all done talking. After several minutes of silence, I asked him, “What happened, anyway?”
    He blew out a cloud of smoke, coughed, and told me, “Not much.” By then it was time for the meeting, so we went on in.

    I finally heard a good part of his story, one night after a meeting. As usual, a bunch of us had gone to the Inn at the Loretto for coffee. It was a pretty relaxed place in those days. None of the help objected if we sat around for a couple of hours, and they even poured us one refill after another while we rehashed the meeting. That night, everybody else from our group went home early, leaving Cowboy Jack and me, two Jacks with no place we particularly wanted to go, especially home.
    I drank the last of my coffee, pulled out my pack of Marlboros, and put it back into my pocket. Trying to quit, or at least cut down. Marisa came by with the pot and filled my cup. CJack put his hand over his cup. “All coffeed out. More’n five cups, I can’t get to sleep.” He studied his empty cup. “Young feller, I ’spect you’re a mite curious about how I landed here, workin’ at the animal pound.”
    “Yes, I’ve wondered,” I told him. “From what you told me, you had a responsible job at the ranch.”
    “Yup, I practically ran that spread all by myself. It was a great setup when old Dan Conley owned the place. Kept me on, even when I was drinkin’. Then after I sobered up, we got to be real good friends. He was one helluva guy, always pitched right in whenever we needed help. Abby, that was his wife, one of the best, too. She used to cook dinner for all of us, most every night. Then she up and died, and Dan sold the ranch, moved to Mexico.”
    He stopped, tilted his hat to the back of his head, and stared at the ceiling for a couple of minutes. Then he started up again: “New owners, name of Biddle, treated me okay at first, but things wasn’t ever the same. Goddam Easterners. Philadelphia. Charles and Bitsy Biddle. Bitsy—can you believe it? Shoulda called her Big Bertha. . . . That pair didn’t give a hoot about the ranch, just bought it to show off. Tore down the old house and built themselves a big high-falutin’ Southern mansion, sittin’ on a three-acre lawn with a white board fence around it. It was a quarter mile from the barn and bunkhouse, so they didn’t get none of the stink and the flies. Took near a year to get the house and swimmin’ pool done, even longer to plant a bunch of trees and get the lawn goin’. They had a cook and a maid and a guy dressed up like a waiter, along with a bunch of help for the yard work. All their help lived in a dormitory in back of the house, and they never had nothin’ to do with the likes of us.”
    He leaned back in his chair and tugged at an ear, apparently lost in thought. “Yup,” he finally said, “that was some weird setup. After the Biddles moved in, all they did was run up to Santa Fe damn near every night, then have big parties at the house for that artsy crowd. Buncha weirdos, most of ’em. But I gotta say, the Biddles treated me decent, up to a point. They paid me good, and I didn’t bother them and they didn’t bother me. Mr. Biddle was a little guy with a swelled head. Bitsy was taller’n him, and wider too. Big blonde with big tits, and just plain nasty.” C-Jack shifted uneasily in his chair. “Dunno why I’m tellin’ you all this stuff. Kinda kept it to myself before.”
    “Keep going,” I told him.” “Can’t wait to hear the rest of it.” I figured to get some more clues on how he stayed sober.
    He stretched, yawned, and motioned to the waitress. “Hey there, Marisa, how’s about bringin’ me a bowl of green chile stew and a glass of milk. . . . And you, yew danged Froggy, you want anything?”
    “No go, Jack. Chile’s too much for me this late.” I figured he was done talking for the night, and I couldn’t think of any way to keep him going.
    He settled back and waited until Marisa set the chile and milk in front of him. He took in a couple of spoonfuls of chile and a big swig of milk, wiped his chin, and continued the story.
    “So everything was goin’ along pretty smooth till I got my leg busted up. Pretty much my own fault. Mr. Biddle had bought this big fancy stud named Black Commander, but we just called him Blackie. Big as two cow ponies, he was. Made Biddle feel important, I guess, ownin’ a stud horse. We never did anything with Blackie but show him off to Biddle’s guests, so we had to keep him spruced up all the time. And you can bet that Biddle never brought nobody down to the barn to look at Blackie. Nope, we had to lead him up to the house and keep him standin’ there till Biddle said we could leave. Took two of us, one to handle Blackie and the other to handle the shovel and the sack. At first, Biddle would have us bring Blackie onto the lawn in back of the house, but then we got the notion of waterin’ him good beforehand. After he squirted out a few gallons and killed off a big patch of lawn, Biddle told us to keep him outside the fence.”
    Jack’s face cracked in a grin. He drained his glass and set it down on the table. “That horse was just a damn nuisance. Not that he was too tough to handle, but keepin’ him away from the mares wasn’t all that easy. Joe always said Blackie was poco loco. Danged horse bit him once, stepped on him a coupla times like on purpose. And I did notice he had a sorta wild look to his eye.
    “Then I got the notion of breakin’ him to ride so’s I could exercise him better, and maybe he’d be easier to handle. He held still while I saddled him up and got on, and then he bucked a little, like he was just showin’ off. After he settled down, I started him walkin’ round the corral, slow and easy, and he acted like a real sweetheart. Then I got careless, and he grabbed the bit and started racin’ round and round, like crazy. Smashed me up against the fence, right on a board that had a big nail into it. Tore off a piece of my leg and jerked me outa the saddle. Then that black devil stood there snortin’ and rearin’, and he stomped on that same leg, just like he knew where to tear me up the most. I was hollerin’ bloody murder, and he kept stompin’ me till Joe shot him. And wouldn’t you know, that rotten piece of horseflesh fell right on top of the same leg.”
    He stopped talking, took off his hat, and fanned his face, seemed to be reliving that day. I kept quiet, hoping he would start talking again. After a couple of minutes of silence, he took up the story.
    “Well, Joe and Ole finally got me clear and managed to stop most of the bleedin’. They tied my leg between two boards and hoisted me into the pickup bed, and Joe hauled me into Santa Fe. Most of the way was on washboard roads, and the joltin’ made my leg hurt like sixty. Every once in a while Joe would holler back to see if I was okay, and I’d tell him hell yes, just go faster. When we got to the hospital, the doc gave me a shot of somethin’ that put me out for a while, and then I half woke up just in time to hear somebody say ‘We’d better amputate.’ So I kicked up such a ruckus that a bunch of docs and nurses come runnin’, and they all stood around jabberin’ at each other, and I passed out again. Next time I woke up I was in a reg’lar hospital bed, and this big ugly nurse give me a big fake smile and said ‘And how are we this morning?’ I cussed her out good, but it didn’t faze her none. And that’s sorta how it went for the next three months. They operated on my leg two or three times but they never had to cut nothin’ off. Then I stayed in a place they called rehab till I could walk, but not good.”
    He ate another spoonful of chile, then pushed the bowl away. “Too cold already.” I was about ready to call it a night; but he settled back, thought for a minute or so, and picked up where he had left off.
    “The Biddles, Charles and Bitsy, that is, never did come to see me or call up. Joe and Ole turned up a couple of times, but mostly they was so busy tryin’ to do all the work that they couldn’t hardly get away. . . . When it got close to my leavin’ time, I told the head nurse that I couldn’t pay no bill for all that time in the hospital. She went and checked and told me I shouldn’t worry, because the Biddles’ insurance was gonna pay the whole thing. That sounded pretty good to me, and I began to think more kindly about the little guy.
    “Ole drove the jeep into town to pick me up. I had trouble climbin’ up onto the seat, but Ole gave me a hoist. Once we got goin’, I asked Ole how things were at the ranch, but he just said okay and then he clammed up. Wouldn’t hardly say a word all the way home.
    “The ranch was the same as always. Real pretty range. We’d had some rain, so everything was green—tall grass, clumps of piñon and juniper, cottonwood in the draws. We drove past the house with its lawn lookin’ like a big pool table, and flowers and trees all over. Back by the barn, of course, they was nothin’ but bare dirt, with the wind kickin’ up little swirls of dust. We pulled up by the bunkhouse, and there was Biddle’s black Cadillac, with Biddle standin’ alongside it. That was some surprise, I tell you. He helped me down from the jeep and shook my hand, and that was even a bigger surprise. He was all dressed up in one of his fancy western suits, along with a slick pair of boots and a big sombrero. . . . It was still mornin’, but gettin’ hot already.
    “‘You’re looking good, Jack,’ he said, and handed me an envelope. He had a real squeaky voice, and he spun out his words like he was talkin’ to a coupla hundred people. ‘Here is your pay for the month you were gone, and I have added another month for good measure. Now, I would really like to keep you on, but it’s quite obvious you can’t do the job any more, so I’ll have to hire someone else to take over.’
    “That hit me like a rock. ‘Now wait a minute, Mr. Biddle,’ I told him. ‘After twenty years, I know this whole spread like the back of my hand. I can still do you a lot of good—take care of the chores and make sure these boys are workin’ where they’re supposed to be. Just keep me on, and you don’t have to pay me no money, just a place in the bunkhouse and some grub. And you can bet it’ll only be a few months till I’m back in the saddle full time, afore you even take notice.’
    “He stepped back, took off his sombrero, and fanned his face. ‘Sorry, Jack, it would never work out. But if you like, you can take along that mare you said was your favorite. What’s her name?’ He turned to Joe as if I couldn’t give him an answer.
    “ ‘Millie!’ I bellered out. ‘But I want to stay on here.’
    “He stepped back a little farther. ‘No, Jack, it’s all settled. I believe we have been very generous with you. After all, we didn’t charge you for what you did to my stallion, and we did pay all of your doctor and hospital bills—a tidy sum, I might add. Joe, will you see that Jack picks up his things and gets started? Back to Santa Fe, I presume.’
    “ ‘Si, Señor Biddle,’ Joe told him. ‘I’ll get Millie into the trailer and haul her and Jack to wherever——’
    “Biddle cut him off. ‘Not so fast, Joe. You’re needed here, and I believe Millie can provide Jack with the needed transportation.’ He put on his sombrero, got into the Cadillac, and took off in a cloud of dust.”

    I’d let my coffee grow cold while I listened to C-Jack’s story. “How could Biddle treat you like that?” I asked. “How could he live with himself afterward?”
    “Oh, he wouldn’t have no trouble,” Jack told me. “Just naturally a mean little sumbitch. Lotta people like that, but he was one of the worst I ever ran into. What he did was pretty crappy, but there wasn’t nothin’ I could do about it. Remember what we say in the Serenity Prayer? ‘God, give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.’ Of course, I wasn’t all that serene right then. But at least I got to keep Millie.”
    “What happened next?” I asked him. And do you still have Millie?”
    He slumped down in his chair. “Best little horse in the world.” Then he stood up. “C’mon, it’s late. Let’s pay up and get out of here.”

    I got the next installment of his story the following Sunday morning. It was his day off, and I happened to spot him stretched out under a shade tree in the Alto Street park. He had his hat over his face and seemed to be asleep, but he sat up as soon as he heard me scrunching along the gravel path. “Howdy, young feller,” he said. “Mighty nice grass here. Why don’t you set for a spell and enjoy it?”
    “Don’t mind if I do.” I sat down beside him and leaned against the tree trunk. I was trying to think of a way I could get him to give me the rest of the story, when he saved me the trouble.
    “Millie, you asked about. A real sweetheart. Strawberry roan with a white star on her forehead. Not as fast as she used to be, but she can still stop on a dime and cut right or left like no cow pony I ever rode before. Like she knows what I’m thinkin’ all the time. She’s got a tender mouth, so I started her off on a snaffle bit and then just kept on using it. Hell, I bet she’d work good without no bridle at all.”
    “Millie. How’d she get that name?”
    “Aw, Millie was a gal in high school back in Lubbock. Senior year, my first girlfriend. Come to think of it, she was the only real girlfriend I ever had. We was hittin’ it off pretty good, but then she went off to college and I never finished high school. I was flunkin’ anyhow, never learned nothin’, and I had to start workin’ for my keep. . . . We wrote letters for a couple of years, and that was that. Anyhow, Millie, my Millie, I mean, sorta reminds me of that gal. Little, pretty as a picture, and just an all-round honey.”
    He yawned, stretched out on the grass again, and closed his eyes but kept on talking.
    “Like I was tellin’ you, Biddle gave me all this crap then he just took off, and Ole and Joe stood there lookin’ uneasy. Finally, Ole said, ‘Goddam shame, Jack. That sumbitch just wants you away, outa sight, so he can’t remember how bad he treated you. Him giftin’ you Millie makes everything okay, he thinks. And him payin’ your hospital bills—bullshit it is, when insurance he’s got. Better you sue the sumbitch for what his horse done to you.’
    “I set him straight. ‘I know all about the insurance, and no, I’m not gonna sue him. I just wanta get the hell out of here before I kill the little skunk.’
    “I took a good look at the place. Barn and bunkhouse like they never been painted, corral with a lot of boards missin’, rickety old windmill, galvanized water tank rusty at the bottom, wind stirrin’ up some dust. Not much of a pretty picture, but durn, I was gonna miss it!
    “Ole walked off to fetch Millie, mutterin’ to himself a mile a minute. Joe and I went into the bunkhouse to get my gear together. I wasn’t much help, but I made sure he packed up my holster and gun. Might need ’em in the big city.
    “When Ole led Millie up to the bunkhouse, she had my saddle and bridle on her, and my two saddlebags was slung across her rump. She came up to me and kinda nuzzled my ear. I felt sorta like cryin’, so I pushed her away. Joe and Ole was standin’ there like dummies, so I cussed ’em out: ‘Come on, you dumb two-bit has-been vaqueros, let’s get me goin’.’
    “Joe looked real miserable. ‘Jack, mi amigo,’ he asked me, ‘how can you live in Santa Fe and take care of Millie?’
    “I told him, ‘I’ve got a friend lives in Agua Fria, has a little farm. He’ll prob’ly keep Millie there as long as I pay the feed bills, and I can sleep in the barn till I find a place.’
    “They loaded my gear in the saddlebags along with some tortillas and jerky, and they tied my bedroll on the back. Ole helped me get up on the saddle, and he hung a canteen of water on the horn. I had to get started pretty quick if I wanted to hit Aurelio’s place before dark. Joe and Ole just stood there, looking mournful. ‘C’mon, you two,’ I told them. ‘You’re just pissed ’cuz you’ll have to work twice as hard. Whoever Biddle hires to run the show, you can bet it’ll be some city cowboy that won’t do a lick of work himself. Well, I better get goin’. So long now.’ ”

    I found it hard to believe that anyone would send C-Jack off on a twenty-mile ride when he was just out of the hospital with a mangled leg. I asked him, “How did you ever make it to Santa Fe, the shape you were in?”
    “It wasn’t too bad,” he told me. “Millie started off slow and gentle, like she knew I was hurtin’. When I got a few hundred yards down the road, I looked back. Joe and Ole was still standin’ right where I left ’em.
    “It was a long ride back to town. Millie was a lot slower than she used to be. Besides, my leg kept stiffenin’ up, and I had to stop ev’ry once in a while and slide down off the saddle. I’d try to pick a spot with some good shade, on a slope so’s I could get back on Millie from the uphill side.
    “We hit the first houses outside of Santa Fe just when the sun was settin’ over the Jemez, and it was so pretty I had to stop for a while. All gold and purple, and over to the east the Sangre de Cristo was lit up like in a pink spotlight.
    “Anyways, we got to Agua Fria and Aurelio’s place before dark. Millie was holdin’ up pretty good, and Aurelio helped me get her fed and watered and bedded down. Teresa—that’s Aurelio’s wife—fed me a good supper, and I headed for the barn to check on Millie. She was lyin’ down, but with her eyes open. When she saw me, she let out a little whinny and closed her eyes. I grabbed my bedroll and settled down on a pile of hay next to her stall.”
    He broke off abruptly, laid his hat over his face, and told me, “I’m all talked out, sonny. Mebbe after I get some shut-eye I’ll feel like talkin’ some more. You’re welcome to hang around.”
    “Thanks, Jack,” I told him, “but I have to meet a lady for lunch. See you at the meeting tonight?”
    No answer. He was already snoring.

    I thought I’d get the rest of the story that night, but Cowboy Jack didn’t come to the meeting, and then he just dropped out of sight without leaving a ripple. I really missed the guy. Things weren’t going well for me. I didn’t have a decent job, and I’d used up almost all my savings. I still went to three meetings a week, but everybody seemed to be mouthing the same old clichés that I couldn’t relate to. Somehow, C-Jack had been the only one who made any sense. He’d become a big factor in my sobriety, and now I worried about a slip, afraid that I’d take that first drink.
    I made a pretty good effort to find him. None of the groups had his phone number, probably because he didn’t have a phone. Finally I got an address, but it turned out to be a place where he’d worked last year. So I checked with the chief honcho at the city pound, who said Cowboy Jack left about a month ago. He wouldn’t give me Jack’s address or tell me anything else. Next I went to the city personnel office, winding up with a fat clerk who looked like I’d interrupted his nap. He couldn’t be bothered to tell me anything, just complained, “You can’t keep up with all these vagrants that drift in and out of jobs.” When I threatened to call Vicky Martinez, the City Manager, implying that she was a personal friend of mine, the guy finally got off his butt, sorted through a bunch of files, and came up with an address.
    This turned out to be a rooming house on Alto Street. An old gal—the landlady, I guess—came to the door dressed in a bathrobe, a cigarette dangling from her mouth. She gave me a sour look and growled out, “Yeah, whaddya want?” Not exactly friendly. But I leaned on her a bit and she finally allowed that Jack had left two weeks ago without leaving a forwarding address. I tried to pump her for some more information, but she slammed the door in my face.
    Everything turned out to be a dead end, and I had lots of other worries. My jobs as a court interpreter were tapering off. There was hardly any demand for French, German, or Russian; and I had trouble with the kind of Spanish they speak in northern New Mexico. Meanwhile, my B.S. in mathematics didn’t impress the personnel people at Los Alamos, and there weren’t any decent openings for a mathematician in Santa Fe. After a couple of months, I gave up and moved to Denver to work for an insurance company. Stable job, fair pay, and I got some good raises. But correlating mortality statistics bored me stiff, and I kept looking for something a little more exciting. Meanwhile, I took night courses in computer programming, which figured to be a big thing in the next few years.
    Whenever I went to an AA meeting in Denver, something always happened to remind me of Cowboy Jack, what a great guy he was, and how much I missed him. Missed Santa Fe, too. Finally, after two years with the insurance company, I’d had it. I landed a job with a Santa Fe company called Digital Micro. It was just a small startup operation, but the work looked exciting—and the salary was nearly twice what I was making in Denver.
    The Santa Fe AA groups had changed a lot during the two years I was gone. Most of the old-timers had either dropped out or died. My home group had moved and changed its name, and all the faces were new. I went to a couple of meetings there, and then I tried out most of the other groups. I really needed to find someone to talk to, maybe get a sponsor, get some help in working the Steps. But I never did find anyone I could relate to.
    Wherever I went, I asked for news of Cowboy Jack. He hadn’t come to any meetings for a long time, and the few people who remembered him weren’t much help. A couple of guys thought he was working for some sort of a “tourist promotion company,” which could mean any one of half the businesses in Santa Fe.

    I usually ate lunch at the counter in the old Woolworth’s on the Plaza. This particular day, as I was standing in line to pay my ticket, I saw a sort of miniature stagecoach out front, stopping to let off a couple of tourists. The rig was in the shade, but it stood out because of the bright gold paint. I got only a quick look at the driver, who was wearing some sort of a weird outfit, but he did look familiar. By the time I paid my bill and got out the door, the stagecoach had disappeared. I cut across the Plaza and finally spotted the rig, stopped a couple of blocks north on Sheridan. The driver did look like Cowboy Jack, but I couldn’t be sure from that distance. I ran those two blocks and puffed up to the coach just in time to see the driver haul out two buckets from the back of the coach and set them down in front of the horse. Then he straightened up, and it was Cowboy Jack, all right. I walked up to him, held out my hand, and said “Hi, Jack.”
    At first he acted as if he didn’t know me, or maybe my beard fooled him; but after he’d looked me over, he grabbed my hand and said “Howdy, Frenchy Jack.”
    I felt like hugging him, but something held me back. “Dammit, Cowboy, I’ve missed you,” I told him.
    “Yeah, I noticed you’d skipped out.” He started to say something else, but then he slumped down and turned away from me.
    I’d been gone only two years, but he looked at least ten years older. He didn’t stand as straight as I remembered, and his limp was worse. But the most startling change was the outfit he wore. Black hat with a rainbow band and a big red feather, shirt with red-white-and-blue stripes, bolo tie with a plastic turquoise the size of a grapefruit, tight black jeans, wide belt with imitation silver dollars all around, and snakeskin boots—with spurs, yet! On his left hip he wore a sheath with a big bone handle sticking out of it, on his right hip a huge holster with a shiny pistol that looked like an old-fashioned six-shooter.
    While C-Jack took care of his horse, I got a better look at the mini-stagecoach, which wasn’t much bigger than a pony cart. It was a four-wheeler, but it had room for only two passengers inside and a driver up front. It was gold-colored all around, with a howling coyote painted on one side, and on the other side a cactus that didn’t look like anything I’d ever seen. The wheel spokes were bright green. The inside of the coach was all finished in red plush, and up on top there was a pink sign with big purple letters that said “Call Stagecoach Tours at 872-5555 to see the real Santa Fe.”
    Then I took a look at the horse, a small strawberry roan mare. She was gussied up like a sideshow horse in a circus, with fake flowers braided into her mane and tail, a red fluffball fastened onto the top of each ear, a silver-studded harness and bridle, and the mandatory diaper to avoid sullying the city streets. I asked him, “Is that Millie?”
    “Sure is.” He patted her rump. “Still the best little horse in all the world, but she’s gettin’ pretty old. Has a hard time makin’ it up the hills.”
    Indeed, Millie looked old and tired. She seemed to have trouble chewing the grain, and she drank water after every mouthful. Then she stopped eating and waited patiently, her head drooping. C-Jack picked up the two buckets and stowed them in the back of the coach.
    He didn’t offer any explanation for Millie’s getup, or his either, so I asked him, “Pretty fancy tack, there. How’d you come by it?”
    “Aw, it’s not mine. My boss said I had to use it. And in case you’re wonderin’ about these clothes, that was their idea too. Weird as hell, but this whole setup is weird.”
    “Weird for sure,” I agreed. “How’d you ever get into this job? And why aren’t you coming to meetings any more?”
    “It’s a long story, and I gotta get movin’. But I’ll tell you why I don’t go to meetin’s no more. I’d be ashamed to show up in this clown suit, and they’re the only clothes I got.” He climbed onto the driver’s seat and waved his hat at me. His face was still the same, white at the top and brown below. He flicked a rein at Millie, and they shambled off down the street.

    The next time I saw Cowboy Jack, his rig was stopped in the shade on East Palace. Millie was just standing with her head hanging down, and C-Jack was sitting on the curb. I got out of my car and sat down beside him. After we’d exchanged howdies, I asked him how things were going, and he said okay. He didn’t volunteer anything else, so I asked “How’d you come to take on this job driving tourists around?”
    That seemed to start him off, as if he’d been saving up words for a long time. “Well, I got fired from the city pound ’cuz I took sick and missed a whole week of work. Then I got a job washin’ cars, and I had to move out of Aurelio’s so’s to get closer to the job. Found a room and a place where I could keep Millie. Everything was goin’ okay until some sneaky coyote stole my saddle and bridle from the stable. Next night while I was sleepin’, two guys broke into my room. One of ’em held a knife to me while the other bagged up most all my stuff. They cleaned me out, right enough. Got my gun, two pretty good knives, all my decent clothes. Even carried off a picture of my sister, in a silver frame.”
    He rolled a cigarette, lit it, and took a big drag. “All they left was my bedroll and the ratty coveralls I’d wore to clean out the dog cages. I was way behind in my rent, the car wash job petered out, and I didn’t have no money to buy clothes. The coveralls looked so bad I couldn’t get nothin’ but odd jobs that didn’t pay enough to keep Millie in feed, or me neither. So when this guy from Stagecoach Tours wanted me to start drivin’ for him, said they had a job for a real authentic cowboy, I signed up right away. They give me a place I could keep Millie, with a little shed and a cot, and they got me this stupid outfit. I have to turn in the shirt and pants every couple days and get clean ones. Hell, those guys own most everythin’ about me. It’s even their gun. They put blanks in it, but I fooled ’em and bought some live ones. Might need ’em sometime.” He broke off and thought for a minute. “I been tryin’ to save up enough to buy some decent clothes, but they ain’t payin’ me much. Besides, there wasn’t no work in the winter, and I had to borrow a little to keep eatin’. Can’t seem to keep ahead of the interest.”
    “How much does this outfit pay you, anyway?”
    “Ten bucks a trip, and it takes near two hours by the time I get Millie back to our place. Once in a while the tourists tip me, but I think Mr. Archuleta, that’s the head honcho, tells them not to. I tried to get him to up the ante, but he said they couldn’t afford it because they was buyin’ the feed for Millie.” He got up off the curb and scratched his crotch. “No plumbin’ where I live, so it’s hard to get a bath. I make it out to Aurelio’s once in a while, but in between it’s just the old wash basin.”
    “Dammit, Jack,” I told him, “they’re ripping you off something fierce. I heard they’re charging three hundred dollars for a trip.”
    “I know it, but what the hell, I gotta live. And it ain’t such a bad life. Sometimes I wonder why my Higher Power is letting all this happen to me, but I still gotta keep goin’ and do the best I can for Millie and me.”
    I had a sudden inspiration. “Why don’t you move in with me? Spare bedroom just going to waste. And there’s a stable a block away where we could board Millie. No problem, I’m making pretty good money.”
    He straightened up. “Mister, I don’t take charity from nobody, not from you and not from the gov’ment or nobody.”
    He climbed onto the driver’s seat and drove off. Millie seemed to be dragging one leg.

    A couple of weeks later, I was in the LaSalle Gallery, where they’d just opened an exhibit of bronzes from Russia. The gallery, a few blocks up Canyon Road, was one of the old-timers. Pierre and Michelle LaSalle started it on a shoestring in the 1940s, and it grew into one of the biggest and best in Santa Fe. The Russian bronzes were fabulous, and I was about halfway through them when I heard a ruckus out on the street—car horns and shouts. I walked out onto the sidewalk, and there was Cowboy Jack with his rig, which had somehow got crosswise in the street and was blocking traffic, maybe a dozen cars each direction. Jack’s passengers were a big fat guy in a white suit and white ten-gallon hat—probably a Texan—and a much younger woman with a mess of black hair piled up on top of her head. Jack was on the driver’s seat, trying to get Millie to straighten out the rig. Tex was yelling at Jack, something about getting this goddam rig squared away; and Jack was talking into his microphone with the volume turned up so you could hear him all over the street: “Now just take it easy, mister, and we’ll be up and runnin’ right soon.”
    Millie was whinnying, and she looked scared and about ready to drop. Then Jack got down from his seat and talked into her ear. She seemed to calm down, and Jack led her so as to straighten the rig and get her started up the hill, threading her way past the line of honking cars.
    They were nearly clear of the line of cars when Millie’s right foreleg buckled, and she dropped onto her side, tilting the coach. Jack rushed back to set the brake, then returned to Millie, who hadn’t made any effort to get up or even lift her head off the pavement. Jack cut her loose from the coach, which righted itself with a jarring thud that brought out some heavy cussing from Tex and screams from his girlfriend.
    Millie didn’t move until Jack returned and whispered something into her ear. She raised her head, and I could hear Jack saying, “Come on, Millie, old gal. It’s just a little ways further.” She tried to get up but fell back again, and I could see her gasping for breath, foam coming out of her mouth. Jack ran his hand over her bad leg, which was cocked at an odd angle.
    About that time, Tex shouted, “Make that sorry old nag get up! Goddammit, I paid good money for this two-bit outfit, and you gotta get us goin’ again!”
    Jack squatted down and said something into Millie’s ear. Then he pulled out his gun and shot her once, just back of the ear. Millie’s head flopped down, and a little stream of blood ran down her neck. Jack walked back to the coach and waved his gun at the two passengers. Tex put up his hands and yelled “Don’t shoot,” and his girlfriend let out a string of obscenities.
    Cowboy Jack didn’t say a word. His face looked like a rock. He put the gun back in the holster and unlocked the brake, sending the coach backward down the hill with its two passengers squealing like stuck pigs. It went only a few yards before it bounced off a car and turned over. Tex and his girlfriend kept on yelling, but it didn’t sound as if they were hurt much.
    The cars stopped honking, and I could hear a siren in the distance. Jack went back to Millie and laid himself down with his head on her shoulder. I heard him say, “It’s okay, Millie, we did our best.”
    I walked over and sat down beside him. Didn’t have any words to say, but at least I could help him wait for the police.

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