Regulator, chapter 11
Meet Marshall Efrain Guerra, who's earned his last name
Efrain Guerra got his start in law enforcement fair and square — he bought his way in. But what he did once there is what made him well known in the New Mexico Territory. The worry here is what he knows about our Charlie Antrim.
by Frank A. Spring
The fire popped and the horses muttered softly as Angus Thorn, Efrain Guerra, and Charlie Antrim huddled to confer on their plans one last time. Charlie would ride out before dawn, Thorn a short while later, and Guerra would wait until midday before beginning his pursuit of Charlie. The timing and roles agreed, the men shook hands and retired to their bedrolls. They told no stories, chatted not at all. This was business, and in the coming days there would be ample opportunity for that business to go sideways in the kind of way that doesn’t leave much option except to follow blood with blood and hope that somehow clears things up.
They had set out from Valle Verde separately, as well, the Llano being the kind of place that would pull a dirty trick like the wrong person chancing across the three of them riding together in a land where you could ride for days and not see a single soul. Thorn and Charlie rode together, Guerra on his own until their rendezvous, in consequence of which Charlie had not had a moment alone with the marshal in which to confirm his growing suspicion that Guerra had recognized him.
He had certainly recognized Guerra. The marshal, of course, made no effort at all to hide his identity; his legend was now as much a tool of his trade as his horse and Colt.
But Charlie had known him before all that. It would be wrong to say they had been boys together; this would imply a closeness that simply didn’t exist, couldn’t have existed because of the way Guerra’s family had moved around. When a murrain amongst his stock had done away with Guerra’s father’s hopes of becoming a rancher, the frustrated vaquero had moved his family from Kansas to the New Mexico Territory and taken work as a ranch-hand until he could get another stake together. For a few years, off and on, that had meant working out of Lincoln County, and when the elder Guerra brought his son with him on a visit to Jaime Nogales, the blacksmith, the lad met the blacksmith’s son James - Charlie, to his friends - and they saw each other from time to time when their fathers had business. Then the Guerras moved away entirely.
When Efrain Guerra next came through town he and Charlie were teenagers, no more than a year or two after Charlie’s father had died, and shortly before Charlie’s life took a turn - The Turn, he’d often think of it when he’d had the right amount of whiskey, his hand straying to the scar on his neck.
There had been no time for conversation when Efrain Guerra and his father walked into the store in Lincoln where Charlie carried boxes and swept up. But they recognized each other and shared an agreeable nod in passing, which seemed to them the appropriate way for men to acknowledge a connection, and each had carried on about his business.
Efrain’s legend had started not long afterward. Times had not always been kind to the Guerras and Efrain had learned early to become what Charlie’s mother would have called “handy,” as in “I heard the McSweens have been having trouble with rustlers; they’ll need someone handy to help run them off.”
Handy indeed, and handsome too, Efrain Guerra was not yet twenty when he had persuaded a prosperous dry goods trader to front him enough money to buy a commission and get kitted out as a justice of the peace. This gave him access to all kinds of money-making opportunities - bounties, fines, regular pay for peacekeeping. Marriages, too, for which he charged by how pretty the bride was, more than once putting a damper on a special day when a gallant swain would hand him a grand coin and Guerra would solemnly give him change.
One night in Catron County, New Mexico, he’d arrested a drunk cowboy who was lighting his pistol off at the moon from inside a local drinking den. The drunk’s friends attempted a rescue by force and Guerra, outnumbered, fired a few shots in their direction by way of driving them off. This might have worked except that one inebriate pulled his horse in front of him as a shield and the horse caught a round in the neck, collapsed on him, and crushed him to death. His friends scattered to find more friends.
The exact size of the posse of vigilantes who came after Guerra the next day was still a matter of dispute. Forty was the consensus of the locals, though there were those, led by Guerra himself, who set the number at closer to eighty. What is not at all in dispute is that they ambushed Guerra just outside of the nearest town and forced him to take shelter in the jacal of a nearby farm, where he shot it out with them for a full day and the best part of another before the county sheriff arrived on the scene with his own posse.
He found three of the vigilantes dead on the site, another three wounded, the jacal shot so full of holes it was a miracle it was still standing, and Efrain Guerra very much alive and shooting at anything that moved or twitched. The sheriff eventually persuaded him to surrender himself and face trial for the murder of the drunken cowboy who’d died under his horse.
There would be no trial for the deaths of the men Guerra had killed at the ambush, said the sheriff, his voice rising above the objections of the gathered vigilantes, because any man who couldn’t survive a shootout with these lopsided odds had already gotten all the justice he deserved. This may have been a little harsh on the mortally wounded present, but even they had to admit the lawman had a point.
Guerra’s trial lasted twenty minutes. The lawyer the vigilantes had gotten to prosecute the case gave the jury the benefit of some bombast about the honest and gentle man that Guerra had so coldly murdered, along with the honest and gentle horse that had been the unwilling tool of the assassin, embellished with some remarks are about the trustworthiness and general character of Mexicans, and sat down to pats on the back from his supporters.
Guerra’s attorney, an elderly cousin of his father’s, rose and asked the judge permission to add an exhibit to his opening statement, which the judge allowed. Two men carried in the door of the jacal, which was shot so full of holes it had to be handled carefully lest it fall to splinters.
“The gentle friends of that gentle man ambushed my client,” said the lawyer, quietly. “He took shelter in a nearby jacal. This is the door of that jacal. Judge the gentleness of these men for yourselves.” to which the vigilantes assembled in the courtroom reacted rather badly.
When the judge had restored order to the courtroom, the jurors had had time to confer with each other, and even appointed a foreman of sorts.
“Judge,” the foreman said, “if it’s all the same to you, we’d prefer you to just turn him loose right now.”
The story of the shootout at the jacal wasn’t the only jewel in the crown of Guerra’s legend but it was the brightest and the one he polished most regularly. He never gave a single explanation for how he’d survived a thirty-six hour gunfight in which his enemies shot at him thousands of times, and he protected by nothing more than latillas and mud spackling.
“I’m too quick,” he’d say. “I’d see the bullet make a hole in the wall and before the shot could hit me, I’d jump out of the way.”
“I’m too tough,” he’d say. “I got shot a few times but I just shrugged them off.”
“I’m too smart,” he’d say. “I wasn’t in the jacal at all, but I tricked them into thinking I was.”
“I’m too handsome,” he’d say. “The bullets just couldn’t bear to hurt something this beautiful. They’d come right up to me and apologize, then fall down on the floor.”
(This last was reserved for a specific audience of admirers and usually only made an appearance in the evening hours.)
He took to wearing a splendid belt buckle with a dent in it, which he claimed is where the only shot that hit him had struck, ricocheting off the buckle and heading straight back out to kill the man who’d had the temerity to fire it.
Never one for resting on his laurels, Guerra used his new-found notoriety to secure a marshal’s badge, behind which even his doubters - and there were certainly those who found Guerra implausible at best and intolerable at worst - had to admit he’d taken down some truly bad men. His reputation for invincibility was burnished when an outlaw put a pistol to the back of Guerra’s head in the bar of the St. James Hotel in Cimarron, New Mexico, and pulled the trigger, only to be rewarded by the fizzling pop of a misfire. Guerra wiped his mouth with a cloth, thanked his drinking companions, rose slowly, and gently took the pistol from the outlaw who was still standing there, frozen and dumb. Guerra walked him down to the local jail and sat with him, chatting amiably enough, until the town could hastily throw a trial together and get the would-be assassin hanged good and proper, which they accomplished without delay. Guerra bought the man his last meal.
All this, and more, each story more wonderful and improbable than the last, lay between Charlie and Efrain’s last nod to each other in the dry goods store in Lincoln and the two of them meeting again at the Old Farmhouse. It was not at all a certainty, Charlie reasoned to himself, that Efrain would recognize him now.
And yet.
Angus Thorn had led Charlie over to the bar as the door swung shut behind the miners, and Guerra had turned to them with a look that chilled Charlie to the bone before he broke out in that same winning smile, this one reaching his eyes.
“Evening, marshal,” Angus advanced with his hand out.
“Angus, cómo estás? Estás bien, or no?” Guerra looked him over, pumping his hand.
“Can’t complain,” said Thorn.
“Gracias for your help just now.”
“You had it under control.”
Guerra shrugged. “Claro.”
Thorn nodded to Charlie. “This is my associate, Charlie Antrim.”
Guerra’s eyes narrowed briefly, but his smile did not waver, and after a pause he said, “Nice to meet you, Charlie Antrim.”
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