Read Online Gone to Texas by Don Worcester - Free Book Online

friends?” Ellis asked.
    The lieutenant hesitated before answering. “Colonel Carreño received a letter from a friend of his, an officer in Chihuahua,” he replied. “I don’t know what it said, but the colonel ordered us to take every precaution to see that you don’t escape.” Ellis scowled. The officer whose daughter he’d spurned must be gloating. He thought of María Baldonado, cursing himself for hesitating too long.
    The next morning when the soldier came with food and water, and opened the door to inspect Ellis’ shackles, he said nervously, “Colonel Carreño wants to see you.” Ellis stood and faced the door, where a heavy-set man scowled at him. His mouth turned down at the corners, and his bushy mustache drooped around his mouth. His small, black eyes glittered like the eyes of a coiled rattlesnake. His lips curled and his nostrils wrinkled at the stench from the cell. Ellis shivered.
    â€œSo you’re our Señor Bean,” Carreño said, in a tone of contempt. “Make yourself comfortable. You won’t be leaving as long as I’m governor of this castle.” He turned and left. The soldier, who had been standing nervously to one side looked relieved.
    â€œHe looks like one mean son-of-a-bitch,” Ellis said in Spanish. The soldier peered out the door to be sure Carreño was gone, then nodded his head vigorously and left, closing the door behind him.
    Every day, the soldier who brought Ellis food and water also checked his shackles to see that they were in place. Ellis still had the money he’d brought from Chihuahua. He took a peso from his pocket. “Will you buy me a knife?” he asked the soldier, handing him the coin.
    â€œI’ll bring it tonight,” the soldier replied.
    When he had the knife, Ellis tried to pick out the mortar between the huge stones of the outer wall, but soon realized it was hopeless. The days dragged by; Ellis thought only of being free again. It appeared that he’d never be released and would have to escape. But how?
    One day, he noticed a white lizard that had crawled through the little window and was trying to catch flies. Out of curiosity, Ellis caught a fly, impaled it on a straw from his mat, and slowly held it up to the lizard’s head. It eyed him suspiciously, but accepted the fly, and as many others as Ellis could catch. Every morning when the lizard crawled through the window, it sang like a frog to announce its arrival. From the time it turned light each day, Ellis listened eagerly for its song. He named the lizard Bill.
    After some days, Bill became so tame Ellis could hold him in his hand and feed him scraps of beef. When he held Bill up to the light, the lizard was so transparent he could make out its bones. “You’re just about the only friend I’ve got left in the world,” he told it, and it cocked its head, staring at Ellis with shiny eyes. Bill became so tame that he even stayed with Ellis nights, but when the soldier came each day to inspect Ellis’ shackles, the lizard hid under his blanket. He came out as soon as he heard the door close, and Ellis always picked him up. “Don’t you worry about any of those soldiers,” he said, stroking Bill’s back. “If one ever tried to harm you, I’d strangle him.”
    When he’d been at Acapulco nearly a year, Ellis developed a fever, and the castle doctor ordered an Indian to carry him to the hospital. Now, he thought, if I ever get well, I’ll find a way to escape. But at the hospital he was put in stocks—two logs with semicircular cuts in them that fit over his legs. While he was in the stocks, small biting insects called chinces nearly drove him mad by biting his legs, for there was no way he could get at them.
    Many in Acapulco had been struck by the same fever, and the hospital was crowded. When men on each side of him died one night, and two more died the next