A Noose for the Desperado

Chapter Eleven

YOU NEVER KNOW, I guess, just what's the right thing to do. You either do it or you don't. And that time I didn't do it.

I stepped outside and something hard and solid connected with the back of my head and bright showers of pain flew out in all directions. I took another step—or I thought I did—and I walked right into that black pit that has no sides and no bottom and I started falling.

It was a long trip. My head hit something two or three times on the way down. Then something slammed in my middle and my stomach jumped up and tried to shove my Adam's apple out of the way and get in my mouth. I fought it, but after a while it didn't seem to be worth the trouble. I let the darkness have its way.

We got to be old friends, me and the darkness. I got to like it down there. It was cool and comfortable and the smothering black fog closed over me and around me and—all I had to do was sleep. The trials and tribulations of the world were away and gone and I didn't have to worry about scrabbling around in the dirt for money or life, because money and life didn't mean anything down there. I should have stayed there. And maybe I would have if I had known what it was going to be like when I got back. But I didn't know it then. I didn't know anything.

I started fumbling in the blackness, and after a while I found a little slit of light about an inch long and about as wide as a thread of silk split four ways—-and that was my consciousness, I suppose. Anyway, I clawed and scratched until I got a hold in the slit, and then, with an effort that left me sweating, I ripped the darkness wide open.

I was sprawled out in Marta's kitchen, and a lamp was being held over me. The sudden light hit my eyeballs like hammers and I rolled over and tried to curse, but all that came out was a groan. I heard somebody saying, “By God, he's got a hard head, all right. That's one thing you can say for him.” Somebody else said, “Just watch him, and if he tries to get up let him have it again.”

I didn't recognize the first voice, but the second one belonged to Kreyler. I lay there for what seemed a long while, trying to get the mud out of my brain. Kreyler... It looked like I had fooled away too much time in Ocotillo when I should have been on the road. The Marshal was either smarter than I thought he was, or I was dumber than I thought I was. It didn't make much difference now. He had found out about the silver, and he had caught up with me, and somebody had damn near beat my brains out with a pistol barrel—if I'd had any brains to begin with.

I tried to move again, and that was a big mistake. The stupor that had me sealed up in a little world all my own, like sod on a grave, suddenly disappeared and I broke into the world of reality, full of aches and pains. My head was the big trouble. It felt like an October gourd that had been stepped on—smashed and empty.

The room began to swim, and my stomach started crowding into my throat again. I raised my head as high as I could, but all I could see was boots and spurs and the packed clay floor. I was ready to give up. I was sick, and tired to death, and blood was getting in my eye, and I couldn't figure out a way to stop it. Kreyler could have the silver. He could have the girl. All I wanted was to be left alone.

But it wasn't as simple as that. Through the sickness I heard the sodden sound of bone and flesh hitting more bone and flesh. Somebody laughed—the man who was supposed to give me another pistol whipping if I tried to get up, I guess. I heard Marta make a tight little sound, and then something hit the floor, solidly, like a sack of oats being dumped off a wagon.

I had a pretty good idea what was happening, but I was in no position to do anything about it. I lifted my head again and the room tilted up on one corner and spun around a few times. Finally it settled down. Things came into focus.

It was about the way I had figured it. Johnny Ray-burn was sitting on his rump, with a bloody mouth and a dazed look in his eyes, and Kreyler was standing over him, grinning, rubbing his right fist in the palm of his left hand. “I can keep this up all night, kid,” the Marshal said. “Do you want to tell me who has that ledger, or do you want to go through this all over again?”

The kid just sat there looking stupid. Kreyler jerked him up by the front of his shirt and hit him again. Away down in the cellar of my mind a spark set off an explosion of anger. I rolled over on my face. I got my hands under me and began to push. My stomach turned over and tied itself into a knot. I pushed some more and sweat popped out all over me. Somebody had gone to Austin and brought the capitol building to Arizona and tied it on my back. But I was going to get up anyway. And when I did, I was going to see if Kreyler could take it as well as he handed it out. I wanted to see how he would stand up under a pistol whipping. I was going to find out—as soon as I managed to get off the floor.

My intentions were all right, but something went wrong with my arms. They gave away and I fell on my face again. For a moment I just lay there with my head ringing, blowing as if I had run all the way from El Paso. I must have put on quite a show. Anyway, it seemed to amuse Kreyler and his pal. They had a good laugh about it. Then Kreyler came over and turned me on my back with the toe of his boot. “Well,” he said, “the great Tall Cameron doesn't look so tough now.” And everybody had another round of laughs.

Anyway, I had pulled Kreyler's attention off the kid for a few minutes. And I finally got a look at the Marshal's pal.

He was a frail little man not much over five feet tall, with pale watery eyes and a thin little mouth that was always just about to break into a smile, but never quite made it. When he laughed it was just a sound that he made with his mouth, ha-ha, something like the kind of sound that Basset used to make. He was standing over me with the muzzle of a .44 shoved in my face, looking as big as a rain pipe. I think he would have pulled the trigger just to feel the gun buck, if Kreyler hadn't stopped him... Well, I wasn't the only one in the company with a hard head. Kreyler's gunny was Bucky Fay, the man I had knocked out with my pistol barrel and who was supposed to have been stretched out in the mountains somewhere with his skull split open.

“Not yet, Bucky,” the Marshal said soothingly, as though he were talking to a backward child, “I'll tell you when, Bucky, but first we've got some things to do. Remember?”

Bucky thought about that for a while, and finally he did remember. He stepped back one pace, almost smiling, and held his pistol just about on a line with my heart.

“Now, let's see,” Kreyler said looking at me. “Would it be better to work on you or the kid?” He wasn't in any hurry. He seemed to have all the time in the world, and this was a delicate problem and he was going to figure it out if it took him all night.

“I think the kid,” he said finally. “You're right fond of him, aren't you, Cameron? You wouldn't like to see him with his face all messed up and maybe an eye knocked out, now, would you, Cameron? Well, I'll tell you what I'll do. You just tell me where that ledger is and I won't even lay a hand on him. I give you my word.”

Kreyler's word would be about as good as a counterfeit dime. But I couldn't tell him that now. He had guessed right about the kid. I wasn't going to let anything happen to him, if I could help it.

“Can I sit up?” I said.

Kreyler shrugged. “Sure. Let him sit up, Bucky.”

Bucky took another step back and lined his pistol up again, this time at some invisible spot between my eyes. My co-ordination must have been getting better, because I made it all the way to a sitting position the first try. But it wasn't without effort. I sat there gulping in air and wiping blood off the side of my face. I felt of my head, and there were two good-sized bumps and a nasty cut, but I figured I would live. For a little while, anyway.

Marta was over by the cook table trying to comfort her old man. Papacito seemed to be taking it harder than anybody in the room. Tears were rolling down his face and getting into his dirty mustache, and he kept fumbling at those wooden beads around his neck and jabbering some kind of prayer over and over, and for some reason that made me madder than anything else. What the hell didhe have to cry about?

“For God's sake, shut him up,” I said to Kreyler. “How can I think with that racket going on?”

It must have been getting on Kreyler's nerves too, although he hadn't shown it. He said, “Watch things, Bucky.” Then he stepped over and knocked the old man clear off his stool and sent him rolling against the wall.

Marta was on him like a panther, clawing and scratching and spitting out curses in that language of hers. But this was the Marshal's night to do all the things that he had been wanting to do for a long time. Me, the kid, the old man and now Marta. He was taking care of all of us and loving it. Every dog has his day, they say. This one belonged to Kreyler.

He made short work of Marta. He backhanded her hard enough to cross her eyes and then he grabbed her shoulder and shook her until her teeth rattled. “Goddamn you!” he said hoarsely, and I didn't realize until then how mad he really was. Maybe he would have killed her if she had kept fighting. But I guess she had all the fight knocked out of her. He let her go and she dropped down at the table and started crying.

That surprised me. I wouldn't have thought that there were any tears in a girl like that.

Anyway, Kreyler had quieted things down. Now he came back to me.

“What's it going to be, Cameron? Are you going to tell me about the ledger or do I work on the kid some more?”

By now I had discovered that my guns were gone, which was no surprise. What was I going to tell him? I couldn't take much more. And neither could the kid. Of course, there was Bama in the next room, and they could work on him if they killed both of us.

I said, “What good is it going to do me if I tell you where the ledger is?”

Kreyler smiled. “You can go, after that. The ledger's all I want.”

“And the silver?”

“You can have that, too, if you can figure a way to get it out of Ocotillo.”

He was lying and we both knew it. Once he knew where the ledger was, he would kill all of us—except Marta, maybe—and take the silver for himself, the way I had been going to do. It would be easy. He could tell the men that I had double-crossed them, and not even Bucky would be alive to tell them any different.

I said, “Would you mind telling me why the men aren't yelling their heads off about their cut? They must have found out by now that the silver's gone.”

“The trouble with you, Cameron,” he said, “is that you don't know how to handle men. I knew what happened to the silver as soon as I found out it was missing. But I didn't tell the men about it. I told them to go on drinking and we'd make the cut in the morning.”

It was all very pretty. I would be missing, and so would the silver, and two and two is always four—anyway, most people think so.

Bucky was still standing there with his .44 pointed at a place between my eyes, and he was probably thinking what a lucky guy he was, because Kreyler was going to split that pile of adobe dollars with him.

Like hell Kreyler was going to split with him. Bucky would wind up with the rest of us, in some shallow grave where we would stay until the coyotes dug us up a year or two from now.

For a minute I thought maybe Marta could help us. I could get a signal to her and she could rush Bucky. Then the kid could keep Kreyler busy for a minute while I got Bucky's gun and finished the job. That was the way things were beginning to shape up in my mind. Johnny Rayburn seemed to be reading my thoughts, because he nodded his head when I looked for just the right spot to make the tackle. But when I looked at Marta I tore the plans up and threw them away.

Marta was a smart girl. I had forgotten how smart.

Marta was through with me. She was through with me, and Bama, and Johnny Rayburn. The money was blowing in a new direction, and Marta was drifting with the wind. The Marshal was her man now.

She had stopped her bawling and thought things over, and she had come to the conclusion that Tall Cameron's future wasn't exactly the bright and shining star to hitch her ambitions to that she had once thought. But Kreyler— that was something else again. From here on out, Kreyler would be boss. Besides that, he would have that pile of silver and could buy her all the pretties her black heart desired.

She thought about that. She liked it. She looked at me and sneered, and she looked at Kreyler and smiled.

But Kreyler wasn't dumb. It was a fact I had overlooked at first, but I was making no mistake about it now. He could look into those eyes of hers and read the lies as plain as anybody and for a minute I thought maybe he was going to tell her to go to hell.

But he didn't. He had wanted her too long, I guess, and she was in his blood. Well, I thought, they would make a nice couple. It would be interesting to stick around and see who would be the first to stick a knife in the other's back.

That was as far as my thoughts got. About that time Kreyler's patience played out, and he stepped over to the kid and jerked him off the floor and hit him across the mouth.

“The ledger,” he said coldly.

The kid said nothing, and that got him another slap across the face. Anger almost made me do something foolish, like getting off the floor and trying to punch a fist through Kreyler's thick middle. The thought was there, but it never got to be more than a thought. My glance ran head-on into that half-smile of Bucky's, and that was a great settling influence.

It was getting bad now. That ham-sized fist of Kreyler's would spat sickeningly in the kid's face.

“The ledger!”

The kid would say nothing.

Then the spat again.

But the kid didn't break. I was the one that broke. I stood it as long as I could and then I yelled, “Goddamnit, let him alone! I'll tell you about the ledger.”

Kreyler paused for a moment. His fist was bloody, and he was grinning, enjoying himself. There are men like that.

He grinned at Bucky. “Mr. Cameron wants to tell us all about it. He doesn't like to see his little pal knocked around. What do you think about that, Bucky?”

Bucky laughed, but there was no comment behind his laugh, and no humor.

“I don't much like to stop in the middle of a job of work like this,” Kreyler said pleasantly. “I figure the kid will tell me what I want to know, Cameron. It may take a little time. But I'm in no hurry.” He grinned again and jerked the kid's limp body up with a big left hand, and I guess that was when I threw caution away.

I started gathering myself. I was going to jump and Bucky knew it and was waiting for it. He opened his thin lips and breathed through his mouth. He was going to shoot me right between the eyes because that was the spot he had been concentrating on.

Oh, he had it figured down to a gnat's hair, all right, and his finger started squeezing the trigger. He was smiling now, actually smiling, and he was probably seeing himself cutting quite a figure among the pilgrims and dance-hall girls; and people would probably buy his drinks for him just to get him to tell how it felt to kill a man like Tall Cameron. Bucky was going to be somebody after this. He was going to get himself a reputation as a gunman, and nobody had to know that he had got it the easy way. All he had to do was pull the trigger.

I could see those thoughts going around in Bucky's mind as he started the squeeze. I had time to move about six inches before the hammer fell—and that wasn't time enough or far enough.

It's funny how your mind works at times like that, being aware of a lot of things but not actually seeing anything in particular. For instance, I knew that Marta would be watching it all and smiling in that detached way of hers, although I couldn't see her. And Kreyler would be too busy with the kid to notice what was going on until it was too late. It was just me and Bucky.

By that time I had lunged forward and was crouching like a wolf ready to spring. But Bucky wasn't worried. He was seeing me lowered away into shallow ditch with somebody throwing dirt in my face. And then the gun went off and the explosion went crashing around the room, and I was wondering why I didn't feel anything, why I didn't go down.

But I didn't wonder long. I crashed into Bucky and he went limp like a bag of grain slit open with a sharp knife, and that was when I realized that Bucky was dead. He was dead before I hit him. I didn't know how or why, and this wasn't the time to ask questions. I threw him aside and wheeled on Kreyler, who was clawing for his gun.

He never got his gun out, though.

There was another explosion and Kreyler took two quick steps forward and one step back, like the pride of the ball getting warmed up for a do-si-do or a skip-to-my Lou. His eyes were faintly bewildered and pained, as if somebody had just played a rather nasty practical joke on him. Then he started falling like a tree in a forest. He crashed to the floor, and he could have been a side of beef for all the fuss he made after that.

Along about then was when I noticed Bama for the first time.

He had that old .36-caliber Leech and Rigdon clutched in both hands, and a curl of white smoke was coming from the muzzle and making a hook near the ceiling, like a question mark over Bama's head. We must have all stood there for a minute or more and nobody did anything or said anything, and Bucky and Kreyler got deader and deader there on the floor. I hadn't seen Bama get out of bed, and I guess Bucky and Kreyler hadn't either. But he had managed it somehow. He had hobbled on one leg to the door, just as the party was getting into full swing.

I said, “Thanks, Bama. I guess that's a favor I owe you.

He didn't say anything for a minute. His wound had come open and blood was pouring down his leg again, but he didn't seem to notice. Then he leaned against the doorframe and panted. I caught him before he fell and got my shoulder under him and dragged him to the bed.

“Marta!” I yelled. She appeared in the doorway, and from the way she looked, I guess she expected to get belted all over the room. “Get some whisky,” I said. “I don't care where or how, just get it.”

Things were moving too fast for Marta, I guess. The situation had changed so often that she wasn't quite sure whose side to be on. She just stood there.

“Look,” I said. “Do you want to go to Mexico with me or don't you?”

Her head bobbed. She wanted to go where that silver went. She knew that.

“Then get out of here and get the whisky!”

She got out, and I got the bandage back on Bama's leg and stopped the bleeding.

“My God, I thought I was finished,” I said. “I guess I forgot that a man's never finished as long as he has friends around.”

Bama didn't say anything. He lay there with his eyes closed, and maybe he was remembering that just a few minutes ago I was ready to run out on him. More than likely, though, he was thinking about that whisky that Marta was going to bring.

I went in the other room and the kid was just picking himself off the floor and trying to get the blood out of his eyes. I've seen men lose their seats in the van of a stampede and not look much worse than Johnny Rayburn did at that moment. But I took him over to the washstand and threw a couple of dippers of water in his face and he didn't look so bad. His nose was swollen, maybe broken, and his mouth was split and puffed, but there was nothing wrong with him that time wouldn't cure. I poured out some more water for him, and then I went outside.

I found Bucky's and Kreyler's horses by the side of the house, and that was going to save me a trip back to the livery barn. I didn't see anything or hear anything out of the way. Those thick adobe walls had probably absorbed most of the noise of Bama's shooting.

I went back in and the kid was drying off his face and looking a lot better. Papacito was crumpled up in one corner of the room like next week's washing. I went in where Bama was.

“How's your leg?”

He opened his eyes and shrugged.

“Are you going to be able to ride?”

“Ride where?”

“To Mexico, where do you think? You sure can't stay here. You've just killed a United States marshal.”

Bama studied that over quietly, turning it over in his mind and looking at it from all sides. Finally he said, “No, I think I'll just stay here, Tall Cameron. I don't feel much like running any more.”

I could see that he was getting all wound up to make a long speech, but about that time Marta came in with two tall bottles of clear tequila. I uncorked one of them and put it in his hands.

“Here, you're going to need this.”

He lay there, holding the bottle up and looking at it, and finally he put it aside. “No,” he said, “I don't think I want it.”

That jarred me.

“What the hell's wrong with you, anyway?” Then I raised him up and put the bottle to his mouth and poured. It went up his nose and over his chin and down the front of his shirt, but some of it went in his mouth too. He coughed and choked, but I kept pouring until almost a quarter of the bottle was gone.

“This isn't just whisky, it's medicine. Drink it.”

I went back in the other room and lifted the old man off the floor and put him in a chair. “Don't forget what I said about the silver, old man,” I told him. “If you want your worthless daughter back, don't forget.”

He couldn't understand my language, but he knew what I was talking about.