A Noose for the Desperado

Chapter Twelve

WE RODE OUT OF THE moonlit town that night and into the dark hills, with Kreyler and Bucky lashed behind our saddles like blanket rolls. About a mile out of town we found a dry wash with a bed of soft sand, and the kid and I dug a long ditch with our hands, and that was where we buried the Marshal and his pal. We covered our trail as well as we could and we scattered brush and leaves over the grave. I figured nobody would find them for a few days. Maybe a month, if we were lucky. Marta and Bama watched from a little knoll while we finished the job; then we got on our horses and rode again toward the south.

Three Mile Cave, it turned out, wasn't a cave at all, but a kind of box canyon eating its way back into the side of a hill. The entrance was just barely wide enough for a horse and rider to get through, but after a little way it widened out to maybe twenty yards in the widest place. There was a little grass for the horses, but there wasn't any water. Well, I could do without water for a day, and so could the others. Bama wouldn't miss it at all as long as the tequila held out.

So that was where we stayed, and it didn't turn out to be so bad after all. The next day I got my rifle and went out and beat the brush until I scared out a couple of swamp rabbits, and we ate them for supper that night.

The next day Bama's leg began to act up. It began to swell until we had to loosen the bandage around it, and the flesh around the bullet hole had a red, angry look. By the middle of the afternoon little red fingers began crawling away from the wound and down the leg, and I knew what that meant.

But I didn't know what to do about blood poison. And Marta didn't either. All we could do was sit there and watch the fever spread and keep him hopped up on tequila.

But he ran out that night. I heard the empty bottle when it hit the ground and I went over to where he was.

“It's beginning to stink,” he said. “In a couple of days it'll turn black and smell like all the cesspools in the world come together.” He laughed abruptly. “This is a hell of a way to die, Tall Cameron. But then, I guess there isn't any good way to die, is there?”

“What are you talking about?” I said. “The old man will be here tomorrow with the silver and we'll buy you the best doctor in Mexico.”

But I don't think he heard me. “There was a lot of blood poison during the war,” he said. “I've seen men rub blisters on their heels and in a few days there would be a surgeon amputating the whole damn leg. I was in a field hospital after the battle of Chickamauga—did I tell you about that?”

“No, I don't think so.”

He seemed to forget about the hospital. I rolled a cigarette for him and put it in his mouth. “I've been thinking about the war,” he said as I held the match. “I wonder if anything was decided by it. There's a theory that wars are inevitable because the natural blood lust in a man demands them. What do you think about that?”

“I don't know anything about wars.”

“But you know about killing. It's the same thing.”

“It's not the same thing. Do you want to know how I got a reputation as a gunman? It all started one day in a little town in Texas. A drunk Davis policeman pushed me off the plank walk. A little thing like that. Well, I hit him and that raised a big racket, but Pa managed to get things quieted down, and we thought it would blow over. But then another guy hit a cavalryman, and that made two of us, and the Yankees figured they'd have to do something about it. The first thing I knew, the bluebellies were wanting to put me on the work gang, so I had to light out. The federals came out to our ranch and wanted to know where I was, and when Pa wouldn't tell them they tried to beat it out of him. They killed him.”

I hadn't thought that I could ever talk about it without getting crazy with anger, but all that happened a long time ago. It was almost like telling a story about somebody else, some person that I only slightly knew.

“That was the way it started,” I said. “I came back home and killed the bluebelly. Then it seemed like everywhere I went people were hunting me. They never learned, goddamn them—they would just make me kill them.”

It was quiet for a minute. And Bama was right about one thing—I began to smell it.

“I went back once,” I said, “to that place in Texas. It was a crazy thing to do, I guess, but there was a girl there and it seemed like I just had to see her. But I shouldn't have done it, I had teamed up with a famous gunman, Pappy Garret, and got myself a reputation, and things weren't the same any more. She was afraid of me. If I had touched her I think she would have fainted. Anyway, she was going to marry somebody else. I guess I'll never go back again.”

I had never told those things to anybody else. I don't know why I told them to Bama, unless maybe it was to get his mind off his leg.

“I wonder,” Bama said, “what would have happened if you hadn't run away.”

“I would have put in two years on the work gang.”

“Would that have been so bad?”

I knew that he was talking about Johnny Rayburn, not me. I got up and went to my own bunk.

It was about two o'clock in the afternoon, and our tongues were beginning to get too big for our mouths, when Marta's old man finally showed up. Around noon I went up on the bluff that formed the south wall of our cave, and there he was, him and his two burros, about three miles away and looking like three bugs crawling up the side of a mountain. He had the silver, all right, I could tell that by the heavy way the burros moved. There was nobody with him, and nobody following him.

“Here he comes,” I shouted down to the others. “Johnny, you gather up the horses.” Then I went down and we all waited in the mouth of the cave.

The old man was puffing and blowing and the burros were all lathered up as they pulled in. Marta swung onto Papacito's neck and they both began to jabber away in Spanish. I went around punching the big leather pack bags, and they all seemed solid and heavy enough, so I guessed that all the silver was there. Marta had found a canteen somewhere and was swigging from the neck when I came up and took it out of her hands. “No!” she yelled. “For Marta!”

“It's for all of us,” I said.

The kid was coming up with the horses, so I gave him a drink, then I poured a little in my hand and let the horses wet their muzzles. “Get the horses stripped down,” I said, “and throw away everything but the saddles and guns. You can start getting those pack bags split up and we'll divide the load between us.”

Bama was sitting with his back against a rock as I came up with the canteen. “Have a drink of this,” I said.

He turned the canteen up and gulped. His leg didn't look any better. The flesh around the wound was beginning to turn a dark purple, like a deep bruise, and he had that wild look that fever puts in a man's eyes.

When I got the canteen there was about a mouthful of water and some dregs in it. I emptied it and hung it over my shoulder.

“Do you feel like riding?”

He shrugged. He should have been in bed. He should have had a good doctor and a roomful of nurses, and maybe a few preachers to say some prayers. But he was going to ride, because there was nothing else to do. “How far are we from the border?” I said. “Only a few miles,” he said, “if we go straight south. But we can't go that way. Federal marshals and Mexican soldiers patrol that country. We'll have to ride into the mountains and take one of those canyons that the smuggler trains use.”

“How far will it be that way?”

“Fifty miles, maybe. It's pretty rough country, but you have to go the long way around with the load we've got. We wouldn't be much good if it came to a horse race.”

Bama was right, as usual. All right, we would go the long way around. Fifty miles wasn't so far. Not for the rest of us, but for Bama it was going to be a long, long trip. Of course, I could lighten our load by leaving Bama behind. It would make things a lot easier for me, and chances were Bama would never last the trip anyway.

But I didn't have the stomach for it. I said, “I'll have the kid bring your horse around and we'll put you in the saddle.”

There was one more way to lighten our load, but I was going to wait until the last minute to do it. I went up to the mouth of the cave and helped get the silver loaded. A lot of it we got in the saddle bags, and the rest of it we had to lash on behind the saddles. It was a clumsy way to do it, and the horses could hardly walk, much less run, but I couldn't think of anything better. When we got to Marta's horse I said, “Throw the saddle off of this one.”

The kid didn't ask any questions this time. We stripped the horse and loaded the rest of the silver in those pack bags.

I found Marta and her old man just outside the cave having another one of their arguments. Papacito was all blown up with anger and Marta was stamping her foot and spitting. I thought I could guess what the argument was about.

I said, “Shut up for a minute and ask the old man how they're taking it back in Ocotillo.”

I guess the sight of me reminded Marta of the silver, and she forgot all about the old man and flashed a smile at me. She turned and spat out the question. The old man answered sullenly, angrily. I had almost forgotten how much he hated me.

“Papacito say much anger in Ocotillo.” She cranked her hand by her ear to show how the men felt about losing their silver. Well, to hell with them. Maybe the next time they wouldn't run off when there was a job to be done.

“Ask him if he saw any cavalry,” I said. She asked him and shook her head.

Then the kid and Bama rode up, leading my big black and Marta's animal, which we had turned into a pack horse. She didn't get it at first. She just looked surprised, like somebody had pulled the chair from under her. But when I swung up on the black she got it. She started screaming and screeching and clawing, trying to pull me out of the saddle.

“Get out of here,” I said to the kid. “Take Bama up in the hills and I'll catch you there,” And all the time the girl was yelling her head off and cursing me, I guess, in Spanish. I gave her a kick and sent her reeling against the old man, and Bama and the kid began squeezing their way out of the cave. Before I could get my own horse through, Marta was clawing at me again. I yelled, “Take her, old man! Get her away from me. That's what you want, isn't it?”

That was what he wanted, but he didn't know how to go about it. He tried to pull her away but she wouldn't budge. The first thing I knew, she had snatched a pistol out of my holster and was shoving the muzzle in my face. “No leave Marta!” she yelled. “No leave Marta!” And all the time she was wrestling the hammer back with both hands.

It was no time to play the gentleman. I rammed the steel to my horse and he jumped and knocked the girl rolling in the dust. But she was up like a cat. She ran to the mouth of the cave and stood in front of it, yelling all the time. She pointed that pistol at me again, but by that time I had my black horse right on top of her. The pistol exploded, but she wasn't a very good shot with a thousand pounds of horseflesh pounding down on her like a runaway locomotive. The bullet must have hit a rock somewhere, because I heard the disappointed whine as it shot up toward a million miles of sky. And that was all for Marta.

We went right over her and blasted through the opening, and the only reason she wasn't killed was because horses, unlike people, are naturally neat animals, and they won't put a hoof down where it's likely to get messed up if they can help it. I looked back once and saw that she wasn't really hurt. The old man was standing outside the cave clutching those wooden beads around his neck, and I suppose he was offering a prayer of thanks because I hadn't run off with that wildcat daughter of his. Or, come to think of it, maybe he was just cursing. I know that's what I would have been doing if I had been in his place and had been stuck with a girl like that.

So that was the last I saw of Marta. There she was lying full length in the dust, beating the ground with her fists and shredding the air with screams like a madman tearing a rotten shirt. Good-by, Marta. The black horse fogged it down a slight grade and we headed for the higher hills where Bama and Johnny Rayburn were waiting. After a while I couldn't hear her screams any more.

We didn't travel far that day—about ten miles, maybe, and by that time Bama had taken all the jolting around he could stand. So we unbitted and unpacked in a gully where some water oozed out of a broken rock. The kid helped me get Bama stretched out in the shade, and then I went down and filled the canteen and gave him some water. That was about all I could do.

The trip hadn't done Bama's leg any good. It was getting blacker—almost to the knee now—and the inflamed underflesh reached down beyond that. His face was bloated and spotted with fever, but he cooled off some after we got some water down him, and after a while he went to sleep.

“He ought to have a doctor,” the kid said.

“Sure,” I said. “Why don't you just ride over the hill and find one?”

His face warmed, but he had his teeth in the idea and he wouldn't turn loose.

“There's a doctor in Tucson.”

“There's also a company of cavalry and bevy of U.S. marshals. Besides, it's a three-day ride, and Bama hasn't got that long to go.”

“You mean he's going to die?”

He said it as if the idea were new to him. He sounded scared.

Of course he's going to die, I thought. But I didn't say it. I said. “When we get across the border I'll get him a doctor.”

“Do they have doctors in Mexico?”

“Well, hell,- yes, they have doctors everywhere.” But I wasn't so sure about that. Come to think of it, I'd never seen a Mexican doctor. I'd never even heard of one. But then, Bama wasn't going to last that long anyway, and it didn't really make any difference if they had any doctors or not.

Around sundown I went out with my rifle, but there were no rabbits up there in the mountains. We didn't have any supper that night. We built a little fire and sat there looking at it and wishing we had something to cook, but that was as far as it went.

“Do you think Bama will be able to ride tomorrow?” the kid asked.

“He'll have to ride whether he's able or not. We can't just sit here and wait for them to come after us. You don't think that girl's going to waste any time getting her story to the marshal's office, do you?”

That gave him something to think about. Up until now he had just been coming along for the ride. I guess he had never figured on winding up like this, being chased out of the country and being hunted by half the lawmen in Arizona.

I watched him closely, because now was the time to find out if he had the guts it took to face it put. I had taken it for granted that he was the kind of kid that could be some help to me. It came as a shock when I realized that maybe I had guessed wrong.

We sat there for a long time, not saying anything. He knew what he was in for if he stuck with me. If he wanted to get out of it, all he had to do was ride off toward Texas and that would be the end of us.

The stars were very clean and cold and superior that night. The kid lay back and watched them, and maybe he was thinking that those very same stars were shining on that wild piece of Texas brush country that he called home—a place that he might never see again.

It all depended on what he decided. If he wanted to know about guns and how to cut aces from the middle, I was the one who could teach him. If he wanted something else... Well, that was up to him.

And still we sat. An orange slice of moon came up behind the hills and a coyote came out and barked at it. A slight wind came up and rattled the parched grass. I listened to the thousand little night sounds, and to Bama's labored breathing, and finally the kid got up.

“Well,” he said, “if we're going to travel tomorrow I guess I'd better get some sleep.”

It took me a few minutes to realize that it was all over. He had thought it over in that slow, deliberate way of his, and he had decided to stay. He had built himself a hero to follow. And I was it.

We traveled about twenty miles the next day before Bama's leg stopped us again. He suddenly dumped out of the saddle and hit the ground, and my first feeling was relief. No sorrow. No regret, or feeling of loss. Only relief, because Bama was finally dead and now we could push across the border.

But I was wrong about Bama. At that moment he was as close to death as a man can get, but he wouldn't die. He lay there clutching like a drowning man at that razor-thin piece of life and he wouldn't let go. For a moment I hated him. He was going to die anyway, so why didn't he do it now while it would do us some good? Why did he have to hold on with that death grip and pull us down with him? I just sat there on my horse, watching, waiting. Die, goddamn you! But he wouldn't turn loose.

“He's bad,” Johnny said. “Real bad.”

The kid was already out of the saddle, wiping the dust off Bama's flushed face.

Well, that was that. I couldn't just ride off and leave him, so I helped get him back on his horse and we held him in the saddle for a hundred yards or so until we came to a washed-out place in the side of a hill. That was where we laid him out. Then I sent the kid out to look for water.

“Bama.”

He didn't say anything. His face got as white as tallow, and it seemed that he would go for minutes at a time without breathing. At last he began to shake, and I knew the chills had started.

The kid came back with the water, but we didn't need it now. We stripped the horses and piled the saddle blankets on top of Bama. We lugged the silver into the wash and staked the horses out. Then we settled down to wait.

Night came finally, and there was no change that I could see. My stomach growled and knotted and ached, and I tried filling it up with water, but that didn't help.

I said, “Get some sleep, kid. When you wake up in the morning it'll be all over.”

But it wasn't. Bama was shaking when I went to sleep and he was still shaking when I woke up. When the sun came up I took my rifle out again and this time I came back with two rabbits.

We skinned them and cooked them like the other time. Me and the kid finished them off because Bama couldn't eat. He couldn't do anything except lie there and shake.

The day dragged on somehow, and to pass the time I got to figuring on our chances of getting out of this. I counted up and discovered that about fifty-six hours had gone by since we left Marta and Papacito at Three Mile Cave. Three days gone and we hadn't traveled more than thirty miles at the outside. Three days. Marta could have got the word all the way to Tucson in that length of time. More than likely a detachment of cavalry was already headed south. Under forced march they would be right in our front yard by this time tomorrow.

The future wasn't exactly bright. I made my mind up once to pull out of there, but when the time came to do it I didn't have the guts for it. For one thing, I wasn't at all sure that the kid would be willing to leave Bama and come with me. And, too, I kept remembering Kreyler and Bucky. It was Bama's time that we were living on now.

The next morning Bama began freezing with chills one minute and burning with fever the next. He kept us busy piling blankets on him and then taking them off and putting wet rags on his head. Along toward noon he went to sleep again. The kid walked out in the sun and stood there breathing in deep gulps of clean air. For a moment I thought he was going to be sick.

“Isn't there anything we can do?” he said. “Anything at all?”

“We're doing everything we can.”

“But he's going to die, don't you see that?” There didn't seem to be anything to say after that, so the kid went over and sat on a rock and held his head in his hands. All this was new to him. He had never seen a friend of his die like this before.

I found a rock for myself and sat down, wondering about the cavalry. What if they had already picked up our trail? Well, it was too late to worry about it now. We'd have to shoot it out with them, and if there weren't too many of them maybe we'd have a chance after all. The kid would be a help. He was good enough with a rifle, he had already proved that in the smuggler raid. And thinking of that made me feel better. We'd fight our way out of it somehow, just the two of us.

I don't know just when it was that those thoughts turned on me, but suddenly I found myself thinking, And then what?

There would be more cavalry, and more U.S. marshals, and you couldn't go on killing them forever. Where was it going to end?

It doesn't happen often, but once or twice in a life-time a man takes a look at himself and sees himself as he really is, and I guess that was what I did then. I knew where it would end. In a deadwood saloon with a bullet in my back, the way the end had come to Hickok. Over a dice table, the way it had come to Hardin. Or on a lonesome Texas hilltop, where Pappy Garret's career had ended. Not even Pappy had been able to go on forever.

And what about the kid? What about that girl of his, and that little cocklebur ranch that he was so set on?

That, I suppose, was the way my mind was running when the kid spoke. I didn't hear what he said, and it wasn't important anyway, because I was thinking of something else. Then he spoke again and I stood up and said:

“I wish to hell you'd stop whining.” My voice was hard and full of anger, and the kid looked as if I had just hit him across the face with a pistol barrel. He didn't understand what I was mad at. And he wasn't alone. Neither did I.

“There's one thing you'd better understand,” I said. “If you're not willing to take the hard bumps when they come, then we'd better split up here and now.”

That outburst kind of knocked the wind out of him, I guess, because he just sat there with his mouth open. He groped around for words, but this was a situation that he had never even thought about and he couldn't find any words to fit it. I said, “You've done nothing but complain. Not that I expect much out of you, because I haven't had time to teach you anything. But guts come natural, and if you haven't got them you're no good to me or anybody else.”

He closed his mouth finally and stared at me with bugging eyes.

He said hoarsely, “I didn't mean to complain. If I was doing it I didn't know it.”

“You didn't know it,” I said. “You don't know anything, and that's the whole trouble.”

Something had gone wrong, but he couldn't understand it. He stood up and wiped his face and shifted from one foot to the other. “Well,” he said, “I know I'm pretty green. But I can learn—you said so yourself.”

“Maybe I was wrong. I've been wrong before.”

He shuffled around some more, putting his hands in his pockets and taking them out. He walked around in a little circle, still not able to understand what had happened. “Maybe,” he said, “I got things all mixed up. I thought all along that you were glad to have me ride with you. I thought we were going to be—well, partners. Something like that.”

“You thought we were going to be partners,” I said dryly, and his face turned beet-red. Then he stopped his marching around and really looked at me for the first time.

“I guess I was jumping at conclusions,” he said after a long pause. “I had kind of a crazy idea that you liked me.”

“I like you well enough, but that doesn't mean that I want to take you to raise.”

He took it all right until then. But now he started to burn. His face started to cloud up and his mouth clamped down to a grim line.

“If I was being so much trouble,” he said tightly, “why did you let me ride this far with you?”

“I do crazy things sometimes. I guess everybody does.”

At last he began to get it.

“Are you trying to tell me that you don't want me around any more?” he said. “Is that it?”

I said, “That's it.”

And that tore it open. He hadn't believed that a crazy thing like this could happen, for no reason at all. But it finally sank in. For a long moment he just stood there staring at me like a backwoods nester looking at a circus freak.

Then he turned and walked stiffly to the wash. He came back with his saddle over his shoulder and headed down to where the horses were grazing.

It was all over. And the whole thing was almost as much a mystery to me as it was to the kid. I needed him. He was my life insurance. And now he was going.

I stood there on a knoll watching him cinch up, wondering how I was going to fight off a detachment of cavalry by myself. After a while he got the saddle on to suit him and he rode up to where I was.

“Well,” he said, “I guess this is good-by, Mr. Cameron. No hard feelings.”

“No hard feelings,” I said. “Part of that silver is still yours.”

“I don't want the silver,” he said.

He started to pull away and I happened to think of something else. “Where do you aim to go, kid?”

“Back to Texas,” he said without turning around.

Back to the work gang. Back to that wind-swept, thorn-daggered land where strong men broke their hearts scrabbling around for a kind of living. Back home.

“Well, good-by, kid.”

But he didn't hear me. He rode straight over a rise and dipped out of sight. And that was the last I saw of him. It was hard to believe that just a few minutes ago both of us had been sitting here waiting for the end. Now there were just me and Bama—and the crazy thing about it was that I wasn't sorry.

I stood there for a long time trying to understand why I had deliberately sent him away. He was sure to wind up on the work gang—but then, there were worse things than a work gang. Maybe that was the answer. I waited until I was sure that he was well in the hills, and then I went back to the wash.

“Bama.”

The fever had gone from his face and left it weak and flabby, like the face of a very old man. I felt that my face must look something like that. He opened his eyes and I got the canteen and dribbled water between his lips.

“How do you feel?”

He moved his shoulders just a little in the barest hint of a shrug.

“Your fever's gone,” I said. “You're going to be all right in a day or two.”

But I wasn't fooling anybody. The sickening smell of rotten flesh still hung heavily over the wash. Bama worked his mouth a few times, licking his cracked lips.

“Why don't you go?” he said. “You and the kid. You can still make it if you go now.”

“The kid's not here,” I said.

He fumbled that around in his mind.

“Where is he?”

“Headed for Texas,” I said. I was suddenly tired of thinking about it and talking about it. “What difference does it make? He's old enough to have a mind of his own.” I got up and paced the wash. “He can go clear to hell as far as I'm concerned.”

Bama didn't say anything. He just lay there with those wide staring eyes watching me as I marched up and down.

“Well, what are you looking at?”

But he only gave that whisper of a shrug again. “Did you tell him to go?”

“Sure, I told him to go. I was goddamn sick and tired of looking at his stupid face.”

Bama closed his eyes again, as if the conversation had worn him out. He lay there for a minute, half-smiling, or grimacing in pain. I couldn't tell which.

“Have you got a cigarette?”

I built a cigarette out of the last of my makings, put it in his mouth, and fired it.

“I guess I never knew you, Tall Cameron,” he said. “Several times I thought I did, but about that time you always did the unexpected.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing. Not a thing.” He dragged on the cigarette, burning it quickly to his lips, and then he spat it out. “You've got to get out of here,” he said. “Take the horses and silver and try to make it to the border. There's no sense in your staying here. Nothing is going to help me now.”

“Nothing's going to help you if you don't shut up. Now, try to get some sleep.”

He lay there for a while with his eyes closed and I thought that he had gone to sleep. Then he said, “I wonder if she ever married.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

But that was all he said. And pretty soon he went to sleep again.

I squatted down in the wash and listened to his breathing, coming strong for a while and then almost stopping completely. He was a crazy sort of galoot and I had never understood him any more than he had understood me. I had hated him and liked him in spells. There was no foolishness about him. He saw himself as he really was —not just rarely, like most people, but all the time. Except maybe when he was drunk.

I unholstered my off-hand gun—Marta had the other one—and wiped it clean with my shirttail. Then I punched out the cartridges and wiped them clean and put them back in the cylinder. I couldn't help wondering about the cavalry. They must be somewhere in the neighborhood by now. Marta must have told them the direction we had headed.

I climbed out of the wash and got my rifle and began cleaning it off the way I had the pistol. I went down and got the horses and picketed them there in the draw where they would be out of sight. Once again the thought crossed my mind that I ought to get out of there. But it just wasn't in me to let Bama die by himself. He had lived by himself. That seemed to be enough.

It was then, I guess, that I first heard it. Or I thought I did. Maybe I just felt it. I listened hard and there was nothing but the sound of wind. But that feeling was there.

I saddled the black horse, and holstered the rifle, then I rode as quietly as I could up to a hogback ridge just east of our wash. When I got near the crest I crawled the rest of the way to the top and looked over. Sure enough, there they were, the United States Cavalry.

There were eight of them about four or five hundred yards down the slope, and they had got together for a powwow, trying to decide which way to go, I guess. The lieutenant was pointing toward the ridge, and the sergeant was pointing to the south, and then they both dismounted and put their noses to the ground, looking for sign.

The wind must have blown most of the sign away, because they still looked pretty undecided when they climbed back on their horses. Then they did what I was afraid they were going to do. They spread out to scour the whole area. I got the lieutenant in the sights of my rifle once, but about that time the wind changed, and by the time I made the changes in sighting he had ridden around the side of a hill. Well, it was just as well. I would only have brought the other seven troopers down on me. The best thing to do was to go back to the wash, where I had a good line of defense, and make my stand there.

So that was what I did. I got that black horse in the draw and wrapped his forelegs and made him lie down. I picked out a place about a dozen yards from Bama.

And there I stood, waiting for them to find me and come after me...

It seemed like a long time, but I guess it wasn't. I stood there and looked at the hills to the west and wondered what was behind them. It never occurred to me that I could get on my horse and find out, while the cavalry was still scattered out. I heard a sound behind me then and I thought Bama had waked up and was wondering what was going on.

“Bama.”

No sound.

“Bama, are you awake?”

Still no sound, except that of the wind coming down the canyon. I left my position and went over to where he was. “It looks like we've got a fight on our hands,” I said. “I just spotted some cavalry over behind the ridge. They're spread out now, but I guess one of them will find us before long.”

He didn't say anything. He lay there with his eyes wide open, staring up at the sky. I knelt beside him and took his pulse. There was no beat, not even a flutter. His chest was quiet. He was perfectly still. After a while it dawned on me that Bama was dead.

I don't know what I did next. I think I got up and fumbled around for the makings of a cigarette, and finally I remembered that Bama had used the last of the tobacco. I must have stood there for quite a while, and I had a queer, uncomfortable feeling that Bama had died just as a personal favor to me. A thought kept nudging the back of my brain, warning me to get out of there. There was no reason to stay any longer. Bama was dead. You can't help a dead man.

But I was in no particular hurry. I wondered if I ought to try to dig a grave for him. But I didn't have anything to work with, and anyway, the cavalry would dig him right up again when they found him. Finally I took off my neckerchief and spread it over his face.

Well, so long, Bama. This isn't much of a send-off, but it's the best I can do.

Then I noticed that pile of silver. It wasn't going to help me, or Johnny Rayburn, or Bama, or anybody else. The kid didn't want it, Bama couldn't use it now, and I sure couldn't take it with me if I meant to outrun the cavalry. Poetic justice, I think they call it. The funny thing about it was that I didn't care.

I got my horse out of the draw and stripped everything off him except the saddle and rifle. I walked over to Bama again, still feeling that there was something I ought to do. If I knew any prayers, Bama, I thought, I'd say one for you. But I didn't know any. There's the Lord's Prayer, I thought. Everybody knows that. But when I started on it I got bogged down in the first line and had to stop. I was wasting precious time, but still I had a feeling that somebody ought to say a few words over him, and I sure couldn't depend on the cavalry to do it. So finally I said:

“Well, rest in hell, Bama. Amen.”

Then I got on my horse and rode west.

It surprised me, I guess, as much as it did the troopers, when I got away with it. I rode out of the draw and into the hills, with the soldiers beating the brush all around. Once I got a few miles away, I was safe—for a day or two, anyway. That silver was going to keep the cavalry busy for a while, when they finally found it, and by the time they got around to thinking about me I would be somewhere else.

There was no use heading for Mexico, though. Without money Mexico was no good. Maybe I could head north, where everybody was too busy fighting Indians to pay any attention to me. Maybe I'd try to get to Wyoming or someplace like that.

But that was a long way off, and I was just beginning to realize how sick and tired I was of running. And maybe that explains the crazy thing I did that same night.

A thing like that builds up in your mind, I suppose, and grows and grows without your knowing it. Then at last it breaks as clear as a summer day, arid you know what you have to do.

I still remember that night sometimes, pitch-black and the chill of the mountains coming down. But still I had to keep running. My horse almost went over the edge of the bluff before I saw the emptiness looming in front of us. He took a step forward and skittered, and I heard rocks and gravel begin to fall away into a black nothingness. My stomach curled up like a prodded sow bug and I tried to get braced for the sickening plunge.

But that horse had more sense than I had. He reared and wheeled and his forefeet slammed solid earth. We were safe then, but it was a close thing and it took something out of me. I climbed out of the saddle and wiped the sweat off my face. I was scared. Pretty soon I stopped being scared and got mad.

Nobody but a damn fool would try to cross country like this at night—and maybe that's just what I was, a damn fool. And finally I guess I got it through my head that it was time to do something about it.

What I did was to take my pistol and throw it as hard as I could over the bluff, and I listened and listened and after what seemed an hour I heard it hit. Then I scooped the .44 ammunition out of my saddlebags and heaved it into the darkness. And after it was all over I stood there panting as if I had just come through a long spell of sickness.

Maybe it was a fool thing, throwing my pistol away like that, as though by a single act I could throw off everything that was bad. But that pistol was a part of me. And I didn't want it any more. A doctor cuts off a leg when it's rotten. It was the same thing. It was with me, anyway. I felt naked without it, but I wasn't sorry it was gone.

The rifle I kept in the saddle holster. A rifle is a defensive weapon, a tool for getting food. It isn't the same as a pistol and it can't get to be a part of you the way a pistol can.

I stood for a long time in the darkness, thinking about it. I half expected to start cursing myself for an idiot as soon as the heat wore off. But I didn't. Without that gun I would never have killed the first man. I'd never have been on the run. Maybe I would have had that ranch in Texas like Johnny Rayburn would have someday. Maybe...

But it was too late for a lot of things. Maybe too late for anything. For all I knew, the cavalry was just a hop and a skip behind me, and the important thing was to keep running.

Keep running. It didn't have the same sound that it once had. The feeling of urgency wasn't there any more. I got back in the saddle and the black horse started marching off into the darkness, just as if there were a place out there somewhere that he knew about—a place where we could stop and rest and live like a man and a horse are supposed to live. It was a crazy idea. We kept traveling.

THE END

Clifton Adams

of a Gold Medal Original by