A Noose for the Desperado

Chapter Four

IN THE HOTTEST PART of the afternoon we started back for Ocotillo, what was left of us. Kreyler and the Indian had gathered the silver together and loaded it on pack horses that we had brought along for that purpose. There were several riderless horses, but I didn't take the trouble to count and see how many men we had left back there in the canyon. I guess nobody did. I made the mistake once of looking back, and already the vultures that Bama had talked about were beginning to circle over the battleground. It took everything I had to keep my stomach out of my throat. I didn't look back again.

Bama had finished the rest of his whisky and was riding slouched, chin on chest, deep in some bleary, alcoholic dream. I tried to keep my mind away from the battle, but I kept seeing those brown, grinning faces as they fell away in front of my guns. I wanted to think of my cut of that silver. I tried to remember that killing was necessary sometimes to save yourself—and that silver would save me.

Somehow, we got back to Ocotillo. We split up again when we came to the meeting place, and Bama and I rode back into town the same way we had left it. It was a long ride. Bama still didn't say anything.

It was almost dark by the time I got my horse put away. I went up to my room and fell on the mattress in front of the door. I was dog tired. Every muscle in my body screamed for rest, and every nerve was ready to snap. Then I turned loose with everything I had. I vomited until my guts were sore and there wasn't anything left in me to come up, but still I kept gagging.

When it was over I was soaked in sweat and shaking like a whipped dog. It was all I could do to get off the floor and pour some water in the bowl and wash my face.

It was then that I felt the draft float over the back of my neck and I knew that the door was open and somebody was standing there. I think I knew who it was before I looked up. Sure enough, it was Marta.

“What do you want?”

“I think you need Marta.”

“I don't need anybody. Get out of here and stay out.”

She looked at me for a moment, then turned and went down the hall. In a minute she was back with a pan and some water, and began cleaning the floor.

“I don't know why they bother to put locks on these doors,” I said. “How did you get in here?”

She grinned faintly, took a knife from the bodice of her dress, and showed it to me.

“Is easy.”

“It must be.”

I didn't feel like talking or fighting or anything else. If she wanted to clean up after me, all right. All I wanted to do was rest and try to forget that I had taken part in anything that had happened today.

She worked quietly, not looking at me. After she had finished I could feel her standing beside me.

“You need eat,” she said.

“I need nothing.”

She went out of the room, taking the dirty water with her. I didn't bother to close the door.

Maybe five minutes went by, and then she came back with two hard-boiled eggs and a pitcher of cool beer.

“Here.”

“You're crazy as hell,” I said.

She cracked one, of the eggs and peeled it. I took it and bit into it. It tasted good. I washed it down with some of the beer, then reached for the other egg.

“Good?” she said.

I nodded and had some more beer.

“You sick. Why?”

How could I tell her why I was sick? Maybe I wasn't even sure myself. But somehow I felt that the last decent thing in me had been fouled in that massacre. A myth had been shattered. I could no longer tell myself that my killing had been done in self-defense. I was sick with myself, but how could I tell anybody that?

“It wasn't anything,” I said.

“You better now?”

“Sure. Have some beer.”

She grinned uncertainly, then swigged from the mouth of the pitcher. I was beginning to be glad that she had shown up. I needed something or somebody to take my mind off of things. It was just the shock of seeing so much cold-blooded killing, I tried to tell myself. Pretty soon I would get over it, but now it was just as well that I had somebody to help me get my mind on something else.

“Don't you ever take no for an answer?” I said. “Do you always hang on until you get what you want?”

She shrugged as if she didn't understand me.

“What do you want me for, anyway? I'm not such a prize—not even in this God-forgotten place where almost anybody would be a prize.”

She shrugged again and grinned. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, she took my wrist and began inspecting the bandage on my left wrist.

“I am sorry,” she said.

“It's all right now.”

But it still hurt, and it gave me a vicious, animal-like satisfaction to see that her mouth was still swollen and bruised where I had hit her.

It was dark now. Night had come suddenly down on Ocotillo, and we could hear the noises in the saloon below, and in the dusty street there was the rattle of high-wheeled cars as the Mexican farmers came in from the fields, and the lonesome, forlorn chanting of the native herdsmen. I rolled a cigarette and gave it to the girl, then I rolled one for myself and fired them with a sulphur match.

“Where you learn smoke like this?” she said suddenly.

“A friend of mine. He used to roll them this way, in cornshucks. He's dead now,” I added, for some reason.

“You love this friend very much,” she said.

“What makes you say that?”

“You are sad when you say he is dead.” Then, “He was good man?”

I listened to the night and remembered Pappy Garret. “He was good at one thing,” I said. “He could draw faster and shoot straighter than any man who ever lived. He picked me up when I was just a kid running from the State Police and taught me what he knew. I used to wonder why he bothered with me—but I know now that he was a lonely man.”

I knew that she wasn't really interested in hearing about it, but she kept quiet and I went on. “He wasn't really a bad man,” I said, “but once you start a thing like that, there's no end to it. A gunman kills a friend of yours, then you kill the gunman. Then the gunman has a friend and you have to kill him, or be killed, and it goes on and on that way until you think there isn't a man in the world that doesn't have a reason to shoot you.”

Marta stroked my bandaged arm with her cool fingers. “You no bad,” she said.

“I'm rotten to the bone, or I would never have done what I did today, no matter how much money there was in it.”

She looked up, but I couldn't see what she was thinking. “I think you be rich man pretty soon.”

“I'm as rich as I'm going to be, as soon as I get my cut of the silver. I'm through with Basset. I'm going to throw my guns in the deepest river I can find.”

It was dark and I couldn't tell much about her face, but I knew that she was smiling. I started hating her all over again. She didn't believe that I would ever throw my guns away, that I would ever quit Basset. What she believed was what I had said before—that I was rotten to the bone—and it didn't matter a damn to her one way or the other. I was going to be a rich man. I felt her arms crawling around my neck like soft warm snakes and she dug her fingers into my hair and pulled my face down to hers.

I brought my arms up and broke her hold and she hit the floor with her rump. I stood up and for a long moment neither of us said anything. Then I tightened my pistol belt and started for the door.

“Where you go?”

“I don't know.” .

I went down the stairs and heard the noise and laughing in the saloon. The girl was beside me as I pushed through the batwings and went to the bar, and I didn't try to get rid of her or hold her. I didn't care what she did.

The bartender came up and I said, “Tequila. You might as well bring the bottle.”

He brought the bottle and two glasses and I took them over to a table where Bama was sitting by himself. The girl was still with me.

Bama blinked his bleary eyes as we sat down. “I knew you were crazy,” he drawled, “but I never figured you'd be this crazy. Don't you know that Black Joseph will shoot you on sight if he catches you with his girl?”

“To hell with Black Joseph.”

He blinked again. Then he shrugged, smiling that lopsided smile of his. “To hell with him,” he said. “Well, I guess another killing, more or less, won't make much difference on this day of days.” He chuckled dryly. “The funny thing about this place is that everybody thinks that everybody else is crazy—and probably they're right. But there's one good thing about these raids of Basset's. A man can afford tequila for a while instead of that poisonous slop the greasers drink. Here's to bigger foothills.”

He filled his glass and drained it, using the bottle I had brought because he had already emptied his. “May the best man win, senorita,” he said, nodding in mock politeness. “And may it be entertaining and bloody. Most of all, let it be bloody.”

Marta sat stone-faced while I poured a round. “Don't you ever sober up?” I said.

“Not if I can help it. Tequila is good for the soul. It reverts man back to the jungle from whence he came, as they say, back to the vicious, lewd, wild beast that he was before somebody told him that he had a soul. Remember the old camp-meeting hymn that backwoods preachers used to bellow at the top of their lungs? 'I'm Washed in the Blood of the Lamb.' Blood with a mile-high capital B. Did it ever occur to you that the Bible is one of the bloodiest manuscripts ever written? Most of its heroes either are killers or died violent deaths themselves. Blood, I've seen enough of it. I'll wash my soul in the clean, destroying liquid of tequila.”

“You're crazy,” I said.

He chuckled. “See what I mean?”

Marta was watching him strangely, almost fearfully. Bama slouched back in his chair and smiled at her, his eyes flat and empty. I drank my tequila down, poured another glass, and downed that. My insides began to settle down and I began to feel better. I could feel Bama watching me. Without interest, without feeling.

Pretty soon I began to notice things that I hadn't noticed before. Basset's customers had given us a whole corner of the saloon to ourselves. The area around our table was quiet, as if some kind of invisible wall had been put up around us.

“You can't blame them for moving out of the line of fire,” Bama drawled. “As long as you're with that girl we're poison. Have another drink?”

Until now I hadn't really believed that men would kill over a girl like Marta—over money, or pride, or almost anything else, but not over a girl like that. But I saw that I was wrong. Everybody in the place accepted it as a fact that before long either the Indian or I would be dead. The talking and laughing and drinking and gambling went on as usual, but there was a nervous sound to it, a tight feel in the air.

I already had my limit of two drinks, but I took the third one that Bama poured and downed it. I tried to reason with myself. What was the good in taking a chance on getting killed over a Mexican hellcat that was no better than a common doxie? All I had to do was tell her to get away from me, and tomorrow after I got my cut of the silver I'd get out of Ocotillo for good.

But I couldn't do it. I'd never backed down from an Indian or anybody else in my life. In this business you took one step back and you were done for, the whole howling hungry pack would be on you.

So I sat there while Bama smiled that crooked smile of his. But he seemed more interested in the girl than in me. He watched her steadily, and all the time a change was taking place in Malta's eyes. First fear, then uncertainty gave way to a brighter fire of self-satisfaction and conquest. It struck me then that she was actually enjoying this! She wanted to be fought over. She wanted blood at her feet. At every sound her head would turn, her eyes would dart this way and that in excitement. I began to understand why most men wanted no part of her.

Bama took another drink and lifted himself unsteadily to his feet. “Like the darky says,” he said, “I'm tired of livin' but 'fraid of dyin'. You don't mind if I just step over to the bar until this is all over, do you?”

I didn't say anything. Bama drunkenly doffed his Confederate hat in Marta's direction, turned, and weaved across the floor.

She was actually smiling now. She reached across the table to take my hand and I pulled away as if she had been a coiled rattler.

“Just let me alone,” I said tightly. “There's no way of stopping this thing now, but there's one thing you'd better understand. I'm not getting into any trouble on account of you. And when it's over, I'm telling you for the last time, let me alone.”

I don't think she even heard me. Her eyes were darting from one side to the other, and her mind was so hopped up with excitement that she couldn't sit still.

I could feel the change in the place the minute he walked in. It was nothing you could put your finger on at first—there was no change in the way people acted, or in the noise, but I had the feeling that somewhere a grave had been opened and Death itself had walked into the saloon.

In a minute the others felt it, and their heads turned toward the door as if they had been jerked on a string. Saloon sounds—the rattle of a roulette wheel, the chanting of the blackjack dealer, the muffled slap of cards on felt, the clank of glasses behind the bar—all went on for a few seconds and then suddenly played out. I shoved my chair back and there he was standing in front of the batwings. He was looking at me. For him there was no one in the saloon but me.

I didn't know whether to get up or stay where I was. If I had been smart I would have had my right-hand gun pulled around in my lap for a saddle draw—but I hadn't been smart, and it was too late to worry about it now. He started forward, and I could feel the customers pushing back out of the line of fire. This is a hell of a thing, I thought. Here's a man I never saw but once in my life, a man I've never as much as said “Go to hell!” to, and now he's after my hide!

He came forward slowly, in that curious toe-heel gait that Indians have, as if he had a long way to go and was in no particular hurry to get there. Just so he got there. Well, anyway, I was glad the waiting was over. Now that I could look at him, he didn't look so damned tough. He looked like any other Indian, except maybe a little dirtier and a little uglier, with eyes a little more deadly. He had just two hands, like anybody else, and he had blood in his veins that would run out when a bullet went in. That first feeling of doom passed away and I was ready for him.

The smart guys along the bar and against the wall were grinning as if they expected me to fall on my knees and start begging him not to shoot me. They would have loved that. There's nothing that would make them happier than to see me spill my guts. There wasn't a man in the place, with the possible exception of Bama, who wouldn't have taken a shot at me if that had happened.

That's a pleasure they'll be a long time seeing, I thought grimly.

I stood up carefully as he stopped at the table, beside Marta.

“There's something you want?” I said.

For a minute he just looked at me. Or through me. There was no way of telling about those eyes of his. Not a muscle twitched in that stone face, but I noticed that his right hand was edging in toward the butt of his pistol—not much, but enough to carry on through when the time came. He didn't even look at Marta. He just reached with a big hand, grabbed her by the hair of the head, and jerked her half out of the chair.

The smart guys sucked in their guts, laughing to themselves. They already had me dead and buried. They didn't like the Indian much, but they hated punk kids like me even more. They figured I had got my reputation the easy way, and they figured I knew it. I guess I jarred them when I said:

“Take your goddamned hands off of her if you want to go on living.”

Even the Indian showed surprise. His eyelids raised about a millionth of an inch. The next thing I knew his gun was coming out of the holster.

I made my grab and didn't bother to aim. There wasn't time to aim, and when you're standing belly to belly, the way we were, there's no sense in it anyway. I just got the muzzle of my pistol over the top of my holster and fired. I didn't hit him. I didn't even come close. The bullet slammed into the floor somewhere, but I wasn't worrying about that.

The muzzle blast from a .44 is a powerful thing. At that range it can deafen a man, paralyze him, burn him, shock him throw him off balance. That was what I was counting on. I didn't need that first bullet, just the muzzle blast. And the Indian knew it. His mouth flew open as he slammed back under the impact, and before he could get his balance, before he could swing that pistol on me again, he was as good as dead.

I had all the time in the world after that first shot. I shot him twice through his left shirt pocket and he jerked like a monkey on the end of a string. He hit the floor, flopping around like a fish with a broken back. I don't know what kept him alive, but he wouldn't die until he managed to lift his pistol again and try to fix it on me.

Sweat poured off his face as he lifted the pistol, slowly, an inch at a time. For him, it must have been like lifting the south end of Texas, but somehow he did it. There was no fear of dying in those eyes of his. They were completely savage, kill-crazy. Then I stepped in and kicked the pistol out of his hand. I slammed the toe of my boot in his ribs.

“You sonofabitch! You filthy sonofabitch!” And I kept kicking him until somebody came up and pushed me back. It was Bama.

“That's enough!” he said. “Jesus Christ, you can't kill a man but once!”

All the anger and hate seemed to rush out in me all at once. I swung on Bama and knocked him sprawling with the barrel of my pistol. “Goddamn you,” I said, “don't tell me what I can't do!”

He was on all fours, shaking his head like a poled steer. Blood was welling up at the corner of his mouth and I could hear every drop hit the floor and splatter. The saloon had been shocked and jarred and stunned to a deathly quiet. The smart guys weren't so smart now. They stood with their mouths hanging open, staring stupidly.

As suddenly as it had hit me, my anger was gone. I put an arm around Bama's shoulder and helped him up.

“How do you feel?”

“I'm—all right.”

But he was looking at me strangely. First at me, then at the dead Indian, then at me again. He said, “I think I need a drink.”

“Sure.” I poured him a drink with my left hand, keeping my gun hand ready in case the Indian had some friends that wanted to take up the argument.

Bama downed the drink and wiped his mouth with a shaky hand. “Put your pistol away,” he said hoarsely. “Nobody wants to fight you. Not now, anyway.” He took a step forward, and a step backward, then he began to fall.

I caught him before he hit the floor and wrestled his dead weight up to something like a standing position. “Give me a hand,” I said to the girl.

She had a stupid, idiot's smile on her lips. She was half crazy with excitement and power and lust and God knows what else. She couldn't take her eyes off the dead Indian. Some insane, morbid love of blood and violence held her entranced, hypnotized her, charmed her.

“Goddamnit!” I said. “Help me get him out of here!”

Her head jerked up. The idiot's stare went out of her eyes and she got her shoulder under one of Bama's arms and we began to drag him out of the place. We dragged him right over the corpse, the rowels of Bama's spurs raking across the Indian's bloody chest and then clanging to the floor. Nobody made a move. I don't think anybody breathed. From the corner of my eye I glimpsed Basset standing in the doorway of his office, his fat face bloated and pale-looking in the orange light of the coal-oil lamps. I think he was smiling, but I wasn't sure, and I didn't care. There was somebody standing behind him looking out with wild, pale eyes. I think it was Kreyler.

Somehow we got Bama out of the place and up the stairs and into my room. I got the mattress off the floor and put it on the bed, then we stretched Bama out and began to work on him.

He was just drunk, mostly, but there was an ugly lump over his ear and a fine red thread of blood was taking quick long stitches across his face and down his neck, ending in a spreading red blotch on his collar.

“Get me some water,” I said.

The pitcher was empty, so she had to go around to the back of the saloon, where the pump was. In a minute she was back, and I dipped a rag into the water and washed the blood off Bama's face. He still didn't move. “Is there a doctor in this place?” I said. She shook her head. She came over to the bed and put a hand on his chest, on his throat, on his forehead. “No need doctor. Too much tequila.”

Maybe she was right, but it made me uneasy seeing him stretched out there, not making a move, hardly breathing. I hadn't meant to hit him. But, goddamn him, why couldn't he have kept out of my way? Why did people always have to make my business their business? If they got hurt they had nobody but themselves to blame.

“Well, I guess there's nothing else we can do. Maybe he'll sleep it off.”

I sat on the bed, staring at nothing, thinking of nothing. Downstairs, they were probably dragging the Indian out and maybe getting ready to bury him, but it didn't mean a thing to me one way or another. The Indian could never have been born, as far as I was concerned. I had no feeling for him at all; no hate, no anger. And in the back of my mind I knew that somebody—Basset, Kreyler, one of the Indian's friends—was probably planning a way to kill me. That didn't seem important either. I was getting out of Ocotillo. I was getting out tomorrow. The girl was standing there beside me, looking at me and not saying anything. She was still smiling, but it was a different, sweet, almost holy smile: It reminded me of old women on their knees in front of altars saying their prayers. It made me uncomfortable having her look at me that way.

I got up and went out of the room and went into Bama's room and lay across the bed in the darkness. I knew that she would be there in a few minutes. And she was.

She didn't say a word. She just lay down beside me and pressed that hot animal self of hers against me and waited. We both waited, and nothing happened. She came closer and those soft arms crawled over me, and then she was breathing her hot breath in my face and mashing her bruised mouth against mine. Still nothing happened. I could have been kissing a stone statue and it would have been about the same. For a while we just lay there. Maybe she thought that it was the excitement of the fight that made me the way I was, but it was more than that. She just wasn't what I wanted. After a while she went away.