A Noose for the Desperado

Chapter Six

IT WAS KIND of funny the way it all happened. One minute I was just another wanted gunman on the run, and the next minute I was all set up in business as the boss of a band of cutthroats. It happened so fast and so natural that I didn't have time to give it much thought. I just saw the opening and took it. That, I realized later, was the way bosses were made.

There was one thing, though, that complicated things, and that was figuring out what to do with Kreyler. The Marshal was the key to the whole thing here in Ocotillo. He gave the business the protection and the freedom to operate that it had to have, and without him the whole thing would fall down around my shoulders. However, that worked itself out along with everything else.

I started with the bartender, by putting him back to work as if nothing had happened. Then I marched the Marshal back into the office, and there we waited for things to begin to happen.

“You'll never get away with it, Cameron,” he kept saying.

But I would, and he knew I would. Then I began going through Basset's things again and finally I found the thing that would nail Kreyler down just the way I wanted him. It was a big ledger book that the fat man had used to make his bookkeeping entries in, and every penny of smuggled silver was accounted for right there, along with the money he had paid out to Kreyler and the Indian and all the rest. I looked at it and sat back and grinned, and the Marshal knew it was all over.

“Now,” I said, “I think we can do business together, Marshal. We'll keep things just like they were when Basset was running things. You furnish the protection and I'll see that you get a good share of the profits. What do you think about that?”

“I think you're crazy. You're wanted in every state west of St. Louis. It would be suicide for a United States marshal to try to do business with you.”

“Maybe,” I said, “but it would be slow and you'd have a chance to build up a stake.” I tapped the ledger. “Here's something for you to think about. Say I turned this ledger over to somebody in Tucson—say a lawyer that I could depend on, or maybe even a sheriff—with instructions that the book was to be turned over to the United States marshal's office if they didn't get the word from me once a month to hold onto it. Of course, I wouldn't ride into Tucson myself, but I could get somebody else to do it.”

He could cheerfully have cut me into pieces and thrown me to the dogs. But I had him where the hair was short. And he knew it. For a long while he just sat there, angry thunderheads boiling behind his eyes.

At last he said, “I'll have to think it over.”

“Think it over, but the answer better be yes. And in the meantime don't try to beat this ledger to Tucson and put the law on my tail.”

He didn't say anything, so I sat there and let him hate me until Bama got back.

“I don't know,” Bama said wearily. “Some of the men don't like it. They didn't care much for Basset, but they just don't like the idea of somebody coming in and shooting his way to the top.”

“Did you tell them about getting a full cut in silver?”

“I think maybe that will do it,” he said. “They're talking it over now among themselves, and we'll know within an hour or so if they're going to work for you.” He looked at Kreyler and then at me. “No matter what they decide,” he went on, “you'll never get away with it.”

“Kreyler's been telling me the same thing,” I said, “but look at this.” And I showed him the ledger and after a minute he caught on what I was going to do with it.

“I think I'd better have a drink.”

“I'll have one with you. We've got something to celebrate here. Kreyler?”

“If it's all right with you,” the Marshal said flatly, “you can celebrate by yourself.”

“Sure, if that's the way you feel about it.” Then I picked up his gun and threw it at him. “You can have this, only don't get any funny notions. That Marshal's badge won't stop a bullet.”

Kreyler buckled his belt on and walked out of the place, and Bama and I went out to the bar and had the bartender bring us a bottle. Bama downed three fast ones then leaned on the bar and held his head in his hands.

“What's the matter with you?

“I guess I'm just a little sick.”

“You'll get over it. In a few weeks we'll have all the money we need and we'll leave this town behind.”

“Are you sure?” he said, looking at me. “What happened to you, anyway? Yesterday you were as sick of this mess as I was and all you wanted was to get out.”

“I still want to get out,” I said. “It's just that I've found a better way to do it. What's the sense in going off half-cocked? This business of Basset's fell right in my lap. Why shouldn't I take it long enough to get a little money?”

“No reason, I guess,” he said. “I was just hoping that it wouldn't work out this way. But then, nothing ever seems to work out, does it?”

I couldn't figure the guy out, and I never did figure him out completely. I didn't say so in as many words, but here I was offering a partnership in a well-paying business and he seemed to be sorry about the whole thing. It wasn't the prettiest business in the world—I could see that—but what the hell, he had been in it longer than I had.

After a while we heard boot heels hit the dirt walk outside the saloon and we had company. Four men pushed through the batwings and stood looking at us.

“Basset's scouts,” Bama said. “They're probably acting as spokesmen for the other men.”

One man stepped out in front of the others, then walked around the tables till he could see Basset where he was still sprawled out. For a long minute he just looked at the dead fat man, and then he said, “By God, he's dead, all right.”

Then he walked over to Bama and me and poured himself a drink from our bottle.

“I hear you're the one that did it,” he said to me.

I didn't say anything. He was a lean, leathery man with about fifteen cents' worth of tobacco working in one cheek, causing a brown dribble at the corner of his mouth, which disappeared into a bushy, dirty beard. He looked about as excited as a dead armadillo. He sure didn't look like a man stricken with grief.

“Well, maybe you done us a favor, but that's to be found out later, I guess. I hear you're settin' yourself up in Basset's place.”

“That's right.”

“What makes you think you're big enough to hold a job like that?”

“Any man that feels bigger can take it from me the way I took it from Basset.”

He considered that carefully, over another drink. He studied my guns. He studied the dead man. “Look,” I said. “I'm offering you men a better deal than you ever got out of Basset. You'll get a fair cut from every raid. The men can watch the money while it's being counted and split up. And, starting now, those brass buttons of Basset's are no good. I'll buy them up with real silver.”

He sipped his drink thoughtfully. “How about Kreyler? We can't do anything without him.”

“Kreyler's staying with us. Never mind why, but he'll be with us to the end.”

Another long minute went by while the scout weighed things in his mind. He had the power to make or break me, and we both knew it. I hadn't made up my mind what I was going to do if he said no.

Luckily, I didn't have to worry about it. The scout shifted his cud and said, “Well, I never liked the sonofabitch much, anyway.” And he motioned to the men standing in the doorway. “You might as well come on in, boys, and have a drink with the new boss.”

There wasn't anything to it after that. We buried Basset in a gully near the Huachuca foothills, and by night the saloon was doing business as usual. I threw Basset's things out of the back end of the place and moved my things in, what there were of them, and called Kreyler and Bama and the scouts together for a pow-wow.

“I haven't been here long enough to know just how Basset ran things here,” I said, “but what I saw of it I didn't like. First, there's that business of letting the smuggler outriders get behind us while we were sitting in ambush. I want a map drawn of those mountains and foothills, and I want every cut and gully and rock and sage brush on it. Like the maps they use in the Army when they're getting ready to plan a battle. Bama, you used to be a soldier. Can you draw a map like that?”

Bama shrugged. “I guess I can try.”

We were sitting in the office, the four scouts, me, Bama, and Kreyler. The door was closed but we could still hear the saloon noise on the other side. The scouts looked sleepy. Bama looked thirsty. Kreyler didn't look any way in particular, but I had an idea of what was going on inside him.

I said, “Bama, it will be your job to do the map. In the morning you can take two scouts into the hills and go to work on it. I don't care how long it takes, just so you get everything on it. The other two scouts can ride off toward Mexico and see what you can find in the way of smuggler trains.”

Kreyler looked up at that.

“You can't push too hard on a thing like this,” he said. “We can't attack every smuggler train trying to make its way to Tucson. They expect a few attacks, but if it happens too often they'll change their route and that will be the end of a good thing.”

I could see the scouts agreeing with him, and Bama too. “We're not going to try to get them all,” I said, “but the ones we do go after, we're going to do it right. That's the reason I want the map. If we pick our spot right, there's no reason why we should get shot up. And besides, we won't need so many men if everything is done right, and that means a bigger cut for everybody.”

They liked that, especially the scouts, and after a while we got down to details.

“How long have you been thinking about this?” Bama asked after the others had gone.

“Just since this morning. How long do you think I've been thinking about it?”

But he only shrugged and let it go.

“The next thing we've got to do is take care of this ledger,” I said. “We can't follow Kreyler around with a gun all the time, and anyway, this thing is better than a gun. It keeps the Marshal tied to us and keeps him from putting a bullet in my back at the same time.”

“You're really going into this, aren't you?” Bama said, and I tried to read some meaning into it, but there wasn't anything there but a thick, heavy drawl.

He sat there looking at me with no expression at all. At that moment he looked as if he had lived a hundred years and every year had been a hard one. “If I had the guts,” he said, “I'd tell you to go to hell. But I haven't got the guts. So if you'll get me a bottle of whisky I'll tell you what you'll have to do about Kreyler.”

I think at that moment he really hated me. But, like he said, he didn't have the guts to do anything about it. Anyway, I was getting used to his moods and the way he talked, so I slapped him on the shoulder and said, “It's not going to be as bad as all that.”

I opened the door and yelled to the bartender, and in a minute we had a bottle and a couple of tumblers on the desk.

Bama said, “I know a lawyer in Tucson who would handle the ledger for you, but I couldn't risk showing myself in a place like that. And neither could you. What you've got to have is a man who isn't wanted by the law here in Arizona. It would be better if he wasn't wanted at all, but it's not likely we'll find a man like that. I think I've got the man you want.”

I waited until Bama finished his drink, then he went on. “He's just a kid—much more of a kid than you are. He came riding into town today sometime after the shooting. From Texas, by the look of his rig. He's out in the saloon and you can talk to him if you want to.”-

“If you think he's the one we need.”

So Bama got up and went into the saloon, and after a minute he came back with a hay-haired kid who looked to be about seventeen years old. He wore blue overalls that had been patched several times around the rump and knees, and heavy brogans, and a dirty felt hat that had part of the brim torn off. He sure didn't look like much, but there was something about him that gave me kind of a shock.

It was almost like looking into a mirror and seeing myself as I had been at that age—except that I had never worn those nester's overalls and brogans. But it was his face, I guess, that got me, and his eyes. His eyes were pale blue and they were kind of bewildered and they didn't know much of anything. And maybe there was a little fear in them, and uncertainty.

“Well, son,” Bama said, reaching for a drink, “how does it feel to be in the presence of the mighty? Of course, you've heard of Talbert Cameron, desperado, killer, as they say on the 'Wanted' posters. The fastest gunman ever to come out of Texas, the scourge of lawmen, soldiers, and just plain downright honest citizens.”

I wished to hell that Bama would shut up, but he kept running on and the kid's eyes got bigger and bigger. And I couldn't get away from that feeling that the kid was myself standing there, getting my first look at a real gunman and being a little stunned and awed by it. I said, “For Christ's sake, Bama, shut up.” Bama grinned a little, sadly, and shrugged. “Go ahead and sit down, son. I don't reckon he'll bite you.”

The kid sat down on the edge of a chair and stared at me. He swallowed a couple of times and his Adam's apple flopped around while he tried to think of something to say.

I said, “Bama tells me you're from Texas. What part?” He gulped. “South,” he said faintly. “Along the Nueces River.”

I'd never been in the brush country, but by looking at the kid I got a pretty good idea of what it was like. It would be blazing sun and blistering wind and men grubbing for a living on land that was never meant to be worth a damn for anything. But those men would love the land, and they would live on it, and fight on it, and die on it. I wondered what had made the kid leave it. “Have you got a name?” I said. “Yes, sir.” He was beginning to find his voice now. “Rayburn. John Rayburn.”

Bama was sitting on the desk, soberly studying the kid, and I guessed that Bama was also seeing something of himself in this lost, bewildered-looking kid who called himself John Rayburn. After a minute he spoke quietly, with a gentleness in his voice that I had never heard before.

“Do you want to tell us about it, Johnny? We're all pretty much in the same fix here, as far as the law goes. And you are running from the law.”

“I've been doin' that, all right,” the kid said, and he looked at me and Bama, “but I sure never figured to wind up in any place like this.” His gaze settled on me. “Are you really the Tall Cameron that they talked so much about in Texas?”

I started to ask him what they were saying about me, but I changed my mind and said, “That's right. Now, who are you, besides just somebody by the name of John Rayburn?”

“Well, gosh,” he said, “I'm not anybody much. My pa owns a little brush-poppin' outfit down on the Nueces, like I said, and I was born there and lived there all my life—until the last month or so.” He hesitated until he became convinced that it was all right to talk. “Well, hell,” he said, “I guess I got into some trouble. There was a dance in Lost Creek—that's a town by our place—and I guess some of the boys kind of got liquored up and there was a fight. The first thing you know there's a deputy sheriff dead on the floor, and then the first thing I know they're claimin' I was one of the boys that done it.”

He looked at us to see what we thought about it. “I didn't have anything to do with it,” he said, “but they locked me up anyway, along with the others. And when they have the trial the jury says manslaughter and sentences all of us to three years on the work gang.” He grinned uncertainly. “But the jail they was holdin' us in wasn't much, so I lit out of there as fast as I could. God knows how I wound up in Arizona.”

For a minute there was silence and I sat there thinking about myself, a kid who had started running just about the same way, and was still running. Then, for no reason I could think of, I began to get mad, and I wanted to get up and shake that kid until his teeth rattled and knock some sense into his head. I wanted to tell him that there were worse things than the work gang. I wanted to tell him how it was when you ran and ran until you couldn't run any more, but you knew that if you stopped it would be all over. There were a lot of things I could tell him— things I wished somebody had told me.

I think Bama's mind was working about the same way mine was, but he just sat there waiting for me to do something. But all I did was to sit back in the chair and say, “Do you want a job?”

“With you, Mr. Cameron? Gosh, yes!”

I looked at him and then looked away. He was building me up in his mind as a big hero, but I didn't feel like a hero right then.

I said, “Bama, give him the ledger and tell him what to do,” and I threw out the sack of Basset's with the five hundred adobe dollars in it. “This ought to be enough to take care of the lawyer.”

Bama took the money and waited a minute for me to look at him. But I didn't look at him.

That night after the saloon had emptied and things had quieted down. I went back to my new quarters behind the office and tried to get things straightened out. The room was a plain affair with the usual bed and chair and washstand. On one wall there was a big framed picture that showed a bunch of battered, dejected, half-frozen soldiers marching through the snow. They had rags tied around their heads and rags on their feet, and they looked as if they had about a bellyful of war. But off to one side there was a cocky little man sitting on a big white horse, and just by looking at him you knew that he was the boss and the war wasn't going to be over until he said so. Down at the bottom of the picture there was some small print that said, “Napoleon in Russia.”

There was a bookshelf beside the bed, and a coal-oil lamp. I picked up one of the books, and it wasThe Complete Works of William Shakespeare. There was also a limp-backed Bible there, and I tried to imagine Basset reading a few chapters of Luke or John before going to bed every night, but the picture wouldn't work out. There were also two big volumes of Dante's Divine Comedy and pictures of devils and angels and a lot of people suffering in one kind of hell or another. Well, I thought, Basset ought to be right there among them about now.

There were a lot of other books there, but I didn't look at them. I began to count the money that the saloon had taken in for the night, and it was a little over two hundred dollars. I was just beginning to appreciate what a good thing I'd come into. I made a mental note to ask somebody where Basset had got his whisky supply for the saloon, but I figured it would probably be Mexico. Then I started figuring how money would be coming in every month from the saloon and the smuggler trains, and the amount it came to was staggering.

I paced up and down the room with figures running through my mind, and every once in a while I would stop and look at that picture of Napoleon and I knew just how he felt. There was only one way to look—straight ahead.

That was before I found out what happened to Napoleon in Russia.

But I was feeling pretty good about it then, and the feeling hung on as long as I kept thinking of money and had that picture to look at. It was only after I had undressed and blown out the lamp that something different began to happen.

There in the darkness things began to look different. I began to think about the day and the things that had happened and I couldn't believe it. Here I was in Basset's room, in Basset's bed, and the fat man was dead and buried—but none of it seemed real.

Maybe, I began to think, it was because I didn't want it to be real. I lay there for a long time and I could hear Bama saying, “What has happened to you?” And that was what bothered me. I didn't know. Things had happened too fast to know much of anything. It was like having a comet by the tail and not being able to let go.

Abruptly, I got out of bed, fumbled for matches, and lit the lamp. I looked at the picture again, but that didn't help. The cocky little man on the white horse didn't seem so cocky now, and I doubted that he was as sure of himself as he tried to make people believe.

I went into the office and fumbled around in the dark until I found the whisky that Bama had left. I poured and downed it. I poured again and downed that. I began to feel better.

I took the bottle and glass back into the room and sat on the bed and had another one. I was beginning to feel fine. Another drink or two and I would be ready to kick Napoleon off that white horse and climb on myself.

I don't know how long I sat there, with my mind going up in dizzy spirals, skipping from one place to another like a desert whirlwind. But after a while it hit me and I realized what I was doing. Nothing ever hit me any harder.

Suddenly I could understand Bama, because I was on the road to becoming just like him. Miles Stanford Bon-ridge, gentleman and son of a gentleman. Now I understood how a man could be so sick of himself that the most important thing in the world could be just forgetting.

But not for me. I hammered the cork into the bottle and took it back into the office and there it would stay.

Not for me. But the effort left me weak as I went back and sat on the bed and tried to piece together a lot of loose ends that didn't seem to fit anywhere.

But they did fit when you worked at it long enough. And the first loose end was that smuggler raid. Killing was one thing, but killing like that was something else and would never really be a part of me. I should have known that when I went back to my room and messed up the floor, and maybe I had known, in the back of my mind.

I sat there for a long time, getting a good look at myself and it wasn't very pretty. It was like that first day that I rode into Ocotillo and Marta had taken me to her house and fixed me up with the stuff to shave and take a bath with. I remembered the shock I'd got when I looked into that mirror. The face I'd seen was a stranger's face, and I guess I was experiencing the same thing all over again.

Except that I was looking deeper. Maybe I had a hold of that dark, illusive thing that they call a soul. But I turned loose of it in a hurry, just as I had looked away from the mirror.