A Noose for the Desperado

Chapter Seven

IT'S FUNNY HOW everything seems different in the light of day. Most of your doubts and fears go with the darkness, and after a while you forget about them completely.

The kid, Johnny Rayburn, got back to Ocotillo late the next day. I came out of the office and there he was standing at the bar, gagging on a shot of tequila.

I said, “You made a quick ride. Did things work out all right in Tucson?”

“Sure, Mr. Cameron.”

Then Kreyler came into the saloon and I said, “Wait a minute. All this is for the Marshal's benefit, so he might as well hear about it.”

The three of us went back to the office, and I could feel Kreyler's eyes on my back, looking for a soft spot to sink a knife in. But he didn't bother me now. I had him where I wanted him and he knew it. Or he would know it pretty soon.

I said, “All right, kid, let's have it. Tell Mr. Kreyler just exactly what you've been doing for the past day and night.”

The Marshal gave the kid a quick look. Then he sat in a chair and waited, and he might as well have been wearing a mask, for all the expression you could read on his face.

“Well,” the kid said, “I rode into Tucson, like you said, and I gave the ledger to—to the man Bama told me about. I gave him five hundred dollars and asked him if he would hold onto the book as long as I kept coming back every month to give him another hundred, and he said sure, he'd be glad to. Then I came back to Ocotillo.”

I said, “Tell us what's going to happen if we miss giving him the hundred dollars every month.”

“He'll turn the book over to the U.S. marshal's office,” the kid said.

I expected Kreyler to do something then, but he didn't. He just sat there with that slab face not telling me a thing.

“Well,” I said, “it looks like you're working for me, Kreyler, whether you like it or not.”

“It would seem that way,” he said flatly.

“It doesn't seem any way. You're working for me and you'll keep on working for me until I get tired of having you around.”

“All right, I'm working for you.”

I didn't like the way things were going. I had expected a hell of a racket about that ledger, but there he was sitting there as if he didn't care about it one way or the other. There was something going on behind those eyes of his, and I thought I knew what it was.

He kept looking at the kid, and then I realized that just three of us knew where that ledger was, me, Bama, and Johnny Rayburn, and if Kreyler wanted to find out where it was he would have to get it out of one of us. I didn't have to do much figuring to guess which one he would work on.

I jerked my head at the kid and said, “Go somewhere and get some sleep.” Then it hit me that just “somewhere” wouldn't be good enough. He had to be someplace where Kreyler wouldn't have a chance to work on him. So I said, “Get your stuff and bring it down here. We'll put up a cot or something and you can bunk with me until we figure out something better.”

“Well, gosh,” the kid said. “Sure, if you want me to, Mr. Cameron.” As he went out of the place he seemed to be walking about a foot off the floor, and he had suddenly developed a curious kind of toe-heel way of walking that reminded me of a cat with sore feet. It wasn't until later that I realized that I walked the same way, because I had learned that it was the quietest way to walk. And with a gunman, the quietest way of doing a thing is the safest way.

It began to dawn on me that Johnny Rayburn was imitating me. A thing like that had never happened before. I had never thought of myself as much of a hero, and it had never occurred to me that anybody would want to pattern his life after mine. But there it was, and there was something about it that pleased me—the same way, I guess, that a man is pleased to have some bawling, yelling brat named after him. It was something like being assured that a part of me would go on living, no matter what happened to Talbert Cameron.

I thought about that, and then I became aware of Kreyler sitting across the desk from me, watching me, reading the thoughts going around in my mind.

“There's something we'd better get straight right now,” I said. “If anything happens to that kid, I'll kill you. All the cavalry and United States marshals in Arizona won't be able to save you.”

He sat there for a while, half smiling. Then he got up and walked out.

It took Bama and the two scouts eight days to make the kind of map I wanted, but when they finally got back and put the finished product on my desk I saw that they had done a good job. The chart was drawn in six different sections, but Bama had the pieces lettered and numbered and the whole thing made sense when he put it together. There were almost a dozen natural traps that Bama had already marked, and there wasn't much for me to do except to post scouts along the various canyons and wait until a smuggler train was spotted.

“And what do we do,” Bama asked, “if the Mexicans decide not to use one of these particular canyons?”

“We'll wait. They'll take one of them sooner or later, and when they do, they won't have a chance.”

“No,” he said wearily, “I guess not. Do you want a drink?”

“No.”

“Well, I do.” And he went to the bar and came back with a bottle and glass. “Did the kid take care of the ledger all right?”

“Sure, he did fine.”

Very deliberately, Bama poured the tumbler brimful and then sat there looking at it. “I saw him out in the saloon,” he said, “when I came in. I thought he was you at first. He walks like you, talks like you, even dresses like you.”

I knew that it didn't mean a thing, but still I couldn't help being pleased that somebody else had noticed. “He picked the new rig out in Tucson,” I said, “with his own money. It's funny that he'd get just the kind of things I wear.”

“Funny?” Then Bama picked up the glass and drained it without taking a breath. He was tired and dirty and his eyes were red-rimmed from long hours of riding in the sun. He said, “I guess I don't see anything very funny about it.”

“What the hell's wrong with you, anyway? You know what I mean.”

“I don't know anything,” he said, “except that I just saw a kid out there blown up with his own conceit and making a goddamned pest of himself. Eight days ago he was just another punk kid who had got off the right track but not so far off that he couldn't have been put back on again. Now he's swaggering like a fighting rooster that hasn't got sense enough to know that he hasn't been equipped with gaffs. But I suppose you're doing something about that. What are you doing to him, anyway— giving him lessons in gun slinging?”

“I'm not doing a damn thing to him,” I said, and in spite of all I could do I was letting him get under my skin again. I stood up and grabbed the front of his shirt and twisted it. “Look,” I said tightly, “there's something we'd better have an understanding about. You're just working for me, like Kreyler and all the others. When I want you to say something or do something, I'll let you know. Until that time, you'll keep your goddamned mouth shut.”

As usual, I was sorry after I had said it. He just stood there looking at me with those sad old eyes and I knew that I would never be able to hate him.

“I'm sorry, Bama,” I said. “I didn't mean what I said, but why do you have to keep prodding me until I fly off the handle that way?”

He kept looking at me and I had the uncomfortable feeling that he was pitying me, and if there was anybody in the world that I didn't want pity from, it was Bama. I sat down and said, “Go on, have another drink and forget it.”

I poured one for him and shoved it across the desk, but he shook his head and said, “I can forget about us because I guess we're not very important to anybody now. But that kid is different.”

I was getting impatient again, but I forced myself to sit tight until he got it off his chest.

Bama said, “Why don't you send him back to wherever he came from? He'd listen to you. Just tell him to go back and put in his time on the work gang and give himself a chance to live like a human being.”

I said, “I'm not holding him here. He can do anything he wants to do.” But that wasn't answering Bama's question and we both knew it. “Anyway, he's the one who has to take care of that ledger.”

Bama sat back and closed his eyes. “Of course, what I think doesn't amount to much, but I was wondering if it wouldn't be better for all of us if we let the kid go—and the ledger, and the smuggler trains, and all the rest of it.”

“Now, that's a hell of an idea. Look, one raid is all we need to make. That will give us enough money to keep a hideout until the law forgets that we were ever alive. But that money, we've got to have that.”

“But is money the most important thing?”

I got up, tired of the senseless bickering that was getting us nowhere. “By God, you're crazy,” I said. “That's the only way to explain the way your brain works.”

And Bama smiled that faraway smile and I knew that he wasn't mad at me, and never would be, really. “Sooner or later it always gets around to that, doesn't it? Everybody's crazy.” He finished off the drink I had poured for him. “Well, maybe that's the right answer. I don't know any more.”

I got to thinking about it later and decided that maybe Bama had been right on a few points. For one thing, the kid was carrying this imitating business too far. God knows where he found them, but somewhere he had picked up a couple of old Prescott revolvers. Navy revolvers, they were called, but the Navy had never bought any of them, and neither had anybody else who had any idea what a good pistol was supposed to be. But the kid had them buckled on with a couple of cartridge belts that I figured he had made himself, and he had his holsters cut away like a real badman and tied down at his thighs.

He was in the saloon talking to Marta when I first saw him in that getup, and I figured it was about time we had a talk.

Marta was laughing at something when I came up, and I said, “I'm glad to see that everybody's in a good humor for a change.”

She laughed again and pointed at Johnny. “Juanito say he be big man like you someday.” The kid's face turned red and he fiddled with a whisky glass that was about a quarter full of clear tequila. “Maybe bigger, he say,” and Marta's eyes had the devil in them again, that look she got whenever she got two men together. It was the kind of look that you see in Mexicans' eyes when they take their roosters to the fighting pit and start roughing them up before the battle.

But I knocked a hole in some of her fun when I said, “Yes he'll be a bigger man than me.” Which, after all, wasn't saying so much. “But not the way he means,” I went on. “Not with guns.”

The kid's face had started to brighten, but it fell quickly. Then it took on a half-angry, defiant look. “I never said anything about it,” he said, “but I was considered a pretty good shot down in the Nueces River country. I guess I know as much about guns as most people.”

“You don't know a hell of a lot,” I said, “or you wouldn't be making a fool of yourself with those old Prescotts.”

Blood rushed to his face as if I had just slapped him. “Look,” I said, any my voice was as deadly serious as I could make it. “I hired you on as a messenger boy, not a gunman. When you're heeled you're just advertising for trouble. On the other hand, there aren't many men—not even in Ocotillo—who would take a shot at a man who didn't have a chance to shoot back.”

The kid stiffened. “Mr. Cameron,” he said, “I guess you don't know much about Ocotillo, even if you do run it.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

Then he took off his hat and I saw the bump over his left ear, and an open cut about an inch long that was just beginning to scab over.

I must have sat there for a minute or more before I could think of anything to say. The thing jarred me because I thought I had everything under control—I had Kreyler nailed down, most of the men were satisfied, and I had two men, the kid and Bama, that I could trust. And still somebody was working against me.

At last I jerked my head at Marta and said, “Go home or somewhere. I want to talk to Johnny alone.”

She didn't like that much, being brushed away like a bothersome fly. But then she saw that I meant business and she got up from the table and sort of melted away.

“All right,” I said. “Tell me about it and don't leave out anything.”

He shrugged. “Well, it was last night. I was in the saloon for a while, and—well, I guess I kind of made friends with that girl, Marta. After a while she said why didn't I walk to her house with her, down in the Mexican part of town, and I said sure, I'd like to. That was the way it started. I got to her house, all right, but her pa raised such a hell of a racket that I didn't stay.” He grinned a little. “I don't understand much of that greaser talk, but I understood enough to know that her old man doesn't like gringos. Well, after that I started back for the saloon, and the streets down there are as dark as hell. That's where they jumped me.”

“Who jumped you? Mexicans?”

“If they were Mexicans, they knew a lot of English cuss words. There were three of them, I think, and I still don't know what the hell they wanted. I didn't have any money. And if it was somebody with a grudge against me, why didn't they shoot me instead of hitting me over the head?”

“How did you get away from them?”

“I guess they weren't expecting much of a fight. Anyway, we stirred up the Mexicans. The next thing I knew I was in one of those adobe houses and Marta was taking care of this cut on my head.”

Slowly I began adding things together. Kreyler and that Mexican girl—they might have something to do with it. Maybe the Marshal was just crazy enough to fight for that girl when he didn't have guts enough to fight for himself. I was beginning to understand that women could make men do crazy things. Anyway, I put Johnny Ray-burn and Marta together in my mind and I didn't like it at all. Even if it had nothing to do with that ambush.

“It's about time we had an understanding,” I said. “That girl, Marta, is not for you. The sooner you get that through your head, the better off you'll be.”

I had expected an argument, but instead of arguing he just sat there looking puzzled. “Why, gosh, Mr. Garner-on,” he said, “I never even thought about her. Not the way you mean.” And he began to look uncomfortable. “Well,” he said, “to tell the truth, I've got a girl down in Texas waiting for me, and I guess she's the only girl in the world as far as I'm concerned. Do you know what I mean?”

He hit me with it and I hadn't been expecting it. It knocked me right out of Ocotillo and into the big, wild Panhandle country, which had been my country once— but that was long ago. There had been a girl there too, and she had waited as long as any girl could be expected to wait, I guess. But I hadn't got around to going back until it was too late.

My first impulse was to strip those guns oft nun and make him go back to Texas and give himself up. But then I remembered the ledger, and the kid was the only one who could take care of that for me. And that had to be taken care of. I had to keep my hands around Kreyler's throat.

Until after one more raid. My visions of riches were gone. Kreyler had found my soft spot—the kid—and he was already beginning to shove the knife in.

“Is anything wrong, Mr. Cameron?”

“Wrong?” For a moment I forgot what we were talking about. “No, nothing's wrong. Just see if you can find Bama, will you, and tell him to see me in the office.”

Bama took his time about coming, but finally he did come, and the world felt like a saner, safer place with Bama around. He helped himself to one of Basset's cigars on the desk, then he pulled up a leather-bottomed chair and sat down.

“You look worried,” he said. “That's not much like you, Tall Cameron.”

Why the hell he couldn't just call me Tall I don't know. But he always used my full name, and for some reason it always reminded me of the first time I ever saw my name on a “Wanted” poster.

But that was just a passing thought, as he sat there looking at me, and I was surprised to see that he was almost sober—or as sober as I had ever seen him, anyway.

I said, “I think Kreyler has already gone to work on the kid. It was a mistake letting Kreyler know who was going to take care of the ledger for us, but I guess it's too late to worry about that.”

And I told him what the kid had told me, about the bushwhacking and the way they had tried to brain him, and Bama sat there rolling the cigar from one side of his mouth to the other and not saying anything.

“If they get their hands on him again,” I said, “they'll beat the information out of him and then put a bullet in his skull.” Bama still didn't do anything, so I said, “Why don't you say something?”

“What good would it do? It's your show now. You've got everything just the way you want it. Of course, you could send the kid back to Texas if you wanted to.”

“You knew we can't do that. Everything here depends on Kreyler, and Kreyler depends on the kid.”

Bama sighed. That was all.

“How many men on my payroll would fall in with Kreyler?”

“Five, maybe six. You find malcontents wherever you go, but I couldn't point them out for you.”

Then I went to the map that I had tacked on the wall of the office and said what I had meant to say in the first place.

“We've got a scout report that a smuggler train has entered here, at a place called Big Mouth Canyon, about twenty-four hours ago. Heavily loaded, according to the scout, with maybe a record load of silver or gold. How soon can you get the men together?”

Bama stared at me. “You can't attack in a place like that. They'll be traveling over open country. Their outriders will be fanned out and they'll shoot us to pieces.”

“We can't string it out any longer,” I said. “This is the raid we have to make. And it will be the last one.”

Bama looked at me, and then at the map, and then he sighed again and got up from his chair. “Well, I'll round up as many as I can find,” he said, “and tell them we'll meet at the same place tonight.”

That was one thing about Bama, you didn't have to talk all day to get an idea across. One raid, that was all I wanted, and then we'd find a place to start all over again —not, as Bama had said, that it made much difference about us. But the kid still had that girl waiting for him, and Bama knew how I felt about that.

It all began much the same as the last raid, except that I was the boss now and not just another rider. But I didn't have the knack for organizing the way Basset had had. I didn't have the patience to sit down with paper and pencil and check off all the names of men I could depend on. I left that job to Bama while I took Johnny Rayburn around to the livery barn to get our rigs in shape.

I didn't like the idea of bringing the kid along on the raid, but I couldn't very well leave him back in Ocotillo making bullet bait of himself. The stableman brought my black in, and a bay for Johnny Rayburn, and then we heard a commotion outside and Bama came in.

His face was worried and he was wiping nervous sweat off the back of his neck with a dirty handkerchief. I waved the stableman out of the place and said, “What's going on?”

“You've got to send somebody out,” he said, “and call your men in, because the raid is off.”

“Like hell,” I said.

He wiped his neck some more and then brought the handkerchief across his mouth. “Maybe you'd better come out and see for yourself.”

I went out, with the kid on my heels, and saw maybe a dozen men ganged around in front of the saloon. In the middle there were two horses, and it didn't take me long to see what the excitement was about. As I began to shove men aside I heard Kreyler saying. “Morry, get yourself a partner and ride out to the meeting place and tell the men to come back in.”

By that time I was in the middle of things. I said, “Just stay where you are, all of you.” One of the horses was nervous, snorting and pawing the ground, the way animals will do at the smell of blood. He started to rear up but I grabbed the reins and jerked him down good and hard, and then I stroked his neck for a minute until he quieted down. After all that I finally got around to inspecting the thing in the saddle.

It had been a man once, but now it wasn't much of anything. He lay belly down across the saddle, his feet and hands tied with a strip of rawhide under the horse's belly to hold him in place.

“Somebody give me a knife.”

A knife appeared from somewhere and I cut the rawhide thongs. The body slid out of the saddle and sprawled out in the dust at my feet. He was one of my scouts, a little man with a mangy beard and a pair of wide-open eyes that seemed to be staring about a thousand miles into space. He had been shot all to pieces and there was no use feeling of his pulse to see if he was dead.

I went around to the other horse where the second body was, and I cut him down. This one had been my chief scout, the lanky, tobacco-chewing man who had thrown his weight on my side the day I shot Basset. He was bleeding from almost a dozen wounds, wounds that at first looked as if he had been caught in the haphazard blast of a scatter gun. But then I saw that there was nothing haphazard about it. He had been shot to death scientifically, by an expert rifleman, with the bullets just missing the really vital parts of his anatomy. It was the hard way to die, the way he had died. It was the long way.

I don't know how long I stood there looking at him before I began working up some kind of feeling about it. I had never known him very well. He was just a man on the run, like the rest of us, and his name was Malloy, and he was a pretty good scout who did his job without asking too many questions. That was about as much as I knew about him. But, seeing him sprawled out in the dust, I seemed to know him better that I had ever known him before. And for a moment something like fear struck in my guts, and I had the crazy idea that it was myself that I was looking at. I could almost feel the pain that was still a silent scream in the scout's eyes, I could almost feel the darkness closing in....

Then Bama said hoarsely, “My God, he's still alive!”

I snapped out of it, and I looked into the scout's eyes, and I saw that Bama was right.

“Get hold of him and take him into the saloon,” I said. “Take him back to the office and put him on my bed. Bama, see if you can find Marta. She's pretty good at this kind of thing.”

But I knew that neither Marta nor anybody else could help him now.

Four men picked him up as easily as they could and took him into my room and put him on my bed. Somebody brought some water and rags.

“Whisky.”

Somebody brought the bottle, but I knew that the scout would never be able to drink it. I soaked a rag and washed his face and that was about all I could do for him. It occurred to me then that it had been meant all along for him to live until he got back to Ocotillo. Such careful shooting wouldn't have been necessary if they had meant only to kill him.

“How do you feel, Malloy? Can you swallow some whisky?” They were both stupid questions, but I couldn't think of anything else to say. For a moment his eyes lost their glassiness, and he looked at me and at the men crowding into the room.

“Who did it, Malloy, can you tell us that?”

It took a long time to get his mouth working, and when . finally did get it working, no sound would come out. I put the wet cloth to his face again and squeezed a little of the water between his lips. He tried again, and this time I could make out the words “Smugglers... Indians...” His mouth kept working, but those were the last words he ever said.

I turned around and said, “Get out of here, all of you.” Then I saw that Bama had come back with Marta and I motioned for Bama to come in.

The girl came in with him and I said, “Not you. He's already dead.”

She looked at me in that flat way of hers, and then she crossed herself. “I say prayer.”

It looked like it was a little late to pray for Malloy, but what difference did it make?

She knelt down by the bed where the dead man was and I turned to Bama. “Smugglers. Indians. What the hell did he mean by that? Apaches don't run in this part of the country.”

“Mexican Indians,” Bama said. “They're even more expert at torture than Apaches.”

“Do these Indians run smuggler trains of their own?”

Bama shook his head. “The Mexicans hire them sometime, when they have to, as guards, and that's what we've run into this time. The Mexicans don't like them, but your men like them even less. They won't go up against a smuggler train with an Indian guard, if they know about it.”

I thought a minute. “They will this time, because we can't wait for another one.”

Bama didn't believe me. He thought that I had run up against something that I couldn't knock over.

I said, “You'd better be getting your horse ready.”

He just stood there. “They won't follow you. They won't go up against those Indians. They're scared to death of them.”

“They'll be scared of something else if they don't.”

I walked into the saloon and Bama came after me, more out of curiosity than anything else. The men were ganged up at the bar pouring whisky down their gullets to settle their guts. I saw Johnny Rayburn and motioned him out of the way, and then I heard Kreyler saying:

“Mexicans are one thing but Indians are something else. If you men want to follow Cameron and wind up like those two scouts, that's fine, but not me.”

I was behind him before he knew it. Instinct told me that arguing with him would only be a waste of time, so I stepped in and hit him as hard as I could behind the ear.

It stunned him. It stunned all of them. From the corner of my eye I saw that Bama and Johnny had their hands on their guns, in case it came to that.

But it didn't. I jerked Kreyler around before his head cleared and hit him in the face. I slammed the heel of my hand on his chin and snapped his head back, then I hit the corner of his square jaw. It was a fool thing to do, maybe, using my hands when I had guns, but I was still remembering that he was a United States marshal. And I didn't want to kill a United States marshal, no matter who he was.

The way it turned out, I didn't need the guns. It hurts to get hit like that, behind the jaw when you're not expecting it. It hurt Kreyler. I could see pain flare up in those dull eyes as his head snapped back. He began to go down, gasping for breath and grabbing for something to hold to. But there wasn't anything there, and he fell to his knees, and then he went over on his side.

I stood back for a minute, panting, and looking at the men.

“Has anybody else got any ideas about not going on this raid?”

Nobody said anything for a minute. Then Bama yelled:

“Look out!”

But I had already seen Kreyler making a grab for his gun. I could have shot him, or I could have kicked the gun out of his hand, but I didn't do either one of those things. I stepped in and slammed the toe of my boot in his gut.

His mouth flew open and his face went from a dead white to an ashy gray. He folded up like a jackknife and began to gag. The Marshal would never be any sicker than he was at that minute, not if he lived to be a hundred. All the fight had gone out of him. The fight seemed to have gone out of everybody.

I said, “Bama, have you got a list of the men who are to make this raid?”

“I've got it,” he said.

Then I looked at the men, still standing at the bar with their mouths hanging open stupidly. “We'll check the list at the meeting place,” I said. “Any man who's not there by sundown, I'll find him. I'll find him if it's the last thing I do.”

They began to get the idea that this raid was coming off, no matter what Kreyler or anybody else thought about it. They stood there for a minute, shuffling uneasily. Then one of them hitched his belt and started for the door, and the rest of them followed, one and two at a time.

“Well,” Bama said, “I guess that takes care of that. You always get what you want, don't you?”

“If I want it bad enough.”

Kreyler was still doubled up on the floor, too hurt and sick to move. I said, “What I told the other goes for you too. You'll meet with the rest of us, before sundown.” Then the three of us, me and Bama and Johnny Ray-burn, walked out of the place. Bama stopped at the bar just long enough to take a bottle out of the bartender's numb hands.