The Desperado

Chapter 11

SO that was the way it was, because I had learned by this time that it didn't pay to act against Pappy's judgment. We watched August and September crawl by with painful slowness. Then came October with its sudden frosts and red leaves and sharp smells, and I think that was the hardest month of all.

And at last November came and Pappy went out to scout the country to the west, and when he came back he said we could try it, if I was still bound to go. It was a bitter cold night when at last we rode out of the hills and headed south, and we still had on the same clothes that we had worn for months. We were still without slickers, or coats of any kind. But I didn't mind the cold because I was going back to Texas again, to Laurin.

We crossed the Red River far west of Red River Station, on my nineteenth birthday, and Pappy said maybe that was a good sign. Maybe we would make it to John's City and everything would work out after all. But he only said it with his voice, and not with his eyes.

Nineteen years old. I could just as well have been ninety. Or nine hundred. I didn't feel any particular age, in this country where age didn't mean much anyway. Men like Pappy, and Buck Creyton, could have notched their guns long before they were nineteen, if they had been the kind of men to make a show about it.

I was on familiar ground when we crossed the river and got into Texas again. I half expected Pappy to leave me there and go his own way toward New Mexico,but he only said, “We've been together now for a pretty good spell. I guess I wouldn't rest good without knowing how you made out.”

It didn't occur to me to wonder what I was going to do or say when the time came to face Laurin. I didn't know how I was going to explain away the reputation I'd got as a gunman, and it didn't worry me until we had come all the way and sighted the Bannerman ranch house in the distance.

And Pappy said, “Well, son, from here on in, I guess it's up to you.”

Pappy knew what he was, the things he stood for. And he knew that he wouldn't do my cause any good if Laurin saw us together. And, for the first time, I saw Pappy as Laurin would have seen him—a hard, dirty old man with ratty gray hair hanging almost to his shoulders. A man in pitiful rags and tired to death of running, but not knowing what else to do. A man with no pride and no strength except in his guns.

Laurin would see only death in those pale gray eyes of Pappy's, missing the shy kindness that I knew was there, too. Laurin would look at Pappy and see me as I would be in a few more years.

I said, “Is this good-by, Pappy?”

He smiled faintly. “Maybe, son. Or maybe I'll see you again. You never know.”

I said reluctantly, and Pappy could see the reluctance in my eyes and it made me ashamed, “You might as well come with me, Pappy. The Bannermans set a good table, and we both could use some grub.”

But he shook his head. “You go on, son.” We shook hands very briefly. “And good luck with that girl of yours.” He jerked his big black around abruptly, and without a good-by, without a wave of his hand or a backward look, he rode back to the north.

I watched him until he disappeared behind a rise in the land, and I felt alone, and unsure, and a little afraid. Doubt began to gnaw at my insides.

Good-by, Pappy.... Good luck.

I nudged Red gently and began riding over the flatland that I knew so well, toward the ranch house. Toward Laurin. As I got closer the uneasiness inside me got worse. For the first time in months, I was conscious of the way I looked—my own ragged clothes, my own shaggy hair hanging almost to my shoulders. And in contrast, my shining, well-cared-for pistols, tied down at my thighs. No pride and no strength except in his guns. That was the thought I had used in my mind to describe Pappy... and all along I had been describing myself.

For a moment, I was tempted to turn and ride as hard as I could until I caught Pappy. Pappy was my kind. We understood each other.... But the thought went away. Clothes didn't make a gentleman. Long hair didn't make a killer. Laurin would understand that.

The thought of turning back went away, but not the feeling of uneasiness, as I got closer to the ranch house. I came in the back way, around by the barns and corrals, and a couple of punchers in the shoeing corral looked up and watched for a moment, and then went on about their work. They didn't even recognize me. More than likely they pegged me for a saddle tramp looking for a few days' work, and, knowing that Joe Bannerman never hired saddle tramps, lost interest.

Then, as I rode on through the ranch back yard, I saw a man come out of a barn with a saddle thrown over his shoulder, heading for a smaller corral near the house where the colts were kept for breaking. He glanced at me once without slowing his walk. Suddenly he stopped, looking at me. He waited until I pulled up alongside him, and then he said:

“My God, Tall!”

The man was Laurin's brother, Joe Bannerman. He looked at me as if he wasn't entirely sure that his eyes weren't playing tricks on him. He looked at Red, who had been a glossy, well-cared-for show horse the last time he saw him, but whose coat was now shaggy and scarred in a thousand places where thorns and brush had raked his royal hide.

I tried to keep my voice light, but I knew that the change in me was even more shocking than the change in Red. I said. “How are you, Joe? I guess you might say the prodigal has returned.”

But Joe Bannerman had no smile of welcome. He shifted the saddle down to the crook of his arm. “Tall, you're crazy! What do you mean, coming back to John's City like this?”

But he knew before I had time to answer. Laurin. Something happened to his face. He said, “Look, Tall, if you know what's good for you, you'll get out of here in a hurry. There's nothing in John's City for you any more.” Then he added, “Nothing at all.”

“Don't you think that's up for somebody else to decide, Joe?”

“She's already decided,” Joe Bannerman said roughly. “Next week she's getting married.”

I stiffened. At first the words had no meaning, and then I thought: Joe never liked me. This is just his way of trying to get rid of me. I even managed a smile when I said, “I guess I won't put much stock in that, Joe, until I hear Laurin say it herself.”

He glanced once at the house and then jerked his head toward the barn that he had come out of. “For God's sake, Tall, be sensible. Get that red horse in the barn before somebody sees you.”

There was something in his voice that made me rein Red over. I followed him, not quite knowing why, as he walked quickly to the other side of the barn, where the house was blocked from view. I dropped down from the saddle and said, “Now maybe you'll tell me what this is all about.”

Joe Bannerman dropped his saddle to the ground and seemed to search for the right words. He said, “I don't want you to get the idea that I'm doing this for your benefit, because I don't give a good round damn what happens to you. But I don't want any trouble around here if I can help it.” Then his voice got almost gentle. And I didn't understand that. “You ought to realize better than anybody else,” he went on, “that things have changed since... since you went away from John's City. You're a hunted man, Tall, with a price on your head.”

I said, “You wouldn't be having any ideas about that reward money, would you, Joe?”

“Don't be a damned fool!” he said angrily. “I just want to keep you from getting killed on my doorstep. Like I told you, there's nothing here for you. Why don't you just ride off and let us alone?”

“I'd still like to hear it from Laurin,” I said, “before I do any riding.” I started to turn toward the house again, but an urgency in Joe Bannerman's voice cut off the movement.

“Goddammit, Tall, listen to me! I'm trying to tell you that it's all over between you and Laurin.” Then he sighed wearily. “I guess you've got a lot of catching up to do. I'll try to give it to you as straight as I know how. Ray Novak's in that house, and he has orders from the federal government to get you. Ray was made a deputy United States marshal after the bluebellies were pulled out of Texas. I told you that things changed....”

I think I knew what was coming next. I tried to brace myself for it, but it didn't do any good when Joe Bannerman said, “It's Ray Novak that Laurin is in love with, Tall. Not you. She's afraid of you. You've got to be just a name on wanted posters, like this Pappy Garret that you've been riding with. You've got to be a killer, just like him.” He shook his head. “I don't know, maybe you had a right to kill that policeman on account of your father. But all those others... What is it, Tall, a disease of some kind? Can't you ever turn your back on a fight? Don't you know any way to settle an argument except with guns?”

Then he looked at me for what seemed a long time. “I guess you don't even know what I'm talking about,” he said. “That's the way you always were, never turning your back on a fight. And you never lost one before, did you, Tall? But you're losing one now. It's Ray Novak that Laurin's going to marry. Not you.”

I stood dumbly for a moment before the anger started to work inside me. I still didn't believe the part about Laurin. A thing like ours couldn't just end like that. But Ray Novak—at the very beginning of the trouble it had been Ray Novak, and now at the end it was the same way. I started for the house again, but Joe Bannerman stepped in my path.

“Tall, you can't go in there. Ray has been sworn in to get you.”

I said tightly, “Get out of my way.”

He didn't move.

I said, “This is my problem and I'll settle it my own way. If you try to stop me, Joe, I'll kill you.”

His face paled. Then I thought I saw that look in his eyes that I had seen once before—just before he told me that Pa was dead. For some reason that I didn't understand, he was feeling sorry for me, and I hated him for it.

Slowly, he stepped back out of my way. He said quietly, “I believe you would. Killing me wouldn't mean any more to you than stepping on an ant. It wouldn't mean a thing to you.”

“Don't be a damned fool,” I said. But he had already stepped back, watching me with that curious mixture of awe and fear that I had come to expect from men like him. He didn't try to stop me as I went around the side of the barn and headed for the back steps of the house. Maybe he didn't feel it was necessary, because it was too late to stop anything now. Ray Novak was waiting for me at the back door.

If he had made the slightest move I would have killed him right there. I realized that I had never really hated anybody but him. It would have been a pleasure to kill him, and I knew I could do it, no matter how much training his pa had given him with guns. But he didn't make a move. He didn't give me the excuse, and I'd never killed a man yet who hadn't made the first move.

He said mildly, “I guess you better come in, Tall.”

He was just a blurred figure behind the screen door and I couldn't see what his eyes were saying. Then another figure appeared behind him. It was Laurin.

Woodenly, I went up the steps, opened the screen door, and stepped into the kitchen. Laurin was standing rigidly behind Ray, and I thought: She's grown older, the same as I have. Those large eyes of hers were no longer the eyes of a girl, but of a woman who had known worry and trouble and—at last I placed it—fear. She had changed in her own way almost as much as I had changed. Only Ray Novak seemed the same.

Ray said, “We don't want any trouble, Tall. Not here. Maybe it's best that you came back this way and we can get things settled once and for all.”

Laurin said nothing. She didn't move. She looked at me as if she had never seen me before, and in my mind I heard Joe Bannerman saying: There's nothing for you here in John's City. Nothing at all. But I fought back the sickness inside me. Laurin had loved me once, that was all that mattered. She still loved me. Nothing could change that.

Ray Novak moved his head toward the parlor. “Do you want to come in here, Tall? We've got a lot to say and not much time to say it in. My pa is coming in from town in a few minutes to pick me up in the buckboard. We'll have to get everything settled before then.”

I said, “I can settle with you later. This is just between me and Laurin.”

I looked at her and still she didn't move. I couldn't tell what she was thinking. At last she said, “It's Ray's affair as much as ours, Tall. You see, we're going to be married.”

I guess a part of me must have died then. Joe Bannerman had said it and I hadn't believed it. Now it was Laurin herself, telling me as soberly as she knew how that it was all over between us, and I knew that this time it was the truth. I wasn't sure what I felt, or what I wanted to do about it. I suppose I wanted to go to her, to take hold of her with my hands and shake some sense into her. Or hold her close and make her see that it wasn't over with us, that it never would be. But her eyes stopped me. Perhaps she had expected something like that, and I saw that look of fear come out and look at me. She started backing away. She was afraid of me.

Ray Novak said, “I wanted you to know about me and Laurin before I went out looking for you. I didn't want you to think that I was going around behind your back....”

I shoved him aside with the flat of my hand and took Laurin's arm before she could back away. She tried to twist out of my grasp, but I held on and jerked her toward me. Anger like I've never known before was swelling my throat. I said, “Tell him to get out of here! If he doesn't, so help me God, I'll kill him where he stands!”

Ray Novak started to step forward. Instinctively, his hand started to move toward his gun, and I was praying that he would follow through with the motion. But Laurin said:

“Ray!”

And he stopped. Then something strange happened to Laurin. A moment before her eyes were bright and shiny with fear, but now they showed nothing.

She said, “Ray, do as he says.”

Ray Novak's face darkened. “I'm not leaving you alone with him. He's crazy. There's something wrong and mixed up and rotten in that head of his.”

“Ray, please!”

He hesitated for another moment. Then he relaxed. “All right, Laurin. Whatever you say. But I'll be outside if...”

He left the rest unsaid. He turned and went out the back door, taking up a position a few paces away from the back steps.

I heard myself laugh abruptly. “So that's the man you're going to marry! A man with a yellow streak up his back that shows all the way through his shirt!”

But I stopped. That wasn't what I wanted to say at all. Anyway, I knew that Ray Novak wasn't yellow. He might be a lot of things, but a coward wasn't one of them.

Laurin said, “Tall, please. You're hurting me.”

I turned loose her arm. My thoughts were all mixed up in my mind and I couldn't get the words arranged to tell her what I wanted to say. I found myself standing there dumbly, rubbing my face with my hands and wondering how I was going to explain it to her. If I could only explain it in a way she could understand, then everything would be all right again. But she didn't give me a chance to get my thoughts arranged.

She said flatly, “Why don't you go away, Tall? Go far away so that we'll never see you or hear from you again. Ray will give you that chance, because he knows what you meant to me once. He has been sworn in as a special deputy to get you. He's working for the government, Tall, a United States marshal—but he'll give you a chance if you'll only take it.”

I said, “I don't need any favors from Ray Novak!” But that wasn't what I wanted to say, either. “Laurin, Laurin, what's wrong? What have they said... what have they done to turn you against me like this?”

She shook her head, a bewildered look in her eyes. “You actually believe that your trouble is caused by other people, don't you?”

Think? Iknew there wouldn't have been any trouble if it hadn't been for the Creytons, and Thorntons, and Hagans, and Novaks. But how could I explain that to her? Women didn't understand things like that. I remembered what my ma had said, long ago, about my fight with Criss Bagley: But, Tall, why didn't you run?

I said quickly, “Laurin, listen to me. This isn't the end of us. It's only the beginning. It won't be the same as we planned, but we can make it good. We can be together.” I took her arm, gently this time, and she didn't try to pull away. “They'll never catch me,” I said. “The army, Ray Novak, nobody else. We'll go away. Pappy knows a place in New Mexico. We can go there. We'll be together, that's the only thing that counts. You don't mean it about marrying Ray Novak, it's just because you've heard wrong things about me. You love me, not him.”

The words came rushing out in senseless confusion, and they stopped as abruptly as they had begun. The look of bewilderment went out of Laurin's eyes, and amazement took its place.

“Love you?” she said strangely. “I don't even know you. I don't suppose I ever knew you. Not really, the way you get to know people and understand them, and be a part of them. You're...” She shook her head helplessly. “You're nobody I ever saw before. You're some wild animal driven crazy—by the smell of blood.”

Her voice was suddenly and painfully gentle, cutting worse than curses. She dropped her head.

“I'm sorry I said that, Tall.”

But she meant it. She didn't try to get out of that. I turned loose of her and walked woodenly to the door. I pushed the door open, went down the steps and into the yard.

Ray Novak said, “Tall.”

I went on toward the barn where I had left Red. I don't know where I thought I was going from there. To catch up with Pappy, maybe, and try to make it to New Mexico with him. Maybe I wasn't going anywhere. It didn't make any difference.

Ray Novak caught up with me as I was about to climb back into the saddle. “I'd better tell you the way things are,” he said. “I'm giving you a day's start to get out of John's City country. Then I'll be coming after you, Tall.”

I said flatly, “Don't be a goddamned fool all your life. I don't want any favors from you. I'm right here. Take me now if you think you can.”

He shook his head. “That's the way Laurin wants it.” He hesitated for a moment, then added, “Don't underrate me, Tall. I've learned things about guns and gunmen since you saw me last. I won't be as easy as Hagan, and Paul Creyton, and some of the others. Don't think that I will, Tall.”

“You and your goddamned two bullets in a tin can,” I said. “You don't even know what shooting is. But I'll teach you. You come after me and I'll teach you good, Ray.”

I got up to the saddle and rode south, without looking back. Without thinking, or wanting to think. I didn't know where I was going and I didn't care. I just knew that I had to get away and I had to keep from thinking about Laurin. I should have hated her, I suppose. But I couldn't. And I suppose I should have killed Ray Novak while I had the chance, but, somehow, I couldn't do that either. Not with Laurin looking. I felt a hundred years old. As old as Pappy Garret, and as tired. But, like Pappy, I had to keep running.

I didn't see the buckboard until it was too late. And by that time, I didn't care one way or another. It was old Martin Novak coming up the wagon road from Garner's Store, and I vaguely remembered Ray saying that his pa was coming by the Bannermans' to pick him up. I had forgotten all the rules that Pappy had gone to so much trouble to teach me. I let him get within fifty yards of me before I even noticed him, and by that time things had boiled down to where there was only one way out.

It's the same thing all over again, I thought dumbly. But they never understand that.

Nobody could understand it, unless maybe it was Pappy, or others like him. The monotonous regularity with which it happened would almost have been funny, if it hadn't been so deadly serious. It was like dreaming the same bad dream over and over again until it no longer frightened you or surprised you—you merely braced yourself as well as you could, because you knew what was going to happen next.

Martin Novak had the buckboard pulled across the road. I could just see the top of his head and the rifle he had pointed at me, as he stood on the other side, using the hack for a breastwork.

“Just keep your hands away from your pistols, Tall,” he called, “and ride this way, slow and easy.”

I didn't have a chance against the rifle, not at that range. But I felt a strange calm. I never doubted what would happen next. I didn't even wonder how it would end this time, because this time I knew.

But I played it straight, the way Pappy would have done. I said, “What's this all about? What's that rifle for, anyway?”

“I think you know, Tall,” he called. “Now just do as I say. Ride in slow and easy, and keep your hands away from your guns.”

I nudged Red forward, keeping my hands on the saddle horn. If it had been Pappy, he would have been wearing his pistols for a saddle draw, high up on the waist, with the butts forward. I had forgotten to make the switch, but even that didn't bother me now. I looked at Martin Novak and thought: There's only one way, I guess, to teach men like you to leave us alone.

When I got within about twenty yards of the buck-board, he motioned me to stop. He was wondering how he was going to disarm me, and probably remembering stories he had heard about what had happened to Bass Hagan.

He said, “I don't want to have to kill you, Tall, but I will if you don't do exactly as I say. Now just reach with one hand, where I can see, and unbuckle your cartridge belts.”

I said, “Just a minute, Mr. Novak. Hell, I never did anything to you.”

He raised up from behind the buckboard and I could see the star pinned to his vest. The Novaks and their god-damned tin stars, I thought.

“It's more than that, Tall,” he said solemnly. “You're wanted by the law. It's my job to arrest you, and that's what I intend to do.” He studied my hands, which still hadn't moved toward my belt buckles. But he still had that rifle aimed at the center of my chest, and he wasn't too worried.

He said, “You've... been to the Bannermans', I guess.”

I said, “Yes. I've been there.”

He nodded soberly. “Ray shouldn't of done it,” he said thoughtfully, almost to himself. “He should of took you in himself. But,” he added, “I guess Laurin wanted you to have one more chance.”

I said, “I guess she did.” I didn't particularly want to kill him. I didn't have anything against him except that he insisted on making my business his business. And if I killed him I knew I wouldn't get that day's start that Ray Novak had promised. But that didn't bother me. Ray Novak could come after me any time he felt like it. I was ready for him.

For a moment, I thought I'd try to talk the old man out of it, but I knew that it wouldn't do any good. Like Pappy, I had grown tired to trying to talk to people in a language that they didn't understand. It was easier to let my guns speak for me.

“There's no use holding off, Tall,” the old man said soberly. “Just go on and drop your guns.”

I looked for a brief moment behind my shoulder. I could still see the Bannerman ranch house. A shot would be heard there, if I was forced to shoot. Maybe they were even watching us. It was possible that Ray Novak was already getting a horse saddled to come after us and try to stop it.

I didn't care one way or another. I had stopped caring about anything when Laurin cut herself away from me. What was there to care about?

I said, “All right, Mr. Novak. I guess you win.”

I could see relief in his eyes as I began to unbuckle my left-hand gun. He was slightly surprised and, because of my reputation, maybe a little disappointed because I gave up so easy. But he was relieved. And the relieved are apt to be careless.

I unslung the cartridge belt, but instead of dropping it, I handed it down to him. Instinctively, he reached for it, pulling his rifle out of line.

Marshal Martin Novak was a smart man. He caught his mistake almost immediately. But by that time it was already too late. He was off balance, in no good position to use either pistol or rifle. He knew that he was going to die before I ever made a move toward my other .44. I saw death in those dark, solemn little eyes of his. I thought, You've got all the time in the world. Take your time and do a good job of it. And then I shot him.

The bullet went in just above his shirt pocket on the left side, and he slammed back against the buckboard. The team scampered nervously for a moment, but I pulled Red over in front of them and quieted them down. Martin Novak went to his knees, held himself up for an instant with his hands, then fell with his face in the dust. He didn't move after that.

I sat there for a moment looking at him. Red was nervous and wanted to pitch, but I reined him down roughly with a heavy hand. I heard myself saying:

“I didn't want to kill you, Mr. Novak, but, goddamn you, why couldn't you let me alone?”

Then I realized that he couldn't hear me. And I knew that before long somebody would start wondering about that pistol shot. I pulled Red around and headed toward the hills.