A Noose for the Desperado (16 page)

I guess we were pretty happy then.

It wasn't my fault that there was a war. It wasn't my fault that the
carpetbaggers and bluebellies moved into Texas looking for trouble. I
hadn't been the only hothead who decided that it was better to live a
life of my own outside the law than to live within the law and have a
bluecoat's boot heel on my neck.

But I hadn't known that it was going to work out like this. In the
back of my mind I had always planned on going back and having that
ranch and family just the way we had planned. But I never would. It was
too late.

“It matters little now, Lorena,

The past is in the eternal past....”

“Will you stop that goddamn noise!” I said, and my voice was
shriller, louder than I had intended.

Then we all began to hear the bright, faraway little sounds of bells,
and I heard somebody say, “Get ready, here they come,” and the word was
passed all along the line. I looked around and everything seemed to be
all right. All the men were down, covered up with brush. Nothing looked
out of place.

The bell sounds became mingled with the clatter of hoofs on the rocky
ground, and then I could see them coming.

“By God, it's just like I figured. Right down the middle.”

Bama didn't say anything. He looked frozen, and he was gripping his
rifle hard enough to put dents in it. The smugglers' advance guard was
getting close now, three Mexicans riding in line with about twenty
yards between them. Behind them came a fat old geezer on a dappled
horse, all decked out in a white sombrero and a scarlet sash and silver
bangles. He was almost as fat as Basset, but he was mean and tough and
he carried two six-guns and a knife and he had a scar from the top of
his left ear to the point of his chin to prove it. Flanking him there
were a couple of saddleless riders with dirty rags around their heads,
and I guessed they were the Indians who were scaring everybody to
death.

They didn't look so tough to me. They rode heavily, slouched on their
ponies, in the way of all Indians. Most of them wore dirty hickory
shirts that they had picked up somewhere, and a great variety of pants,
most of which were torn off or cut off just below the knee. There were
a great many knives and hatchets and a few old cap-and-ball pistols
that must have been relics of the Mexican War.

After the advance guard, and the head smuggler and his personal
bodyguard, there came the train of little gray mules and the outriders.
It was pretty much my first raid all over again, except for the
Indians. There was nothing much we could do now except lie there and
hope that they didn't see us until we had the whole train in our field
of fire.

After they all came into line I saw that the picture wasn't as bad as
the scouts had painted it. After some fast counting I saw that there
were only twenty Indians and four Mexicans, including the head man, so
they only had us outnumbered twenty-four to twenty. Which wasn't bad,
considering that we had our twenty in ambush.

I could feel Bama tighten up as the outriders began to come by. They
were damn near close enough to shake hands with.

I let about half the train go by and said, “Suck your guts in and
pick out a target.” Then I got an Indian's head in the V of my rear
sight. I waited an instant while the knob of my front sight settled on
his ear. I should have squeezed the trigger. Bama was waiting for it,
white-faced, but I couldn't seem to make my finger move.

This was a hell of a time to think about ethics, but I simply
couldn't kill a man like that, without giving him a chance in the world
to fight back. I lowered my rifle. Before I realized what I was doing I
was standing up and yelling—and that, I guess was when hell moved to
Arizona.

IT DIDN'T TAKE long to see why the men held such a deadly respect for
the Indian's fighting ability. There was no period of surprise when I
stood up and yelled, there was no time wasted in shock, and they didn't
wonder what to do. They just did it. One instant they were riding in
deep lethargy under the broiling sun, and the next instant they were
screaming insanely and firing point-blank down our throats.

I had never seen anything like it. I fell back and lost sight of my
target completely, and the next thing I knew, an Indian was trying to
split my skull with a hand ax. I must have shot him, but I can't be
sure about anything that happened then. I had dropped my rifle
somewhere and was clawing for my pistols, and across the flats I could
hear the sharp volley of fire as Kreyler's men let go with their first
rounds.

Vaguely, I saw the fat old smuggler slide from his horse and come
charging at us with both pistols blazing. He went down holding his gut.
The Mexicans milled senselessly, wondering what had hit them, but the
Indians were chopping us to pieces. And the crazy thing about it was
that you could shoot them but they would keep coming and slash your
throat and laugh at you before they died. It was a nightmare of screams
and smoke, and men wandering aimlessly with bullet holes in them like
lost souls in limbo.

It couldn't have lasted long, but time like that isn't measured by
the ticks of a clock. A lifetime can be lived by the time a bullet
travels twenty paces. In the instant it takes a hammer to fall and a
cartridge to explode you can grow to be an old man. I felt like an old
man right then. My hands shook. I wasn't certain of anything. I kept
falling back and more Indians went down in front of my guns. Then my
pistols were empty and I scooped one out of a dead man's hand and kept
on firing. Then I heard Bama yelling, and I looked around and saw him
kneeling behind one of those little gray mules, his rifle to his
shoulder.

Somehow I got over to him and he gave me covering fire while I
punched out-my empties and reloaded. We seemed to be the center of
attention now as four or five Indians spotted us and rushed us. We beat
them off that time. I dropped one and Bama got one with his rifle, and
they turned and got behind rocks to think up something better. That was
when I began to notice that we were all alone out there.

I didn't see any of the men anywhere. It was just me and Bama and
maybe a half-dozen Indians. And I had a feeling that pretty soon it
would be just the Indians.

“My God,” I said, “are all the others dead?”

Bama laughed. It wasn't a pretty sound. He pointed behind us, and the
men were running—what was left of them. They were running for the high
ground and the Indians had decided to let them go and concentrate on
us.

For a long moment I cursed. I used all the vilest words I'd ever
heard, and they weren't half enough to say what I wanted to say. And
then our friends the Indians were coming again. This time they had
spread out and were coming at us from three sides, and they must have
picked up some of our rifles because their shooting was getting better
all the time.

They had changed their tactics too. They had learned that charging us
wasn't the answer, so they were creeping up on us from behind rocks and
bushes, and even dead animals and men. They seemed to flit across the
ground like cloud shadows in front of a racing wind, and they were gone
before you realized they were there.

I took some shots just to keep my nerve up, to feel the pistols in my
hands, but I wasn't doing any good. I looked back at the high ground
just in time to see Kreyler and his men clawing their way up the steep
embankment.

“The bastards! The goddamn no-good bastards!”

Bama laughed that wild laugh again.

“Shut up, goddamn you! Shut up and let me think!”

The wildness went out of Bama's face and he just looked tired. Very
sober and very tired, and he looked as if he didn't give a damn what
happened.

“I'll get them,” I said tightly. “If it's the last thing I do, I'll
kill every last one of them.”

And Bama said flatly, “Yes, I guess you would, Tall Cameron.”

“I
will!”

Somehow I would get out of this mess. I didn't know how yet, but I
would, and when I did...

“Watch it!” Bama said.

I caught just a glimpse of an Indian as he shuttled from one rock to
another. I burned a cartridge just because I wanted to shoot at
something, not because I thought I would hit anything. I started
reloading again, filling the cylinders all the way around, six
cartridges to a pistol. I finished one gun and got three in the other
one and that finished my belt.

That was when the sun stopped giving off heat. That was when cold
sweat started popping out on my neck and my insides felt as if it had
been washed with ice water. Bama's .36-caliber ammunition wouldn't fit
my pistols, and anyway, he was out too.

“How many rounds have you got for that rifle?”

He checked the magazine and there were two.

“Well, that gives us eleven shots between us. Have you got any
ideas?”

“I guess you could pray, if you go in for that sort of thing.”

That seemed to end the conversation. Things didn't look too bright,
but they could be a lot worse. For one thing, Bama was getting his guts
back—I could tell by the way he talked—and guts was just the thing
that might save us. My brain still burned when I thought of Kreyler and
his boys running out on us, but I'd have to wait a while to take care
of that. The Indians moved in a little more.

“How many do you make out there?” I said.

“Six, seven, eight, maybe more.”

He was a big help. But he still had his guts, and a rifle and two
cartridges, and that was something. “When they get close enough,
they'll have to rush us,” I said. “I guess that will tell the story.”

“I guess so,” Bama said. He didn't even sound interested. He
scrunched down behind the little mule and began fumbling at his
pockets. After a while I got my own makings out and gave them to him.
It seemed that the whole world held its breath while he built a
cigarette and held a match to it, and I caught myself jumping every
time the wind rattled a piece of dry grass. Take it easy, I told
myself. Just take it easy and let them come. There won't be anything to
it then; all you have to do is shoot.

I took my guns out and laid them on the mule where they would be
handy and then I took the tobacco and corn-shuck papers and built a
cigarette for myself. It was so quiet that I began to wonder if the
Indians were really out there. I looked out at the battlefield and for
the first time I saw it as it actually was. The most pitiful things
there were the little mules with the bells around their necks. The men
didn't seem to mean much, dead or alive—but those mules, they hadn't
asked for any of this.

As far as I could see, they were all dead. The ones that hadn't been
shot for breastworks had run into stray bullets. When I thought back on
it, it seemed a wonder that anything was still alive. The battle seemed
long ago. I had to keep reminding myself that it wasn't over yet.

“Watch it!” Bama hissed.

And about that time four Indians jumped up and started at us in a
crazy-legged gait, as silent as ghosts. It didn't seem right that they
didn't make any noise. They ought to yell, I kept thinking, but they
didn't. One of them had a rifle and he fired once, and that snapped me
out of it. The other three could have had guns if they had wanted
them—there were plenty of them scattered around—but they seemed to
favor knives and hatchets. They were almost on top of us before I got
my guns to working. I heard my pistols roaring, and after a moment I
heard the empty click of my off-side gun, so I dropped that one.

I stopped the one with the rifle and two of the others. I thought
Bama had the last one, but the bullet went in and out without even
slowing him down. He came charging over the mule, a bloody mess and a
scream. Then Bama swung his rifle and the stock made a sickening, mushy
sound as it smashed into the Indian's skull.

I thought we would be swarmed then, but the others decided to sit
this hand out. When I turned around Bama was wiping the blood off his
rifle and making a higher breastwork by putting the Indian on top of
the mule.

I had three rounds left for my right-hand pistol, and Bama had one
for his rifle. I wondered how many Indians were still out there. There
was no way of telling. They seemed to come out of the ground like
weeds.

Bama was puffing and blowing after his skirmish. He hunched down in
an awkward, one-sided position, his face as white as a frog's belly,
and that was when I noticed that he had been hit.

It was his leg, about halfway between the knee and the hipbone. The
Indian rifleman, I guessed, must have done it with that single shot
that he let go with.

“Well,” Bama said between puffs, “I guess this about frays it out,
Tall Cameron. You'd better make a run for it. There can't be many more
of them left. I've still got a bullet. I can stop one of them.”

“Shut up and give me
a
knife.”

He didn't have a knife, but the Indian on top of the mule had one,
and I used it to slit Bama's trousers up to the hip. There was a lot of
blood and it was coming out in spasmodic little spurts, and I figured
that an artery or something had been hit. But still it wasn't too bad,
everything considered. There was a clean hole where the bullet had gone
in and come out. There didn't seem to be any bones broken.

I said, “Just keep your eyes open and watch our friends out there.”
Then I hacked off the leg of his trousers, wound it up, and tied it
loosely above the bullet hole. I got my empty pistol between the leg
and the bandage for some leverage, and began to twist. After a minute
the spurting stopped.

I took his rifle and put it on top of the mule where I could get to
it.

“Just take it easy for a few minutes and we'll be out of here.”

But Bama didn't believe it, and I guess I didn't either. As Bama had
said, it began to look as if our string had about frayed out. I could
see them moving around out there again—or rather, I could feel them.
They were getting closer all the time, but they never showed enough of
themselves to shoot at. It was very quiet.