A Noose for the Desperado (19 page)

“Bring the stuff out here,” I called. “Johnny, give Marta a hand.”

I had the chickens scattered and squawking all over the place by the
time they came out with the first load, but I also had a couple of
empty chicken coops, which were just what we needed. We piled the
silver in the back of the coops and shooed the chickens back in.

That about nailed things down. All we had to do now was to get out of
Ocotillo, and we couldn't do it too fast to suit me. We went back in
the house and I said, “Well, Bama, I guess this is good-by.”

He opened his eyes and looked at me. “Good-by to Ocotillo,” he said
lazily. “I've been saying that ever since I got her, but I never left
the place. Maybe I never will now.”

“Sure you will,” I said. “I'll have the old man give you some silver.
All you can carry. When your leg gets better you can pull out of here.
Maybe we'll meet up in Mexico sometime. You can't tell who you'll run
into down there, they tell me.”

The kid came into the room just as I was finishing my speech. I
turned and said. “We've got to get a horse for Marta. I'll have to see
if I can get back to the livery barn—if Kreyler's men haven't already
missed us and started tearing things up.”

“You mean two horses, don't you, Mr. Cameron?” the kid said. “Bama
hasn't got a way to travel.”

“Bama's not going,” I said.

I don't think he even heard me, or if he did, he didn't believe me.
“He sure can't stay here,” he went on. “He would be the only one left
who knew about the ledger, and you know what Kreyler would do to him
about that.”

“Kreyler can have the ledger,” I said. “It doesn't make any
difference now.”

But he still couldn't believe that I was going to leave Bama behind.
Bama was my friend. Bama was a man you could put your trust in. You
didn't go off and leave friends to wait for what was almost certain
death.

“Look,” I said. “We've got a long ride ahead of us and it's no kind
of trip for a man with a hole in his leg.” I could have gone on
arguing, trying to justify it, but what good would it do? It was a hard
world, and sooner or later the kid had to learn that.

He began to get a stubborn look. He wanted to argue. Bama was
watching us in a disinterested sort of way, as though he thought it
might be kind of interesting to see how it-came out. But not too
interesting.

Nothing at all happened, the way things worked out. Outside, I heard
one of the horses stamp nervously. It wasn't anything out of the
ordinary. But just the same, it gave me a funny feeling. Uneasiness
started walking up my back with cold feet, so I went to the door and
looked out.

Things were pitch-dark out there and I couldn't see a thing. But that
feeling was still with me. I stepped outside, brushing my palms against
the butts of my pistols, just to make sure that I had them.

That wasn't enough. I should have pulled them and started shooting.

YOU NEVER KNOW, I guess, just what's the right thing to do. You
either do it or you don't. And that time I didn't do it.

I stepped outside and something hard and solid connected with the
back of my head and bright showers of pain flew out in all directions.
I took another step—or I thought I did—and I walked right into that
black pit that has no sides and no bottom and I started falling.

It was a long trip. My head hit something two or three times on the
way down. Then something slammed in my middle and my stomach jumped up
and tried to shove my Adam's apple out of the way and get in my mouth.
I fought it, but after a while it didn't seem to be worth the trouble.
I let the darkness have its way.

We got to be old friends, me and the darkness. I got to like it down
there. It was cool and comfortable and the smothering black fog closed
over me and around me and—all I had to do was sleep. The trials and
tribulations of the world were away and gone and I didn't have to worry
about scrabbling around in the dirt for money or life, because money
and life didn't mean anything down there. I should have stayed there.
And maybe I would have if I had known what it was going to be like when
I got back. But I didn't know it then. I didn't know anything.

I started fumbling in the blackness, and after a while I found a
little slit of light about an inch long and about as wide as a thread
of silk split four ways—-and that was my consciousness, I suppose.
Anyway, I clawed and scratched until I got a hold in the slit, and
then, with an effort that left me sweating, I ripped the darkness wide
open.

I was sprawled out in Marta's kitchen, and a lamp was being held over
me. The sudden light hit my eyeballs like hammers and I rolled over and
tried to curse, but all that came out was a groan. I heard somebody
saying, “By God, he's got a hard head, all right. That's one thing you
can say for him.” Somebody else said, “Just watch him, and if he tries
to get up let him have it again.”

I didn't recognize the first voice, but the second one belonged to
Kreyler. I lay there for what seemed a long while, trying to get the
mud out of my brain. Kreyler... It looked like I had fooled away too
much time in Ocotillo when I should have been on the road. The Marshal
was either smarter than I thought he was, or I was dumber than I
thought I was. It didn't make much difference now. He had found out
about the silver, and he had caught up with me, and somebody had damn
near beat my brains out with a pistol barrel—if I'd had any brains to
begin with.

I tried to move again, and that was a big mistake. The stupor that
had me sealed up in a little world all my own, like sod on a grave,
suddenly disappeared and I broke into the world of reality, full of
aches and pains. My head was the big trouble. It felt like an October
gourd that had been stepped on—smashed and empty.

The room began to swim, and my stomach started crowding into my
throat again. I raised my head as high as I could, but all I could see
was boots and spurs and the packed clay floor. I was ready to give up.
I was sick, and tired to death, and blood was getting in my eye, and I
couldn't figure out a way to stop it. Kreyler could have the silver. He
could have the girl. All I wanted was to be left alone.

But it wasn't as simple as that. Through the sickness I heard the
sodden sound of bone and flesh hitting more bone and flesh. Somebody
laughed—the man who was supposed to give me another pistol whipping if
I tried to get up, I guess. I heard Marta make a tight little sound,
and then something hit the floor, solidly, like a sack of oats being
dumped off a wagon.

I had a pretty good idea what was happening, but I was in no position
to do anything about it. I lifted my head again and the room tilted up
on one corner and spun around a few times. Finally it settled down.
Things came into focus.

It was about the way I had figured it. Johnny Ray-burn was sitting on
his rump, with a bloody mouth and a dazed look in his eyes, and Kreyler
was standing over him, grinning, rubbing his right fist in the palm of
his left hand. “I can keep this up all night, kid,” the Marshal said.
“Do you want to tell me who has that ledger, or do you want to go
through this all over again?”

The kid just sat there looking stupid. Kreyler jerked him up by the
front of his shirt and hit him again. Away down in the cellar of my
mind a spark set off an explosion of anger. I rolled over on my face. I
got my hands under me and began to push. My stomach turned over and
tied itself into a knot. I pushed some more and sweat popped out all
over me. Somebody had gone to Austin and brought the capitol building
to Arizona and tied it on my back. But I was going to get up anyway.
And when I did, I was going to see if Kreyler could take it as well as
he handed it out. I wanted to see how he would stand up under a pistol
whipping. I was going to find out—as soon as I managed to get off the
floor.

My intentions were all right, but something went wrong with my arms.
They gave away and I fell on my face again. For a moment I just lay
there with my head ringing, blowing as if I had run all the way from El
Paso. I must have put on quite a show. Anyway, it seemed to amuse
Kreyler and his pal. They had a good laugh about it. Then Kreyler came
over and turned me on my back with the toe of his boot. “Well,” he
said, “the great Tall Cameron doesn't look so tough now.” And everybody
had another round of laughs.

Anyway, I had pulled Kreyler's attention off the kid for a few
minutes. And I finally got a look at the Marshal's pal.

He was a frail little man not much over five feet tall, with pale
watery eyes and a thin little mouth that was always just about to break
into a smile, but never quite made it. When he laughed it was just a
sound that he made with his mouth, ha-ha, something like the kind of
sound that Basset used to make. He was standing over me with the muzzle
of a .44 shoved in my face, looking as big as a rain pipe. I think he
would have pulled the trigger just to feel the gun buck, if Kreyler
hadn't stopped him... Well, I wasn't the only one in the company with a
hard head. Kreyler's gunny was Bucky Fay, the man I had knocked out
with my pistol barrel and who was supposed to have been stretched out
in the mountains somewhere with his skull split open.

“Not yet, Bucky,” the Marshal said soothingly, as though he were
talking to a backward child, “I'll tell you when, Bucky, but first
we've got some things to do. Remember?”

Bucky thought about that for a while, and finally he did remember. He
stepped back one pace, almost smiling, and held his pistol just about
on a line with my heart.

“Now, let's see,” Kreyler said looking at me. “Would it be better to
work on you or the kid?” He wasn't in any hurry. He seemed to have all
the time in the world, and this was a delicate problem and he was going
to figure it out if it took him all night.

“I think the kid,” he said finally. “You're right fond of him, aren't
you, Cameron? You wouldn't like to see him with his face all messed up
and maybe an eye knocked out, now, would you, Cameron? Well, I'll tell
you what I'll do. You just tell me where that ledger is and I won't
even lay a hand on him. I give you my word.”

Kreyler's word would be about as good as a counterfeit dime. But I
couldn't tell him that now. He had guessed right about the kid. I
wasn't going to let anything happen to him, if I could help it.

“Can I sit up?” I said.

Kreyler shrugged. “Sure. Let him sit up, Bucky.”

Bucky took another step back and lined his pistol up again, this time
at some invisible spot between my eyes. My co-ordination must have been
getting better, because I made it all the way to a sitting position the
first try. But it wasn't without effort. I sat there gulping in air and
wiping blood off the side of my face. I felt of my head, and there were
two good-sized bumps and a nasty cut, but I figured I would live. For a
little while, anyway.

Marta was over by the cook table trying to comfort her old man.
Papacito seemed to be taking it harder than anybody in the room. Tears
were rolling down his face and getting into his dirty mustache, and he
kept fumbling at those wooden beads around his neck and jabbering some
kind of prayer over and over, and for some reason that made me madder
than anything else. What the hell did
he
have to cry about?

“For God's sake, shut him up,” I said to Kreyler. “How can I think
with that racket going on?”

It must have been getting on Kreyler's nerves too, although he hadn't
shown it. He said, “Watch things, Bucky.” Then he stepped over and
knocked the old man clear off his stool and sent him rolling against
the wall.

Marta was on him like a panther, clawing and scratching and spitting
out curses in that language of hers. But this was the Marshal's night
to do all the things that he had been wanting to do for a long time.
Me, the kid, the old man and now Marta. He was taking care of all of us
and loving it. Every dog has his day, they say. This one belonged to
Kreyler.

He made short work of Marta. He backhanded her hard enough to cross
her eyes and then he grabbed her shoulder and shook her until her teeth
rattled. “Goddamn you!” he said hoarsely, and I didn't realize until
then how mad he really was. Maybe he would have killed her if she had
kept fighting. But I guess she had all the fight knocked out of her. He
let her go and she dropped down at the table and started crying.

That surprised me. I wouldn't have thought that there were any tears
in a girl like that.

Anyway, Kreyler had quieted things down. Now he came back to me.

“What's it going to be, Cameron? Are you going to tell me about the
ledger or do I work on the kid some more?”

By now I had discovered that my guns were gone, which was no
surprise. What was I going to tell him? I couldn't take much more. And
neither could the kid. Of course, there was Bama in the next room, and
they could work on him if they killed both of us.

I said, “What good is it going to do me if I tell you where the
ledger is?”

Kreyler smiled. “You can go, after that. The ledger's all I want.”

“And the silver?”

“You can have that, too, if you can figure a way to get it out of
Ocotillo.”

He was lying and we both knew it. Once he knew where the ledger was,
he would kill all of us—except Marta, maybe—and take the silver for
himself, the way I had been going to do. It would be easy. He could
tell the men that I had double-crossed them, and not even Bucky would
be alive to tell them any different.

I said, “Would you mind telling me why the men aren't yelling their
heads off about their cut? They must have found out by now that the
silver's gone.”

“The trouble with you, Cameron,” he said, “is that you don't know how
to handle men. I knew what happened to the silver as soon as I found
out it was missing. But I didn't tell the men about it. I told them to
go on drinking and we'd make the cut in the morning.”