A Noose for the Desperado (20 page)

It was all very pretty. I would be missing, and so would the silver,
and two and two is always four—anyway, most people think so.

Bucky was still standing there with his .44 pointed at a place
between my eyes, and he was probably thinking what a lucky guy he was,
because Kreyler was going to split that pile of adobe dollars with him.

Like hell Kreyler was going to split with him. Bucky would wind up
with the rest of us, in some shallow grave where we would stay until
the coyotes dug us up a year or two from now.

For a minute I thought maybe Marta could help us. I could get a
signal to her and she could rush Bucky. Then the kid could keep Kreyler
busy for a minute while I got Bucky's gun and finished the job. That
was the way things were beginning to shape up in my mind. Johnny
Rayburn seemed to be reading my thoughts, because he nodded his head
when I looked for just the right spot to make the tackle. But when I
looked at Marta I tore the plans up and threw them away.

Marta was a smart girl. I had forgotten how smart.

Marta was through with me. She was through with me, and Bama, and
Johnny Rayburn. The money was blowing in a new direction, and Marta was
drifting with the wind. The Marshal was her man now.

She had stopped her bawling and thought things over, and she had come
to the conclusion that Tall Cameron's future wasn't exactly the bright
and shining star to hitch her ambitions to that she had once thought.
But Kreyler— that was something else again. From here on out, Kreyler
would be boss. Besides that, he would have that pile of silver and
could buy her all the pretties her black heart desired.

She thought about that. She liked it. She looked at me and sneered,
and she looked at Kreyler and smiled.

But Kreyler wasn't dumb. It was a fact I had overlooked at first, but
I was making no mistake about it now. He could look into those eyes of
hers and read the lies as plain as anybody and for a minute I thought
maybe he was going to tell her to go to hell.

But he didn't. He had wanted her too long, I guess, and she was in
his blood. Well, I thought, they would make a nice couple. It would be
interesting to stick around and see who would be the first to stick a
knife in the other's back.

That was as far as my thoughts got. About that time Kreyler's
patience played out, and he stepped over to the kid and jerked him off
the floor and hit him across the mouth.

“The ledger,” he said coldly.

The kid said nothing, and that got him another slap across the face.
Anger almost made me do something foolish, like getting off the floor
and trying to punch a fist through Kreyler's thick middle. The thought
was there, but it never got to be more than a thought. My glance ran
head-on into that half-smile of Bucky's, and that was a great settling
influence.

It was getting bad now. That ham-sized fist of Kreyler's would spat
sickeningly in the kid's face.

“The ledger!”

The kid would say nothing.

Then the spat again.

But the kid didn't break. I was the one that broke. I stood it as
long as I could and then I yelled, “Goddamnit, let him alone! I'll tell
you about the ledger.”

Kreyler paused for a moment. His fist was bloody, and he was
grinning, enjoying himself. There are men like that.

He grinned at Bucky. “Mr. Cameron wants to tell us all about it. He
doesn't like to see his little pal knocked around. What do you think
about that, Bucky?”

Bucky laughed, but there was no comment behind his laugh, and no
humor.

“I don't much like to stop in the middle of a job of work like this,”
Kreyler said pleasantly. “I figure the kid will tell me what I want to
know, Cameron. It may take a little time. But I'm in no hurry.” He
grinned again and jerked the kid's limp body up with a big left hand,
and I guess that was when I threw caution away.

I started gathering myself. I was going to jump and Bucky knew it and
was waiting for it. He opened his thin lips and breathed through his
mouth. He was going to shoot me right between the eyes because that was
the spot he had been concentrating on.

Oh, he had it figured down to a gnat's hair, all right, and his
finger started squeezing the trigger. He was smiling now, actually
smiling, and he was probably seeing himself cutting quite a figure
among the pilgrims and dance-hall girls; and people would probably buy
his drinks for him just to get him to tell how it felt to kill a man
like Tall Cameron. Bucky was going to be somebody after this. He was
going to get himself a reputation as a gunman, and nobody had to know
that he had got it the easy way. All he had to do was pull the trigger.

I could see those thoughts going around in Bucky's mind as he started
the squeeze. I had time to move about six inches before the hammer
fell—and that wasn't time enough or far enough.

It's funny how your mind works at times like that, being aware of a
lot of things but not actually seeing anything in particular. For
instance, I knew that Marta would be watching it all and smiling in
that detached way of hers, although I couldn't see her. And Kreyler
would be too busy with the kid to notice what was going on until it was
too late. It was just me and Bucky.

By that time I had lunged forward and was crouching like a wolf ready
to spring. But Bucky wasn't worried. He was seeing me lowered away into
shallow ditch with somebody throwing dirt in my face. And then the gun
went off and the explosion went crashing around the room, and I was
wondering why I didn't feel anything, why I didn't go down.

But I didn't wonder long. I crashed into Bucky and he went limp like
a bag of grain slit open with a sharp knife, and that was when I
realized that Bucky was dead. He was dead before I hit him. I didn't
know how or why, and this wasn't the time to ask questions. I threw him
aside and wheeled on Kreyler, who was clawing for his gun.

He never got his gun out, though.

There was another explosion and Kreyler took two quick steps forward
and one step back, like the pride of the ball getting warmed up for a
do-si-do or a skip-to-my Lou. His eyes were faintly bewildered and
pained, as if somebody had just played a rather nasty practical joke on
him. Then he started falling like a tree in a forest. He crashed to the
floor, and he could have been a side of beef for all the fuss he made
after that.

Along about then was when I noticed Bama for the first time.

He had that old .36-caliber Leech and Rigdon clutched in both hands,
and a curl of white smoke was coming from the muzzle and making a hook
near the ceiling, like a question mark over Bama's head. We must have
all stood there for a minute or more and nobody did anything or said
anything, and Bucky and Kreyler got deader and deader there on the
floor. I hadn't seen Bama get out of bed, and I guess Bucky and Kreyler
hadn't either. But he had managed it somehow. He had hobbled on one leg
to the door, just as the party was getting into full swing.

I said, “Thanks, Bama. I guess that's a favor I owe you.

He didn't say anything for a minute. His wound had come open and
blood was pouring down his leg again, but he didn't seem to notice.
Then he leaned against the doorframe and panted. I caught him before he
fell and got my shoulder under him and dragged him to the bed.

“Marta!” I yelled. She appeared in the doorway, and from the way she
looked, I guess she expected to get belted all over the room. “Get some
whisky,” I said. “I don't care where or how, just get it.”

Things were moving too fast for Marta, I guess. The situation had
changed so often that she wasn't quite sure whose side to be on. She
just stood there.

“Look,” I said. “Do you want to go to Mexico with me or don't you?”

Her head bobbed. She wanted to go where that silver went. She knew
that.

“Then get out of here and get the whisky!”

She got out, and I got the bandage back on Bama's leg and stopped the
bleeding.

“My God, I thought I was finished,” I said. “I guess I forgot that a
man's never finished as long as he has friends around.”

Bama didn't say anything. He lay there with his eyes closed, and
maybe he was remembering that just a few minutes ago I was ready to run
out on him. More than likely, though, he was thinking about that whisky
that Marta was going to bring.

I went in the other room and the kid was just picking himself off the
floor and trying to get the blood out of his eyes. I've seen men lose
their seats in the van of a stampede and not look much worse than
Johnny Rayburn did at that moment. But I took him over to the washstand
and threw a couple of dippers of water in his face and he didn't look
so bad. His nose was swollen, maybe broken, and his mouth was split and
puffed, but there was nothing wrong with him that time wouldn't cure. I
poured out some more water for him, and then I went outside.

I found Bucky's and Kreyler's horses by the side of the house, and
that was going to save me a trip back to the livery barn. I didn't see
anything or hear anything out of the way. Those thick adobe walls had
probably absorbed most of the noise of Bama's shooting.

I went back in and the kid was drying off his face and looking a lot
better. Papacito was crumpled up in one corner of the room like next
week's washing. I went in where Bama was.

“How's your leg?”

He opened his eyes and shrugged.

“Are you going to be able to ride?”

“Ride where?”

“To Mexico, where do you think? You sure can't stay here. You've just
killed a United States marshal.”

Bama studied that over quietly, turning it over in his mind and
looking at it from all sides. Finally he said, “No, I think I'll just
stay here, Tall Cameron. I don't feel much like running any more.”

I could see that he was getting all wound up to make a long speech,
but about that time Marta came in with two tall bottles of clear
tequila. I uncorked one of them and put it in his hands.

“Here, you're going to need this.”

He lay there, holding the bottle up and looking at it, and finally he
put it aside. “No,” he said, “I don't think I want it.”

That jarred me.

“What the hell's wrong with you, anyway?” Then I raised him up and
put the bottle to his mouth and poured. It went up his nose and over
his chin and down the front of his shirt, but some of it went in his
mouth too. He coughed and choked, but I kept pouring until almost a
quarter of the bottle was gone.

“This isn't just whisky, it's medicine. Drink it.”

I went back in the other room and lifted the old man off the floor
and put him in a chair. “Don't forget what I said about the silver, old
man,” I told him. “If you want your worthless daughter back, don't
forget.”

He couldn't understand my language, but he knew what I was talking
about.

WE RODE OUT OF THE moonlit town that night and into the dark hills,
with Kreyler and Bucky lashed behind our saddles like blanket rolls.
About a mile out of town we found a dry wash with a bed of soft sand,
and the kid and I dug a long ditch with our hands, and that was where
we buried the Marshal and his pal. We covered our trail as well as we
could and we scattered brush and leaves over the grave. I figured
nobody would find them for a few days. Maybe a month, if we were lucky.
Marta and Bama watched from a little knoll while we finished the job;
then we got on our horses and rode again toward the south.

Three Mile Cave, it turned out, wasn't a cave at all, but a kind of
box canyon eating its way back into the side of a hill. The entrance
was just barely wide enough for a horse and rider to get through, but
after a little way it widened out to maybe twenty yards in the widest
place. There was a little grass for the horses, but there wasn't any
water. Well, I could do without water for a day, and so could the
others. Bama wouldn't miss it at all as long as the tequila held out.

So that was where we stayed, and it didn't turn out to be so bad
after all. The next day I got my rifle and went out and beat the brush
until I scared out a couple of swamp rabbits, and we ate them for
supper that night.

The next day Bama's leg began to act up. It began to swell until we
had to loosen the bandage around it, and the flesh around the bullet
hole had a red, angry look. By the middle of the afternoon little red
fingers began crawling away from the wound and down the leg, and I knew
what that meant.

But I didn't know what to do about blood poison. And Marta didn't
either. All we could do was sit there and watch the fever spread and
keep him hopped up on tequila.

But he ran out that night. I heard the empty bottle when it hit the
ground and I went over to where he was.

“It's beginning to stink,” he said. “In a couple of days it'll turn
black and smell like all the cesspools in the world come together.” He
laughed abruptly. “This is a hell of a way to die, Tall Cameron. But
then, I guess there isn't any good way to die, is there?”

“What are you talking about?” I said. “The old man will be here
tomorrow with the silver and we'll buy you the best doctor in Mexico.”

But I don't think he heard me. “There was a lot of blood poison
during the war,” he said. “I've seen men rub blisters on their heels
and in a few days there would be a surgeon amputating the whole damn
leg. I was in a field hospital after the battle of Chickamauga—did I
tell you about that?”

“No, I don't think so.”

He seemed to forget about the hospital. I rolled a cigarette for him
and put it in his mouth. “I've been thinking about the war,” he said as
I held the match. “I wonder if anything was decided by it. There's a
theory that wars are inevitable because the natural blood lust in a man
demands them. What do you think about that?”

“I don't know anything about wars.”