A Noose for the Desperado (7 page)

“Kreyler says goddamnit, be quiet!”

As we lay there, I learned to hate the Marshal. I hated every line in
his dry, sun-cracked face. By noon I could cheerfully have killed him.

“Take it easy, kid,” Bama said softly.

“Where does he get off bossing us around like that? He's just one of
Basset's hired help, isn't he? Like the rest of us.”

“Think of something else,” Bama said. “This sun bakes a man's brains.
It gives him crazy ideas sometimes.”

For a while we lay there. I could see the Indian and his half of the
party oh the other side of the canyon, and I began hating them too,
every damned one of their sweaty, grim faces.

“Listen,” Bama said.

And after a minute we all began to hear the faraway sound of
bells—small bells, cool little silver sounds in the blazing afternoon.
Along the rim of the canyon there were brisk metal sounds of cartridges
being jacked into rifles. Bama's face was tight and gray as he lay on
his belly, sighting along the short barrel of his carbine. He looked as
if death had already touched him—as if the grave and he were old
friends.

Then the mule train rounded into the canyon. One after the other they
came, as if there was no end—gray, sure-footed little mules with bells
around their necks and tall, awkward-looking aparejos strapped to their
backs. Along the flanks came the outriders, brown-faced, hard-eyed men,
heeled up with rifles and pistols and knives, looking as if they were
begging for a fight. In front of the whole business rode a grinning old
Mexican on a pale horse, dressed fit to kill in a tall spiked sombrero
decorated with silver bangles, flashing light and spitting fire every
time he moved his head. His big-bottomed pants were of cream-colored
buckskin with more silver bangles and pearl buttons down the seams. A
gawdy serape and high-heeled boots finished off his outfit, along with
a fancy-handled six-shooter at his side and a long-barreled rifle
resting across the pommel of his saddle. He looked like hell, all
right. He could have been a gay old ranchero on his way to visit the
most beautiful senorita in all of Sonora, from the way he was dressed.
I wondered how that grin of his would stand up if he knew that thirty
rifles were aimed at the back of his head.

Still the mule train kept coming, and the outriders kept watching the
hills with restless eyes. I wondered how they could fail to see us. Did
they have any outriders up in the hills looking down on us? If they
did, it would be too bad, because they already had more men than we
had. Thirty-five, maybe forty outriders were in view by the time the
tail of the train had rounded into the canyon.

Word came down: “Hold your fire until Kreyler gives the word.”

Bama was dead white. He didn't even seem to be breathing. I wanted to
look behind me, but I didn't dare move. The palms of my hands were wet.
It seemed almost impossible that in the next few seconds I would be
killing men I had never seen before in my life, killing them without
giving them a chance in the world. The thought lay heavy and unreal and
dull on my mind—but it didn't have time to become an idea.

From somewhere—I didn't know where at first—came a wild, savage
scream, and suddenly rifles were beating down on us from above. In the
back of my mind I knew that what I had been afraid of had happened:
Some of the outriders had got behind us and had discovered us before we
could open fire. The next minute I heard one of our own men scream, and
Kreyler was yelling, and gunfire seemed to explode from everywhere. I
saw Mexicans go down in the first volley, and we fired again and more
went down before they could bring their guns on us. But the rifles up
above were raising hell.

“Make for the canyon!” I yelled at Bama.

He was pumping bullets into the Mexicans as fast as he could lever
and pull the trigger. After a minute he lay down and began to reload. A
bullet whined, kicking dirt up at his feet.

“In the canyon!” I yelled again.

“You're crazy!”

“It's better than getting shot in the back!”

Another bullet slammed into the rock beside his head. “Maybe you're
right!”

The others were pouring down the canyon walls now, shooting as they
slipped and skidded and fell to the bottom. The Mexicans were shooting
their mules and using them for breastworks. It was all a crazy uproar
of shooting and screaming and cursing, and there didn't seem to be any
sense to anything. I felt the slight tug of a bullet going through the
sleeve of my shirt and I snapped a shot into a brown, grinning face.
The bullet hit in his mouth and exploded brains through the back of his
head.

The violence and noise worked like a fever, and men who had been
afraid now seemed crazy to kill. They rushed at each other like idiots,
and now and then there was the keen flash of knives in the swirling
smoke. I lost track of Bama. I seemed to lose track of everything
except the brown faces that kept coming out of nowhere and falling back
again into nowhere as my own pistols added to the noise.

The old leader of the smuggler train had been the first to die. He
lay under his pale horse with his insides shot out by a dozen rifles,
and two members of Basset's army were fighting over his fancy pistol.

I don't know how long it went on. I remember dropping behind a dead
horse to reload, and when I stood up again there were no brown faces to
shoot at. Whitish, gagging gun smoke swirled around the figures of the
men still standing. Occasionally a moan would go up, or a curse, or
maybe a prayer in Spanish. A pistol would explode to startle the sudden
quiet, and the Mexican voice would be stilled.

“Jesus!” a voice said. “What did you have to shoot him in the gut
for? That was a solid silver belt buckle, and look at it now!”

I went over to a rock and sat down. For a minute I thought I was
going to be sick.

Bama came up from somewhere and sat beside me. Pistols were still
exploding every minute or so as wounded horses or Mexicans were
discovered and killed.

“I wonder,” Bama said flatly, “what General Sherman would have to say
about our little war here today.”

I didn't say anything. The men were cutting the aparejos open,
laughing and gibbering and shoving as clank-streams of adobe dollars
poured into the dust. I didn't know how much money there was, but I had
never seen so much silver before. Twenty thousand dollars, maybe, It
looked like that much.

But I was sick, and the thought of money didn't help. The ground was
littered with the dead. I had never seen so many dead men before. They
lay sprawled in crazy ragdoll positions, smugglers and bandits alike,
and the horses, and the gray little mules with the bells around their
necks.

“I've seen what they call major battles,” Bama said, “without that
many men getting killed.” He stared blankly at nothing. He rubbed his
hands over his face, through his hair. At last he got up.

“Where are you going?”

“To find my horse.”

Now I knew why Bama had saved that half bottle of whisky.

IN THE HOTTEST PART of the afternoon we started back for Ocotillo,
what was left of us. Kreyler and the Indian had gathered the silver
together and loaded it on pack horses that we had brought along for
that purpose. There were several riderless horses, but I didn't take
the trouble to count and see how many men we had left back there in the
canyon. I guess nobody did. I made the mistake once of looking back,
and already the vultures that Bama had talked about were beginning to
circle over the battleground. It took everything I had to keep my
stomach out of my throat. I didn't look back again.

Bama had finished the rest of his whisky and was riding slouched,
chin on chest, deep in some bleary, alcoholic dream. I tried to keep my
mind away from the battle, but I kept seeing those brown, grinning
faces as they fell away in front of my guns. I wanted to think of my
cut of that silver. I tried to remember that killing was necessary
sometimes to save yourself—and that silver would save me.

Somehow, we got back to Ocotillo. We split up again when we came to
the meeting place, and Bama and I rode back into town the same way we
had left it. It was a long ride. Bama still didn't say anything.

It was almost dark by the time I got my horse put away. I went up to
my room and fell on the mattress in front of the door. I was dog tired.
Every muscle in my body screamed for rest, and every nerve was ready to
snap. Then I turned loose with everything I had. I vomited until my
guts were sore and there wasn't anything left in me to come up, but
still I kept gagging.

When it was over I was soaked in sweat and shaking like a whipped
dog. It was all I could do to get off the floor and pour some water in
the bowl and wash my face.

It was then that I felt the draft float over the back of my neck and
I knew that the door was open and somebody was standing there. I think
I knew who it was before I looked up. Sure enough, it was Marta.

“What do you want?”

“I think you need Marta.”

“I don't need anybody. Get out of here and stay out.”

She looked at me for a moment, then turned and went down the hall. In
a minute she was back with a pan and some water, and began cleaning the
floor.

“I don't know why they bother to put locks on these doors,” I said.
“How did you get in here?”

She grinned faintly, took a knife from the bodice of her dress, and
showed it to me.

“Is easy.”

“It must be.”

I didn't feel like talking or fighting or anything else. If she
wanted to clean up after me, all right. All I wanted to do was rest and
try to forget that I had taken part in anything that had happened
today.

She worked quietly, not looking at me. After she had finished I could
feel her standing beside me.

“You need eat,” she said.

“I need nothing.”

She went out of the room, taking the dirty water with her. I didn't
bother to close the door.

Maybe five minutes went by, and then she came back with two
hard-boiled eggs and a pitcher of cool beer.

“Here.”

“You're crazy as hell,” I said.

She cracked one, of the eggs and peeled it. I took it and bit into
it. It tasted good. I washed it down with some of the beer, then
reached for the other egg.

“Good?” she said.

I nodded and had some more beer.

“You sick. Why?”

How could I tell her why I was sick? Maybe I wasn't even sure myself.
But somehow I felt that the last decent thing in me had been fouled in
that massacre. A myth had been shattered. I could no longer tell myself
that my killing had been done in self-defense. I was sick with myself,
but how could I tell anybody that?

“It wasn't anything,” I said.

“You better now?”

“Sure. Have some beer.”

She grinned uncertainly, then swigged from the mouth of the pitcher.
I was beginning to be glad that she had shown up. I needed something or
somebody to take my mind off of things. It was just the shock of seeing
so much cold-blooded killing, I tried to tell myself. Pretty soon I
would get over it, but now it was just as well that I had somebody to
help me get my mind on something else.

“Don't you ever take no for an answer?” I said. “Do you always hang
on until you get what you want?”

She shrugged as if she didn't understand me.

“What do you want me for, anyway? I'm not such a prize—not even in
this God-forgotten place where almost anybody would be a prize.”

She shrugged again and grinned. Sitting cross-legged on the floor,
she took my wrist and began inspecting the bandage on my left wrist.

“I am sorry,” she said.

“It's all right now.”

But it still hurt, and it gave me a vicious, animal-like satisfaction
to see that her mouth was still swollen and bruised where I had hit
her.

It was dark now. Night had come suddenly down on Ocotillo, and we
could hear the noises in the saloon below, and in the dusty street
there was the rattle of high-wheeled cars as the Mexican farmers came
in from the fields, and the lonesome, forlorn chanting of the native
herdsmen. I rolled a cigarette and gave it to the girl, then I rolled
one for myself and fired them with a sulphur match.

“Where you learn smoke like this?” she said suddenly.

“A friend of mine. He used to roll them this way, in cornshucks. He's
dead now,” I added, for some reason.

“You love this friend very much,” she said.

“What makes you say that?”

“You are sad when you say he is dead.” Then, “He was good man?”

I listened to the night and remembered Pappy Garret. “He was good at
one thing,” I said. “He could draw faster and shoot straighter than any
man who ever lived. He picked me up when I was just a kid running from
the State Police and taught me what he knew. I used to wonder why he
bothered with me—but I know now that he was a lonely man.”

I knew that she wasn't really interested in hearing about it, but she
kept quiet and I went on. “He wasn't really a bad man,” I said, “but
once you start a thing like that, there's no end to it. A gunman kills
a friend of yours, then you kill the gunman. Then the gunman has a
friend and you have to kill him, or be killed, and it goes on and on
that way until you think there isn't a man in the world that doesn't
have a reason to shoot you.”

Marta stroked my bandaged arm with her cool fingers. “You no bad,”
she said.

“I'm rotten to the bone, or I would never have done what I did today,
no matter how much money there was in it.”

She looked up, but I couldn't see what she was thinking. “I think you
be rich man pretty soon.”

“I'm as rich as I'm going to be, as soon as I get my cut of the
silver. I'm through with Basset. I'm going to throw my guns in the
deepest river I can find.”