The Desperado (3 page)

“We'll head for the arroyo and take Daggert's Road!”

Ray yelled something, but the wind snatched the words away before
they got to me. Anyway, I figured he understood. It was the natural
thing to do if you knew the country, and Ray knew it as well as I did.
We went barreling across the natland, pulling away from the cavalry a
little, but not enough to get lost. And then we blasted into the hills,
into the dagger-thorned chaparral and clawlike scrub oaks that grew as
thick as weeds. In the pale moonlight, we were able to look for
familiar trails and find them, but I hated to think what Red's glossy
coat was going to look like when we came out of it.

The cavalry made up some lost time as we thrashed our way through the
brush. They were coming into shooting range again, they had their
carbines out now, pumping lead in our general direction, and I began to
be afraid that somebody was going to get lucky after all if they kept
that up for long.

But we blasted our way through the brush and went barreling down the
slope again toward the ugly dark gash in the land below us, the arroyo.
The spring rains hadn't come yet, so the sandy weed-grown bed was still
dry as we slid our horses down the steep bank. The shooting had stopped
again. I figured the cavalry had hit the brush and was having its hands
full there. So we pounded on down the dry wash and finally we came to
what we were looking for, a cutaway in the bank of the wash, only you
had to know where it was to see it, especially at night. It was grown
over with weeds and scrub trees, and it stayed that way the year around
except for maybe two months in the spring when the rains up north set
the wash to flowing.

That was Daggert's Road. If you knew where to look, there was room
enough to squeeze a horse through the opening, through the hanging
vines and scrubs, and you entered into a kind of a trail that wound up
into the hill country. If you followed the trail far enough you'd find
a little lean-to shack against a hillside, falling to pieces and rotten
with years. Old-timers would tell you that shack used to be Sam
Daggert's headquarters, that he used to hide out there after making one
of his raids on the wagon trains crossing the Santa Fe Trail.

I don't know about the Sam Daggert part, but I know the cabin is
there, and somebody must have made that trail for some reason. I used
to ride out this way with Pa sometimes, looking for strays. And,
kidlike, I would poke around the shack looking for buried treasure, or
maybe skeletons or guns. But all I ever found was a few soggy,
blackened bits of paper that might have been paper cartridges at one
time.

Well, Sam Daggert or not, whoever made the trail, I was grateful to
him. Ray Novak was first to go through the opening because his black
was smaller than Red. Then I shoved Red through, and took a minute to
rearrange the vines. We could hear the cavalry just beginning to jump
their horses down the bank of the wash.

We waited where we were until they pounded past us, running south in
the bend of the arroyo. And for a minute there I felt pretty good about
it. I was pretty pleased with myself. I wasn't scared, for one thing,
and hadn't been, through the whole business. And I don't think it had
entered my mind that the cavalry would catch us, and even if they had
caught us, they couldn't have done anything.

It wasn't cockiness exactly. It was training. One Texan was better
than a whole goddamned regiment of blue-belly Yankees. I was as sure of
that as I was sure the sun would come up the next morning. The War
between the States hadn't changed that. So that was the way I thought.
Only it wasn't thinking, it was knowing, and for a few minutes there I
didn't hate Ray Novak for getting me into this mess, because I was
enjoying myself.

But not Ray. His face was whiter than the pale moonlight that sifted
through the brush. He wiped his face on his shirt sleeve and looked at
me and Red, and then at his own black horse, as if he was surprised to
see that we were still in one piece.

He said finally, “I guess I didn't bargain for a thing like this.”

“For a thing like what?”

“I didn't figure they'd be so worked up. You'd think I'd killed
somebody, from the way they came after us.”

I couldn't figure Ray Novak out. He acted scared, but I knew he
wasn't—or at least I'd never known him to be scared of anything
before. He sat there, looking at me with those sober eyes of his, and
wiping his face. “I don't like it at all.”

“For God's sake,” I said, “what don't you like about it? We got away
from them, didn't we?”

He didn't say anything, so I pulled Red around and nudged him
forward, heading north. I could almost feel Ray stiffen in surprise.

“Now where are you going? I had an idea we were headed east.”

I said, “We're going away, aren't we? That's the time for saying
good-by, isn't it?”

He knew I was headed for the Bannerman spread to see Laurin before
starting the long ride to the Brazos. I half expected him to-go on
without me. At least, I expected an argument of some kind, but
strangely enough he didn't offer any. He reined the black over and fell
in beside me.

The Bannerman ranch house was dark when we got there, but it wasn't
long before we saw somebody light a lamp and come out on the front
porch. It was Joe Bannerman, Laurin's brother, holding a big hog-leg
six-shooter in one hand and the lamp in the other.

Before he decided to shoot first and ask questions later, I called,
“It's me, Joe—Tall Cameron. Ray Novak's here with me.”

I heard him grunt in surprise as Ray and I swung around the hitching
rack in the front yard, making for the back of the house.

I said, “Blow the lamp out, Joe. The cavalry's after us. I don't
think they're anywhere close, but there's no use taking chances.”

“What the hell have you got yourself into now?” he said. He sounded
half mad at being jarred out of bed at that time of night. But the lamp
went out and he padded barefoot to the end of the porch, peering at us
through the darkness. “Ray Novak, is that you?” Then we heard him spit
in the darkness. “Has this young heller got you mixed up in some of his
shenanigans?”

Joe never liked me much. He was a lot older than Laurin, and I knew
he never liked it much when I came calling. But to hell with Joe
Bannerman. Laurin was the one I'd come to say good-by to.

“It's me, all right, Joe,” Ray Novak said, “but the trouble we're in
is my fault. Tall didn't have anything to do with it.”

For a moment, Joe didn't say anything. Then, “Well, I'll be
damned....”

Ray started explaining about his fight with the blue-belly back in
John's City, but I didn't stay to hear about it. Just then I saw her
standing there at the back door. I dropped down from the saddle and
gave Red a slap on the rump, sending him on around to the back of the
house.

“Tall?”

She looked like a pale ghost, or an angel, standing there in the
darkness. Her voice was anxious, touched with fear. Then she pushed the
screen door open and came outside. She stood there on the top step,
covered in one of those pale, shapeless wrap-arounds that all women
seem to reach for when they get out of bed. I had never seen her like
that before. In the pale moonlight, her face seemed even more beautiful
than I had remembered it, and her dark hair was unbraided, falling
around her shoulders as soft as a dark mist. I stood there at the
bottom of the steps, looking up at her.

“Tall,” she said urgently, “something's wrong. You wouldn't be here
at this time of night unless...”

“It's nothing,” I said. “We're going down on the Brazos for a spell.
I wanted to say good-by, that's all.”

“We?” I don't think she had known there were two of us until then.

“Me and Ray Novak,” I said. “He took a swing at a bluebelly and got
the cavalry on him. Now they're after both of us.”

She made a startled little sound, and I wanted to reach up and put my
arms around her and tell her not to worry. I'd be back. All the
bluebellys north of the Rio Grande couldn't keep me away from her.

But I didn't move. Joe Bannerman would have shot me in a minute if he
had caught me laying a hand on his sister while she was still in her
nightclothes. And probably that was just what Joe was expecting. He
moved around to the corner of the house, still talking to Ray Novak,
but careful not to let me out of his sight.

She lowered her voice, but the worry and urgency were still there.
“Tall, are you sure... are you sure that you haven't... done anything?”

That would have made me mad if it had been anybody else. Nobody
seemed to believe me when I told them that Ray Novak was the one that
started all the trouble. They seemed to think that Ray Novak was
incapable of getting into any trouble, especially on the wrong side of
the law. With Tall Cameron, that was the thing they expected.

But I couldn't get mad at Laurin. I said, “Don't worry about me.
We'll put in a spell on the Brazos, until things settle down, and then
I'll be coming back. Don't forget that. I'll be back.”

At last she seemed to believe me. She smiled faintly and started to
come down the steps, but a sullen grunt from her brother stopped her.

Damn Joe Bannerman, anyway. And Ray Novak. This was a hell of a way
for a man to say good-by to his best girl. His only girl. I heard a
rustling around inside the house, and then a match flared and lighted a
lampwick. That would be Old Man Bannerman coming out to see what the
fuss was about, and I didn't feel like I wanted to go through the whole
rigmarole again, explaining that we were in trouble and it was Ray who
started it and not me.

Ray Novak called, “We'd better be riding, Tall.”

I knew he was right. There was no sense in staying here and letting
the bluebellies finally stumble on us.

I was standing there, feeling helpless. One moment Laurin's face was
quiet and composed, and the next moment it began to break up around her
eyes. Then, somehow, she was in my arms.

“Laurin!” Joe Bannerman roared. “For God's sake, haven't you got any
decency?”

The moment was over almost before I knew she was there. But I felt
better. I had held her in my arms for that short moment, and that was
something they couldn't take away from me. It was something I could
remember for the month, or six months, or whatever length of time we
had to be apart.

She had jumped back, startled at her brother's bellowing. Then the
back door opened again and the old man came out, and the lamplight
splashed around until it seemed to me that the cavalry couldn't miss
seeing it, no matter where they were. I knew it was time to start
riding.

I got Red and led him around to the corner of the house. Ray Novak
was already in the saddle, waiting for me. So I swung up, too.

Laurin's face was cameo-soft and pale in the lamplight, and that was
the way I remembered it.

“Take care of yourself, Tall. Don't ... let anything happen.”

“Don't worry. There's nothing to worry about.”

“Will I hear from you?”

“Sure. Anyway, I'll be back before you know it.”

Ray Novak was sitting his horse impassively. Nothing showed on his
face, but I could guess at what was happening inside him. All the time
we had been here, Laurin hadn't even looked at him. Only when we reined
our horses around to leave did she say:

“Good-by, Ray.”

And he said, “Good-by, Laurin.” And we rode out of the yard. I looked
back once and she was still standing there by the steps, pale and
beautiful in the flickering light from the oil lamp, and I realized
what a lucky guy I really was. I could even afford to feel sorry for
Ray Novak.

We rode east for what must have been two hours. I figured the Yankees
would be so lost by now that they would be lucky to find their way
home. And, as we put distance between us and John's City, I did some
thinking about Ray Novak, trying to figure out what had got into him
back there at Daggert's Road.

I added together all the things I knew about him and was a little
surprised when it didn't come to much. The Novak ranch had been next to
ours for as long as I could remember, and I had known him all that
time, or thought I had known him. We had gone to Professor Bigloe's
Academy together—a hell of a fancy name, I thought, for a school that
held classes three times a week in the smelly parlor of Ma Simpson's
boarding house, but it was the only school anywhere near John's City,
and it was considered quite the thing. They said Old Man Bigloe had
been a professor at the University of Virginia before they kicked him
out for drunkenness. He always kept a bottle in the inside breast
pocket of his frock coat, and he couldn't get through a spelling lesson
without stepping back to Ma Simpson's kitchen three or four times to
take a nip. Maybe he had had a good brain once, but it was
fuzzy
and booze-soaked by the time he opened the academy.

Anyway, he managed to get most of us through four steps of arithmetic
and some spelling and history. The history and geography came together
in the same class and it was the only class that Old Man Bigloe really
liked. He would get to talking about Italy, and then Rome, and finally
he'd get down to Caesar and he wouldn't give a damn if you threw spit
balls or not. He was a thin man with a perpetual stoop to his
shoulders, and sometimes he would go for two weeks without shaving. He
always got a funny look in his eyes when he got to talking about Rome
and those places, and it was generally agreed that he was crazy. During
classes, Ma Simpson would always sit, fat and watchful, in one corner
of the parlor, peeling potatoes or paring apples. She always arranged
to have a murderous-looking butcher knife in her hands, just in case
Old Man Bigloe had a “spell” and tried to kill somebody. But he never
did.

So that was Professor Bigloe's Academy. Professor Bigloe's Academy
for Learning and Culture, if you want the whole name. We went there
three times a week, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, the boys riding
in on horseback. There was a lot of hell raised, and a lot of fights;
but now that I came to think of it, Ray Novak hadn't figured in any of
them.