The Desperado (7 page)

But I thought of Laurin Bannerman. Laurin, with eyes a little too
large for her small face, and her small mouth that always looked
slightly berry-stained, and her laugh that was as fresh as spring rain.
I thought about her plenty now that I had time on my hands and there
was nothing else to do. It was a funny thing, but I had never paid any
attention to her until a couple of years ago. I guess that's the way
boys are around that age. One minute girls mean nothing, and the next
minute they're everything.

That was Laurin for me. Just about everything.

It was late in the afternoon when Pappy woke up. I was sitting under
a cottonwood up on the creek bank, flipping my new pistols over and
over to get the feel of them. Pappy sat up lazily, stretching, yawning,
and scratching the mangy patches of beard on his face.

“That's better,” he said. “Much better.” He got up on his feet and
hobbled around experimentally. “You handle those guns pretty good,
son,” he said. “Do you think you can shoot them as well?”

“Well enough, I guess.”

Pappy shook his head soberly and beat some of the dust from his
battered hat. “That's one thing no man ever does—shoot well enough.
Sooner or later, if you keep looking, you'll find some bird that can
slap leather faster.”

“How about you?” I asked.

Pappy grinned slightly. “Maybe I haven't looked long enough,” he
said. “But I don't expect to live forever.”

He began getting his stuff together, a ragged gray blanket that still
had C.S.A. stenciled on it in faded black letters, a change of
clothing, and that was about all. He did have some tobacco, though. He
took the sack out of his shirt pocket and poured some of the powdery
stuff into a little square of corn shuck, Mexican style, and tossed the
makings up to me.

“You figure to ride east tonight?” he asked casually.

“That's what I had in mind.”

“Alone?”

He was holding a match up to his cigarette and I couldn't see his
face. “I guess that's up to you,” I said.

He got that surprised look again. “How do you mean, son?”

He came up the slope and held a match while I got my cigarette to
going. “Isn't that what you had in mind all along?” I said. “You look
like a man that's just about played out. I don't know what you're
running from, or how long you've been at it, but I know a man can't
stay on the alert twenty-four hours a day, the way you must have been
doing. I'm on my way to the Brazos country. If you want to ride along
and keep clear of the bluebellies, that's all right with me. We'll take
turns sleeping and watching, and split up when we get to the river.”

He tried to look all innocence, but he didn't have the face for it.
“Do you think I'd let a mere boy tie up with a wanted man like me?”

“I think that's what you've been figuring on all along,” I said.

I thought for a minute that he was going to break down and have a
real laugh. But he didn't. He only said, “I guess we'd better get ready
to ride. The sun will be down before long.”

We made about twenty-five miles that night, and I knew before we had
covered a hundred yards that I had picked the right man to get me
through hostile country. Pappy knew every trick there was to learn
about covering a trail. When a hard shale outcropping appeared, we
followed it. When we crossed a stream we never came out near the place
we went in. We even picked up the tracks of some wild cattle and
followed them for two or three miles, mingling our own horses'
hoofmarks with the dozens of others.

Pappy didn't ask me, but I told him about myself as we rode. I even
told him about Laurin, and Ray Novak, and how we came to be on the run,
but there was no way of knowing what he thought about it. He would
grunt once in a while, and that was all.

The next day, when we started to ride again, Pappy found a holster
for me in one of those saddlebags of his. “Some people will tell you
that a good shot doesn't need but one gun,” he said, “but that's a lot
of foolishness. Two of anything is better than one.”

I felt foolish at first. It seemed like a lot of hardware— a lot
more than an ordinary man needed to pack. But then, Pappy Garret wasn't
an ordinary man, and when you were with Pappy you did as he did.

The day after that he said we didn't have to ride at night any more.
He knew the country and there was nothing to worry about between us and
the Brazos. Pappy, I gathered, was figuring on tying up with a trail
herd headed for Kansas, but he never said so. He never said anything
much after we got to riding, except for things like: “Loosen your
cartridge belt, son. Let your pistols hang where your palms can brush
the butts. Boothills are full of men that had to reach that extra inch
to get their guns.” Or, at the end of a day maybe, when we were sitting
around doing nothing: “Clean your pistols, son. Guns are like women; if
you don't treat them right, and they turn against you, you've got
nobody to blame but yourself.”

It was almost sundown of the fourth day when we raised the wooded
high ground with a sagging little log shack partly dug into the side of
a hill. A thin little whisper of smoke was curling up from a rock
chimney.

“It looks like they're expecting us,” Pappy said, squinting across
the distance.

I looked at him, and he saw the question before I could ask it.
“They,”
he said, “could be almost anybody. Anybody but the law,
that is. The shack was built a long time ago by a sheepherder, but the
cattlemen chased him out of Texas before he had time to get settled
good. Some of the boys I know use it once in a while. I use it myself
when I'm in this part of the country.”

Well, I figured Pappy ought to know. We rode up toward the shack, and
before long a man came out of it and stood there by the front door—the
only door the cabin had—nursing what looked like a short-barreled
buffalo gun. A Sharps maybe, about a .50 caliber, I guessed, when we
got closer.

The man himself wasn't much to look at. About twenty-three or so,
with a blunted, bulldog face, and long hair that hung down almost to
his shoulders. His clothes were in about the same shape as Pappy's, and
that wasn't saying much.

Pappy grunted as we pulled up near the crest of the hill. “It looks
like one of the Creyton boys,” he said.

I had a closer look at the man. The Creyton boys had hard names in
Texas. They were supposed to have been in on a bank robbery or two down
on the border. There were three of them: Buck, and Ralph, and a younger
one called Paul. I figured the one at the shack was Paul Creyton,
because he looked too young to have done the things that Buck and Ralph
had to their credit.

The man recognized Pappy as we drew up into the thicket that passed
for a front yard. I saw there was a lean-to shed on the side of the
shack—a place for keeping horses, I supposed—but there was no horse
stable there. The man lowered his gun and came forward.

“Pappy Garret,” he said flatly, “I had an idea you was up in Kansas.”

Pappy grinned slightly and leaned across his big black's neck to
shake hands. “A Texan likes to see the old home place once in a while.
How are you, Paul?”

The man glanced sideways at me, and Pappy said quickly, “This is Tall
Cameron, a friend of mine. He's going as far as the Brazos with me.”

We nodded at each other. Paul Creyton said, “You haven't seen Buck,
have you?”

“Not for about two years,” Pappy said.

“We split up down on the Black River,” Creyton went on flatly, as if
he had gone over the story a hundred times in his mind. “A Morgan
County sheriff's posse jumped us just south of the river. Ralph's dead.
A sonofabitch gave him a double load of buckshot. My horse played out
about four miles off, down in the flats, and I had to leave him in a
gully.”

I watched Pappy stiffen, just a little, then relax. “That's too bad
about Ralph,” he said softly.

“A double load of buckshot the sonofabitch gave him,” Paul Creyton
said again. “Right in the face. I wouldn't of known him, my own
brother, if I hadn't been standing right next to him and seen him get
it.” His little eyes were dark with anger, but I couldn't see any
particular grief on his face. He jerked his head toward the shack. “It
ain't much, Pappy, but you and your friend are welcome to stay with me.
I was just going out to see if I couldn't shoot myself some grub.”

Pappy looked at me. We had been riding a long way and our horses
needed a rest, but he was leaving the decision up to me.

“I've got some side bacon and corn meal,” I said. “I guess that will
see us through supper.”

We cooked the bacon at a small rock fireplace in one corner of the
shack, then we fried some hoecake bread in the grease, and finally made
some coffee. Pappy and Paul Creyton talked a little, but not much.
Somehow I gathered that Pappy wasn't such a great friend of the
Creytons as I had thought at first.

After supper, it was almost dark, and the only light in the shack
came from the little jumping flames in the fireplace. Talk finally
slacked off to nothing, and Paul Creyton sat staring into the fire,
anger written into every line of his face. Whatever his plans were, he
wasn't letting us in on them. Whatever was in his mind, he was keeping
it to himself.

Pappy got up silently and went outside to look at his horse. I
followed him.

“What do you think about that posse?” I said. “Do you think they'll
follow Creyton up to this place?”

Pappy shook his head, lifting his horse's hoofs and inspecting them.
“Not tonight. This place is hard to find if you don't know where to
look, and Paul can cover a trail as well as the next one.”

I rubbed Red down and gave him some water out of a rain barrel at the
edge of the shack. His ribs were beginning to show through his glossy
hide, and there were several briar scratches across his chest. But
there wasn't anything wrong with him that a sack of oats or corn
wouldn't fix.

I heard Pappy grunt, and I looked up. He had his horse's left
forefoot between his knees, gouging around the shoe with a pocketknife.

“A stone bruise,” he said. “He's been walking off center since noon,
but I figured it was because he was tired.” He got the rock that was
caught under the rim of the shoe and nipped it out. “Well, there won't
be any riding for a day or so, until that hoof is sound again.”

“That means staying here tomorrow?”

“It means
me
staying here. You don't have to. Another day's
ride will put you on the Brazos.”

For a minute I didn't say anything. I hadn't figured that it would be
any problem to pack up and leave Pappy any time I felt like it. But
there was something about that ugly face that a man could get to like.
He didn't have many friends. Maybe I was the closest thing to a friend
that he had ever had. I made up my mind.

“I'll wait,” I said. “We'll ride in together.”

I imagined that I saw Pappy smile, but it was too dark now really to
see his face. Then, without looking up, he said, “In that case, you'd
better keep an eye on that red horse of yours.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“If you were on foot,” Pappy said, “and in no position to get
yourself a horse, what would you do?”

“Like Paul Creyton.”

“We'll say Eke Paul Creyton.” began to get mad just thinking about
it. “If he lays a hand on Red,” I said, “I'll kill him.”

Pappy turned, and stretched, and yawned, as if it were no concern of
his. “Maybe I'm wrong,” he said, “but I doubt it. He's got to have a
horse, and that animal of yours is the closest one around.”

He started back toward the shack, toward the doorway faintly jumping
in orange firelight. “Just a minute,” I said. “How are you so sure that
he won't try to steal that black of yours?”

Pappy smiled. He was in the dark, but I knew he was smiling.

“Paul Creyton knows better than to steal an animal of mine,” he said.

When I got back to the shack I decided that Pappy had the whole thing
figured wrong. Creyton had his blanket roll undone and was stretched
out in front of the fireplace when I came in. He didn't look like a man
ready to make a quick getaway on a stolen horse. Pappy was sitting on
the other side of the room with his back to the wall, smoking one of
his corn-shuck cigarettes.

“It seems like Paul just came from your part of the country,” he
said.

“John's City?”

Creyton sat up and worked with the makings of a cigarette. “That's
the place,” he said. “Me and Ralph and Buck came through there a few
days back. About the day after you pulled out, according to what Pappy
tells me.”

I looked at Pappy, but his face told me nothing.

“Well, what about it?”

“Nothing about it,” Creyton said bluntly. “We just came through it,
that's all. The carpetbag law was raisin' hell. Stoppin' all travelers,
police makin' raids on the local ranchers. All because some white punk
took a swing at a cavalryman, they said.”

I hadn't been ready for that. I had figured, like Ray Novak, that if
the two of us got out of the country for a while it would all blow
over. But here the police were raiding the ranches, because of us. Our
own place, maybe. Or the Bannerman place, where Laurin was.

If one of the pigs so much as laid a hand on Laurin...

The thought of it made me weak and a little sick. I wheeled and
started for the door.

“Where do you think you're going?” Pappy said.

“Back to John's City.”

“Do you plan to go on foot? I don't care what you do with yourself,
but I hate to see you kill a good horse out of damn foolishness. Wait
till tomorrow. You'll make better time in the long run by giving your
horse a rest.”

Pappy was right. I knew that, but it wasn't easy staying here and
wondering what might be happening to Laurin, or Ma and Pa, and doing
nothing about it. Grey-ton got slowly to his feet, standing there in
front of the fireplace, looking at me.