The Desperado (8 page)

“You'd better listen to Pappy, kid,” he said. “When you need a horse
you need him bad. I ought to know.”

I didn't want Creyton's advice. For all I knew, he just wanted me to
stick around a while longer to give him a better chance to steal my
horse. But I knew they were both right. Red had been pushed hard for
the past few days, and if I tried to push him again tonight he might
break down for good.

So I stayed. When the fire burned out, we made blanket pallets on the
dirt floor, and before long Pappy's heavy breathing told me that he was
asleep. He didn't snore. From time to time the rhythm of his breathing
would break, he would rouse himself, look around, and then go back to
sleep again. That was the way Pappy was. He never slept sound enough to
snore. You had a feeling that he never let his mind be completely
blanked out, that he always kept some little corner of it open. Being
on the run had done that. He was afraid to allow himself the luxury of
real sleep. A man like Pappy never knew when he would have to be wide
awake and ready to shoot.

I lay awake for a long while, listening to a night wind moan and
fling gravel and dust against the shack. Creyton seemed to be asleep.
His breathing was regular, and once in a while he would snort a little
and roll over on the hard ground. I lay there, with my eyes wide open,
not taking any chances.

The night crawled by slowly. How many hours, I don't know. My eyes
burned from keeping them open, and every so often I'd feel myself
dropping off and I'd have to start thinking about something. I wanted a
cigarette, but I didn't dare light one. I was asleep, as far as Paul
Creyton was concerned, and I wanted to keep it that way in case he had
ideas about that red horse of mine. I started thinking about Laurin.

I was dreaming of Laurin when something woke me. I didn't remember
going to sleep, but I had. I sat up immediately, looking around the
room, but it was too dark to see anything. I could hear Pappy's
breathing. But not Paul Creyton's.

Sickness hit in my stomach, and then anger. Then, outside the shack,
I heard Red whinny, and I knew that was the thing that had wakened me.

I went to the door, and in the pale moonlight I could see Paul
Creyton throwing a saddle up on Red's back. So Pappy had been right all
along. I found my cartridge belt on the floor, swung it around my
middle and buckled it. Pappy didn't move. Didn't make a sound.

I didn't feel angry now, or in any particular hurry. I knew Creyton
wasn't going to get away with stealing my horse, the same as that time,
years ago, when I had known that Criss Bagley wouldn't hurt me with
that club. I didn't know just how I would stop him; but I would stop
him, and that was the important thing.

The night was quiet, and the sudden little scamper of Red's hoofs was
the only thing to disturb it as I stepped out of the shack. Creyton had
the horse all saddled and ready to ride by the time I got out to the
shed. He was standing in the shadows, on the other side of Red, and I
couldn't see him very well. But he could see me.

I never heard of a man talking his way out of horse stealing, and I
guess Creyton never had either. Anyway, he didn't try it this time. He
moved fast, jerking Red in front of him. Everything was so cut and
dried that there wasn't any use thinking about it, even if there had
been time. I dropped to my knees, with one of my new .44's in my hand.
For just a moment I wondered how I was going to get Creyton without
hitting Red. Then I made out the figure of Creyton kneeling under the
horse's belly, and his gun blazed.

It all happened before Red could jump. I felt the .44 kick twice in
my hand, the shots crowding right on top of Creyton's, and something
told me there was no use wasting any more bullets. Red reared suddenly
and, as he came crashing down with those ironshod hoofs, there was a
soft, mushy sound, like dumping a big rock into a mud hole.

I thought for a minute that I was going to be sick. But that passed.
I ran forward and caught hold of the reins and stroked the big horse's
neck until he began to quiet down. There were nervous little ripples
running up and down his legs and shoulders, but he got over his wild
spell. I petted him some more, then led him away from the place and
hitched him to a blackjack tree near the shack.

Paul Creyton was dead. I dragged him out into the moonlight and had a
look at him. His face was a mess of meat and gristle and bone where
Red's hoof had caught him, but that wasn't the thing that had done it.
He had a bullet hole in the hollow of his throat, just below his Adam's
apple, and another one about six inches up from his belt buckle. The
one in the throat went all the way through, breaking his neck and
leaving a hole about the size of a half dollar where the bullet came
out. His head flopped around like something that didn't even belong to
the rest of the body, when I tried to pick him up.

It had all happened too fast to make much of an impression on me at
first. But now I was beginning to get it. I backed up and swallowed to
keep my stomach out of my throat. I hadn't known that a man could die
like that. Just a flick of the finger, enough to pull a trigger, and
he's dead. As easy as that. The night was cool, almost cold, but I felt
sweat on my face, and on the back of my neck. Sweat plastered my shirt
to my back. I walked away from the place and headed back toward the
shack.

It occurred to me to wonder what had happened to Pappy. He must have
heard the shooting. The way he slept.

As I stepped through the doorway, a match flared and Pappy's face
jumped out at me as he lit a cigarette. He put the match out and I
couldn't see his face any more, just the glowing end of that corn-shuck
tube, with little sparks falling every once in a while and dying before
they hit the floor.

He said at last, “Creyton?”

“He's dead.”

I could see the fire race almost halfway down the cigarette as he
dragged deeply. I was still too numb to put things together. I only
knew that Pappy had been awake at the time of the shooting and he had
made no move to help me. He hadn't even bothered to come out and see if
I was dead or not. He took one more drag on the cigarette and flipped
it away.

“Well,” he said, “it's just as well. Maybe I could have stopped it,
but I doubt it. Sometimes it's best to let things run until they come
out the way they're bound to in the end, anyway.”

“Were you awake,” I asked, “while he was trying to steal my horse?”

“I was awake.”

“A hell of a friend you are! What was the idea of laying there and
not even bothering to wake me up?”

“You woke up,” Pappy said mildly. “Anyway, it wasn't any of my
business. I did my part when I warned you about Paul Creyton. What if I
had walked into the quarrel and shot Paul for you? What difference
would it have made? He's dead anyway.”

“But what if he had shot me?” I wanted to know.

I could almost see Pappy shrug. “That's the way it goes sometimes. By
the way, you handle guns pretty well, at that. Paul Creyton wasn't the
worst gunman in Texas, not by a long sight.”

It took me a while to get it. But I had a good hold now. All the time
I had been thinking that Pappy was my friend. He didn't even know what
the word meant. Bite-dog-bite-bear, every man for himself, that was the
way men like Pappy Garret lived. Unless, of course, some dumb kid came
along who might be of some use to him for a few days. I'd played the
fool all right, thinking that you could ever be friends with a man like
that.

“Buck Creyton,” I said. “You were afraid to take a hand with his kid
brother because you knew you'd have Buck Creyton on your tail.”

“I'll admit I gave Buck some thought in the matter,” Pappy said.

I found that I still had the pistol in my hand. I flipped it over and
shoved it in my holster. It's surprising how fast the shock of killing
a man wears off. I wasn't thinking of Paul Creyton now. I was just
thinking of how big a fool I had been, and getting madder all the time.

“This finishes us, Pappy. From now on you take your trail and I'll
take mine. This is as far as we go together.”

There was another flare of a match as Pappy lit a fresh cigarette.
“Of course, son,” he said easily. “Isn't that the way you wanted it all
along?”

I left Pappy in the shack! I'd had enough of him. I went outside and
gentled Red some more and wondered vaguely what to do with Paul
Creyton. I didn't have any feeling for him one way or the other, but it
didn't seem right just to leave him there.

What I finally did was to drag him down to the bottom of the slope
and roll up boulders to build a tomb around him. That was the best I
could do since I didn't have anything to dig a grave with. It was hard
work and took a long time, but I stuck with it and did a good job.
Anyway, it had a permanent look, and it would keep away the coyotes and
buzzards.

When I finished, the sky in the east was beginning to pale, and it
was about time to start riding back toward John's City. I stood there
for a while, beside the tomb, half wishing I could work up some feeling
for the dead man. A feeling of regret, or remorse, or something. But I
didn't feel anything at all. I looked at the pile of rocks that I had
rolled up, and it was hard to believe that a man was under them. A man
I had killed.

When I started up toward the shack again, I saw that Pappy had come
outside and had been watching the whole thing. There was a curious
twist to his mouth, and a strange, faraway look in his eyes, as I
walked past him. But he didn't speak, and neither did I.

I got Red saddled again, and, as I finished tying on the blanket
roll, Pappy came over.

“You probably don't want any advice,” he said, “but I'm going to give
you some anyway. Go on down to your uncle's place on the Brazos, like
your old man wanted. You'll just get into trouble if you go back home
and try bucking the police.”

I swung up to the saddle without saying anything.

Pappy sighed. “Well ... so long, son.”

I had forgotten that I was still wearing the guns that he had given
me, or I would have given them back to him. As it was, I just pulled
Red around and rode west.

around the second day, on the trail back to John's City, I began to
think straight again. I began to wonder if maybe Pappy hadn't been
right again and I was acting like a damn fool by going back and asking
for more trouble from the police. Maybe—but I had a feeling that
wouldn't be wiped away by straight thinking. It was a feeling of
something stretching and snapping my nerves like too-tight banjo
strings. I couldn't place it then, but I found out later what the
feeling was. It was fear.

Up until now it was just a word that people talked about sometimes. I
always thought it was something a man felt when a gun was pointed at
him and the hammer was falling forward, of when a condemned man stood
on the gallows scaffold waiting for the trap to spring. But then I
remembered that I hadn't felt it when Paul Creyton had taken a shot at
me a few nights back. This was something new. And I couldn't explain
it. When I felt it, I just pushed Red a little harder in the direction
of John's City.

We made the return trip in three days, because I wasn't as careful as
Pappy had been about covering my trail. We came onto the John's City
range from the north, and I made for the Bannerman ranch first because
it was closer than our own place, and I wanted to see if Laurin was all
right. I remember riding across the flat in the brilliant afternoon,
wondering what I would do if the cavalry or police happened to be
waiting for me there at the Bannermans'. I had been around Ray Novak
and his pa enough to be familiar with the law man's saying: “If you
want to catch a fugitive, watch his woman.”

But I didn't see anything. I raised the chimney of the Bannerman
ranch house first, sticking clear-cut against the ice-blue sky. And
pretty soon I could make out the whole house and the corrals and
outbuildings, and that feeling in my stomach came back again and told
me that something was wrong.

It was too quiet, for one thing. There are sounds peculiar to cattle
outfits—the sound of blacksmith hammers, the rattle of wagons, or clop
of horses—sounds you don't notice particularly until they are missing.
There were none of those sounds as I rode into the ranch yard.

And there were other things. There were no horses in the holding
corrals, and the barn doors flapped forlornly in the prairie wind, and
the bunkhouse, where the ranch hands were supposed to be, was empty.
The well-tended outfit I had seen a few days before looked like a ghost
ranch now. And, somehow, I knew it all tied up with that feeling I had
been carrying.

I rode Red right up to the back door and yelled in.

“Laurin! Joe! Is anybody home?”

It was like shouting into a well just to hear your voice go round and
round the naked walls, knowing that nobody was going to answer.

“Laurin, are you in there?”

Joe, the old man, the ranch hands, they didn't mean a damn to me. But
Laurin...

I didn't dare think any further than that. She was all right. She had
gone away somewhere, visiting maybe. She
had
to be all right.

I dropped down from the saddle, took the back steps in one jump, and
rattled the back door.

“Laurin!”

I hadn't expected anything to happen. It was just that I didn't know
what else to do. I was about to turn away and ride as fast as I could
to some place where somebody would tell me what was going on here.
Something was crazy. Something was all wrong. I could sense it the way
a horse senses that he's about to step on a snake, and I wanted to shy
away, just the way a horse would do. I took the first step back from
the door, when I heard something inside the house.

It moved slowly, whatever it was. Not with stealth, not as if it was
trying to creep up on something. More as if it was being dragged, or as
if it was dragging itself. Whatever it was, it was coming into the
kitchen, toward the back door where I still stood. Then I saw what it
was.