A Noose for the Desperado (22 page)

“He's bad,” Johnny said. “Real bad.”

The kid was already out of the saddle, wiping the dust off Bama's
flushed face.

Well, that was that. I couldn't just ride off and leave him, so I
helped get him back on his horse and we held him in the saddle for a
hundred yards or so until we came to a washed-out place in the side of
a hill. That was where we laid him out. Then I sent the kid out to look
for water.

“Bama.”

He didn't say anything. His face got as white as tallow, and it
seemed that he would go for minutes at a time without breathing. At
last he began to shake, and I knew the chills had started.

The kid came back with the water, but we didn't need it now. We
stripped the horses and piled the saddle blankets on top of Bama. We
lugged the silver into the wash and staked the horses out. Then we
settled down to wait.

Night came finally, and there was no change that I could see. My
stomach growled and knotted and ached, and I tried filling it up with
water, but that didn't help.

I said, “Get some sleep, kid. When you wake up in the morning it'll
be all over.”

But it wasn't. Bama was shaking when I went to sleep and he was still
shaking when I woke up. When the sun came up I took my rifle out again
and this time I came back with two rabbits.

We skinned them and cooked them like the other time. Me and the kid
finished them off because Bama couldn't eat. He couldn't do anything
except lie there and shake.

The day dragged on somehow, and to pass the time I got to figuring on
our chances of getting out of this. I counted up and discovered that
about fifty-six hours had gone by since we left Marta and Papacito at
Three Mile Cave. Three days gone and we hadn't traveled more than
thirty miles at the outside. Three days. Marta could have got the word
all the way to Tucson in that length of time. More than likely a
detachment of cavalry was already headed south. Under forced march they
would be right in our front yard by this time tomorrow.

The future wasn't exactly bright. I made my mind up once to pull out
of there, but when the time came to do it I didn't have the guts for
it. For one thing, I wasn't at all sure that the kid would be willing
to leave Bama and come with me. And, too, I kept remembering Kreyler
and Bucky. It was Bama's time that we were living on now.

The next morning Bama began freezing with chills one minute and
burning with fever the next. He kept us busy piling blankets on him and
then taking them off and putting wet rags on his head. Along toward
noon he went to sleep again. The kid walked out in the sun and stood
there breathing in deep gulps of clean air. For a moment I thought he
was going to be sick.

“Isn't there anything we can do?” he said. “Anything at all?”

“We're doing everything we can.”

“But he's going to die, don't you see that?” There didn't seem to be
anything to say after that, so the kid went over and sat on a rock and
held his head in his hands. All this was new to him. He had never seen
a friend of his die like this before.

I found a rock for myself and sat down, wondering about the cavalry.
What if they had already picked up our trail? Well, it was too late to
worry about it now. We'd have to shoot it out with them, and if there
weren't too many of them maybe we'd have a chance after all. The kid
would be a help. He was good enough with a rifle, he had already proved
that in the smuggler raid. And thinking of that made me feel better.
We'd fight our way out of it somehow, just the two of us.

I don't know just when it was that those thoughts turned on me, but
suddenly I found myself thinking, And then what?

There would be more cavalry, and more U.S. marshals, and you couldn't
go on killing them forever. Where was it going to end?

It doesn't happen often, but once or twice in a life-time a man takes
a look at himself and sees himself as he really is, and I guess that
was what I did then. I knew where it would end. In a deadwood saloon
with a bullet in my back, the way the end had come to Hickok. Over a
dice table, the way it had come to Hardin. Or on a lonesome Texas
hilltop, where Pappy Garret's career had ended. Not even Pappy had been
able to go on forever.

And what about the kid? What about that girl of his, and that little
cocklebur ranch that he was so set on?

That, I suppose, was the way my mind was running when the kid spoke.
I didn't hear what he said, and it wasn't important anyway, because I
was thinking of something else. Then he spoke again and I stood up and
said:

“I wish to hell you'd stop whining.” My voice was hard and full of
anger, and the kid looked as if I had just hit him across the face with
a pistol barrel. He didn't understand what I was mad at. And he wasn't
alone. Neither did I.

“There's one thing you'd better understand,” I said. “If you're not
willing to take the hard bumps when they come, then we'd better split
up here and now.”

That outburst kind of knocked the wind out of him, I guess, because
he just sat there with his mouth open. He groped around for words, but
this was a situation that he had never even thought about and he
couldn't find any words to fit it. I said, “You've done nothing but
complain. Not that I expect much out of you, because I haven't had time
to teach you anything. But guts come natural, and if you haven't got
them you're no good to me or anybody else.”

He closed his mouth finally and stared at me with bugging eyes.

He said hoarsely, “I didn't mean to complain. If I was doing it I
didn't know it.”

“You didn't know it,” I said. “You don't know anything, and that's
the whole trouble.”

Something had gone wrong, but he couldn't understand it. He stood up
and wiped his face and shifted from one foot to the other. “Well,” he
said, “I know I'm pretty green. But I can learn—you said so yourself.”

“Maybe I was wrong. I've been wrong before.”

He shuffled around some more, putting his hands in his pockets and
taking them out. He walked around in a little circle, still not able to
understand what had happened. “Maybe,” he said, “I got things all mixed
up. I thought all along that you were glad to have me ride with you. I
thought we were going to be—well, partners. Something like that.”

“You thought we were going to be partners,” I said dryly, and his
face turned beet-red. Then he stopped his marching around and really
looked at me for the first time.

“I guess I was jumping at conclusions,” he said after a long pause.
“I had kind of a crazy idea that you liked me.”

“I like you well enough, but that doesn't mean that I want to take
you to raise.”

He took it all right until then. But now he started to burn. His face
started to cloud up and his mouth clamped down to a grim line.

“If I was being so much trouble,” he said tightly, “why did you let
me ride this far with you?”

“I do crazy things sometimes. I guess everybody does.”

At last he began to get it.

“Are you trying to tell me that you don't want me around any more?”
he said. “Is that it?”

I said, “That's it.”

And that tore it open. He hadn't believed that a crazy thing like
this could happen, for no reason at all. But it finally sank in. For a
long moment he just stood there staring at me like a backwoods nester
looking at a circus freak.

Then he turned and walked stiffly to the wash. He came back with his
saddle over his shoulder and headed down to where the horses were
grazing.

It was all over. And the whole thing was almost as much a mystery to
me as it was to the kid. I needed him. He was my life insurance. And
now he was going.

I stood there on a knoll watching him cinch up, wondering how I was
going to fight off a detachment of cavalry by myself. After a while he
got the saddle on to suit him and he rode up to where I was.

“Well,” he said, “I guess this is good-by, Mr. Cameron. No hard
feelings.”

“No hard feelings,” I said. “Part of that silver is still yours.”

“I don't want the silver,” he said.

He started to pull away and I happened to think of something else.
“Where do you aim to go, kid?”

“Back to Texas,” he said without turning around.

Back to the work gang. Back to that wind-swept, thorn-daggered land
where strong men broke their hearts scrabbling around for a kind of
living. Back home.

“Well, good-by, kid.”

But he didn't hear me. He rode straight over a rise and dipped out of
sight. And that was the last I saw of him. It was hard to believe that
just a few minutes ago both of us had been sitting here waiting for the
end. Now there were just me and Bama—and the crazy thing about it was
that I wasn't sorry.

I stood there for a long time trying to understand why I had
deliberately sent him away. He was sure to wind up on the work
gang—but then, there were worse things than a work gang. Maybe that
was the answer. I waited until I was sure that he was well in the
hills, and then I went back to the wash.

“Bama.”

The fever had gone from his face and left it weak and flabby, like
the face of a very old man. I felt that my face must look something
like that. He opened his eyes and I got the canteen and dribbled water
between his lips.

“How do you feel?”

He moved his shoulders just a little in the barest hint of a shrug.

“Your fever's gone,” I said. “You're going to be all right in a day
or two.”

But I wasn't fooling anybody. The sickening smell of rotten flesh
still hung heavily over the wash. Bama worked his mouth a few times,
licking his cracked lips.

“Why don't you go?” he said. “You and the kid. You can still make it
if you go now.”

“The kid's not here,” I said.

He fumbled that around in his mind.

“Where is he?”

“Headed for Texas,” I said. I was suddenly tired of thinking about it
and talking about it. “What difference does it make? He's old enough to
have a mind of his own.” I got up and paced the wash. “He can go clear
to hell as far as I'm concerned.”

Bama didn't say anything. He just lay there with those wide staring
eyes watching me as I marched up and down.

“Well, what are you looking at?”

But he only gave that whisper of a shrug again. “Did you tell him to
go?”

“Sure, I told him to go. I was goddamn sick and tired of looking at
his stupid face.”

Bama closed his eyes again, as if the conversation had worn him out.
He lay there for a minute, half-smiling, or grimacing in pain. I
couldn't tell which.

“Have you got a cigarette?”

I built a cigarette out of the last of my makings, put it in his
mouth, and fired it.

“I guess I never knew you, Tall Cameron,” he said. “Several times I
thought I did, but about that time you always did the unexpected.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing. Not a thing.” He dragged on the cigarette, burning it
quickly to his lips, and then he spat it out. “You've got to get out of
here,” he said. “Take the horses and silver and try to make it to the
border. There's no sense in your staying here. Nothing is going to help
me now.”

“Nothing's going to help you if you don't shut up. Now, try to get
some sleep.”

He lay there for a while with his eyes closed and I thought that he
had gone to sleep. Then he said, “I wonder if she ever married.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

But that was all he said. And pretty soon he went to sleep again.

I squatted down in the wash and listened to his breathing, coming
strong for a while and then almost stopping completely. He was a crazy
sort of galoot and I had never understood him any more than he had
understood me. I had hated him and liked him in spells. There was no
foolishness about him. He saw himself as he really was —not just
rarely, like most people, but all the time. Except maybe when he was
drunk.

I unholstered my off-hand gun—Marta had the other one—and wiped it
clean with my shirttail. Then I punched out the cartridges and wiped
them clean and put them back in the cylinder. I couldn't help wondering
about the cavalry. They must be somewhere in the neighborhood by now.
Marta must have told them the direction we had headed.

I climbed out of the wash and got my rifle and began cleaning it off
the way I had the pistol. I went down and got the horses and picketed
them there in the draw where they would be out of sight. Once again the
thought crossed my mind that I ought to get out of there. But it just
wasn't in me to let Bama die by himself. He had lived by himself. That
seemed to be enough.

It was then, I guess, that I first heard it. Or I thought I did.
Maybe I just felt it. I listened hard and there was nothing but the
sound of wind. But that feeling was there.

I saddled the black horse, and holstered the rifle, then I rode as
quietly as I could up to a hogback ridge just east of our wash. When I
got near the crest I crawled the rest of the way to the top and looked
over. Sure enough, there they were, the United States Cavalry.

There were eight of them about four or five hundred yards down the
slope, and they had got together for a powwow, trying to decide which
way to go, I guess. The lieutenant was pointing toward the ridge, and
the sergeant was pointing to the south, and then they both dismounted
and put their noses to the ground, looking for sign.

The wind must have blown most of the sign away, because they still
looked pretty undecided when they climbed back on their horses. Then
they did what I was afraid they were going to do. They spread out to
scour the whole area. I got the lieutenant in the sights of my rifle
once, but about that time the wind changed, and by the time I made the
changes in sighting he had ridden around the side of a hill. Well, it
was just as well. I would only have brought the other seven troopers
down on me. The best thing to do was to go back to the wash, where I
had a good line of defense, and make my stand there.