The mare was a good one with an urge to travel. She stepped out with her ears pricked forward like she knew she was going into new country, like she wanted to see what was beyond the hill and around the bend. This was a traveling mare.
So north we rode, away from Jefferson, away from Caddo Lake. I was in Louisiana with the Arkansas line somewhere to the north and the Texas line just to the west, only a few miles away. When I crossed into Texas I would be in Cass County, which was my home county, but I had just to hope that I’d see nobody who knew me. After crossing Baker Creek, I turned west.
Avoiding roads I kept to old trails the Caddoes used and that Cherokee hunting parties had used when they came down from the Nation. When I forded the river and rode up to Mush Island I took it almighty cautious to see before I was seen.
A broken branch with green leaves lay across the path ahead of me, so I walked the mare along until I saw the three stones beside the trail. The triangle they formed pointed into the woods.
They were signs our outfit used, but they might also be a trap, so I reined the mare over and hooted like an owl, waited, then hooted again.
After a minute or so a frog sounded back in the woods, and only Matt Kirby could do it so natural-like.
So I sat my horse and kept my eyes open for trouble, and waited for him to come up to me, but when he came he had a stranger with him. “It’s all right,” Kirby said, “This here’s a cousin to Buck and Joe. I know him.”
The stranger was as large as either Kirby or me, and he was almost in rags.
Mike had said Katy was bringing some clothes to their meeting at Willow Bluff so I dug into my saddlebags. “You could use a shirt,” I said, and hauled out my old checkered shirt and a pair of homespun jeans made by a Mormon woman near Cove Fort. They were none too good but better than what the fellow had on. “You take these,” I said, “I’ve had my wear out of them.”
“Thanks.” The big fellow was mighty embarrassed. “I’m beholden. We uns are fresh out of cash money up on the Red. Man gits mahty little for his crops nowadays.”
“What are you down this way for?”
He looked up, honest surprise on his face. “Why, they kilt my cousins. Somebody kills our’n, we kill them. That’s the way it is up on the Red.”
“You go home,” I told him, “you just go back up there. You’ll catch nothing but trouble down here.”
“I got it to do,” he said soberly. “Pa says so an’ I got a feelin’ he’s raht. Them Tinney boys. I growed up with Buck an’ Joe. Can’t hear of them bein’ laid away without the men who kilt ’em laid away, too.”
“You go home,” I insisted.
Bob Lee came up through the woods, Longley a length behind, and both of them grinned when they saw me. “Figured you for swamp bait,” Bob said, “figured they’d tacked up your hide.”
“Take some doing,” I said.
“Bickerstaff went to Johnson County.”
We squatted on our heels and talked commonplaces while Kirby and his new partner rustled wood and started some coffee. Bob Lee looked tired and even Longley, the youngest of the lot except for this new man, looked beat. Bob Lee, he looked around us. “I never liked this place; makes a man spooky.”
“You going to Mexico?”
“Uh-huh. I figure to ranch down there.” Bob Lee took the broken stub of a cigar from his pocket. “Down in Chihuahua I have friends. I’ll send for the wife later.”
“I’m riding West.”
It was on us now, the feeling that we were leaving was riding us, and a man could feel the uneasiness among us. All of us had been riding elbow to elbow with death for months, and yet now that we had a chance to get out we were more scared than ever.
I never figured it was a cowardly thing to be scared. It’s to be scared and still to face up to what scares you that matters. A man in our way of life faces guns many times, and he knows a gun can kill, but now we had our chance to get out and away and we were ready. No sense in prolonging it. Taking the coffee Matt offered me I drank a mouthful. “I’m pulling out,” I said. “I’m getting shut of this place.”
Lee glanced up at me as I straightened up. Longley got up, too. Matt poked at the fire, and the youngster sat there and looked at us like he couldn’t understand. All of us knew that we weren’t about to see each other again, and we had shared troubles.
“Wait a spell,” Lee told me, “and I’ll ride as far as Fannin County with you.”
My clothes itched me and I felt cold and lonely. A little wind came through the trees and I shivered. The feeling was on me that there was death in this place and it was my death that was coming. “Bob, I wouldn’t go to Fannin County if I were you.”
“I’ve got to see the wife.”
“Don’t go! Write to her. You light out for Mexico and don’t stop until you’ve got Laredo behind you. I’m telling you, Bob, we should all get shut of Texas. You ride out, Bob, and you keep going. You’re a good man, one of the best I ever knew, and there’s no sense you spilling blood of yours for a cause that wasted itself away. You keep riding.”
“Never saw you jumpy before.”
Turning around I looked at that long, tall, handsome Bill Longley. “You hang up your guns, Bill. They’ll get you killed, believe me.”
“A man has to die,” he said.
Holding out my hand to Bob, I said, “So long, Bob. Easy riding.”
“Adios, compadre.”
Longley got up. He looked awkward and embarrassed. “See you out West sometime. You watch for me.”
“I’ll do that.”
Throwing the rest of my coffee into the dead leaves I looked into the empty cup, then I turned and dropped the cup and stepped into the saddle. For a long moment I sat my saddle unmoving, my back turned to them, for we all knew it was the last time, and the sickness of leaving was on me. Then I rode away.
“He should have waited to eat,” Longley said.
Kirby glanced up. “A doom’s on him, can’t you see it? My old grandma told me when the doom’s on a man and he knows he’s going to die, he’s like that.”
“That’s fool talk.” Bob Lee dropped his cup. “I’m not waiting. I’m riding to Fannin County. Coming Bill?”
When they were gone the tall young man rubbed his eyes and looked sheepishly at Kirby. “You sleepy? I’m raht tard.”
Only a a few yards away I’d stopped again, almost afraid to go on, yet feeling like Bob Lee that there was something about this place that gave me a bad feeling. I’d sat there, listening to them talk, hearing the retreating sounds of the horses of Lee and Longley, and then I heard Kirby say, “Sleep, I’ll wake you to take watch when I’m sleepy.”
So I rode away under the trees, sitting easy in the saddle and shaped up for a long ride West.
At daybreak I was still riding, but the mare was dead tired and we both needed rest. There was plenty of time to get to Willow Bluff—but that was the trouble. A man always thought there was plenty of time, and there never was.
When I awakened and pulled on my boots I checked my guns and then scouted around. By the sun I judged I’d slept a couple of hours, and after a scout around I put together a small fire in a hollow place near a tree where the rising smoke could lose itself in the branches, and made coffee. Broiling a chunk of beef, I took a couple of swallows of coffee and then with the beef in my left hand, taking occasional bites, I strolled over to where the trail went through the trees.
There was no evidence that the trail had been used by anyone else, although I saw where an inquisitive deer had been checking my tracks. This was an old Caddo trail, and kept to high ground under the trees, dipping only occasionally to lonely springs or to the river. The days of Caddo wandering were almost a thing of the past, so the trail was unused. It was the same trail I’d taken out of the country once before. My camp was south of the Sulphur near Whiteoak Creek.
Both Barlow and the soldiers would be hunting me now. I’d escaped from prison now, and for that alone they’d be after me.
But I was out of Cass County, and pretty much beyond Barlow’s zone of action.
There was a mockingbird doing tricks in a treetop some distance away, but no other sound. At the fire I finished eating, finished my coffee and put out the fire with great care. I’d seen too much damage done by carelessly put out fires, or those left burning by some damn’ fool.
It was a lazy, sunlit morning, and I was about three miles from Willow Bluff. In the silent woods a sound can be heard from quite a distance, so when I heard a sound I straightened up and listened.
It could have been a branch breaking, but animals do not break branches, and if broken deliberately it must be for a cooking fire. If otherwise, then somebody was sneaking around and I wasn’t ready for that.
Moving easy-like, I saddled up and put my stuff together. Mounting up I walked the horse off under the trees, keeping away from my lonely little trail until some distance from the night camp. The main trail, such as it was, was several miles away, but there was another used occasionally that would touch at Willow Bluff. There was not a chance in a million anyone would guess my trail was here. Fact is, it would take a sharp man, just stumbling on it, to judge it a trail at all.
At no time had I failed to practice the technique of drawing a gun fast. Each day except when in jail I’d spent some time working at it, and I knew I’d become a sight faster than when I killed Dud Butler in Fort Worth. Accuracy had never been a problem. From boyhood I’d been skillful with all sorts of weapons.
At intervals I drew up to judge the silence of the woods, to sort out the sounds, and the closer I was to final escape the more jumpy I became. The very fact that I was getting out made every move more careful because I wanted nothing to go wrong at the last minute.
About noontime I rode down to the bank of the Sulphur. It was a dangerous river, many ways. Under the surface there was an entangling mass of roots, old snags, and masses of dead and long-submerged water lilies, sudden shallows or depths. The old ferry was several miles downstream, and the place where I now sat my saddle was an old Caddo crossing almost two miles upstream from Willow Bluff.
Approaching the bluff from the north seemed a likely idea, and I’d circled around, cutting for sign, and checking the country. Right about then I’d an uneasy feeling the woods weren’t at all empty. Could be I was jumpy, but the feeling was on me.
Katy might come at any time, and she might not be alone, so I’d want to check whoever was with her before I showed up in plain sight. Also, there was always the chance she’d been followed. A man on the dodge can’t rule out anything as unlikely. Walking the dapple into the water I waded him and swam him across the Sulphur.
The old trail divided here and a branch went northwest toward a couple of shacks called White Cotton. The other branch went northeast to intersect with a very poor trail running north to Dalby Springs and southeast toward the ferry. Turning off the trail before it reached the road, I worked a cautious way through the forest toward Willow Bluff.
Willow Bluff was one of several bluffs that were actually little more than high banks covered with willows as was much of this bottom in 1869. On the edge of a thicket near some pines I got down from the saddle. There was no reason I could think of for feeling like I did but there was panic in me. The silence of the forest was suddenly oppressive and I had to fight back an urge to climb into the saddle and light out of there and run like I never had in my life until I was far from here, far from Texas, and far from anything I ever knew.
Easing the girth on the dapple I squatted on my heels and lighted my pipe, and then I stayed right there, listening, making myself easy. The earth smelled of decayed leaves and rotting timber. Along a fallen log walked a big red ant, and a bumblebee bumbled lazily among the wild flowers—no other sound came through the trees.
Below me and to the right was Willow Bluff. There was a tumbled-down log cabin lurched half over like a sorry old drunk. There was a well, the remains of a pole corral and some unfinished fence, and not far off was the north bank of the Sulphur. I could hear the water running through the branches of a huge old tree that had fallen off the bank into the stream.
There was some open meadow down there, and from where I squatted on the slope I could see it all without being seen. A fly buzzed in the sunshine, my horse cropped grass, down on the river a fish jumped. Easing my pistols in my belt I knocked out the pipe on the palm of my hand.
Nothing moved anywhere, yet my stomach felt empty and I felt touchy as a boar with a sore snout. There was no sense to feeling this way: Katy would be here soon.
When they came it wasn’t like I expected. Katy was there, but with her was Lacy Petraine and John Tower, and they were leading a pack horse. Tower got down from the horse and helped the two girls down, but I sat right still and didn’t move.
Impatient as I was, I sat right still, just waiting and listening. If they had been followed, I wanted to know it. When ten minutes had passed I could wait no longer, so cinching up the gray, I walked down the slope.
“Cullen!” Katy ran toward me. “We heard you were dead! Warren said he’d killed you!”
It made no kind of sense. Not at first. Seems when they were well on their way they had spotted a rider coming toward them, and when he pulled up it was Warren and he was wild, and he was yelling, “I killed him! I killed him!”
“Killed who?” Tower had demanded.
“I killed that outlaw!” Warren was excited and his eyes had a glassy shine. “I killed Cullen Baker!”
“You killed Cullen Baker?” Tower had asked. “A sneaking little pipsqueak like you?”
“Don’t you dare talk to me like that!” Warren’s voice was shrill. “Don’t you dare! I killed Cullen Baker!”
“I don’t believe you,” Tower had said. “You’re out of your mind.”
Warren had laughed, and Katy said she was shocked by his manner. He acted as if he were intoxicated. There was a queerness about him, an almost sadistic excitement that revolted them.
“Oh, I killed him all right! He thought he was so much! He was there in the brush with another fellow. I shot them both. Cullen was lying there in the checkered shirt he always wore and he never knew what happened. That other man, the one called Kirby, he started to get up, and—”
“You shot him when he was asleep?” Tower’s face was white with fury, Katy said. “Why you little—”
“He didn’t kill him, Mr. Tower,” Katy said. “I just know he didn’t.”
Warren had turned on her, almost white with anger. “You fool! Can’t you see now? He’s dead! He’s dead now, and nothing but a clod of empty flesh! And I killed him! I! There’s no sense you mooning around over him. It will be me they talk about now. I’ll be the man who killed Cullen Baker!”
“I think,” Tower had said, “I think I’ll kill him.”
‘No,” Katy stopped him, “he doesn’t understand. Down here,” she said, looking at Warren, “a man is admired for daring to face another armed man with a pistol and for settling his quarrels bravely. It isn’t a killing that is admired, it is the courage to fight for what you believe. You won’t be admired as the man who killed Cullen Baker, you will be despised as someone who murdered a sleeping man.”
They had turned then and ridden away as he stared after them. And the last thing they heard was a contemptuous laugh, but it was a hollow sound.
“I won’t believe it,” Katy had said, “I’m going on to Willow Bluff.”
And in the end they had all come on along.
* * *
SO THERE WE stood in the warm sunshine of the meadow, with the grass around our feet and a blue sky overhead with a few white puffballs of fleecy cloud drifting. We heard the gurgle of the water around that fallen tree, and I looked at Katy and she looked at me and I knew my home was going to be wherever she was, that I didn’t need the land Pa had owned, that I didn’t need anything, anywhere as long as I had her.
Tower, he turned to Lacy, and he said, “Something I’ve got to say. Lacy, I love you.
I’m in Texas because I came hunting you, because I had to find you. I think I’ve loved you ever since you were Terry’s wife, but Lacy, I didn’t want to kill him, I didn’t want to at all.”
Right then Katy was in my arms and I wasn’t thinking about anything else but I heard Lacy say, “John, I think we should go West, too.”
And Katy was saying to me that she’d brought Sandoval for me, and then I looked up and threw Katy away from me.
Chance Thorne and Sam Barlow were there at the edge of the woods, just beyond the old well. And there were two others with them.
Four men standing in a scattered line, and they had us covered.
Fifteen feet away from me John Tower was facing them also.
“John,” I said quietly, “it looks like we’re going to do some shooting.”
We both knew what could happen to the girls if we were killed without killing them.
“I’ll take Barlow and Thorne, John,” I told him, speaking low. “You get those others.”
“All right, but you’re getting all the best of it.”
Sam Barlow was grinning. “Wish we were closer to that grave you dug for me. I figured you to fill it.”
“John”—they were walking nearer—“I’ve been working on something. Getting my gun out fast, shooting from where it is, it worked against Butler in Fort Worth.”
“I saw it.”
“Takes them a moment to think, you know.”
“All right.”
They had come up within thirty feet of us now, and Chance was looking at Katy, and there was nothing nice in the way he looked. “You always despised me,” Chance said, “and whatever happens here, nobody knows. Nobody will ever know.”
“I’d like to take time to set fire to you, Cullen,” Barlow was staying. “but we don’t want to keep them girls awaitin’. They’ll be impatient for some real men, seems like, so we’re goin’ to kill you.”
“Sam.” I was cold inside. I felt like ice. I could feel the sun and hear a mockingbird in the trees and I could see the wasps hovering about the well. “Sam,” I said, “there’s one thing I’ve got to tell you.”
The First Fast Draw Page 14