A Noose for the Desperado

by Clifton Adams

  When it was over it was over all of a sudden. He went limp and the hatchet dropped out of his hand and that's all there was to it. I shoved him away. I knelt on my hands and knees and tried to gulp all the air in Arizona into my lungs. “Well,” I heard somebody say, “the sonofabitch finally decided to die.” It didn't sound like my voice, but it was, I guess. And then—finally—I remembered the other Indians.

  I couldn't move. I squatted there like a poled steer and wondered why I wasn't dead. What had happened to the other Indians that had been in on the charge? It worried me, but I didn't have the strength to do anything about it.

  I gulped some more air into my lungs. My stomach was sick and fluttery and the muscles in my legs were as weak as buttermilk. Maybe a minute went by while I got a hold on myself. I was pretty sure that those Indians hadn't decided to knock off work and go home just when they had us where they wanted us. Maybe it was one of those miracles that you hear about but almost never see. Like Daniel and the lions. But I didn't put much stock in it. I hadn't led the right kind of life for that sort of thing.

  I had a few more theories, but I discarded them. It was time to take a look.

  The first thing I saw was Bama. He was still sitting there behind the mule, holding onto the bandage around his leg. He looked as if he knew the answer, but he wasn't saying anything unless I asked him, and I was still too addled to think up words to put into questions. I stood up, finally, and saw that the Indians had been taken care of. They were scattered around carelessly like dirty laundry in a bunkhouse, and just as lifeless. One of them had reached our mule fortress and had died with a knife in his hand just as he was about to go over the top. His trouble had been two rifle bullets in the chest, spaced almost a foot apart. Not very good shooting. But good enough. By that time I had the answer. Johnny Rayburn was walking across the flat with a rifle cradled in the crook of his arm.

  I don't know how he did it, but he must have slipped down from the high ground some way and then crawled for about a quarter of a mile on his belly across the flats. The important thing was that he had done it. While all the others had been running, he had been figuring out a way to save my hide.

  I guess I hadn't realized before just how close I had been to dying. The thought of it put a watery feeling in my guts.

  “He's going to be a big help to you, isn't he, Tall Cameron?” Bama said dryly.

  The words jarred me, because that was exactly what I was thinking as the kid came toward us. With some training, with some of the greenness rubbed off and some experience rubbed in, he would be a big help. He would be somebody I could trust; that was the important thing.

  That was when I started changing my plans, putting the kid into them, taking Bama out of them. Bama couldn't help me. Not with that leg. But the kid... That was something else again.

  Johnny Rayburn grinned nervously as he came up to where we were. He looked awed by the thing he had just done.

  “I thought I told you to stay with the horses,” I said.

  “Well,” he said, “I figured the horses could take care of themselves. Anyway, I wasn't crazy about staying up there on the bluff with Kreyler's men.” He shifted hands with his rifle. “I didn't do wrong, did I?”

  I laughed, not because anything funny had happened, but just because it felt good to have a kid like that on my side. I said, “No, you didn't do anything wrong.”

  “I told you once I was a pretty good shot.”

  “Not too damn good,” and I nodded at the dead Indian, “when you space them a foot apart.” I knew that Bama was listening. And I didn't give a damn. I said, “But there's nothing wrong with your shooting that can't be fixed. And I'll fix it.”

  He couldn't have been more pleased if I had just handed him Texas with a fence around it.

  From that moment, I guess, it was just me and Johnny Rayburn against the world. Or rather me and Johnny Rayburn, and a fortune in silver. That reminded me— we had to do something about the silver.

  We didn't have any horses, and we sure couldn't carry the stuff on our backs. I looked up at the high ground and saw that Kreyler and some of his boys were still up there. I guess they had time to get their guts in shape, and probably they had just been waiting for me and the Indians to finish each other off so they could come back down and take the silver for themselves. But I had something else planned for them.

  I stepped out in the open and cupped my hands around my mouth and yelled for them to come on down. I hadn't forgotten the way they had run out on us, but I could take care of that when the time came. This wasn't the time.

  They must have been pretty disappointed to see me come out of it alive, and they must have had a pretty good idea that it wasn't purely an act of brotherly love that prompted me to call them back into the fold. I could see them talking it over. There was some arguing, I guess, but in the end they came down, as I knew they would. The silver was still down there and they couldn't resist the temptation of that easy money.

  As they started down the slope, I went over our battlefield and found my rifle and salvaged some .44 cartridges for my pistols. I was ready for them by the time they rode up, and there wasn't much doubt as to who was still boss.

  Kreyler looked like a man who had been outvoted. Silver wasn't as important to him as it was to some of the others, but he couldn't very well tell them to go to hell, because he still had ideas of running the business himself someday.

  I said, “Well, men, we did it. All we've got to do now is get this silver back to Ocotillo and split it up. Let's get at it.”

  That jarred them a little. They had expected a good cussing at the very least, and here I was practically patting them on their backs. But they got over their shock. A yell went up and they went scurrying over the battlefield, cutting open the silver-filled aparejos and stuffing the adobe dollars into saddle pouches and war bags. But Kreyler wasn't fooled. He knew that I had to have them, if I wanted to get that money back to Ocotillo.

  But there was nothing much he could do about it. Anyway, all that silver was putting a hungry look in his eyes, and the first thing I knew, he was as busy as any of us. Bama sat quietly through all of it, his face getting whiter and whiter. After a while I had the kid bring the horses down, and I found Bama's bottle and gave it to him.

  “Here,” I said, “you'd better have a drink of this.”

  He took the bottle and looked at it blankly. He turned it up and drank as if it were the last whisky he would ever see. Then he sloshed a little of it on his wound. But not much.

  He sat back and closed his eyes for a minute until the pain let up. “You're not fooling Kreyler,” he said.

  “I'm not fooling anybody.”

  “You're not going to split that silver, are you, when you get back to Ocotillo?”

  I just grinned.

  “That's what I thought. I guess there's no use telling you that the men won't stand for it. But they won't. You've pushed them around about as long as they'll take it.”

  “Why don't you let me worry about that?”

  He hit the bottle again. Loss of blood and shock and whisky were beginning to hit him. His eyes were bleary. His mouth didn't seem big enough to hold his tongue. He took another long drink and let the empty bottle slip out of his hand. “You and the kid,” he said thickly, “ought to make quite a team.”

  “We might, at that.”

  He looked at me for a while. Then he slid over on his elbow. He must have passed out then, because his arm gave way and he fell on his face.

  The tourniquet on his leg came loose and blood began spurting again. I grabbed it and tightened it, and stretched him out as well as I could. I looked up and the kid was standing there beside me.

  “Get the horses,” I said, “and bring them over here. Then find one of those Indian hatchets and cut a pair of blackjack poles long enough to make a travois.”

  He didn't ask a lot of fool questions. In a few minutes he was back with the horses and poles. The poles weren't nearly long enough
, but it was the best he could do in this kind of country. We lashed them to Bama's saddle and laced them with a reata that one of the men had. Then we tied Bama on it.

  By the time all that was done, the men were ready to go. The silver had all been gathered up and they were anxious to get home and make the split.

  So we rode out of the valley and into the high Huachucas, the thud of hoofs mingled with the heavy jouncing of silver. I didn't look back this time. The death and stink of battle seemed a long way off, and I wanted to keep it that way if I could. The kid rode beside me, his eyes thoughtful, and I could see the question coming long before he got up nerve enough to ask it.

  “I was just wondering about something,” he said finally. “Did you really mean it, what you said back there? When you said you'd fix up my shooting?”

  We rode on for quite a while before I answered. And in my mind there was the memory of empty days and long nights. Tight-wound days and tighter nerves, when the sound of a snapping twig or the rustle of brush was always a cavalryman, or a marshal, or maybe just a reputation-hunting punk anxious to get a notch in his gun butt. Sounds were always sharper when you were on the run, and alone.

  But who could you trust when you had a price on your head?

  Well, I guessed I had found somebody at last. So I said, “Don't worry about it, kid. I meant it, all right.”

  Chapter Ten

  IT WAS DARK again when we got to Ocotillo, and the town seemed nice and peaceful and sleepy-looking there at the bottom of the foothills. It seemed a shame to ride in there and get everything all stirred up again. But it had to be done. A few Mexicans came out and watched as we rode into town, and I imagined that their faces had a dull, angry look.

  It was a funny thing, but I had never thought of the Mexicans' resenting us and hating us. Well, I thought, they wouldn't be bothered long with me and the kid, and if they got tired of Kreyler and his bunch they could rise up and knock them down. I wondered why they hadn't done it before now.

  As we pulled up in front of the livery barn, beside the saloon, the Mexicans sort of melted away in the darkness and I forgot about them. I watched the men while they unsaddled and lugged their saddlebags and war bags back to the rear of the saloon and into the office. After they were all finished we had silver scattered all over the middle of the room and it looked like a hell of a lot of money stacked up there in one big pile. The men were all ganging up in the room to watch the split. Something had to be done about that.

  So I said, “It looks like a pretty good haul, doesn't it?” And everybody agreed. I laughed and kicked the saloon door open and yelled for the bartender to set them up.

  That broke it up. They all flocked out and ganged up around the bar—all but Kreyler, that is. He stayed in the office with me and the kid, and I had an uneasy feeling that he had picked my brain and knew as much about my plans as I did.

  I said, “You might as well get your share of the free drinks.”

  But he shook his head. He leaned against the door-jamb, looking careful and crafty, but not very healthy.

  “Well, I am,” I said. I looked at the kid and we went into the saloon and left Kreyler in the office. He couldn't carry off much of that silver by himself, if that was what he had in mind.

  Everybody had had a round or two by the time we got to the bar, and it looked like a real celebration was on the way. I motioned to the bartender and he slid a bottle down, and I guess it was the bottle that reminded me.

  “By God, we forgot Bama!”

  I went out the door and the first thing I knew a couple of arms came out of the darkness and grabbed me. Probably I would have killed her and learned who it was later, if she hadn't laughed. But she did laugh and I knew it was Marta.

  “Goddamnit, don't you know better than to jump on a man like that?” She was pawing me and kissing me and she seemed as happy as a pup with a bone.

  “You glad to see Marta?”

  “Sure,” I said, “I guess I'm glad.”

  But just the same I shook her off and got my back against the wall and got my gun hand ready. In the back of my mind I was reasoning, that somebody out there in the darkness could have put a bullet in me while a fool girl was hanging around my neck. It was just a passing thought, but I didn't like it.

  Marta's laughter lost its bright edge. “What's the matter?”

  “Nothing's the matter. I just like to be careful.”

  “You no trust Marta.”

  “I no trust anybody. That's how I got to be as old as I am.”

  “You no like Marta.”

  I was beginning to get tired of this. “Sure I like you,” I said. “I'm crazy about you. Now, just come along with me. I've got a job for you.”

  “What job?”

  “Never mind, just come along.”

  I took her arm and led her around toward the livery barn, the kid right behind us like a shadow. We found the horse, and Bama was still lashed to the stubby travois poles. He was pretty shaken up but his tourniquet was still in place and the bleeding had stopped. We left him on the travois but untied the poles and lowered him to the ground. The kid felt of his face and forehead while I loosened the tourniquet.

  “He's got a fever.”

  “Then he's all right. What we've got to do is get him somewhere and keep him warm before the chills begin.” I thought for a minute and began to get an idea. “Kid, do you think you and Marta can get Bama down to her house without advertising it?”

  He rubbed his chin. “Well, sure, I guess so. She can take the feet and I can—”

  “That's all I want to know. Marta, have you got some friends—friends with strong backs and not too many brains?”

  She nodded, frowning.

  “Round them up,” I said. “Have them come around to the back of the saloon where the office is. I've got some things I want them to carry down to your place, and I want them to be quiet about it. Tell them it's worth five dollars in silver after the job's over.”

  She began to get it then, and so did the kid. Marta's face broke up in a grin. “Marta think you plenty rich!”

  “Marta thinks too damn much.”

  “You leave Ocotillo, maybe?”

  “My plans are my own. Now, pick up that travois before we have a dead man on our hands.”

  “You take Marta with you?”

  “Good God, yes, I'll take you with me. Anything, just get going.”

  The last thing in the world I wanted was to be tied down to a girl like that, but I had to tell her something. And it seemed to satisfy her.

  Johnny Rayburn hadn't decided if he was satisfied or not. He was thinking about Bama, I guess, and wondering how we were going to get out of Ocotillo with a wounded man and several hundred pounds of silver. He didn't know it yet,, but Bama wasn't going with us. I hadn't figured out a way yet to take care of the silver. But I would.

  Using the travois like a stretcher, they picked it up and marched off into the darkness. I waited a few minutes until I was pretty sure that they were going to make it, and then I went back to the saloon.

  Kreyler was standing in the doorway. I was going to walk right past him, but he turned and followed me to the bar. His face was grim as he said: “Wasn't Marta with you out there?”

  I had almost forgotten that the Marshal was still crazy about the girl. Well, he could have her as soon as I got out of Ocotillo.

  I said, “There wasn't anybody out there. I was just looking after Bama.”

  “Didn't the kid go out with you?”

  “What the hell is this? If you've got something in your craw, spit it out.”

  Suddenly he smiled, and I didn't like that at all. What if he had his boys out there laying for the kid? It was something to worry about, but there wasn't much I could do. Of course, I could have gone running after them, but that would have given the whole thing away. There was still the silver to be taken care of. Not even Johnny Rayburn came ahead of that.

  I went back to the office and locked the door and put a c
hair against it. Then I walked the floor, waiting for something to happen. From the sound of things, the men were getting pretty drunk in the saloon. But there was still Kreyler, goddamn him.

  Well, I could still take care of him. When he ran out on me I swore I would kill him. And I might do it yet.

  Somewhere in that confusion of thoughts there was a knock at the back door. I opened up and there stood four grinning Mexicans, all teeth and eyes in the darkness. They all started jabbering that spick lingo at me, and I told them to shut up and start moving those bags.