A Noose for the Desperado

by Clifton Adams

  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.�
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  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.

  So that was what I did. I got that black horse in the draw and wrapped his forelegs and made him lie down. I picked out a place about a dozen yards from Bama.

  And there I stood, waiting for them to find me and come after me...

  It seemed like a long time, but I guess it wasn't. I stood there and looked at the hills to the west and wondered what was behind them. It never occurred to me that I could get on my horse and find out, while the cavalry was still scattered out. I heard a sound behind me then and I thought Bama had waked up and was wondering what was going on.

  “Bama.”

  No sound.

  “Bama, are you awake?”

  Still no sound, except that of the wind coming down the canyon. I left my position and went over to where he was. “It looks like we've got a fight on our hands,” I said. “I just spotted some cavalry over behind the ridge. They're spread out now, but I guess one of them will find us before long.”

  He didn't say anything. He lay there with his eyes wide open, staring up at the sky. I knelt beside him and took his pulse. There was no beat, not even a flutter. His chest was quiet. He was perfectly still. After a while it dawned on me that Bama was dead.

  I don't know what I did next. I think I got up and fumbled around for the makings of a cigarette, and finally I remembered that Bama had used the last of the tobacco. I must have stood there for quite a while, and I had a queer, uncomfortable feeling that Bama had died just as a personal favor to me. A thought kept nudging the back of my brain, warning me to get out of there. There was no reason to stay any longer. Bama was dead. You can't help a dead man.

  But I was in no particular hurry. I wondered if I ought to try to dig a grave for him. But I didn't have anything to work with, and anyway, the cavalry would dig him right up again when they found him. Finally I took off my neckerchief and spread it over his face.

  Well, so long, Bama. This isn't much of a send-off, but it's the best I can do.

  Then I noticed that pile of silver. It wasn't going to help me, or Johnny Rayburn, or Bama, or anybody else. The kid didn't want it, Bama couldn't use it now, and I sure couldn't take it with me if I meant to outrun the cavalry. Poetic justice, I think they call it. The funny thing about it was that I didn't care.

  I got my horse out of the draw and stripped everything off him except the saddle and rifle. I walked over to Bama again, still feeling that there was something I ought to do. If I knew any prayers, Bama, I thought, I'd say one for you. But I didn't know any. There's the Lord's Prayer, I thought. Everybody knows that. But when I started on it I got bogged down in the first line and had to stop. I was wasting precious time, but still I had a feeling that somebody ought to say a few words over him, and I sure couldn't depend on the cavalry to do it. So finally I said:

  “Well, rest in hell, Bama. Amen.”

  Then I got on my horse and rode west.

  It surprised me, I guess, as much as it did the troopers, when I got away with it. I rode out of the draw and into the hills, with the soldiers beating the brush all around. Once I got a few miles away, I was safe—for a day or two, anyway. That silver was going to keep the cavalry busy for a while, when they finally found it, and by the time they got around to thinking about me I would be somewhere else.

  There was no use heading for Mexico, though. Without money Mexico was no good. Maybe I could head north, where everybody was too busy fighting Indians to pay any attention to me. Maybe I'd try to get to Wyoming or someplace like that.

  But that was a long way off, and I was just beginning to realize how sick and tired I was of running. And maybe that explains the crazy thing I did that same night.

  A thing like that builds up in your mind, I suppose, and grows and grows without your knowing it. Then at last it breaks as clear as a summer day, arid you know what you have to do.

  I still remember that night sometimes, pitch-black and the chill of the mountains coming down. But still I had to keep running. My horse almost went over the edge of the bluff before I saw the emptiness looming in front of us. He took a step forward and skittered, and I heard rocks and gravel begin to fall away into a black nothingness. My stomach curled up like
a prodded sow bug and I tried to get braced for the sickening plunge.

  But that horse had more sense than I had. He reared and wheeled and his forefeet slammed solid earth. We were safe then, but it was a close thing and it took something out of me. I climbed out of the saddle and wiped the sweat off my face. I was scared. Pretty soon I stopped being scared and got mad.

  Nobody but a damn fool would try to cross country like this at night—and maybe that's just what I was, a damn fool. And finally I guess I got it through my head that it was time to do something about it.

  What I did was to take my pistol and throw it as hard as I could over the bluff, and I listened and listened and after what seemed an hour I heard it hit. Then I scooped the .44 ammunition out of my saddlebags and heaved it into the darkness. And after it was all over I stood there panting as if I had just come through a long spell of sickness.