Chapter Twelve
So me and ole Bill Rice, we traveled on together. We stopped at noon or thereabouts to fix us another meal and some coffee and to feed and water and rest our horses. Then we moved on some more. We kept on a watching ole Clell’s tracks all along the way. At least we both thought they was Clell’s. It seemed like as if we was getting closer to him all the time, and I felt just like as if I couldn’t hardly stand to wait till we come up on him.
“He must not think he’s being followed,” Rice said. “He don’t seem to be worried none.”
“Or else he knows he’s being follered all right,” I said, “and he’s just a waiting to lay in a ambush for us somewheres.”
“Naw,” Rice said, “I don’t think so. If he had that in mind, he’s already passed by a couple of real good spots for it. I think he feels safe.”
“Maybe so,” I said, feeling a little burned like as if he’d showed me up to be some kinda greenhorn, which I guess I really was compared to a real veteran manhunter like what he was. Still, I didn’t like having it pointed out to me like that. Well, we rid on through till suppertime, and then we stopped again. We fixed us up another meal, and this time we set and smoked some after we was done eating.
“Why do you and me have to fight it out, Kid?” he said. “When we catch up with Clell, why won’t watching him hang be good enough for you?”
“‘Cause it’ll take too damn long,” I said. “Your way, there’ll be a trial and sentencing and then fin’ly the hanging. And that’s all after we catch up with him, and after you take him all the way back to Texas. If ever’thing goes right. He might get off. They sometimes do. Even if he don’t get off, though, I don’t want to wait all that long to see him dead. Hell, I thought we went all over all this before.”
“You sure are impatient for such a young fellow,” he said.
“Well,” I said, “there’s something else too.”
“What’s that?” he asked me.
“I ain’t so sure that you told me straight,” I said, “whenever you said that no one wants me back there for killing that Joe Pigg with a ax handle. For one thing, you also said I’d oughta stay outa Texas.”
“Well,” he said, and he kinda shoved his hat back to scratch his head, “it’s all the truth, but I can’t really say I blame you for being suspicious about it. I sure am going to be sorry to have shoot you, though, when the time comes.”
“Don’t be so damn sure it won’t be me what shoots you first,” I said. “You know I am—”
“A regular Billy the Kid,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said. “It might be good. for you to keep that in your head.”
We had us a few more hours of daylight, so we decided to make use of them, and we rid on down the trail. Whenever the sun got way low in the west, we started in looking for a place to camp the night. We found us a nice little place beside a stream in a grove of trees, and we fixed ourselfs up there. The horses had good grazing and plenty of water. I think we all slept good that night, and in the morning we had us a good breakfast. We drunk all the coffee we wanted, cleaned up and headed on out. It was about mid-morning I’d guess whenever ole Rice stopped his horse to study tracks on the road.
“Uh-oh,” he said.
“What is it?” I said.
“He’s left the road,” he said. “Right there. See?”
He pointed out to me a place just ahead of us where some tracks took a sharp turn to the left a going up a narrow trail that led higher on up into the mountains.
“How do you know them are his tracks?” I said.
“I don’t know for sure,” Rice said, “but they’re the tracks you’ve been following all along. I just followed after you. Remember?”
“That’s the same horse I was follering?” I said.
“That’s right,” he said.
“And he’s headed up that mountain trail,” I said.
“Yep,” said Rice.
“Well,” I said, “just what the hell are we a going to do now?”
I was thinking that it might not be too bright to foller ole Clell up that narrow trail, ’cause just anyplace along it, he could be laying in wait up above us with a rifle aimed right down our throats.
“I don’t know,” Rice said. “I’ll have to study on it for a spell. I never figured him to do anything like that. I figured he’d ride right on into the next town. There’s nothing up there but snow. Why the hell would he go up there?”
“To lay a trap for us,” I said.
“You could be right,” said Rice. “Maybe he did figure out he was being followed.”
“Well?” I said, feeling some kinda smug.
“Well,” Rice said, “I say we don’t follow him up there. I say we don’t fall into that trap. What do you say, Kid?”
“I ain’t going to argue with that,” I said, “but then, what do we do?”
Rice kinda stood up in his stirrups and looked around some. The road we was a riding still wound along at the foot of the mountains and still had a little meandering stream running along on its other side. The stream was mostly tree-lined.
“I say we make us a camp right over there,” he said, pointing off toward the trees and the stream, “and wait it out. I bet he won’t want to stay up there for too long. It gets cold up there, especially at night.”
So we done what ole Rice suggested and made us another camp. Like I think I done said, it was only ‘bout mid-morning, but ole Clell was up the mountain, and we wasn’t about to foller him, so we didn’t really have us no place to go. We agreed that there wouldn’t be no fires, ’cause we didn’t want to give ourselfs away, so when noon come around, we et cold. We et cold again for supper. I was thinking, it was going to be a cold damn night, too, without no fire, but then I thought about ole Clell up on the mountain. It would be worser for him, and that give me some comfort. But along toward dark, I looked up the mountain, and I seen smoke.
“Well, God damn,” I said. “Would you looky there at that?”
Ole Rice looked, and he seed it too.
“The bastard’s built him a fire,” I said. “He’s cozy and prob’y eating hot food and drinking coffee.”
Rice just stared at it for a bit, and then he said, “Yeah, and what’s more, I think his fire’s in a fireplace or a stove. That smoke looks to me to be coming out a chimney.”
“The son of a bitch,” I said. “Him in a warm house up there and us a shivering down here. I can’t hardly wait to kill his ass.”
“He must have known there was a house up there,” Rice said. “He must have been headed for it all along.”
“What’s that mean?” I said. I was really feeling stupid about then.
“I don’t know,” said Rice, and that give me some comfort. “Let’s sleep on it. Maybe we’ll come up with something by morning.”
We put down our blankets, but I was thinking that I sure didn’t have near enough of them for what the night was going be like without no fire going, but I piled them up on me and soon got warmed up enough to start getting drowsy, and just as I did, I heared the pounding of horses’ hoofs. I set up quick, and in the moonlight, I could see that ole Rice was already up. He was a watching the road from behind a tree. I set still for fear I’d make some fool move and give our ass away.
Pretty soon come four horsemen riding along the road from the north, and damned if they didn’t “turn off just where ole Clell had turned off. They headed up that trail right after his ass. I waited till Rice watched all he wanted to, and when he come walking back toward our little cold camp, I said to him in a real low voice, like as if them riders might could still hear me even though they was getting well up that trail,”It looks like we ain’t the only ones after ole Clell.”
“Could be,” Rice said, “but what I think is more likely is that those four were part of his gang. We didn’t catch up with him soon enough. Now we’ll have five of them to fight. Or more.”
“More?” I said.
“Someone could have
been up there already,” he said, “waiting for him.”
“We can’t fight no army,” I said. Now I know that ole Rice had told me earlier that there might be five or more, but I didn’t really hardly believe it nor think about it till I actual seen them four ride by. Of a sudden now, it seemed pretty damn real. “Just the two of us? Can we?”
“Not without some pretty careful planning,” Rice said. “Let’s get some sleep.”
Well, I guess he did, but I sure never. It was too damn cold, and I was thinking about that damn gang of outlaws up on the mountain in their warm cabin. I was wondering what the hell me and Rice would do whenever they come back down. I wished that he would get us a plan and tell me about it, but at the same time, I realized that I was sure damn glad that he was along with me and we was in it now together. If it was just me by my lonesome, I don’t know what the hell I’d a did. I wanted to kill ole Clell bad enough that I might of did some fool thing like take a shot at him and just take my chances on getting away from the rest of them. You know, kinda shoot and run. But I also knowed that such a move would be pretty damn stupid.
I never thought that I’d be glad to be in the company of a lawman, but I sure damn was. ’Course it helped some that he was a West Texas lawman, and we was in Colorady, so he couldn’t arrest me nor nothing like that. Not legal anyhow. He had admitted to me that he was planning on capturing ole Clell and taking him back to Texas so he could arrest him. Now I didn’t have no use for Clell, as I think you already know, and somehow that plan of ole Rice’s just didn’t seem fair.
It didn’t really matter though, ’cause I didn’t have no intention of letting him carry it on through. Like I had done told him two or three times, I meant to kill Clell whenever I laid eyes on the son of a bitch. It had seemed kinda simple. I’d have to deal with Rice in order to kill Clell, but somehow I didn’t think that ole Rice would kill me just so he could take Clell back to hang. But now with four more outlaws, maybe more, in the picture, the whole thing was a bunch more complicated. It would be me and Rice trying to stay alive through a fight with all them bastards.
Whenever we got up the next morning, I was still a shivering, and I sure did want me a cup a hot coffee, but we et cold again, and I felt like a damn soldier in the middle of a war or something, being deprived like that. I wondered just how long this situation was going to last, and if it was to last much longer, I wondered how long I would last. But lucky for me, them outlaws come on down the mountain later that morning. They come on down, and there was seven a the bastards.
Me and Rice, we stayed right with our horses to keep them quiet while that gang rid by, and what they done was they turned back south whenever they got down on the road. They turned south, and I was a worrying about ole Zeb and ole Red, but then the outlaws turned a ways downstream and crossed over the water and headed out east onto the Colorady flats. I give ole Rice a look.
“They’re up to something,” he said. “We’ll let them get a ways ahead, and then we’ll follow them.”
We tuck advantage a the situation and built us a fire, and the first thing I done was I put on some coffee. It sure did taste good that morning, I can tell you. We went on ahead and we et us a good hot breakfast and drunk us some more coffee, and when my belly was good and full and I weren’t shivering so much no more, I rolled me a cigareet and smoked it. Fin’ly ole Rice said that we had ought to get going, so we cleaned up our campsite, packed up our things and crossed the stream to foller them outlaws east.
“You reckon they’re planning on some kinda raid?” I asked him as we rid along.
“They’re sure up to something,” he said.
“We going to just let them do it and get away with it?” I said.
“What can we do?” he said.
“We could try to warn folks up ahead,” I said.
“We can’t get around them and ahead of them,” he said, “and even if we could, we don’t know what they’re planning to do.”
He was right, a course, and it burned me up again, him showing me to be so dumb like that. I wished just once that I could figger things out ahead a him and get the best a him and show him that I had some brains too. But he was a old guy. I reckoned him to be maybe thirty-five, and he’d had him a lot of experience with chasing outlaws and such. I figgered that if I was to ever live so long, why, maybe I’d have me enough experience by then that I’d be smart like him too. But right then I wasn’t good for much of nothing. I could do ranch work, most all of it, ’cept for the paperwork, and I could do gunfighting, but that was about all. And I didn’t really want to be knowed for the gunfighting.
The more easter we went the flatter and drier that Colorady got, and it was so flat that we could most see them outlaws. Not quite. We could see their dust, though, sometimes. We was follering their tracks, and it was real easy, there was so many of them. But they was a good ways ahead of us, and it weren’t likely that they knowed we was on their trail. Rice seed to it that we hung back far enough to keep them from taking note of us. Toward noon, he stopped us.
“What?” I said.
“Look ahead,” he told me, and I did, and I seed the smoke from a couple a fires. “Campfires,” he said. “They’ve stopped to eat. We might as well do the same thing.”
We et again and drunk some more coffee and smoked some more cigareets. By and by the smoke of their fires had stopped, and ole Rice figgered that they was on their way again. We cleaned up and packed up and follered. I begun to wonder if we was going to foller them all the way to the other side of the country and right into the ocean out there, but I never said nothing. I did want to kill ole Clell, but I sure hadn’t never thought that it would turn out to be this much trouble.
“Say,” I said, riding along, “we ain’t going back into Texas, are we?”
“If they keep on the way they’re headed,” Rice said, “we’ll wind up in Kansas, but my guess is they’ll try to pull something right here in Colorado. It’s a long ride on into Kansas.”
“It’s done been a long ride,” I said, and he kinda laughed at me. I tell you what, sometimes I actual kinda liked that man, but other times I just wanted to ride off in some other direction from where he was headed and hope that I wouldn’t never set eyes on his ass again. We follered them outlaws the rest a the day, and come nightfall, ole Rice, he said that he thought that we oughta just keep a going. He figgered that they’d stop for the night, and if we was to just keep riding, why, we might just ride right on around them. It seemed to me that I had suggested something like that earlier and he had made me feel like a fool for it, but I kept my mouth shut about that.
You know, there’s times when a feller oughta take advantage of a situation and say I told you so to another feller. If you was right in the first place, why, it’d make you feel some better to say that. But then there’s other times when it seems like as if the best thing to do is to just not say nothing and let it ride. ’Cause it might not be worth the little bit a pleasure you’d get outa saying it to mess up something else you got going.
Well sure enough, them outlaws stopped, and so we went and made us a wide swing around them, moving slow and keerful in the dark, but we just kept on a riding all night, so by morning, we was well ahead of them. I weren’t for sure just what ole Rice meant for us to do, now that we was out front like that, but pretty soon we seed us a sign that said a town was just up ahead. Lowry it was. We just kinda looked at each other, and we rid on. I was just about to fall asleep in my saddle, and I figgered that ole horse was pretty damn tired too. But we rid on into that town, and Rice, he found the law right away.
We pulled up at the hitch rail there in front of the Lowry sheriff’s office, and Rice clumb down and headed for the door. He stopped and looked back at me.
“I’ll just wait here,” I said.
He went on in and pretty soon he come back out.
“I told him who’s coming,” he said. “He told me they’ve got a bank here with a lot of money in it. We’re going to get rea
dy as if we know they mean to rob that bank. Just in case. Come on.”
“Where we going?” I asked him.
“We’re going to climb up on top of that hotel over there,” he said. “The sheriff said there’s a staircase out back. Come on.”
As we headed across the street, I seed the sheriff come out of his office and go running down the board sidewalk. I figgered he was on his way to round up some a the citizens to get ready for this bank robbery that maybe was about to happen. Me and ole Rice rid on around behind the big hotel he had pointed out to me. We tied our horses back there, unpacked our rifles and all our extry ammunition, for rifles and six-guns, and clumb up the stairs on the back a the building. We got ourselfs up to a upstairs landing thataway, but then we had to stand on the rail a the landing to grab hold of the roof overhang.
Rice done it okay. He got up there. But whenever I got my hands on the edge a that roof, and my feet come off a the railing, I was just a hanging there and kicking my feet around in the air. I just knowed I was going to fall all the way back down to the alley and break myself all to pieces, and I had a funny and scared feeling that hit so far down deep into the pit of my stomach that I felt it clear into the end of my pecker.
“Rice,” I yelled. “I can’t do it. I’m going to fall.”
He come over and reached down and tuck hold a my wrists and pulled me right on up onto the roof. He had him some strong arms, I can tell you. I crawled on all fours till I was a few feet away from the edge. I was trying to think a what I had ought to say to him, but he just turned and headed for the front a the building. “Come on,” he said. I stood up on uneasy legs and follered him over to where the top of the building front made a kind of a wall for us to hide behind, but we could stand up and see over it and shoot over it all right. I looked west, but I never seed nothing a coming.
What I did see was I seed all kinds a citizens on the rooftops a the other buildings, all with guns: rifles, shotguns, revolvers. Pretty soon it seemed to me like as if ever’ man what lived in Lowry must a been out there somewheres with his guns. And the womenfolks and the kids had all disappeared into houses or something. The town looked most near deserted. There was a couple a stray dogs wandering around sniffing things, but that was about all. Then I seed the sheriff again. He was walking along with three other men, all armed to the teeth, and they was a looking west just the same way like I had did. He pointed a couple a times in different directions. Then two a the men went across the street and inside a building over there, and the sheriff and the other feller went on into each a the buildings on either side a the bank.
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