The Desperado

by Clifton Adams

  The Desperado

  Clifton Adams

  Tall's temper is hotter than forked lightning with the cinch off; and the only thing faster is his gun. With those two things working for him he finds himself outside the law, a target for every gunslinger trying to build himself a killer's name in the canyon country. Here is a real western, as authentic as sage brush, as crammed with action as a man-fighting bronc, and a story that will hog-tie and hold your interest from the first paragraph.

  The Desperado

  Clifton Adams

  Chapter 1

  I AWOKE SUDDENLY and lay there in the darkness, listening to the rapid, faraway thud of hoofbeats. The horse was traveling fast, and occasionally the rhythmic gait would falter and become uneven, then catch and come on again in the direction of the ranch house. It was a tired horse. It had been pushed hard and for too long. I could tell by the way it was running.

  Pa had heard it too. I heard the bedsprings screech downstairs as he got up. Then the old wall clock began to clang monotonously. I didn't bother to count the strokes, but I knew it must be twelve o'clock. The hoof-beats were getting louder now.

  I got up and pulled on my pants. I found my boots under the bed and stuffed my feet into them without bothering to light the lamp. Then, holding onto the banister, I felt my way downstairs and into the parlor.

  Pa was standing at the front door, a slight breeze coming through the doorway and flapping the white cotton nightshirt against his bare legs. He was standing there peering into the darkness, holding a shotgun in the crook of his arm.

  “Tall?” he said without looking around.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You better get that forty-four out of the bureau drawer. It's in there with my shirts somewhere. You can find it.”

  I said, “Yes, sir,” and turned and felt my way into the downstairs bedroom that Pa and Ma used. Ma was sitting up in bed, her nightgown a white blob in the darkness and her nightcap a smaller blob above it. I went to the bureau and started feeling around in the drawer until I found the pistol.

  “Talbert,” Ma said anxiously, “what is it, son?”

  “Just a rider, Ma. Nothing to worry about.”

  “What are you looking for there in the bureau?”

  “Pa's pistol,” I said. “Just in case.”

  She didn't say anything for a moment. But she was worried. She had been worried ever since I'd got into that scrape with the state police down at Garner's Store. But that had been a long time ago, almost six months. Anyway, I hadn't killed anybody; I'd just beaten hell out of a carpetbagger with the butt end of a Winchester. There had been a big stir about it for a while, but Pa had fixed it up with the bluebelly police for fifty head of three-year-old cattle. So I wasn't worried about that.

  I said, “Rest easy, Ma. It's probably one of the neighbors. Maybe somebody's sick.”

  She still didn't say anything, so I went back into the parlor where Pa was. We heard the horse pull up and scamper nervously, and we knew the rider was swinging open the rail gate about two hundred yards south of the house.

  Pa said, “Tall?” That's the way Pa would do when he was worrying something in his mind. He'd call your name and wait for you to answer before he'd come out and say what he was thinking.

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “Tall, you haven't been up to anything, have you? You haven't got into any trouble that you haven't told us about?”

  “No, sir,” I said.

  I could feel Pa relax. Then he reached over and roughed up my hair, the way he used to do when I was just a kid, when he was feeling good. Pa could stand just about anything but a liar, and he knew I'd tell him the truth, no matter what it was.

  The rider was coming on now, and we could hear the horse blowing and grunting. The rider swung down at the hitching rack by our front porch and called out:

  “Mr. Cameron! Tall!”

  “It was Ray Novak's voice. I would have known it anywhere. He was two or three years older than me, and his pa used to be town marshal in John's City, before the scalawags and turncoats came in and elected their own man. Ray was old enough to have fought a year for the Confederacy, and that set him apart from the rest of us who had been too young. Ordinarily, he was an easygoing, likable man, and the only thing I had against him was that he had been seeing a little too much of Laurin Bannerman. But that wasn't important. I knew how Laurin felt, and I knew I didn't have anything to be afraid of On that score. From Ray Novak or anybody else.

  Pa pushed the screen door open and stepped out on the front porch. “Ray?” he said. “Ray Novak?”

  “Yes, sir,” Ray said.

  “Well, come on in,” Pa said. “Tall, light the table lamp, will you? And see if the kitchen stove's still warm. Pull the coffee pot up on the front lid if it is.”

  I lit the lamp and went back to the kitchen. The fire had gone out in the stove. When I came back to the parlor, Ray was saying, “I'm afraid I can't stay, Mr. Cameron. The truth is I just stopped by to see if I could change my horse for a fresh mount. That animal of mine is about played out.” He saw me then and we nodded to each other.

  Ray Novak didn't look scared exactly, but he looked worried. He took off his hat and ran his fingers through thick, straw-colored hair. “I played the fool down in John's City this afternoon,” he said. “I let myself get suckered into a scrape with the police. I guess I'll have to get out of the country for a while, until things cool off a little.”

  Pa looked at him sharply. “You... didn't kill anybody, did you, Ray?”

  Killing a state policeman in Texas, in 1869, was the same as buying a one-way ticket to a hanging. The blue-bellies from the North had their own judges and juries, and their verdict was always the same.

  But Ray shook his head. “It was just a fist fight,” he said. “But they're pretty riled up. I was in the harness shop getting a splice made in a stirrup strap and this private cavalryman came in and started passing remarks about all the families around John's City—all the families that amounted to anything before the war. When he started on 'that goddamn Novak white trash that used to be town marshal,' I hit him. I busted a couple of teeth, I think. I expect a detachment of cavalry will be along pretty soon, looking for me. I don't aim to be around.”

  Pa nodded soberly. “It was a damn fool thing to do all right,” he said. “And you won't be able to fix it with the police this time. First Tall, and now you. The Yankees'll feel bound to do something about it this time.”

  Ray looked down at his feet and shifted uncomfortably. “Yes, sir,” he said. “That's about the way I figured it. That's one reason I came by your place. If they don't find me they might get to remembering Tall and start on him again.” Then he looked up at me, his big bland face as serious as a preacher's. “I'm sorry, Tall, I didn't figure to get you mixed up in it.”

  “What the hell,” I said. “The only thing I'm sorry about is that you didn't put a bullet in the bluebelly's gut.”

  “Tall?” Pa said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Now just hold your head. Ray's right. This could be serious for both of you. We better take a little time and figure something out. Ray, have you figured on anything?”

  “I thought maybe I'd go up to the Panhandle for a while, sir. I've got an older brother up there that has a little spread. I could work with him through the spring gathering season and come back in the summer. That ought to be time enough to let it blow over.”

  Pa thought about it, standing there in his nightshirt, still holding that shotgun in the crook of his arm. “Maybe,” he said. “But the Panhandle isn't far enough. Tail's got an uncle down on the Brazos. You boys could stay there. I could write you a letter when it looks all right to come back.”

  Maybe I was still half a
sleep. Anyway, it was just coming to me what they were talking about. I said, “Just a minute, Pa. I don't aim to run. This isn't my scrape, it's Ray's.”

  “Tall?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said from force of habit.

  “Now listen to me,” Pa said soberly. “Pretty soon they'll be coming. When they don't find Ray they're going to be mad, and it won't take them long to remember that carpetbagger you clubbed with a rifle stock. You know what kind of a chance you'll have if the scalawags decide to bring it to court.”

  For a minute I didn't say anything. I knew Pa was right. If they didn't find Ray, they would be coming for me. The smart thing to do would be to get out of the country for a while. But knowing it didn't make me like it.

  I liked things just the way they were. I liked it here on the ranch—being able to ride over to the Bannerman spread every day or so to see Laurin, going into John's City once a month when they held the dances in Community Hall. I liked it just fine right where I was, and I hated the idea of being chased away by a bunch of damned Yankee bluebellies and blacks who had been slaves only a few years ago. And pretty soon some of that hate began to direct itself at Ray Novak.

  I looked at Ray and he knew how I was beginning to feel about it. He was sorry. But a hell of a lot of good that was going to do. He stood there shifting from one foot to the other, uncomfortably. He was a big man, and he couldn't have been more than twenty-one years old. But that didn't make him young. In this country a boy started being a man as soon as he could strap on a gun. And about the first thing a boy did, after he learned to walk and ride, was to strap on a gun.

  Before I could say what I was thinking, before Ray Novak could put his discomfort into words, Ma came out of the bedroom and stood looking at us with worried eyes. Ma was a thin, work-weary woman, not really old, but looking old. There were deep lines around her pale eyes that came from worry and trying to gouge a living from this wild land. Ma had been pretty as a girl. There were faded pictures of her in an old album that gave you an idea how she must have looked when she married Pa. The pictures showed a young girl dressed in the rather daring fashion of the day—those low-cut dresses that all the great ladies of the Confederacy used to wear with such a casual air, as they sat queenlike, smiling and pouring tea from silver pots into delicate china cups. It was hard to believe that Ma had been one of those great ladies once. Her father had been a rich tobacco buyer in Virginia, but he lost everything in the war and died soon afterward.

  I never saw Virginia myself. And those pictures in the album were just pictures to me, but I guess Pa still saw her as she had looked then, because something happened to him every time he looked at her. His wind-reddened face softened and his stern eyes became gentle — even as they did now as he saw her standing in the doorway.

  She stood there, holding her cotton wrap-around together, smiling quickly at Ray.

  “Good evening, Ray,” she said.

  “Good evening, Mrs. Cameron,” Ray said uneasily.

  “Mother,” Pa said, “why don't you go back to bed? I'll be along in a few minutes.”

  But she shook her head. “I want to know what it's about. Tell me, Rodger, because I'll find out sooner or later.”

  “It's nothing serious,” Pa said gently. “Ray just had some trouble in John's City with the state police. It's nothing to worry about.”

  “I don't understand,” Ma said vaguely. “What has that to do with Talbert?”

  “I just think it's best if they both go away for a while, until it blows over. There's been no killing. Just a fist fight. But there's no telling what the Yankee troopers will do while they're riled up. I'll send Ray and Tall down to my brother's place on the Brazos. You know how the police shift from one place to another. In a few months there won't be anybody around John's City to remember or hold a grudge, and then they can come back.”

  She considered it carefully, but I knew she wouldn't question Pa's word. That's the way it always had been.

  “All right, Rodger,” she said at last. “Whatever you say.”

  Her voice was heavy and edged with hopelessness. She had had great plans for me. Even before I was born she had started making plans to send me to the University of Virginia and make a lawyer out of me, or maybe a preacher. But the war had put an end to that. There wasn't anybody in Texas, except the scalawags and bureau agents, that had money enough to send their children off to places like Virginia. And I hadn't made things any easier for Ma. I had come into the world in the midst of great pain, almost killing her, and I had been a source of pain ever since. Like the time I cut Criss Bagley open with a pocketknife. She had tried to comfort me and to understand, and I had tried to explain to her. But I couldn't explain when I didn't know myself. I just knew that Criss had been coming at me with an elm club and I knew I had to get it away from him, one way or another. Criss was twelve and I was ten, and he outweighed me by thirty pounds or more, so the knife seemed the only way.

  I remember the way he looked, standing there with his eyes wide in amazement—before the pain—staring down at his opened belly. We had been swimming down at Double-dare Hole, a muddy, deep hole in the arroyo that cut across our land, and in the spring and early summer it was almost always full. It was June, I remember, and four of us had stopped there on our way from school. And one of the kids—I don't know which one— tied knots in Criss's clothes, and that was the way it started. He thought I did it. He came out of the water yelling, “Goddamn you, Tall Cameron!” And I remember saying, “Don't goddamn me! I didn't tie knots in your dirty damn clothes!”

  For a while we just stood there glaring at each other. Criss was naked and dripping, and fat around the belly and hips, like a girl. I had already dried myself in the sun and had my clothes on. The other two boys climbed up on the bank, grinning. Then one of them said, “What's the matter, Criss? You afraid of Tall? You just goin' to stand there and let him get away with tyin' knots in your clothes?”

  Criss turned on the boy. “Keep your goddamn mouth shut. I guess I know how to take care of Tall Cameron... unless he wants to untie my clothes, that is.”

  I know now that Criss really didn't want to fight. But I didn't know it then. I could have untied his clothes and that would have been the end of it. Instead, I said, “You can untie them yourself if you want them untied. I don't guess I'm bound to wait on you.”

  Criss was one of those people who never tanned in the summer, no matter how much he stayed out in the sun. His hair was kind of a dirty yellow, and so were his eyebrows; and his skin was as pink and soft as a baby's bottom. He stood there waiting for me to do something about his clothes. His pale little eyes shut down to angry slits.

  “I'll count to ten,” he said tightly. “If you don't have my clothes untied by then, it's goin' be too bad.”

  “You can count to ten thousand,” I said. “I told you I didn't do it.”

  So he started counting. And I didn't move. And when he had finished he said, “All right, goddamn you!” and started toward me.

  I had never fought Criss before. I'd never wanted to because of his size, but I wasn't afraid of him. And, after the first swing he took, I saw that it was going to be easy. He was big and fat and clumsy, and not very smart. I ducked under his fist and slammed him right in the middle of his pink, fat belly. He eyes flew open in surprise and he made a sound like a horse breaking wind. I hit him again in the face, and once more in the belly, and he sat down. He didn't fall or stumble. He just sat down. And when he got up again he had that stick in his hand.

  I don't even remember getting the knife out of my pocket. I just remember Criss flailing away with that club, catching me once on the left shoulder and numbing it. Then he came in to hit me again, and that was when I cut him. Right across the belly. You could see layers of fat meat as the gash began to open. And at first little droplets of bright blood appeared like sweat on the raw edges of the cut. Then Criss sat down again, very carefully, and then he lay down and began to cry.

  “Goddamn you,
Tall! You killed me!”

  For a minute I thought maybe I had. The blood was coming faster now, oozing out of the white gash and over his pink skin. I still wasn't scared, but I knew I'd have to get out of John's City if he died, and I would have to do it before the town marshal heard about it. That was when Ray Novak's pa was marshal, old Martin Novak, and he had a reputation for tracking killers. So I left Criss where he was, there on the ground, crying, and ran all the way to our ranch house.

  I told Pa what had happened, and I remember him staring at me for a long, long time and not saying anything. He grew to be an old man in those few minutes. And he had been an old man ever since. At last he said, “Tall?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You go to the house. You go to your room and stay there. Don't tell your ma anything about it until I get back. Give me your word.”

  I had to give him my word. And I had to stay with it, because that's the way it was between me and Pa. I went to the house, and from my room I watched Pa get the spring wagon hitched and head down toward the arroyo.