Criss didn't die, but there were some anxious days. Old man Bagley swore that he would kill me, and Pa too, if Criss died. But he didn't die. He stayed in bed for about two months and then he got up as well as anybody, except for an eight-inch scar across his belly, just below the navel.
I tried to explain to Ma the way it happened—the way Criss had come at me with that stick—but it wasn't any use. She would always end up by crying, “But son, why didn't you run from him? Why didn't you untie his clothes for him?” And I couldn't tell her. I didn't know myself.
So, for some reason, that was what I thought about as Ma stood there in the doorway holding her wrap-around together, and looking at Pa, and me, and Ray Novak. As she said:
“All right, Rodger. Whatever you say.”
I said, “It's going to be all right, Ma. We'll just put in the spring working, and come home in the summer.”
For a moment I forgot that I didn't want to leave the John's City country, that I didn't want to go away from Laurin, that I was mad at Ray Novak for bringing all this on. I wanted to see Ma smile more than anything else.
And she did, finally, but it was weak, not reaching her eyes. She said, “Of course, son. Will you be going... right away?”
I looked at Pa and he nodded. “Yes,” he said. “Right away.”
Ma went into the kitchen and we heard her shaking the grate on the cookstove. Pa said, “Ray, did you come by your pa's place?”
“No, sir,” Ray said. “I figured that would be the first place the posse would look for me.”
Pa nodded soberly. “You did right. I'll go over and let him know that you're all right. I'll do it tomorrow.”
“I'd be much obliged, sir.”
Pa went into the bedroom and put on his pants and boots. He came out stuffing his nightshirt in his pants. Without saying anything, he handed me a cartridge belt with an open holster attached to it. I buckled the belt on and he slid the .44 into the holster, then I went upstairs to change my own nightshirt for a regular shirt and a mackinaw.
The whole thing struck me as something out of a dream. Only a few minutes ago I had been sound asleep, with not a worry in the world, unless maybe it was figuring out a way to see Laurin more often. And now I was getting ready to leave. Going down on the Brazos to a strange country that I had never seen before. Just because Ray Novak lost his fool head and hit a Yankee cavalryman.
I heard the front door open and close, and there was a thud of boots and a bright sound of spurs as Pa and Ray went out to the barn to get the horses ready. There? was a familiar stirring sound downstairs, wooden spoon against crock bowl, and I knew Ma was mixing a batter of some kind. Ma was like most women. In case of death or any other disaster, her first thought was of food. The women themselves never eat the food, but cooking gives them something to do. It takes their minds off their troubles. Maybe it's the same as a man getting drunk to forget his troubles. A woman cooks. Anyway, I knew Ray and I wouldn't go hungry on our trip to the Brazos.
I went downstairs and outside, and the night was as clean and sharp as a new knife. I stood out there for a few minutes, in the yard, looking to the west where the Bannerman spread was. I thought about Laurin. I let myself wonder if Laurin would miss me. If she would miss Ray Novak—even a little bit. Goddamn Ray Novak, anyway.
Pa and Ray were working quietly in the barn, in the sickly orange light of an oil lantern. Pa had cut out two horses from the holding corral, and I saw immediately that one of them was the big copper-colored gelding that was registered in the horse book as Red Hawk. But he was just “Red” to me, and beautiful as only a purebred Morgan can be. Ray was throwing a saddle up on a sturdy little black and Pa was taking care of Red, patting him gently and crooning into his nervous pointed little ears.
I came up and slapped Red on his smooth glossy rump and he switched his fine head around and glared at me with a caustic eye. Red was bigger than most Morgans; almost sixteen hands high and king every inch of the way. The extra height was mostly in his hard-muscled legs, which gave him speed. A barrel chest and a heart as big as Texas gave him the stamina to do a hard day's work and not complain, although he had been bred as a show horse. An Eastern pilgrim had brought him down from Vermont or Massachusetts or somewhere two summers ago when the horse had been a two-year-old, and it had been love at first sight between Red and Pa. Pa had bought him on the spot, and Ma and me still didn't know what Red cost.
Pa looked up at me as he tightened the cinch under Red's belly. “I guess Red will get you to Brazos country,” he said, “and get you back again.”
I didn't know what to say. I knew how Pa felt about that blueblood, and there were other horses on the place that would do just as well for me. But I found the good sense to keep my mouth shut. Pa was giving Red to me and he wanted to do it his own way.
After a while, Ma came out with some things for me done up in a blanket roll, and she had a grub sack filled with coffee and bacon and meal and salt and some fresh-cooked cornbread. And there was a small deep skillet done up in the blanket roll. I couldn't help grinning a little. It was more like getting ready for a picnic or a camp meeting than making a cross-country run with a posse on our tails.
I said, “Thanks, Ma. Now don't you worry.” Then I kissed her cheek, and her skin was dry and rough against my lips. Her eyes were wide—a little too wide, and liquid-looking, but not a tear spilled out. She would wait until I was gone for that. I swung up on Red and Pa handed up a sealed white envelope.
“This is for your Uncle George Cameron,” he said quietly. “Give it to him when you get to the ranch. It tells him who you are and asks him to give both of you a job of work through the spring season. It doesn't say anything about the police trouble. I don't figure there's any use worrying him about that.”
He stopped and raked his fingers through his thinning hair. Pa had been a handsome man not many years before, and part of that handsomeness could still be seen. Men hold up better than women in this country. But he looked tired and old as he reached up to shake hands with me. Most of the age was in his eyes.
“Good-by, Tall. Be careful of yourself.”
“Sure, Pa.”
“Do you think you can find the place all right?”
“We can't miss the Brazos if we ride east,” I said. “We'll head south and then ask questions if we have to.”
He nodded. “I guess that's about right. Good-by, Ray. I'll let your pa know.”
“Good-by, sir. Thank you.”
We sat there for a minute, wondering if there was anything else to say. Then we all began to hear the noise of complex rattle and movement. For an instant I listened and looked at Ray Novak. He was thinking the same as I was. There was a rattle of loose steel and the aching screech of saddle leather, all muted and deadened by night and the distance. Then came the thudding of regimented horses, and we didn't have to be told that they were cavalry horses.
And still we sat there as the sound of horses and the rattle of cavalry sabers got closer. And I thought grimly, They sure as hell didn't waste time! Then I raked Red with the blunted rowels of my spurs, and we jumped out of the barn and into the darkness, with Ray Novak right behind.
The detachment of troopers saw us, or heard us. Somebody, an officer probably, bellowed out, “Halt! In the name of the United States Army!”
I sank the steel into Red and we jumped out a full length in front of Ray and the black. The cavalry recovered quickly and there were more bellowed orders in the darkness. Then they were coming after us, at full charge, from the way it sounded.
Chapter 2
IT'S FINE TO FEEL A HORSE like Red under you. I bent over his neck and felt the long hard muscles along his shoulders as he began to stretch out in a long, flowing, ground-eating stride. Then the cavalry started shooting, but that didn't worry me much. They couldn't hit anything in the darkness unless somebody got pretty lucky. And Ray and I had one advantage over them. We knew the country.
We headed south first, toward some low
rolling hills where the mesquite and scrub oak was so thick that it was hard to get through, even in the daytime, if you didn't know your way around. Red was running like a well-oiled machine now, and Ray's black horse was about two jumps behind us. The black was a good horse, but he was used mostly for cutting cattle and I knew he wouldn't hold up at the pace we were going for more than a half a mile. So I turned in the saddle and yelled back at Ray Novak.
“We'll head for the arroyo and take Daggert's Road!”
Ray yelled something, but the wind snatched the words away before they got to me. Anyway, I figured he understood. It was the natural thing to do if you knew the country, and Ray knew it as well as I did. We went barreling across the natland, pulling away from the cavalry a little, but not enough to get lost. And then we blasted into the hills, into the dagger-thorned chaparral and clawlike scrub oaks that grew as thick as weeds. In the pale moonlight, we were able to look for familiar trails and find them, but I hated to think what Red's glossy coat was going to look like when we came out of it.
The cavalry made up some lost time as we thrashed our way through the brush. They were coming into shooting range again, they had their carbines out now, pumping lead in our general direction, and I began to be afraid that somebody was going to get lucky after all if they kept that up for long.
But we blasted our way through the brush and went barreling down the slope again toward the ugly dark gash in the land below us, the arroyo. The spring rains hadn't come yet, so the sandy weed-grown bed was still dry as we slid our horses down the steep bank. The shooting had stopped again. I figured the cavalry had hit the brush and was having its hands full there. So we pounded on down the dry wash and finally we came to what we were looking for, a cutaway in the bank of the wash, only you had to know where it was to see it, especially at night. It was grown over with weeds and scrub trees, and it stayed that way the year around except for maybe two months in the spring when the rains up north set the wash to flowing.
That was Daggert's Road. If you knew where to look, there was room enough to squeeze a horse through the opening, through the hanging vines and scrubs, and you entered into a kind of a trail that wound up into the hill country. If you followed the trail far enough you'd find a little lean-to shack against a hillside, falling to pieces and rotten with years. Old-timers would tell you that shack used to be Sam Daggert's headquarters, that he used to hide out there after making one of his raids on the wagon trains crossing the Santa Fe Trail.
I don't know about the Sam Daggert part, but I know the cabin is there, and somebody must have made that trail for some reason. I used to ride out this way with Pa sometimes, looking for strays. And, kidlike, I would poke around the shack looking for buried treasure, or maybe skeletons or guns. But all I ever found was a few soggy, blackened bits of paper that might have been paper cartridges at one time.
Well, Sam Daggert or not, whoever made the trail, I was grateful to him. Ray Novak was first to go through the opening because his black was smaller than Red. Then I shoved Red through, and took a minute to rearrange the vines. We could hear the cavalry just beginning to jump their horses down the bank of the wash.
We waited where we were until they pounded past us, running south in the bend of the arroyo. And for a minute there I felt pretty good about it. I was pretty pleased with myself. I wasn't scared, for one thing, and hadn't been, through the whole business. And I don't think it had entered my mind that the cavalry would catch us, and even if they had caught us, they couldn't have done anything.
It wasn't cockiness exactly. It was training. One Texan was better than a whole goddamned regiment of blue-belly Yankees. I was as sure of that as I was sure the sun would come up the next morning. The War between the States hadn't changed that. So that was the way I thought. Only it wasn't thinking, it was knowing, and for a few minutes there I didn't hate Ray Novak for getting me into this mess, because I was enjoying myself.
But not Ray. His face was whiter than the pale moonlight that sifted through the brush. He wiped his face on his shirt sleeve and looked at me and Red, and then at his own black horse, as if he was surprised to see that we were still in one piece.
He said finally, “I guess I didn't bargain for a thing like this.”
“For a thing like what?”
“I didn't figure they'd be so worked up. You'd think I'd killed somebody, from the way they came after us.”
I couldn't figure Ray Novak out. He acted scared, but I knew he wasn't—or at least I'd never known him to be scared of anything before. He sat there, looking at me with those sober eyes of his, and wiping his face. “I don't like it at all.”
“For God's sake,” I said, “what don't you like about it? We got away from them, didn't we?”
He didn't say anything, so I pulled Red around and nudged him forward, heading north. I could almost feel Ray stiffen in surprise.
“Now where are you going? I had an idea we were headed east.”
I said, “We're going away, aren't we? That's the time for saying good-by, isn't it?”
He knew I was headed for the Bannerman spread to see Laurin before starting the long ride to the Brazos. I half expected him to-go on without me. At least, I expected an argument of some kind, but strangely enough he didn't offer any. He reined the black over and fell in beside me.
The Bannerman ranch house was dark when we got there, but it wasn't long before we saw somebody light a lamp and come out on the front porch. It was Joe Bannerman, Laurin's brother, holding a big hog-leg six-shooter in one hand and the lamp in the other.
Before he decided to shoot first and ask questions later, I called, “It's me, Joe—Tall Cameron. Ray Novak's here with me.”
I heard him grunt in surprise as Ray and I swung around the hitching rack in the front yard, making for the back of the house.
I said, “Blow the lamp out, Joe. The cavalry's after us. I don't think they're anywhere close, but there's no use taking chances.”
“What the hell have you got yourself into now?” he said. He sounded half mad at being jarred out of bed at that time of night. But the lamp went out and he padded barefoot to the end of the porch, peering at us through the darkness. “Ray Novak, is that you?” Then we heard him spit in the darkness. “Has this young heller got you mixed up in some of his shenanigans?”
Joe never liked me much. He was a lot older than Laurin, and I knew he never liked it much when I came calling. But to hell with Joe Bannerman. Laurin was the one I'd come to say good-by to.
“It's me, all right, Joe,” Ray Novak said, “but the trouble we're in is my fault. Tall didn't have anything to do with it.”
For a moment, Joe didn't say anything. Then, “Well, I'll be damned....”
Ray started explaining about his fight with the blue-belly back in John's City, but I didn't stay to hear about it. Just then I saw her standing there at the back door. I dropped down from the saddle and gave Red a slap on the rump, sending him on around to the back of the house.
“Tall?”
She looked like a pale ghost, or an angel, standing there in the darkness. Her voice was anxious, touched with fear. Then she pushed the screen door open and came outside. She stood there on the top step, covered in one of those pale, shapeless wrap-arounds that all women seem to reach for when they get out of bed. I had never seen her like that before. In the pale moonlight, her face seemed even more beautiful than I had remembered it, and her dark hair was unbraided, falling around her shoulders as soft as a dark mist. I stood there at the bottom of the steps, looking up at her.
“Tall,” she said urgently, “something's wrong. You wouldn't be here at this time of night unless...”
“It's nothing,” I said. “We're going down on the Brazos for a spell. I wanted to say good-by, that's all.”
“We?” I don't think she had known there were two of us until then.
“Me and Ray Novak,” I said. “He took a swing at a bluebelly and got the cavalry on him. Now they're after both of us.”
She made a startled little sound, and I wanted to reach up and put my arms around her and tell her not to worry. I'd be back. All the bluebellys north of the Rio Grande couldn't keep me away from her.
But I didn't move. Joe Bannerman would have shot me in a minute if he had caught me laying a hand on his sister while she was still in her nightclothes. And probably that was just what Joe was expecting. He moved around to the corner of the house, still talking to Ray Novak, but careful not to let me out of his sight.
She lowered her voice, but the worry and urgency were still there. “Tall, are you sure... are you sure that you haven't... done anything?”
That would have made me mad if it had been anybody else. Nobody seemed to believe me when I told them that Ray Novak was the one that started all the trouble. They seemed to think that Ray Novak was incapable of getting into any trouble, especially on the wrong side of the law. With Tall Cameron, that was the thing they expected.
The Desperado Page 2