I watched the sleeping gunman as those thoughts went through my mind. Pappy's face was relaxed now and I could see the deep lines of incredible weariness around his eyes and mouth. He looked as if he hadn't slept for days. I knew that he hadn't slept for years. Not real sleep. But now he lay like a log, numbed with weariness and comforted with hot food in his belly. He didn't look like a killer to me. He looked like an old man—very old and very tired—who couldn't hold his eyes open any longer.
Ray was coming up on Pappy's left, moving silently. In just a minute it would be over, if Pappy made a move for his guns. He would be able to sleep then—the long sleep that lasted forever.
The shout, when it came, startled me as much as anybody. It came high-pitched and loud and I hardly recognized it as my own.
“Pappy, look out!”
I lurched up to my feet. I don't know what I thought I was going to do then. It was too late to do anything but to stand there, half-crouched, and watch.
If I hadn't seen it I wouldn't have believed it. I never could entirely believe it when I watched Pappy handle guns. And you wouldn't believe that a man like Pappy could come awake as quick as he did, or that a man could move as fast. It all happened so fast that you couldn't be sure where the movement started and where it ended. He flipped over on his stomach and rolled on his right side, and his right hand started plunging down to his holster before my first word was out. Ray was almost on top of him. His .44 was already out and cocked, and Ray was the man who could put two holes in a tossed-up can before it hit the ground. But by the time he got his second shot off this time, it was too late.
Ray Novak's first bullet slammed into Pappy's saddle, where his head had been only an instant before. Before he could thumb the hammer and press the trigger again, Pappy's own deadly .44 had bellowed. Pappy lay on his side, firing across his body. He must have drawn the gun and cocked it while he was flopping over, but it looked as if it had been in his hand all the time. One bullet was all he used.
I still hadn't moved. I stood there in that frozen half-crouch waiting for Ray Novak to go down. When Pappy fired only once, I knew it was over. He got to his knees and slowly lifted himself to his feet, darting a glance in my direction.
He said mildly, “Just unbuckle your pistol, son, and kick it over here.”
I slipped the buckle on my cartridge belt and dropped it. Then I kicked it toward Pappy. But the thing that held me fascinated was Ray Novak. He was still standing. He wasn't even swaying. Then I saw that his gun hand was empty and I began to understand what had happened.
It hadn't been anything as fancy as shooting a man's gun out of his hand. Not even Pappy Garret could have done that, shooting as fast as he had, from the position he had been in. He had shot to kill, but the bullet had nicked Ray's forearm, making him drop the gun.
I lost any suspicion I had about Ray Novak's guts. He had plenty. There was nothing he could do now but stand there and wait for Pappy to finish him off. But he didn't flinch, or beg, or anything else. He just stood there, staring into those pale gray eyes of Pappy Garret's, while bright red blood dripped from his fingers and splashed in a little pool at his feet.
“What are you waiting on, Garret?” he said. “Why don't you go ahead and finish it?”
Pappy smiled that tired half-smile of his. He said softly, “I wouldn't waste another bullet on you. If I decide to kill you, I'll beat your brains out with a pistol butt. Now get the hell out of here before I do it.”
Ray Novak's face burned a bright red. For a moment he didn't move. Then Pappy started toward him, slowly, holding his .44 like a club.
Ray said, “I'll get you, Garret. There won't always be carpetbag law in this country. And then I'll get you, if it's the last thing I do.”
Pappy kept coming, half-smiling, with his pistol raised.
Ray turned then, and walked off, leaving a little trail of crimson in the tender green shoots of young grass. He didn't look at me. He walked on by. Around the bend he got his horse saddled, and pretty soon we heard him ride away.
I started to go myself. There was no explaining the reason I had yelled the way I had. Probably it had been because of a lot of things. Ray Novak and his everlasting talk of law. Ray Novak being able to put two bullets in a tin can. Even those rides of his over to Laurin's might have had something to do with it. All that, and Pappy lying there under the cottonwood, looking like a tired, helpless old man.
Anyway, I had done it. Ray Novak and I were through for good now, but I didn't give a damn about that. I turned and started up toward the bend in the creek to get Red saddled up.
But Pappy said, “Just a minute, son. I'd like to talk to you.”
Chapter 3
I TURNED AROUND. Pappy looked at me as he punched the empty cartridge out of his pistol and replaced it with a live round. After a moment he said:
“Thanks.”
“Forget it. I wasn't trying to buy anything.”
“You called me Pappy,” he said. “How did you know who I was?”
“The other fellow figured it out. His old man used to be a town marshal and he saw your picture on one of the dodgers that came through the office.”
Pappy shook his head, puzzled. “I know a man on the run when I see one. And he was on the run, the same as you. He didn't look like a marshal's son to me.”
“His pa was marshal before the carpetbaggers took over.”
Pappy began to understand. He rubbed a hand thoughtfully over his bushy chin. He moved back up the slope a few steps and sat down, leaning back with his elbows on his saddle. After a moment he untied the dirty bandanna and mopped his face and the back of his neck.
There was something about him that fascinated me. Only a minute ago he had come within a hair's breadth of getting a bullet in his brain, and all the emotion he showed was to wipe his face 'with a dirty handkerchief.
“Well,” he asked, “what are you staring at?”
“You,” I said. “I was just wondering how you came to go to sleep at a time like that.”
He thought about that for a moment, and at last he sighed. “I was tired,” he said simply. “I haven't slept for more than two days.”
I should have saddled Red right then and rode away from there. There was trouble in the air. You could feel it all around, and you got the idea that trouble flocked to Pappy like iron filings to a lodestone. But I didn't move.
I said, “Ray Novak will be on your trail again. Sooner or later he'll be riding behind a marshal's badge, and when that happens he'll hunt you down. You should have killed him while you had the chance.”
I half expected Pappy to laugh. The idea of Pappy having anything to fear from a youngster like Ray Novak would have been funny to most people. But Pappy didn't laugh. He studied me carefully with those pale gray eyes.
“A man does his own killing, son, and that's enough,” he said. “I reckon if you want this Novak fellow dead, you'll have to see to it yourself.”
I flared up at that.
“I don't care if he's dead or alive. Ray Novak doesn't mean anything to me.”
Something changed in Pappy's eyes. I had an idea that way down deep he was smiling, but it didn't show on that ugly face.
“Maybe I spoke out of turn,” he said finally. “I guess you're right. I should have killed him... while I had the chance.”
There didn't seem to be any more to say. I turned and headed around the bend to where Red was picketed, and Pappy didn't make any move to stop me. But I could almost feel those eyes on me as I threw the double-rigged saddle up on Red's broad neck and began to tighten the cinches. I got my blanket roll and tied it on behind and I was ready to go. I was ready to leave this creek and Pappy Garret behind. I had enough trouble as it was, and if I got caught, I didn't want it to be with a man like Pappy. I swung up to the saddle and pulled Red around to where the outlaw was still standing.
“I guess this is where I cut out,” I said. “So long, Pappy.”
“So long, son.”
> He looked a hundred years old right then. His heavy-lidded, red-rimmed eyes were watery with fatigue, and once in a while little nervous tics of sheer weariness would jerk at the corner of his mouth.
“Well,” I said, “take care of yourself.”
“The same to you, son,” Pappy said. I started to pull Red around again and head downstream, when Pappy added, “Just a minute before you go.”
He moved over a couple of steps to where his saddlebags were. He opened one of them and took out a pair of pistols, almost exactly like the ones he was wearing. Gleaming, deadly weapons, with rubbed walnut butts. He came over and handed them up to me.
“Bad pistols are like bad friends,” he said. “They let you down when you need them most. You'd better take these.”
I didn't know what to say. I looked at Pappy and then at the guns.
“Go on, take them,” he said. “A fellow down on the border let me have them.” And he smiled that sad half-smile of his. “He wasn't in any condition to object.”
I took the guns dumbly, feeling their deadly weight as I balanced them in my hands. I had never held weapons like them before. They had almost perfect balance. I flipped them over with my fingers in the trigger guards, and the butts smacked solidly in my palms, as if they had been carved by an artist specially to fit my hands.
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “All right, Pappy,” I said finally. “You win.”
He looked surprised. “I win what?”
“I'll keep watch while you catch some sleep. That's what you wanted, wasn't it?”
Then I saw something that few people ever saw. Pappy Garret smiled. Not that sad half-smile of his, but a real honest-to-God, face-splitting smile that reached all the way to his gray eyes.
“I think we'll get along, son,” he said.
So that's the way it was. I unsaddled Red again and staked him out, then I took my position up on the creek bank while Pappy stretched out again with his head on the saddle. He raised up once to look at me, still slightly amused.
“My hide is worth ten thousand dollars at the nearest marshal's office,” he said. “How do I know you won't try to shoot me while I'm asleep?”
“If I'd wanted ten thousand dollars that bad,” I said, “I'd have killed you the first time you went to sleep. And I wouldn't have been polite enough to wake you up first. I don't let my conscience bother me, the way Novak does.”
Pappy's mouth twitched, and there was that almost silent grunting sound, and I knew that he was laughing. He was dead asleep before his head hit the saddle again.
I had time to do some thinking while Pappy slept. I decided that maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea, after all, to stick with Pappy until we reached the Brazos. If anybody would know all the outtrails to miss the cavalry and police, Pappy Garret was the man. And avoiding cavalry and police was about the most important thing I could think of right now.
I didn't think much about Ray Novak. We had never been anything in particular to each other, and now that we were separated for good, I was satisfied. I didn't give a damn where he went or what he did.
But I thought of Laurin Bannerman. Laurin, with eyes a little too large for her small face, and her small mouth that always looked slightly berry-stained, and her laugh that was as fresh as spring rain. I thought about her plenty now that I had time on my hands and there was nothing else to do. It was a funny thing, but I had never paid any attention to her until a couple of years ago. I guess that's the way boys are around that age. One minute girls mean nothing, and the next minute they're everything.
That was Laurin for me. Just about everything.
It was late in the afternoon when Pappy woke up. I was sitting under a cottonwood up on the creek bank, flipping my new pistols over and over to get the feel of them. Pappy sat up lazily, stretching, yawning, and scratching the mangy patches of beard on his face.
“That's better,” he said. “Much better.” He got up on his feet and hobbled around experimentally. “You handle those guns pretty good, son,” he said. “Do you think you can shoot them as well?”
“Well enough, I guess.”
Pappy shook his head soberly and beat some of the dust from his battered hat. “That's one thing no man ever does—shoot well enough. Sooner or later, if you keep looking, you'll find some bird that can slap leather faster.”
“How about you?” I asked.
Pappy grinned slightly. “Maybe I haven't looked long enough,” he said. “But I don't expect to live forever.”
He began getting his stuff together, a ragged gray blanket that still had C.S.A. stenciled on it in faded black letters, a change of clothing, and that was about all. He did have some tobacco, though. He took the sack out of his shirt pocket and poured some of the powdery stuff into a little square of corn shuck, Mexican style, and tossed the makings up to me.
“You figure to ride east tonight?” he asked casually.
“That's what I had in mind.”
“Alone?”
He was holding a match up to his cigarette and I couldn't see his face. “I guess that's up to you,” I said.
He got that surprised look again. “How do you mean, son?”
He came up the slope and held a match while I got my cigarette to going. “Isn't that what you had in mind all along?” I said. “You look like a man that's just about played out. I don't know what you're running from, or how long you've been at it, but I know a man can't stay on the alert twenty-four hours a day, the way you must have been doing. I'm on my way to the Brazos country. If you want to ride along and keep clear of the bluebellies, that's all right with me. We'll take turns sleeping and watching, and split up when we get to the river.”
He tried to look all innocence, but he didn't have the face for it. “Do you think I'd let a mere boy tie up with a wanted man like me?”
“I think that's what you've been figuring on all along,” I said.
I thought for a minute that he was going to break down and have a real laugh. But he didn't. He only said, “I guess we'd better get ready to ride. The sun will be down before long.”
We made about twenty-five miles that night, and I knew before we had covered a hundred yards that I had picked the right man to get me through hostile country. Pappy knew every trick there was to learn about covering a trail. When a hard shale outcropping appeared, we followed it. When we crossed a stream we never came out near the place we went in. We even picked up the tracks of some wild cattle and followed them for two or three miles, mingling our own horses' hoofmarks with the dozens of others.
Pappy didn't ask me, but I told him about myself as we rode. I even told him about Laurin, and Ray Novak, and how we came to be on the run, but there was no way of knowing what he thought about it. He would grunt once in a while, and that was all.
The next day, when we started to ride again, Pappy found a holster for me in one of those saddlebags of his. “Some people will tell you that a good shot doesn't need but one gun,” he said, “but that's a lot of foolishness. Two of anything is better than one.”
I felt foolish at first. It seemed like a lot of hardware— a lot more than an ordinary man needed to pack. But then, Pappy Garret wasn't an ordinary man, and when you were with Pappy you did as he did.
The day after that he said we didn't have to ride at night any more. He knew the country and there was nothing to worry about between us and the Brazos. Pappy, I gathered, was figuring on tying up with a trail herd headed for Kansas, but he never said so. He never said anything much after we got to riding, except for things like: “Loosen your cartridge belt, son. Let your pistols hang where your palms can brush the butts. Boothills are full of men that had to reach that extra inch to get their guns.” Or, at the end of a day maybe, when we were sitting around doing nothing: “Clean your pistols, son. Guns are like women; if you don't treat them right, and they turn against you, you've got nobody to blame but yourself.”
It was almost sundown of the fourth day when we raised the wooded high grou
nd with a sagging little log shack partly dug into the side of a hill. A thin little whisper of smoke was curling up from a rock chimney.
“It looks like they're expecting us,” Pappy said, squinting across the distance.
I looked at him, and he saw the question before I could ask it.“They,” he said, “could be almost anybody. Anybody but the law, that is. The shack was built a long time ago by a sheepherder, but the cattlemen chased him out of Texas before he had time to get settled good. Some of the boys I know use it once in a while. I use it myself when I'm in this part of the country.”
Well, I figured Pappy ought to know. We rode up toward the shack, and before long a man came out of it and stood there by the front door—the only door the cabin had—nursing what looked like a short-barreled buffalo gun. A Sharps maybe, about a .50 caliber, I guessed, when we got closer.
The Desperado Page 5