The Desperado

by Clifton Adams

  The man himself wasn't much to look at. About twenty-three or so, with a blunted, bulldog face, and long hair that hung down almost to his shoulders. His clothes were in about the same shape as Pappy's, and that wasn't saying much.

  Pappy grunted as we pulled up near the crest of the hill. “It looks like one of the Creyton boys,” he said.

  I had a closer look at the man. The Creyton boys had hard names in Texas. They were supposed to have been in on a bank robbery or two down on the border. There were three of them: Buck, and Ralph, and a younger one called Paul. I figured the one at the shack was Paul Creyton, because he looked too young to have done the things that Buck and Ralph had to their credit.

  The man recognized Pappy as we drew up into the thicket that passed for a front yard. I saw there was a lean-to shed on the side of the shack—a place for keeping horses, I supposed—but there was no horse stable there. The man lowered his gun and came forward.

  “Pappy Garret,” he said flatly, “I had an idea you was up in Kansas.”

  Pappy grinned slightly and leaned across his big black's neck to shake hands. “A Texan likes to see the old home place once in a while. How are you, Paul?”

  The man glanced sideways at me, and Pappy said quickly, “This is Tall Cameron, a friend of mine. He's going as far as the Brazos with me.”

  We nodded at each other. Paul Creyton said, “You haven't seen Buck, have you?”

  “Not for about two years,” Pappy said.

  “We split up down on the Black River,” Creyton went on flatly, as if he had gone over the story a hundred times in his mind. “A Morgan County sheriff's posse jumped us just south of the river. Ralph's dead. A sonofabitch gave him a double load of buckshot. My horse played out about four miles off, down in the flats, and I had to leave him in a gully.”

  I watched Pappy stiffen, just a little, then relax. “That's too bad about Ralph,” he said softly.

  “A double load of buckshot the sonofabitch gave him,” Paul Creyton said again. “Right in the face. I wouldn't of known him, my own brother, if I hadn't been standing right next to him and seen him get it.” His little eyes were dark with anger, but I couldn't see any particular grief on his face. He jerked his head toward the shack. “It ain't much, Pappy, but you and your friend are welcome to stay with me. I was just going out to see if I couldn't shoot myself some grub.”

  Pappy looked at me. We had been riding a long way and our horses needed a rest, but he was leaving the decision up to me.

  “I've got some side bacon and corn meal,” I said. “I guess that will see us through supper.”

  We cooked the bacon at a small rock fireplace in one corner of the shack, then we fried some hoecake bread in the grease, and finally made some coffee. Pappy and Paul Creyton talked a little, but not much. Somehow I gathered that Pappy wasn't such a great friend of the Creytons as I had thought at first.

  After supper, it was almost dark, and the only light in the shack came from the little jumping flames in the fireplace. Talk finally slacked off to nothing, and Paul Creyton sat staring into the fire, anger written into every line of his face. Whatever his plans were, he wasn't letting us in on them. Whatever was in his mind, he was keeping it to himself.

  Pappy got up silently and went outside to look at his horse. I followed him.

  “What do you think about that posse?” I said. “Do you think they'll follow Creyton up to this place?”

  Pappy shook his head, lifting his horse's hoofs and inspecting them. “Not tonight. This place is hard to find if you don't know where to look, and Paul can cover a trail as well as the next one.”

  I rubbed Red down and gave him some water out of a rain barrel at the edge of the shack. His ribs were beginning to show through his glossy hide, and there were several briar scratches across his chest. But there wasn't anything wrong with him that a sack of oats or corn wouldn't fix.

  I heard Pappy grunt, and I looked up. He had his horse's left forefoot between his knees, gouging around the shoe with a pocketknife.

  “A stone bruise,” he said. “He's been walking off center since noon, but I figured it was because he was tired.” He got the rock that was caught under the rim of the shoe and nipped it out. “Well, there won't be any riding for a day or so, until that hoof is sound again.”

  “That means staying here tomorrow?”

  “It meansme staying here. You don't have to. Another day's ride will put you on the Brazos.”

  For a minute I didn't say anything. I hadn't figured that it would be any problem to pack up and leave Pappy any time I felt like it. But there was something about that ugly face that a man could get to like. He didn't have many friends. Maybe I was the closest thing to a friend that he had ever had. I made up my mind.

  “I'll wait,” I said. “We'll ride in together.”

  I imagined that I saw Pappy smile, but it was too dark now really to see his face. Then, without looking up, he said, “In that case, you'd better keep an eye on that red horse of yours.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “If you were on foot,” Pappy said, “and in no position to get yourself a horse, what would you do?”

  “Like Paul Creyton.”

  “We'll say Eke Paul Creyton.” began to get mad just thinking about it. “If he lays a hand on Red,” I said, “I'll kill him.”

  Pappy turned, and stretched, and yawned, as if it were no concern of his. “Maybe I'm wrong,” he said, “but I doubt it. He's got to have a horse, and that animal of yours is the closest one around.”

  He started back toward the shack, toward the doorway faintly jumping in orange firelight. “Just a minute,” I said. “How are you so sure that he won't try to steal that black of yours?”

  Pappy smiled. He was in the dark, but I knew he was smiling.

  “Paul Creyton knows better than to steal an animal of mine,” he said.

  When I got back to the shack I decided that Pappy had the whole thing figured wrong. Creyton had his blanket roll undone and was stretched out in front of the fireplace when I came in. He didn't look like a man ready to make a quick getaway on a stolen horse. Pappy was sitting on the other side of the room with his back to the wall, smoking one of his corn-shuck cigarettes.

  “It seems like Paul just came from your part of the country,” he said.

  “John's City?”

  Creyton sat up and worked with the makings of a cigarette. “That's the place,” he said. “Me and Ralph and Buck came through there a few days back. About the day after you pulled out, according to what Pappy tells me.”

  I looked at Pappy, but his face told me nothing.

  “Well, what about it?”

  “Nothing about it,” Creyton said bluntly. “We just came through it, that's all. The carpetbag law was raisin' hell. Stoppin' all travelers, police makin' raids on the local ranchers. All because some white punk took a swing at a cavalryman, they said.”

  I hadn't been ready for that. I had figured, like Ray Novak, that if the two of us got out of the country for a while it would all blow over. But here the police were raiding the ranches, because of us. Our own place, maybe. Or the Bannerman place, where Laurin was.

  If one of the pigs so much as laid a hand on Laurin...

  The thought of it made me weak and a little sick. I wheeled and started for the door.

  “Where do you think you're going?” Pappy said.

  “Back to John's City.”

  “Do you plan to go on foot? I don't care what you do with yourself, but I hate to see you kill a good horse out of damn foolishness. Wait till tomorrow. You'll make better time in the long run by giving your horse a rest.”

  Pappy was right. I knew that, but it wasn't easy staying here and wondering what might be happening to Laurin, or Ma and Pa, and doing nothing about it. Grey-ton got slowly to his feet, standing there in front of the fireplace, looking at me.

  “You'd better listen to Pappy, kid,” he said. “When you need a horse you need him bad. I oug
ht to know.”

  I didn't want Creyton's advice. For all I knew, he just wanted me to stick around a while longer to give him a better chance to steal my horse. But I knew they were both right. Red had been pushed hard for the past few days, and if I tried to push him again tonight he might break down for good.

  So I stayed. When the fire burned out, we made blanket pallets on the dirt floor, and before long Pappy's heavy breathing told me that he was asleep. He didn't snore. From time to time the rhythm of his breathing would break, he would rouse himself, look around, and then go back to sleep again. That was the way Pappy was. He never slept sound enough to snore. You had a feeling that he never let his mind be completely blanked out, that he always kept some little corner of it open. Being on the run had done that. He was afraid to allow himself the luxury of real sleep. A man like Pappy never knew when he would have to be wide awake and ready to shoot.

  I lay awake for a long while, listening to a night wind moan and fling gravel and dust against the shack. Creyton seemed to be asleep. His breathing was regular, and once in a while he would snort a little and roll over on the hard ground. I lay there, with my eyes wide open, not taking any chances.

  The night crawled by slowly. How many hours, I don't know. My eyes burned from keeping them open, and every so often I'd feel myself dropping off and I'd have to start thinking about something. I wanted a cigarette, but I didn't dare light one. I was asleep, as far as Paul Creyton was concerned, and I wanted to keep it that way in case he had ideas about that red horse of mine. I started thinking about Laurin.

  I was dreaming of Laurin when something woke me. I didn't remember going to sleep, but I had. I sat up immediately, looking around the room, but it was too dark to see anything. I could hear Pappy's breathing. But not Paul Creyton's.

  Sickness hit in my stomach, and then anger. Then, outside the shack, I heard Red whinny, and I knew that was the thing that had wakened me.

  I went to the door, and in the pale moonlight I could see Paul Creyton throwing a saddle up on Red's back. So Pappy had been right all along. I found my cartridge belt on the floor, swung it around my middle and buckled it. Pappy didn't move. Didn't make a sound.

  I didn't feel angry now, or in any particular hurry. I knew Creyton wasn't going to get away with stealing my horse, the same as that time, years ago, when I had known that Criss Bagley wouldn't hurt me with that club. I didn't know just how I would stop him; but I would stop him, and that was the important thing.

  The night was quiet, and the sudden little scamper of Red's hoofs was the only thing to disturb it as I stepped out of the shack. Creyton had the horse all saddled and ready to ride by the time I got out to the shed. He was standing in the shadows, on the other side of Red, and I couldn't see him very well. But he could see me.

  I never heard of a man talking his way out of horse stealing, and I guess Creyton never had either. Anyway, he didn't try it this time. He moved fast, jerking Red in front of him. Everything was so cut and dried that there wasn't any use thinking about it, even if there had been time. I dropped to my knees, with one of my new .44's in my hand. For just a moment I wondered how I was going to get Creyton without hitting Red. Then I made out the figure of Creyton kneeling under the horse's belly, and his gun blazed.

  It all happened before Red could jump. I felt the .44 kick twice in my hand, the shots crowding right on top of Creyton's, and something told me there was no use wasting any more bullets. Red reared suddenly and, as he came crashing down with those ironshod hoofs, there was a soft, mushy sound, like dumping a big rock into a mud hole.

  I thought for a minute that I was going to be sick. But that passed. I ran forward and caught hold of the reins and stroked the big horse's neck until he began to quiet down. There were nervous little ripples running up and down his legs and shoulders, but he got over his wild spell. I petted him some more, then led him away from the place and hitched him to a blackjack tree near the shack.

  Paul Creyton was dead. I dragged him out into the moonlight and had a look at him. His face was a mess of meat and gristle and bone where Red's hoof had caught him, but that wasn't the thing that had done it. He had a bullet hole in the hollow of his throat, just below his Adam's apple, and another one about six inches up from his belt buckle. The one in the throat went all the way through, breaking his neck and leaving a hole about the size of a half dollar where the bullet came out. His head flopped around like something that didn't even belong to the rest of the body, when I tried to pick him up.

  It had all happened too fast to make much of an impression on me at first. But now I was beginning to get it. I backed up and swallowed to keep my stomach out of my throat. I hadn't known that a man could die like that. Just a flick of the finger, enough to pull a trigger, and he's dead. As easy as that. The night was cool, almost cold, but I felt sweat on my face, and on the back of my neck. Sweat plastered my shirt to my back. I walked away from the place and headed back toward the shack.

  It occurred to me to wonder what had happened to Pappy. He must have heard the shooting. The way he slept.

  As I stepped through the doorway, a match flared and Pappy's face jumped out at me as he lit a cigarette. He put the match out and I couldn't see his face any more, just the glowing end of that corn-shuck tube, with little sparks falling every once in a while and dying before they hit the floor.

  He said at last, “Creyton?”

  “He's dead.”

  I could see the fire race almost halfway down the cigarette as he dragged deeply. I was still too numb to put things together. I only knew that Pappy had been awake at the time of the shooting and he had made no move to help me. He hadn't even bothered to come out and see if I was dead or not. He took one more drag on the cigarette and flipped it away.

  “Well,” he said, “it's just as well. Maybe I could have stopped it, but I doubt it. Sometimes it's best to let things run until they come out the way they're bound to in the end, anyway.”

  “Were you awake,” I asked, “while he was trying to steal my horse?”

  “I was awake.”

  “A hell of a friend you are! What was the idea of laying there and not even bothering to wake me up?”

  “You woke up,” Pappy said mildly. “Anyway, it wasn't any of my business. I did my part when I warned you about Paul Creyton. What if I had walked into the quarrel and shot Paul for you? What difference would it have made? He's dead anyway.”

  “But what if he had shot me?” I wanted to know.

  I could almost see Pappy shrug. “That's the way it goes sometimes. By the way, you handle guns pretty well, at that. Paul Creyton wasn't the worst gunman in Texas, not by a long sight.”

  It took me a while to get it. But I had a good hold now. All the time I had been thinking that Pappy was my friend. He didn't even know what the word meant. Bite-dog-bite-bear, every man for himself, that was the way men like Pappy Garret lived. Unless, of course, some dumb kid came along who might be of some use to him for a few days. I'd played the fool all right, thinking that you could ever be friends with a man like that.

  “Buck Creyton,” I said. “You were afraid to take a hand with his kid brother because you knew you'd have Buck Creyton on your tail.”

  “I'll admit I gave Buck some thought in the matter,” Pappy said.

  I found that I still had the pistol in my hand. I flipped it over and shoved it in my holster. It's surprising how fast the shock of killing a man wears off. I wasn't thinking of Paul Creyton now. I was just thinking of how big a fool I had been, and getting madder all the time.

  “This finishes us, Pappy. From now on you take your trail and I'll take mine. This is as far as we go together.”

  There was another flare of a match as Pappy lit a fresh cigarette. “Of course, son,” he said easily. “Isn't that the way you wanted it all along?”

  I left Pappy in the shack! I'd had enough of him. I went outside and gentled Red some more and wondered vaguely what to do with Paul Creyton. I didn't have any fee
ling for him one way or the other, but it didn't seem right just to leave him there.

  What I finally did was to drag him down to the bottom of the slope and roll up boulders to build a tomb around him. That was the best I could do since I didn't have anything to dig a grave with. It was hard work and took a long time, but I stuck with it and did a good job. Anyway, it had a permanent look, and it would keep away the coyotes and buzzards.

  When I finished, the sky in the east was beginning to pale, and it was about time to start riding back toward John's City. I stood there for a while, beside the tomb, half wishing I could work up some feeling for the dead man. A feeling of regret, or remorse, or something. But I didn't feel anything at all. I looked at the pile of rocks that I had rolled up, and it was hard to believe that a man was under them. A man I had killed.