A Noose for the Desperado

by Clifton Adams

  More than we ever dared to tell;

  And what we might have been, Lorena,

  Had but our lovings prospered well....”

  I don't know, maybe it was the song that started me thinking about Texas again. “And what we might have been, Lorena.” It was so goddamned cloying and sickeningly sentimental that it was almost enough to make a man throw up—and still, that just about summed it up....

  Sometimes, after I had finished with my ranchwork, I used to ride over to Laurin's place, which was only about two miles from our own Panhandle ranch house. And more than likely I would use the excuse of looking for strays, because her brother thought I was wild, as he called it, and never liked for me to be hanging around. But he couldn't keep me from seeing her. We were both pretty young then and we didn't do much except talk a little, but we understood from the first the way it was. I remember on my seventeenth birthday Pa had given me four head of beef cattle and I couldn't wait to tell her about it. “This is just the start,” I said. “Those four cows will grow into one of the biggest ranches in Texas. It'll be our ranch.”

  I guess we were pretty happy then.

  It wasn't my fault that there was a war. It wasn't my fault that the carpetbaggers and bluebellies moved into Texas looking for trouble. I hadn't been the only hothead who decided that it was better to live a life of my own outside the law than to live within the law and have a bluecoat's boot heel on my neck.

  But I hadn't known that it was going to work out like this. In the back of my mind I had always planned on going back and having that ranch and family just the way we had planned. But I never would. It was too late.

  “It matters little now, Lorena,

  The past is in the eternal past....”

  “Will you stop that goddamn noise!” I said, and my voice was shriller, louder than I had intended.

  Then we all began to hear the bright, faraway little sounds of bells, and I heard somebody say, “Get ready, here they come,” and the word was passed all along the line. I looked around and everything seemed to be all right. All the men were down, covered up with brush. Nothing looked out of place.

  The bell sounds became mingled with the clatter of hoofs on the rocky ground, and then I could see them coming.

  “By God, it's just like I figured. Right down the middle.”

  Bama didn't say anything. He looked frozen, and he was gripping his rifle hard enough to put dents in it. The smugglers' advance guard was getting close now, three Mexicans riding in line with about twenty yards between them. Behind them came a fat old geezer on a dappled horse, all decked out in a white sombrero and a scarlet sash and silver bangles. He was almost as fat as Basset, but he was mean and tough and he carried two six-guns and a knife and he had a scar from the top of his left ear to the point of his chin to prove it. Flanking him there were a couple of saddleless riders with dirty rags around their heads, and I guessed they were the Indians who were scaring everybody to death.

  They didn't look so tough to me. They rode heavily, slouched on their ponies, in the way of all Indians. Most of them wore dirty hickory shirts that they had picked up somewhere, and a great variety of pants, most of which were torn off or cut off just below the knee. There were a great many knives and hatchets and a few old cap-and-ball pistols that must have been relics of the Mexican War.

  After the advance guard, and the head smuggler and his personal bodyguard, there came the train of little gray mules and the outriders. It was pretty much my first raid all over again, except for the Indians. There was nothing much we could do now except lie there and hope that they didn't see us until we had the whole train in our field of fire.

  After they all came into line I saw that the picture wasn't as bad as the scouts had painted it. After some fast counting I saw that there were only twenty Indians and four Mexicans, including the head man, so they only had us outnumbered twenty-four to twenty. Which wasn't bad, considering that we had our twenty in ambush.

  I could feel Bama tighten up as the outriders began to come by. They were damn near close enough to shake hands with.

  I let about half the train go by and said, “Suck your guts in and pick out a target.” Then I got an Indian's head in the V of my rear sight. I waited an instant while the knob of my front sight settled on his ear. I should have squeezed the trigger. Bama was waiting for it, white-faced, but I couldn't seem to make my finger move.

  This was a hell of a time to think about ethics, but I simply couldn't kill a man like that, without giving him a chance in the world to fight back. I lowered my rifle. Before I realized what I was doing I was standing up and yelling—and that, I guess was when hell moved to Arizona.

  Chapter Nine

  IT DIDN'T TAKE long to see why the men held such a deadly respect for the Indian's fighting ability. There was no period of surprise when I stood up and yelled, there was no time wasted in shock, and they didn't wonder what to do. They just did it. One instant they were riding in deep lethargy under the broiling sun, and the next instant they were screaming insanely and firing point-blank down our throats.

  I had never seen anything like it. I fell back and lost sight of my target completely, and the next thing I knew, an Indian was trying to split my skull with a hand ax. I must have shot him, but I can't be sure about anything that happened then. I had dropped my rifle somewhere and was clawing for my pistols, and across the flats I could hear the sharp volley of fire as Kreyler's men let go with their first rounds.

  Vaguely, I saw the fat old smuggler slide from his horse and come charging at us with both pistols blazing. He went down holding his gut. The Mexicans milled senselessly, wondering what had hit them, but the Indians were chopping us to pieces. And the crazy thing about it was that you could shoot them but they would keep coming and slash your throat and laugh at you before they died. It was a nightmare of screams and smoke, and men wandering aimlessly with bullet holes in them like lost souls in limbo.

  It couldn't have lasted long, but time like that isn't measured by the ticks of a clock. A lifetime can be lived by the time a bullet travels twenty paces. In the instant it takes a hammer to fall and a cartridge to explode you can grow to be an old man. I felt like an old man right then. My hands shook. I wasn't certain of anything. I kept falling back and more Indians went down in front of my guns. Then my pistols were empty and I scooped one out of a dead man's hand and kept on firing. Then I heard Bama yelling, and I looked around and saw him kneeling behind one of those little gray mules, his rifle to his shoulder.

  Somehow I got over to him and he gave me covering fire while I punched out-my empties and reloaded. We seemed to be the center of attention now as four or five Indians spotted us and rushed us. We beat them off that time. I dropped one and Bama got one with his rifle, and they turned and got behind rocks to think up something better. That was when I began to notice that we were all alone out there.

  I didn't see any of the men anywhere. It was just me and Bama and maybe a half-dozen Indians. And I had a feeling that pretty soon it would be just the Indians.

  “My God,” I said, “are all the others dead?”

  Bama laughed. It wasn't a pretty sound. He pointed behind us, and the men were running—what was left of them. They were running for the high ground and the Indians had decided to let them go and concentrate on us.

  For a long moment I cursed. I used all the vilest words I'd ever heard, and they weren't half enough to say what I wanted to say. And then our friends the Indians were coming again. This time they had spread out and were coming at us from three sides, and they must have picked up some of our rifles because their shooting was getting better all the time.

  They had changed their tactics too. They had learned that charging us wasn't the answer, so they were creeping up on us from behind rocks and bushes, and even dead animals and men. They seemed to flit across the ground like cloud shadows in front of a racing wind, and they were gone before you realized they were there.

  I took some shots just to ke
ep my nerve up, to feel the pistols in my hands, but I wasn't doing any good. I looked back at the high ground just in time to see Kreyler and his men clawing their way up the steep embankment.

  “The bastards! The goddamn no-good bastards!”

  Bama laughed that wild laugh again.

  “Shut up, goddamn you! Shut up and let me think!”

  The wildness went out of Bama's face and he just looked tired. Very sober and very tired, and he looked as if he didn't give a damn what happened.

  “I'll get them,” I said tightly. “If it's the last thing I do, I'll kill every last one of them.”

  And Bama said flatly, “Yes, I guess you would, Tall Cameron.”

  “Iwill!”

  Somehow I would get out of this mess. I didn't know how yet, but I would, and when I did...

  “Watch it!” Bama said.

  I caught just a glimpse of an Indian as he shuttled from one rock to another. I burned a cartridge just because I wanted to shoot at something, not because I thought I would hit anything. I started reloading again, filling the cylinders all the way around, six cartridges to a pistol. I finished one gun and got three in the other one and that finished my belt.

  That was when the sun stopped giving off heat. That was when cold sweat started popping out on my neck and my insides felt as if it had been washed with ice water. Bama's .36-caliber ammunition wouldn't fit my pistols, and anyway, he was out too.

  “How many rounds have you got for that rifle?”

  He checked the magazine and there were two.

  “Well, that gives us eleven shots between us. Have you got any ideas?”

  “I guess you could pray, if you go in for that sort of thing.”

  That seemed to end the conversation. Things didn't look too bright, but they could be a lot worse. For one thing, Bama was getting his guts back—I could tell by the way he talked—and guts was just the thing that might save us. My brain still burned when I thought of Kreyler and his boys running out on us, but I'd have to wait a while to take care of that. The Indians moved in a little more.

  “How many do you make out there?” I said.

  “Six, seven, eight, maybe more.”

  He was a big help. But he still had his guts, and a rifle and two cartridges, and that was something. “When they get close enough, they'll have to rush us,” I said. “I guess that will tell the story.”

  “I guess so,” Bama said. He didn't even sound interested. He scrunched down behind the little mule and began fumbling at his pockets. After a while I got my own makings out and gave them to him. It seemed that the whole world held its breath while he built a cigarette and held a match to it, and I caught myself jumping every time the wind rattled a piece of dry grass. Take it easy, I told myself. Just take it easy and let them come. There won't be anything to it then; all you have to do is shoot.

  I took my guns out and laid them on the mule where they would be handy and then I took the tobacco and corn-shuck papers and built a cigarette for myself. It was so quiet that I began to wonder if the Indians were really out there. I looked out at the battlefield and for the first time I saw it as it actually was. The most pitiful things there were the little mules with the bells around their necks. The men didn't seem to mean much, dead or alive—but those mules, they hadn't asked for any of this.

  As far as I could see, they were all dead. The ones that hadn't been shot for breastworks had run into stray bullets. When I thought back on it, it seemed a wonder that anything was still alive. The battle seemed long ago. I had to keep reminding myself that it wasn't over yet.

  “Watch it!” Bama hissed.

  And about that time four Indians jumped up and started at us in a crazy-legged gait, as silent as ghosts. It didn't seem right that they didn't make any noise. They ought to yell, I kept thinking, but they didn't. One of them had a rifle and he fired once, and that snapped me out of it. The other three could have had guns if they had wanted them—there were plenty of them scattered around—but they seemed to favor knives and hatchets. They were almost on top of us before I got my guns to working. I heard my pistols roaring, and after a moment I heard the empty click of my off-side gun, so I dropped that one.

  I stopped the one with the rifle and two of the others. I thought Bama had the last one, but the bullet went in and out without even slowing him down. He came charging over the mule, a bloody mess and a scream. Then Bama swung his rifle and the stock made a sickening, mushy sound as it smashed into the Indian's skull.

  I thought we would be swarmed then, but the others decided to sit this hand out. When I turned around Bama was wiping the blood off his rifle and making a higher breastwork by putting the Indian on top of the mule.

  I had three rounds left for my right-hand pistol, and Bama had one for his rifle. I wondered how many Indians were still out there. There was no way of telling. They seemed to come out of the ground like weeds.

  Bama was puffing and blowing after his skirmish. He hunched down in an awkward, one-sided position, his face as white as a frog's belly, and that was when I noticed that he had been hit.

  It was his leg, about halfway between the knee and the hipbone. The Indian rifleman, I guessed, must have done it with that single shot that he let go with.

  “Well,” Bama said between puffs, “I guess this about frays it out, Tall Cameron. You'd better make a run for it. There can't be many more of them left. I've still got a bullet. I can stop one of them.”

  “Shut up and give mea knife.”

  He didn't have a knife, but the Indian on top of the mule had one, and I used it to slit Bama's trousers up to the hip. There was a lot of blood and it was coming out in spasmodic little spurts, and I figured that an artery or something had been hit. But still it wasn't too bad, everything considered. There was a clean hole where the bullet had gone in and come out. There didn't seem to be any bones broken.

  I said, “Just keep your eyes open and watch our friends out there.” Then I hacked off the leg of his trousers, wound it up, and tied it loosely above the bullet hole. I got my empty pistol between the leg and the bandage for some leverage, and began to twist. After a minute the spurting stopped.

  I took his rifle and put it on top of the mule where I could get to it.

  “Just take it easy for a few minutes and we'll be out of here.”

  But Bama didn't believe it, and I guess I didn't either. As Bama had said, it began to look as if our string had about frayed out. I could see them moving around out there again—or rather, I could feel them. They were getting closer all the time, but they never showed enough of themselves to shoot at. It was very quiet.

  And then it wasn't quiet any longer because they were coming after us.

  Bama just sat there looking at them. They split the afternoon wide open with their yelling and shooting—six of them, and I remember thinking that it might as well be six hundred.

  They came at us from three sides and it seemed to take them a year to reach us. I had the impulse to shoot as fast as I could at anything that moved, but I choked it down and took my time. I made the one cartridge in Bama's rifle good, but it didn't even slow them down. Bama seemed to have completely disconnected himself from the whole business. He sat there smiling that half-smile of his, as if a hole had suddenly opened up for him and he could look right through that impenetrable barrier that separates the living from the dead. I don't know what he saw there on the other side, but whatever it was, he had reconciled himself to it, and he was waiting for it with no bitterness and no regret.

  But not me. I hadn't gone to all this trouble only to be cut down by a few savages. All I had to do was hold onto my guts. I raised my pistol and waited until it seemed that I had the muzzle in an Indian's mouth. Then I pulled the trigger. He was the fast one of the bunch. He was the eager one with a whetted taste for blood, and I could almost smell his rancid breath in my face as the pistol jerked in my hand.

  I could count him out. He was traveling the road to hell on a fast horse, and now I cou
ld turn my attention on the others and try to figure out a way to make two bullets do the job of one. That was what I was thinking, and the next thing I knew he was hacking at my skull with a hand ax.

  I don't know how he did it. I'd never seen a man take a .44 bullet in the face before, and keep coming after you, still determined to kill you. We went down in a bloody tangle of arms and legs and my pistol went flying out of my hand. Something hit the side of my head then. It felt like a mountain falling on me, but I guess it was just a glancing blow from the Indian's hatchet. A smothering black fog rolled in. It was a cool, comfortable fog where there was no noise and no pain, and the most pleasant thing in the world would be just to lie down and let it wash over me.

  But I kept fighting. Reflex, I guess, took over where the brain left off, and I grabbed hold of an arm and held on until the fog drifted off somewhere. We seemed to wrestle for a week, kicking, biting, scratching there on the rocky ground. He was gouging at my eyes and giving me the knee every chance he got, but I still held onto that arm. I seemed to be covered with blood and I couldn't tell if it was coming from me or him, or maybe both of us. I held onto that arm.