A Noose for the Desperado

by Clifton Adams

  They grunted, surprised at the weight6i the stuff. But I finally got them loaded up and they went staggering off into the darkness. They only got about half of it the first time around, and I waited for what seemed a week for them to come back. What if they got curious as to what was in those bags? You can't trust Mexicans. You can't trust anybody with that much money.

  But I guess they weren't the curious kind. They came back finally, puffing and grinning, and I loaded them up again. I went around to the livery barn and got that black horse of mine and a sturdy little bay for the kid, and I headed down the alley toward the Mexican part of town.

  I knew that part of town pretty well by now, so I went around the back way and came in between the high adobe walls to the back door of Marta's place. Through the open door I could see the Mexicans puffing and wiping their faces as they stared blankly at the pile of silver on the kitchen floor.

  “Mr. Cameron?”

  “Are you all right, kid?”

  “Sure,” he said, and came out into the little walled-in yard where I was.

  “How's Bama?”

  “He looks pretty good,” he said. “That girl washed the wound and bandaged it up and gave him some broth. He looks better than he did on that travois.”

  “Let's go in and look at him,” I said. “We haven't got much time, though.”

  The kid held back as if he weren't any too anxious to go back inside.

  “What's the matter?”

  “It's the old man,” he said. “Marta's pa. He doesn't like gringos to start with, and he especially doesn't like them coming in and taking his house over.”

  We could fix that, I thought. I'd give him a handful of silver and that would shut him up. Anyway, we went in and there was Bama stretched out on the earth bed with a cigarette between his lips. His face had been washed and his leg had a clean bandage. He looked like a new man.

  But he hadn't really changed. He spat the cigarette out and drawled, “Welcome to our little sanctuary, Tall Cameron,” and I remembered that long spiel he had made the first time I saw him. “Welcome to Ocotillo, the last refuge of the damned, the sanctuary of killers and thieves and real badmen and would-be badmen; the home of the money-starved, the cruel, the brute, the kill-crazy....” At the time I thought he had been joking. But it was no joke. I had seen them and lived with them. I was one of them.

  “How's the leg?” I cut in on him.

  He closed his eyes. “The leg's all right. It's a hell of a thing, isn't it, to have a body that's seemingly indestructible, when you're dead inside?”

  “I guess you're all right. You still talk crazy, which is normal for you, I guess.”

  Bama laughed. “How about Kreyler and the boys? Are they going to let you just walk out with their silver?”

  “They don't know yet that I've walked out with it. By the time they find out, I mean to be on my way to Mexico.”

  Bama had no comment to make on that. He just lay there with his eyes closed. All the time we had been talking there had been a lot of jabbering going on in the other room. I went to the door and saw that it was Marta paying off my baggage boys. They backed out of the house, grinning and bowing, clutching the silver in their hands.

  “Where are they going?” I asked.

  Marta laughed. “They go cantina.”

  That was fine. Tomorrow morning they would wake up with a headache and a bad memory.

  I wondered how long it would take Kreyler to discover that I had pulled out with the silver. Not long, probably, but after he did find out he would have to find us to do anything about it. We had an hour, I figured, to take care of the silver and get out of Ocotillo.

  They say that money can be a burden, and for a minute it looked as if that was what that silver was going to be to me. We couldn't load our horses down with it. And we couldn't put it on a pack horse and take it with us, because that would slow us down, too. The only thing to do was to go somewhere and have the silver shipped to us.

  But now? No freighting company would touch it, even if there had been a freighting company in Ocotillo. We could bury it, maybe,, and come back after it later. But we needed the money now. Anyway, I'd had enough of Ocotillo to last a lifetime.

  Then the whole thing exploded pretty and clean in my mind and I knew how we were going to take care of that silver.

  I yelled, “Marta!” and she was standing right at my elbow. “Look,” I said, “do you still want to go with me?”

  Her head bobbed. There was nothing she would like better—especially since I had come into a fortune of silver. Marta's old man had been quiet through the whole thing until now. He had been sitting at a rough plank table holding his head in his hands. Every once in a while he would fumble at some wooden beads around his neck and mumble a prayer, and from the look of hate in his eyes I figured he was praying for lightning, to strike us all. Now his head jerked up and he glared at me. He didn't understand a word of what I had said, but somehow he knew.

  “This is what we're going to do,” I said. And I was talking to the old man as much as to Marta. “We've got to get out of Ocotillo and we've got to leave the silver here. The old man's got some burros, hasn't he?” She nodded, puzzled.

  “All right, we'll go somewhere—” And then I remembered a place on that map that Bama had drawn for me. “We'll go to Three Mile Cave down near the border. Do you know where that is?” She knew. “We'll go there and wait two days, and in the meantime Papacito can load the silver and bring it to us. He can cover it with wood or something to fool anybody who may get curious. I don't care how he does it, just so he does it.”

  She was beginning to get it now. Her eyes lit up, and I guess she was seeing herself as the belle of Sonora, dressed in silks and satins and cutting quite a figure. The real reason I wanted her along never occurred to her.

  But it did to the old man. He jumped up from the table and began to jabber in that spick language, and I could see that he was telling Marta that he wasn't going to do it. But Marta was still seeing herself with all the things that silver could buy. That was one picture that she liked, and she wasn't going to have it ruined, Papacito or no Papacito. Before I knew it, the whole thing got out of control. Marta's eyes spat fire and they stood there in the middle of the room yelling at each other.

  I had to break it up myself. I stepped in and shoved Marta against the wall. The old man yelled louder than ever, so I shoved him down in his chair and whipped my hand back and forth across his mouth, crack, crack, like a mule skinner two days behind schedule and laying on the leather.

  That quieted things down for a minute. Marta stood against the wall, her eyes still flashing. She hadn't liked the way I shoved the old man around, and I hadn't enjoyed it much myself. But sooner or later somebody was going to have to step in and declare himself boss. So that was what I did.

  I got hold of Marta's arm and quieted her down. “I'm sorry,” I said. “But we can't stand here yelling at each other. We haven't got time for it. For all I know, Kreyler and his boys may be right outside the door getting ready to shoot hell out of everything.”

  I said, “Has the old man got it straight what he's to do with the silver? We pull out of here tonight and head for Three Mile Cave. Tomorrow he loads the silver on his burros and meets us at the cave the next day. Tell him again.”

  She shrugged and told him again, and the old man didn't like it any better this time than he had the first.

  “We'd better do something to impress it on his mind,” I said. “Tell him we're taking you as hostage. If he doesn't show up with the silver he'll never see you again.”

  She wasn't so sure that she liked that, but she understood that it was the only way of being sure of that silver. So she told him.

  The old man stared at me for a long while with those hate-filled eyes, and then he started breaking up in little pieces. He dropped his head on the table and his shoulders began shaking. The silver would arrive on time.

  But in the meantime we couldn't just leave it piled
up in the middle of the room. I walked around the house, but there wasn't any place there to hide it. I went out in the yard and kicked around for a few minutes, waking up a hound dog and a few chickens. The chickens gave me an idea.

  “Bring the stuff out here,” I called. “Johnny, give Marta a hand.”

  I had the chickens scattered and squawking all over the place by the time they came out with the first load, but I also had a couple of empty chicken coops, which were just what we needed. We piled the silver in the back of the coops and shooed the chickens back in.

  That about nailed things down. All we had to do now was to get out of Ocotillo, and we couldn't do it too fast to suit me. We went back in the house and I said, “Well, Bama, I guess this is good-by.”

  He opened his eyes and looked at me. “Good-by to Ocotillo,” he said lazily. “I've been saying that ever since I got her, but I never left the place. Maybe I never will now.”

  “Sure you will,” I said. “I'll have the old man give you some silver. All you can carry. When your leg gets better you can pull out of here. Maybe we'll meet up in Mexico sometime. You can't tell who you'll run into down there, they tell me.”

  The kid came into the room just as I was finishing my speech. I turned and said. “We've got to get a horse for Marta. I'll have to see if I can get back to the livery barn—if Kreyler's men haven't already missed us and started tearing things up.”

  “You mean two horses, don't you, Mr. Cameron?” the kid said. “Bama hasn't got a way to travel.”

  “Bama's not going,” I said.

  I don't think he even heard me, or if he did, he didn't believe me. “He sure can't stay here,” he went on. “He would be the only one left who knew about the ledger, and you know what Kreyler would do to him about that.”

  “Kreyler can have the ledger,” I said. “It doesn't make any difference now.”

  But he still couldn't believe that I was going to leave Bama behind. Bama was my friend. Bama was a man you could put your trust in. You didn't go off and leave friends to wait for what was almost certain death.

  “Look,” I said. “We've got a long ride ahead of us and it's no kind of trip for a man with a hole in his leg.” I could have gone on arguing, trying to justify it, but what good would it do? It was a hard world, and sooner or later the kid had to learn that.

  He began to get a stubborn look. He wanted to argue. Bama was watching us in a disinterested sort of way, as though he thought it might be kind of interesting to see how it-came out. But not too interesting.

  Nothing at all happened, the way things worked out. Outside, I heard one of the horses stamp nervously. It wasn't anything out of the ordinary. But just the same, it gave me a funny feeling. Uneasiness started walking up my back with cold feet, so I went to the door and looked out.

  Things were pitch-dark out there and I couldn't see a thing. But that feeling was still with me. I stepped outside, brushing my palms against the butts of my pistols, just to make sure that I had them.

  That wasn't enough. I should have pulled them and started shooting.

  Chapter Eleven

  YOU NEVER KNOW, I guess, just what's the right thing to do. You either do it or you don't. And that time I didn't do it.

  I stepped outside and something hard and solid connected with the back of my head and bright showers of pain flew out in all directions. I took another step—or I thought I did—and I walked right into that black pit that has no sides and no bottom and I started falling.

  It was a long trip. My head hit something two or three times on the way down. Then something slammed in my middle and my stomach jumped up and tried to shove my Adam's apple out of the way and get in my mouth. I fought it, but after a while it didn't seem to be worth the trouble. I let the darkness have its way.

  We got to be old friends, me and the darkness. I got to like it down there. It was cool and comfortable and the smothering black fog closed over me and around me and—all I had to do was sleep. The trials and tribulations of the world were away and gone and I didn't have to worry about scrabbling around in the dirt for money or life, because money and life didn't mean anything down there. I should have stayed there. And maybe I would have if I had known what it was going to be like when I got back. But I didn't know it then. I didn't know anything.

  I started fumbling in the blackness, and after a while I found a little slit of light about an inch long and about as wide as a thread of silk split four ways—-and that was my consciousness, I suppose. Anyway, I clawed and scratched until I got a hold in the slit, and then, with an effort that left me sweating, I ripped the darkness wide open.

  I was sprawled out in Marta's kitchen, and a lamp was being held over me. The sudden light hit my eyeballs like hammers and I rolled over and tried to curse, but all that came out was a groan. I heard somebody saying, “By God, he's got a hard head, all right. That's one thing you can say for him.” Somebody else said, “Just watch him, and if he tries to get up let him have it again.”

  I didn't recognize the first voice, but the second one belonged to Kreyler. I lay there for what seemed a long while, trying to get the mud out of my brain. Kreyler... It looked like I had fooled away too much time in Ocotillo when I should have been on the road. The Marshal was either smarter than I thought he was, or I was dumber than I thought I was. It didn't make much difference now. He had found out about the silver, and he had caught up with me, and somebody had damn near beat my brains out with a pistol barrel—if I'd had any brains to begin with.

  I tried to move again, and that was a big mistake. The stupor that had me sealed up in a little world all my own, like sod on a grave, suddenly disappeared and I broke into the world of reality, full of aches and pains. My head was the big trouble. It felt like an October gourd that had been stepped on—smashed and empty.

  The room began to swim, and my stomach started crowding into my throat again. I raised my head as high as I could, but all I could see was boots and spurs and the packed clay floor. I was ready to give up. I was sick, and tired to death, and blood was getting in my eye, and I couldn't figure out a way to stop it. Kreyler could have the silver. He could have the girl. All I wanted was to be left alone.

  But it wasn't as simple as that. Through the sickness I heard the sodden sound of bone and flesh hitting more bone and flesh. Somebody laughed—the man who was supposed to give me another pistol whipping if I tried to get up, I guess. I heard Marta make a tight little sound, and then something hit the floor, solidly, like a sack of oats being dumped off a wagon.

  I had a pretty good idea what was happening, but I was in no position to do anything about it. I lifted my head again and the room tilted up on one corner and spun around a few times. Finally it settled down. Things came into focus.

  It was about the way I had figured it. Johnny Ray-burn was sitting on his rump, with a bloody mouth and a dazed look in his eyes, and Kreyler was standing over him, grinning, rubbing his right fist in the palm of his left hand. “I can keep this up all night, kid,” the Marshal said. “Do you want to tell me who has that ledger, or do you want to go through this all over again?”

  The kid just sat there looking stupid. Kreyler jerked him up by the front of his shirt and hit him again. Away down in the cellar of my mind a spark set off an explosion of anger. I rolled over on my face. I got my hands under me and began to push. My stomach turned over and tied itself into a knot. I pushed some more and sweat popped out all over me. Somebody had gone to Austin and brought the capitol building to Arizona and tied it on my back. But I was going to get up anyway. And when I did, I was going to see if Kreyler could take it as well as he handed it out. I wanted to see how he would stand up under a pistol whipping. I was going to find out—as soon as I managed to get off the floor.

  My intentions were all right, but something went wrong with my arms. They gave away and I fell on my face again. For a moment I just lay there with my head ringing, blowing as if I had run all the way from El Paso. I must have put on quite a show. Any
way, it seemed to amuse Kreyler and his pal. They had a good laugh about it. Then Kreyler came over and turned me on my back with the toe of his boot. “Well,” he said, “the great Tall Cameron doesn't look so tough now.” And everybody had another round of laughs.

  Anyway, I had pulled Kreyler's attention off the kid for a few minutes. And I finally got a look at the Marshal's pal.

  He was a frail little man not much over five feet tall, with pale watery eyes and a thin little mouth that was always just about to break into a smile, but never quite made it. When he laughed it was just a sound that he made with his mouth, ha-ha, something like the kind of sound that Basset used to make. He was standing over me with the muzzle of a .44 shoved in my face, looking as big as a rain pipe. I think he would have pulled the trigger just to feel the gun buck, if Kreyler hadn't stopped him... Well, I wasn't the only one in the company with a hard head. Kreyler's gunny was Bucky Fay, the man I had knocked out with my pistol barrel and who was supposed to have been stretched out in the mountains somewhere with his skull split open.