CHAPTER 21
The watcher didn't know he was under attack until it was too late to do anything about it. At the last second some instinct must have warned him, because he twisted around and looked up, revealing a freckled, frightened face.
The next instant, Bo's booted feet smashed into him and drove him to the ground.
The man let out a cry of pain. Bo's weight carried him forward, but he rolled against the bushes and they kept him from falling off the ledge and into the river. As soon as he caught his balance, he came up on one knee and drew his Colt.
He didn't have to worry about the man he had jumped on putting up a fight. The fellow was curled up in a ball clutching his chest with both hands. He gasped, “Holy cow! I think you ... busted all my ribs!”
The watcher's hat had flown off when Bo knocked him to the ground, revealing him to be young, probably no more than twenty years old. He had a thick shock of rumpled red hair that went with his freckled features. The rifle that lay on the ledge close to the spot where he'd been hunkering on his heels was an old single-shot weapon. As far as Bo could see, the youngster wasn't carrying a handgun.
Bo's hat had come off, too, when he jumped from the edge of the bank. It had landed nearby on top of a bush. Without taking his eyes off the man he was covering, he picked up the black hat and clapped it back on his head.
Then he said, “Don't try anything. I don't want to shoot you, but I will if I have to.”
“Didn't you ... hear me?” the young man asked miserably. “I'm busted all to pieces inside!”
“I doubt that,” Bo said. “I didn't hit you that hard. What's your name?”
“Early,” the youngster forced out through clenched teeth. “Early Nesbit.”
“Why were you lurking in the bushes, Early?” Bo asked. “Waiting for somebody to come along so you could bushwhack them and rob them?”
“No! I ... I wasn't lurkin'. Can't a fella ... stop to have a smoke ... without somebody jumpin' him?”
“You didn't just stop to have a smoke,” Bo said. “You were hidden in the brush, and you've been here a while.” He gestured toward the ground. “I see what's left of half a dozen quirlies lying there.”
An angry, sullen expression came over Early's face.
“I don't have to ... talk to you. You got no right ... to ask me a bunch of questions.”
Quietly, Bo said, “I reckon this Colt in my hand gives me the right to ask whatever I want.”
Early sighed. “All right. I was waitin' for somebody. A friend. He was supposed to meet me here, but he ain't come along yet.”
Bo shook his head, apparently sad at hearing the answer Early had given him.
“All right. I guess I'll just have to shoot you. That way you can't go running to Hank Gentry to tell him what you saw. When he gets curious and sends somebody to check on you, and they find your body, he'll figure this must be where we crossed. By then, though, you'll be dead, so it'll be too late for the knowledge to do you any good.”
Early's brown eyes widened in fear.
“You'd really shoot me in cold blood? But you're supposed to be lawmen!”
Bo smiled at the young man, who winced as he realized what he'd just done.
“I said too much, didn't I?” Early drew in a deep breath and winced again at the pain that caused him. “Now you really are gonna kill me.”
“No, I'm not,” Bo said as he stood up. “Or at least I might not, as long as you keep telling me the truth. Are you part of Hank Gentry's gang?”
Early struggled into a sitting position with his back propped against the bank. He shook his head and said, “I ain't never rode with 'em on a job, if that's what you mean. Me and some other fellas just sort of hung around wherever Hank was, hopin' that someday he'd take us with him when he went to rob a bank or hold up a train.”
“Where was this?”
Early got that sullen look on his face again.
“I ain't sayin'. I don't turn on my friends that easy. You can just go ahead and shoot me if you want!”
“Hank Gentry and those owlhoots aren't your friends, son,” Bo said. “If you're lucky and live long enough, you might figure that out one of these days.”
Early glared up at him.
“What're you gonna do with me?”
“Yeah, Bo,” Scratch said from the top of the bank, where he'd come up without Early noticing him, although Bo had. “What're we gonna do with him? He's too small a fish. He ain't a keeper.”
Early leaned forward and twisted his head to look up at the silver-haired Texan.
“You better go ahead and kill me!” he raged. “If you don't, I'll hunt you down and shoot you both!”
“Settle down,” Bo told him. “This isn't some dime novel. Ranting and making threats isn't going to do you any good.” He picked up Early's rifle. “Can you get to your feet?”
“I ... I don't know.”
“Why don't you try?” Bo suggested.
“My ribsâ”
“Aren't broken, or you wouldn't be able to breathe and talk the way you are.”
“Well, by God, they
feel
broken!”
Bo motioned with the Colt and said, “Up.”
Muttering curses under his breath, Early struggled to his feet. When he made it, he said, “There! You satisfied?”
“It'll do for a start,” Bo told him. “You're here alone, aren't you?”
“That's right.” Early's jaw jutted out defiantly. “Hank trusted me to handle this job by myself. He knows I'm a good man.”
Bo had counted on the young man's pride to get him an honest answer to the question, and he was convinced Early was telling the truth.
He looked up and said, “Scratch, go tell Forty-two that he can bring the wagon on across. We'll collect Early's horse and meet you at the ford.”
“You're not gonna shoot him?” Scratch asked.
“Not yet, anyway.”
Scratch shook his head. “Forty-two ain't gonna like havin' another prisoner to take care of.”
“Well, if Early gets to be too much trouble, I'm sure there are buzzards and coyotes on the other side of the river, too.”
Early swallowed hard at the grim implications of that seemingly casual comment. Bo managed not to grin. He figured that right now, keeping the young man good and scared was the best way to get him to cooperate.
Bo wiggled the revolver's barrel again.
“Get moving,” he ordered. “Down the ledge and around the bend to where you left your horse.”
“You're gonna be mighty sorry about this,” Early threatened as he moved gingerly along the ledge in front of Bo. “Hank don't take kindly to hombres who mistreat his friends.”
“I told you, you're not Hank Gentry's friend. A man like that doesn't have any real friends, only people that he uses to get what he wants. Where are you from, anyway? Seems like I hear some Texas in your voice.”
“A little town called Tioga,” Early replied grudgingly. “It ain't too far from here.”
“I've heard of it,” Bo said. “What made you decide to cross the Red River and become an outlaw?”
“That's none o' your damn business!” After a moment, though, the youngster went on, “You ever pick cotton, mister?”
“I sure have,” Bo said.
“Well, my daddy works a cotton patch on shares, and he expects all of us kids to work, too. I just couldn't see spendin' the rest of my life bent over pickin' those damn bolls, so as soon as I got big enough, I lit out.”
“Just because you don't want to be a cotton farmer doesn't mean you have to become an outlaw.”
“Maybe not, but it seemed like the quickest way to get rich.”
“That's all you want to do, get rich?”
“Don't you?” Early asked.
“Can't say as it ever interested me all that much,” Bo answered honestly. “Having a bunch of money seemed like more trouble than it was worth. You'd have to be worrying all the time that something might happen to it.”
“Not having money doesn't worry you?”
“Not all that much. I'm not so old that I can't do an honest day's work for an honest day's pay.”
“What are you gonna do when you
are
too old to do that? How you gonna take care of yourself then?”
That question brought a frown to Bo's face as they reached the bottom of the ledge. It was something he had thought about from time to time. He didn't have any close relatives who would take him in, and as far as he knew, neither did Scratch. There had been some lonely nights on the trail when they got to talking and wondering about such things, and neither of the Texans had an answer for the problem.
On the other hand, Bo told himself, the sort of lives they led, the way trouble followed them around, it was more likely they'd get shot or knifed before they got so old they couldn't fend for themselves. There was a lot to be said for dying with your boots on.
Early's horse was a placid-looking chestnut gelding. Bo untied the animal and swung up into the saddle.
“Hey!” Early protested. “Are you stealin' my horse?”
“No, just riding back down to the crossing on it.”
“How am I supposed to get there?”
“You can wade along the edge,” Bo told him.
“Why do I have to wade while you get to ride?”
“Well, for one thing, I'm older than you, and you should respect your elders. For another, I've already been wading one time this week, and I don't have any hankering to do it again. Now move.”
The crossing was only a hundred yards or so from where Early had left his horse. He slogged through the reddish mud and shallow water at the edge of the river, and Bo rode behind him, covering him with the Colt. By the time they reached the crossing, Scratch and Brubaker were waiting for them just on the Texas side of the river. They all went up the trail between the cutbanks to the flats at the top.
Bo dismounted and told Early, “Climb on top of the wagon.”
Brubaker frowned. “What've you got in mind to do with the boy, Creel?” he asked.
“I don't want to put him in with those three prisoners,” Bo said. “But I don't want to have to shoot him off his horse if he decides to light a shuck, either. So I figured we could tie his hands and feet and he could ride on top.”
“I'll fall off,” Early complained.
“Try not to,” Scratch drawled. “Sounds like a pretty good idea to me, Bo.”
“Why are we even takin' him along anyway?” Brubaker wanted to know.
“Well, Forty-two, you're the boss,” Bo said, “so if you don't want to bring him, I reckon we can just tie him up and leave him here. Somebody
might
come along to turn him loose before he starves to death. I just thought that if we took him with us, he might be able to tell us some more about Gentry and the rest of that bunch.”
“I told you, you're wastin' your time,” Early said. “I ain't a double-crosser.”
“Also,” Bo went on, “we'd have him to use as a hostage if we needed to.”
Early let out a bark of laughter.
“Now you really are loco,” he said. “If Hank Gentry wants to kill you, he won't let me stand in the way. Why, he'dâ”
The youngster stopped short as he realized what he was saying.
“That's right,” Bo said. “He'd just shoot you to get to us, because he doesn't care whether you live or die, Early. Are you starting to understand now what I've been trying to tell you?”
Early just glared and muttered something, probably a curse.
Brubaker said, “All right, you convinced me, Creel. Get up there, kid. Morton, you got some rope I can use?”
“I sure do,” Scratch said.
A few minutes later, Early Nesbit was sitting on top of the wagon with his hands tied together behind his back and his legs stretched out in front of him with the ankles roped together. As long as he made an effort to stay balanced, he wouldn't be likely to fall off. Bo tied the youngster's horse to the back of the wagon, alongside Brubaker's saddle mount.
“Ready to go,” he told the deputy with a nod.
“Let's get movin', then,” Brubaker said. “Right now, the more distance we put between us and Indian Territory, the better as far as I'm concerned.”