Pat had been out of the cabin for some reason when the ambush had
been set, and when he came back, there was the soldier waiting to take
him. I could imagine the way Pat Roark's face must have looked. He
probably never even lost his grin as he jerked that .44 and shot the
trooper's brains out. But not before he got a carbine slug in the gut
for his trouble.
The others must have been wondering where I was and had set
themselves to catch me when I came back—if I came back. Anyway, there
was the dead cavalryman, and Pat, who must have lived two or three
hours with a hot lead slug in his belly, waiting for me to come back
and save him. But I hadn't got back in time. And I couldn't have saved
him anyway. I couldn't even save myself now.
The best I could do was to try to keep things going the way Pat had
started it, by making the cavalry believe that their man was still
alive.
“All right,” the voice behind the rock called. “We gave you your
chance, Cameron. Now, we're coming after you.”
I shouted, “Try it and this trooper of yours gets a bullet in his
brain.”
I had guessed right. That had them worried.
“How do we know he's not already dead?” the voice wanted to know.
“Why don't you come in and see for yourself?”
But they didn't accept the invitation. They were going to think it
over a while longer, and in the meantime I had some time for thinking
myself. I wondered how they found this shack so quick. Probably some
turncoat had told them about it. I kept forgetting that Texas was full
of traitors. I remembered Pappy Garret saying once, “One mistake is all
a man is allowed when he's on the run.” It looked like I had made mine
early.
I kept moving from window to window, from the door to the rear of the
shack, but I still couldn't see anything to shoot at. The waiting began
to get on my nerves. I couldn't very well make a deal with them. I
couldn't get away without a horse, and from the way Red was going the
last time I saw him I guessed he must be close to Kansas by now.
So we waited some more. From time to time the voice would yell for me
to come out or they were coming after me. But they kept holding off.
Then, as the first pale light began to show in the east, I knew they
had finally made up their minds. I could hear them moving around out
there, and the officer giving orders in a low, hushed voice. They had
decided their man was dead. There was no use for them to wait any
longer.
I could hear them spreading out, circling the cabin. It was light
enough to see by now, but they were behind rocks or brush, waiting for
the signal to rush. I waited by the west window, thinking, So this is
the way it's going to end—when the shooting and yelling started at the
rear of the cabin. I jumped over to the rear wall and got a pistol
through the crack. I shot twice before I saw that there was nothing to
shoot at.
It was a trick. They had planted two or three men back there to draw
my attention while the others started rushing from the front and two
sides. I wheeled and headed back for one of the windows, but I could
already see that it was too late. They were almost on me before I could
get a shot off. I remember thinking coolly all the time, I'll have time
to get one of them, maybe two. They'll have to pay for me if they get
me. And I fired point blank into a cavalryman's face. The man running
beside him fell away to one side, hit the ground and scrambled for the
cabin. Behind me, I heard the others closing in on my blind sides.
I wheeled away from the window and took a shot out of the door. Then
I saw a crazy thing. One of them stumbled, grabbed his belly and
fell—not the one I was shooting at, but another one. Then I saw
another one fall, and another one.
I didn't try to understand what was happening. For a moment I stood
there dumb with surprise, and, by that time, panic had taken hold of
the cavalry and they scrambled again for cover, what was left of them.
I circled the inside of the cabin, counting the soldiers that hadn't
made it back to cover. There were six of them. That stunned me. I had
accounted for only one of them. I was sure of that. Then who had killed
the other five?
Probably the cavalry was wondering the same thing. I could hear the
officer shouting angrily, trying to get his men grouped for another
rush. And after a minute they came again. Their force was cut
to
half this time, but they came running and yelling from all sides.
Before I could raise my pistols, one went down. Then another one.
I didn't even bother to shoot again. The cavalry had had enough. They
turned and scattered like scared rabbits, and there wasn't any officer
to pull them together this time. The officer, a lieutenant, lay outside
my window with a rifle bullet in his brain.
It had happened too fast to try to understand it. I only knew that
there were eight dead men outside the shack, and I had killed only one
of them. I heard the cavalry detail—what was left of it—scrambling
down in the gully, and pretty soon there was the clatter of hoofs and
the rattle of chain and metal as they lit out for the south. By this
time they probably figured that the cabin was haunted, that there was a
devil in there instead of an eighteen-year-old kid. And I wasn't so
sure that they were so far wrong.
I should have known, I suppose, with that kind of shooting—but Pappy
Garret never entered my mind until I saw him coming down from the high
ground, astride that big black horse with the white diamond in the
center of its forehead. He was riding slouched in the saddle, looking
more like a circuit-riding preacher than anything else, except for that
deadly new rifle, still cradled in the crook of his arm. In one hand he
held a pair of reins, and that big red horse of mine was coming along
behind.
Pappy rode up in the clearing in front of the cabin, looking at me
mildly, with that half-grin of his. Then he snapped the leaf sight down
on his rifle, and sighed. Like a woodsman putting away his ax after a
good day's work.
“Son,” he said soberly, “you sure as hell have got a lot to learn.”
“Where did you come from?” I blurted. “How did you know I was here?”
“Now don't start asking a lot of damnfool questions,” he said. “You'd
better just climb on this horse, because we've got ourselves some hard
riding to do.”
It was incredible that Pappy would stick his neck out like this to
help a kid like me. But there he was. And if I wanted to be smart, I'd
just be thankful and let it go at that.
I managed to say, “Thanks, Pappy. If you ever need a favor... well, I
owe you one.”
I went in the cabin and gathered up the extra cartridges and grub and
rolled it all up in a blanket. In a few minutes I had it all tied
behind the saddle and was ready to go.
Pappy looked at me, and then at Red. He said, “We'll see now if that
red horse was worth killing for.” Then he added, “He'd better be.”
For the next four days, I learned what hard riding really was. Pappy
had it worked out to a science. Walk, canter, gallop. Walk, canter,
gallop. Rest your horse five minutes every hour. Water him every chance
you got, but be careful not to let him have too much at once. Steal
grain for him. Raid cornfields or homestead barns. Take wild
chances—chances that a man wouldn't dare take for money—just to get a
few ears of corn for your horse.
We didn't have time to eat, ourselves. The horses were the important
things. I wanted to stop and cook some bacon, but Pappy said no. He had
some jerky that he saved for times like this, so we chewed that while
we rode. We traveled cross-country, never touching the stage roads
except to cross them. Skirting all towns and settlements. Avoiding
communities where we saw telegraph wires strung up.
Then, on the fourth day, we saw red dust boiling up ahead of us like
low-hanging clouds. And as we got closer we could hear the bawling of
cattle and the hoarse cursing of trail hands. At last we pulled up on a
small rise and looked down on the constant stream of animals and men.
It didn't look like an easy way to get to Kansas, but it was the best
way for us. The law didn't bother trail herds. The big ranchers and
cattle buyers saw to that. Their job was to get cattle to the railheads
in Kansas, and they weren't particular about the men they hired, as
long as they got the job done.
“Well, Pappy?” I said.
Pappy shook his head. “This is still dangerous country. Probably
those cattle were gathered around Uvalde. They'll travel along the
eastern line of army posts until they get to Red River Station. We'll
push on east and catch a herd coming up the Brazos.”
So we headed east and north, skirting the main trails until we got to
Red River Station. The Station was a wild, restless place, milling with
bawling cattle, and wild-eyed trail bosses trying to keep their herds
in check until their time came to make the crossing. Herds from all
over Texas gathered here to make their push through Indian
Territory—shaggy brush cattle from along the Nueces, as wild and
murderous as grizzlies; scrawny, hungry-looking steers all the way from
Christi; fat, well-fed ones from the Brazos. Wild cattle and the
near-wild men that drove them, all took advantage of the Station's
limited facilities to break the monotonous, fatiguing routine of trail
life.
The only building there was a long, cigar-box-shaped log hut along
the river bank, and Pappy and I made for it. There was no sign of
police or cavalry, and, when I mentioned it to Pappy, he laughed dryly.
“They wouldn't do any good here. In the first place, it would take a
regiment of cavalry and the whole damn ate police force to make an
impression on a bunch of drovers. Anyway, all a man has to do is jump
across the river and he's in Indian Territory where the police couldn't
follow him.”
There was a long bar inside the Station's one building, where men
stood two deep waiting for their wildcat whiskey at two bits a drink.
There was gambling in the jack of the place, and half-breed saloon
girls moving among the customers, promoting one kind of deal or
another. Pappy and I waited at the bar until the bartender got around
to us.
“Well, son, what do you think of it?”
“I'm not sure,” I said. “I never saw anything like it before.”
Pappy grinned slightly. “Wait until you see Abilene.” He picked up a
bottle and we went to a table in the back of the place. It felt good to
sit down in a chair for a change, instead of a saddle. I didn't feel
sleepy. You got the idea that nobody ever slept in a place like this.
There was too much excitement for that.
I said, “Do you think we'll be safe here?”
“As safe as we'd be anywhere,” Pappy said. “As long as we don't
overdo it. I'll look around and pick out a herd to hook up with before
long. Abilene beats this place. Besides, the marshal there is a friend
of mine.”
For the past four days, I hadn't had time to think. And now I was too
tired to think. The fight with the cavalry seemed a long way in the
past. It was hard to believe that it had happened.
We stayed at Red River Station that night, spreading our blanket
rolls on the ground, the way the drovers did, and the next day Pappy
went to see about a job for us.
That was the day I met Bat Steuber, a wiry little remuda man from an
outfit down on the Brazos. A remuda man, I figured, might be able to
rustle up some grain for Red and that big black of Pappy's, if he was
handled right.
The way to handle him, it turned out, was with whiskey. I bought him
three drinks of wildcat with Pappy's money and he couldn't do enough
for me. He took me down to where the outfit was camped and got some
shelled corn out of the forage wagon. Or rather, he was about to get
the corn, when a man came up behind the wagon and cut it short.
“The boss says look after the horses,” the man said.
He was a big man, his shoulders and chest bulging his faded blue
shirt. His eyes were red-rimmed from riding long days in the drag, and
his mouth was tight, looking as if he hadn't smiled for a long time.
Bat Steuber said, “Hell, Buck, I finished my shift. It's your...”
The man cut him off again. “I said see about the horses.”
The voice cracked and Steuber jumped to his feet. “Sure, Buck, if you
say so.”
The man watched vacantly as Steuber went back to the rear where the
remuda was ringed in; then he turned to me. I had a crazy idea that I
had seen the man before, but at the same time I knew I hadn't. There
was something about him that was familiar. His eyes maybe. I had seen
eyes like those somewhere, clear, and blue, and deadly. He wore matched
.44's converted, the same as mine, and I didn't have to be told that he
knew how to use them. There are some things you know without having it
proved to you.
“What's your name, kid?” he asked flatly.
“Cameron,” I said. “Talbert Cameron. I don't think I caught yours.”
He looked as if he hadn't heard me. “You're the kid that rode in with
Pappy Garret yesterday, ain't you?”
He was asking a lot of questions, in a country where it wasn't polite
to ask a stranger too many questions.
But I said, “That's right.”
I thought something happened to those eyes of his. He said flatly,
“When you see Pappy, tell him I'm looking for him to kill him.”
For a moment, I just stood there with my back against the wagon
wheel. He said it so quietly and matter-of-factly that you wondered
afterward if he had spoken at all.
I tried to keep my voice as level as his. “Don't you think that'll be
kind of a job? Men have tried it before, I hear.”
His voice took an edge. “You just tell him what I said, kid. That way
maybe you'll live to be a man someday.” He turned abruptly and started
to walk away. Then he turned again. “Just tell him Buck Creyton is
ready any time he wants to show his guts. If there is any question as
to why I want to kill him, you might ask if he remembers my brother
Paul.”