There was no way of knowing how long it would take the word to get to
Creyton, but it would get to him. All I had to do was stand here, and
before long he would be coming after me. I couldn't tell if I was
scared or not. I wasn't very curious about it. There was an emptiness
in my belly, and a dull ache... and maybe I was scared, after all. But
not so much of Buck Creyton. My mind kept going back to better days and
better lands, and, no matter how I fought it, I couldn't keep my
thoughts away from Laurin.
That was what I was afraid of, not of getting killed, but of leaving
Laurin.
In the darkness, we heard the hurried sucking sound of soggy boots
coming toward the chuck wagon. I turned quickly. Beside me, Pappy
jerked out of the weary slouch that he had fallen into.
“Watch it, son,” he said quietly. “Don't frame yourself against the
firelight.”
The boots came on. A blurred figure began to take shape in the rain,
walking quickly and making sloshing sounds in the gummy mud. But it
wasn't Buck Creyton. It was a man I had never seen before, in dripping,
rattling oilskins. He ducked under the shelter and stood glaring
angrily at us.
“Get the hell out of here,” he said abruptly. “I don't know who you
are, but you're not goin' to start a shootin' scrape and stampede a
thousand head of steers. Not if I can help it.”
Pappy said softly, “Now wait a minute. We're not starting anything.
We just dropped in for a hot cup of coffee.”
The man spat. “Like hell,” he said. “You ride up and in ten minutes
the whole camp's in an uproar.” He looked at Pappy. “You ever hear of
Buck Creyton?”
“I heard of him,” Pappy said.
“He's comin' after you,” the man said, grinning suddenly. He looked
as if he expected Pappy to turn pale and start running at the mention
of Buck Creyton. When Pappy didn't move, his eyes were suddenly angry
again.
Pappy began rolling another cigarette. “It's not me he's after,” he
said. Then he nodded at me. “It's him.”
The man stared. He was a short, round, hard little Irishman, with a
baby-pink face and a blue-red nose. The herd's trail boss, I guessed.
He didn't believe that an eighteen-year-old kid would stand still when
he knew that a man like Creyton was gunning for him. He wheeled back on
Pappy, about to call him a liar, when there was the sound of boots
again, coming out of the darkness.
“The firelight, son,” Pappy said softly. “Don't frame yourself.”
I moved away, to the edge of the canvas shelter.
“Further,” Pappy said.
I moved out into the rain. The rain hit my face like slender silver
spikes driving out of a black nothingness. I felt empty and all alone
out there, away from the fire's warmth, the canvas's shelter, Pappy's
friendliness. There was just me and the night and the rain, and the
sound of boots coming toward me. I thought: This is the way it had to
be, Laurin. You understand that, don't you?
There was little comfort in the night's answer. The boots were
getting closer. From the corner of my eye I could see Pappy standing
there under the shelter, looking into the darkness. And the pink-faced
little trail boss, with his mouth working angrily, but no sound coming
out. The sound of the boots stopped. A voice came out of the night.
“Pappy, I want to see that killing little bastard you ride with.”
I thought I could see Pappy smile. A sad, forlorn smile. I reckon
you'll see him, Buck, if you just keep walking.”
“Where is he? Hid out to shoot me in the back, the way he did Paul?”
I heard myself saying, “I'm not hid out. I'm here in the rain, just
like you are. And I didn't shoot your brother in the back. But I shot
him.”
I heard him swearing. “You won't shoot anybody else, punk. Not after
tonight.”
He started walking forward again, slowly now, carefully. I suppose I
should have stayed where I was, stood still, with my pistols out. That
way I could have followed the sound, and that would have cut down
Creyton's advantages. But suddenly I didn't want any advantage. Pappy
never asked for one. All he ever asked for was an even break, and I
could get that here in the darkness. I started walking toward the
sound.
I heard Pappy give a grunt of dismay. The trail boss said hoarsely,
“My God, stop it! This is crazy!”
But we didn't stop. It couldn't be stopped now. With every step we
got closer together and I expected to see him. My eyes began to jump
from peering so hard into the darkness. I didn't dare close them for an
instant, even to blink away the water that was caught on my lashes. An
instant was all it took with a man like Buck Creyton.
Pappy, and the trail boss, and the nickering firelight seemed to fade
off into the distance and disappear completely. There was just me and a
sound out there in the night. I wondered if Creyton had drawn yet. I
wondered if that sighting-before-shooting technique of Pappy's worked
in the rain. Would anything work in the rain? This was a hell of a
place for a gun fight, in the rain and darkness where you couldn't see
anything. I thought: If you don't stop thinking about it, Buck
Creyton's going to spill your guts in the mud. And then I saw him
looming out of the darkness.
He looked as big as a mountain. He had his slicker pulled back behind
the butts of his pistols and water was pouring in a sheer veil off the
brim of his hat. His face shone faintly over the shapeless bulk of his
body, as cold and distant as the moon. I imagined that I could see
those icy eyes of his. But that was only imagination. Everything
happened too fast, and it was too dark, to make out details.
His hands were just a blur going after his pistols, and I thought:
He's fast. He's fast, all right. Pappy himself, on the best day he ever
saw, was never any faster than that. Then everything in my mind became
crystal clear and painfully sharp. It was that instant in a lifetime
that a few people experience once, and most not at all—that instant of
walking the razor-sharp edge of time and space, knowing that if you
fall there is nothing but disaster all around you. Even my hearing was
tuned sharper than the best-bred hunting dog's. I imagined that I could
hear every raindrop hit. I could hear the double clicks as the hammers
of Creyton's pistols were jerked back. And I thought: So this is the
way it is. It's almost worth getting killed just to be a part of the
excitement of dying. And then the night exploded into sound and fire.
I was vaguely aware of the pistols in my hands, and the roaring in my
ears drowning all other sound. It was almost like being drunk, but no
man had ever been drunk the way I was for that instant. Not on anything
that came out of a bottle. For that moment I wasn't afraid of Buck
Creyton, nor of any man on earth. I just held my guns and they did the
rest, one crash crowding another until the night was crazy with sound.
And after a time there were hollow, empty clicks as hammers fell on
empty chambers, and I looked up ahead and there was only a shapeless
hulk on the ground where Buck Creyton had been standing. I stood there
gasping for breath, as if I had been running hard until my lungs
couldn't take it any longer. And over the monotonous beat of the rain,
I could hear the trail boss saying, “My God! My God!” over and over, as
if he had to say something and those were the only two words he knew.
From far away, it seemed, I heard the sound of alarm and the crazy
bawling and the pound of hoofs. And a voice in the darkness shouted,
“Stampede!” and the running boots headed for the chuck wagon suddenly
stopped, wheeled, and ran toward the remuda pen for the horses. Over it
all, the trail boss was bellowing wildly, but it all seemed far away
and no concern of mine.
Pappy came out from under the shelter, looking at me strangely. Then
he went over to what was left of Buck Creyton.
“Jesus Christ, son,” Pappy said, “did you have to shoot him all to
pieces?”
“I couldn't stop,” I said. “I started shooting and something got
ahold of me, and I couldn't stop.”
Pappy looked at me again in that strange way. I couldn't tell what
was behind those gray expressionless eyes of his. I couldn't tell if he
was glad or sorry that it had worked out the way it had. For a moment,
as he looked at me, I thought there was fear in those eyes. But I must
have been mistaken about that.
“Do you feel like riding?” Pappy said at last.
“Sure,” I said. “But why should we ride anywhere?”
He jerked his head toward the bedground where all the noise and
commotion was going on. All hell was breaking loose, but I was just
beginning to become conscious of it. It was almost like returning
suddenly from a long visit in a strange place, and it took a while to
get used to things as you used to know them. The cattle had broken
toward the north, running blind and wild with fear. The riders, some of
them just in the underwear they had been sleeping in, were riding hard
on the flanks, trying to turn them.
“After starting this ruckus,” Pappy said, “the least we can do is
help them turn the herd.”
Pappy started in an awkward half-lope toward his horse beside the
chuck wagon. In a moment I came out of it. I ran toward Red, and on the
way I passed the bloody, shapeless form that had been Buck Creyton a
few minutes before. He lay twisted, in the mud, looking straight up,
with the rain in his face. There were bright, shimmering puddles
forming all around him.
I hit the saddle hard, and Red switched his head in angry protest. He
didn't want to move. He had lulled himself into a kind of stupor there
in the rain, and he just wanted to be let alone. I drove the iron to
him and he reared sharply. Finally I pulled him around and he fell into
a quick, ground-eating run to the north.
We caught Pappy on the herd's flank just as the break began to settle
down to a real stampede. There wasn't time to be scared, the way they
say you always are after a fight. There was just the blind race along
the flanks of the herd, and once in a while I could feel Red slide and
fight for his footing again in the mud, and I tried not to think what
would happen if he put a hoof down on a loose rock or into a
prairie-dog hole. Red and Pappy's big black spurted ahead of most of
the other riders. Up ahead, I could hear the trail boss yelling and
cursing.
He was trying to turn them by himself as Pappy and I came up
alongside him. He drove his rugged little paint into the van of the
stampede. Leaning far over his pony he shoved the muzzle of his pistol
behind the shoulders of the lead steer and fired.
The big animal thundered down, rolling and churning the mud, slowing
the herd's rush. Without looking back to see who we were, he roared,
“Turn 'em, goddammit!”
I thought I could make out that faint grin of Pappy's as he drove his
big black into the point of the herd. I shoved Red in after him, and
the trail boss came in on our heels. The startled cattle began to slow
down their crazy rush for nowhere. The point began to give, began to
edge to the left as Pappy and the trail boss pushed in, yelling and
firing their pistols over the animals' heads.
There wasn't much to it after the point began to give. We cut them
over and headed them back until we had two columns of cattle going in
opposite directions; then the riders came up and milled them in a wide
circle.
After the riders got the mill going, there was nothing for me and
Pappy to do. We pulled up the slope a way to let our horses blow after
the hard run. I noticed then, for the first time, that it had stopped
raining.
“One steer lost,” I said. “It could have been worse.”
Pappy looked at me. “One steer and one rider,” he said dryly. He
nodded toward the bottom of the slope to where a rider was coming
toward us. It was the trail boss.
Surprisingly, he didn't seem mad this time. He just looked relieved
to get his herd under control with the loss of only one steer. He
pulled up in front of us, mopping his face with a rain-soaked bandanna.
“By God,” he said wearily, “I ought to turn the two of you over to
the bluebellies.”
Pappy straightened in the saddle. “What makes you think the
bluebellies want us?”
The little Irishman laughed roughly. “You're Pappy Garret, the boys
tell me. And this kid's name's Cameron, ain't it?” Without waiting for
an answer, he took a folded, soggy square of paper from his hip pocket.
It was too dark to read, but a sinking feeling in my stomach told me
what it was.
“Reward,” the trail boss said pleasantly. “For killin' off some
bluebelly cavalry down in northern Texas. Ten thousand for Garret, five
for the kid. Here, read it for yourself.”
Pappy made no move to take the paper. “Are you aiming to make a try
for that reward money?” he asked softly.
The trail boss laughed abruptly. “Hell, no.” Then his voice got
serious. “It's no concern of mine if the army wants to take you in. I'm
short of hands and good horses. From the way you two jumped in and
turned that herd, it looks like my problem is taken care of. That is,
if you want a job.”
Pappy looked at me. He was thinking the same thing I was. “I kind of
figured,” he said, “that you'd be sore because the boy killed off one
of your riders.”
The trail boss snorted. “It was small loss. Creyton was trouble from
the first day I signed him on. He thought he was Godamighty with them
two pistols of his... and I guess he had everybody else thinking it
until tonight.” He looked at me with much the same expression that I
had seen in Pappy's eyes. “I'll tell you the truth,” he said. “I never
expected you to beat Buck Creyton, son. I was expecting we'd be burying
a kid of a boy in the morning.” He shrugged. “But I guess you never
know.”
He pulled his paint around and studied the herd for a minute. “Think
it over,” he said. “If you want to sign up, I'll see you at the chuck
wagon for breakfast.”