Jake was lying on his saddle blanket feeling drunk and depressed. Dan Suggs had shot the old man driving the wagon at a hundred yards’ distance, without even speaking to him. Dan had been hiding in the trees along the creek, so the old man died without even suspecting that he was in danger. He only had about thirty dollars on him, but he had four jugs of whiskey, and they were divided equally, although Dan claimed he ought to have two for doing the shooting. Jake had been drinking steadily, hoping he would get so drunk the Suggses would just go off and leave him. But he knew they wouldn’t. For one thing, he had eight hundred dollars on him, won in poker games in Fort Worth, and if Dan Suggs didn’t know it, he certainly suspected it. They wouldn’t leave him without robbing him, or rob him without killing him, so for the time being his hope was to ride along and not rile Dan.
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“I wish he’d had the sense to stay with Lorie,” Augustus said. “She might have aggravated him some, but she wouldn’t have led him to this.” “It’s his dern laziness,” Call said. “Jake just kind of drifts. Any wind can blow him.” He touched the mare and rode on—he didn’t need Deets in order to follow the tracks of nearly thirty horses. He put the mare into a slow lope, a gait she could hold all day if necessary.
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This time he was up against twenty or thirty nesters. They were grouped in front of the store as if puzzled by the situation. Jake put his gun back in its holster and looked at the girl once more.
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Then nesters began to boil out of Doan’s Store—it seemed there were twenty or thirty of them. Jake felt discouraged by the sight, for it reminded him of how people had boiled out of the saloons in Fort Smith when they discovered Benny Johnson lying dead in the mud. Now another man was lying dead, and it was just as much an accident: if the old nester had just announced himself politely as the girl’s husband, Jake would have tipped his hat and walked off. But the old man had whacked him and offered to do it again—he had only shot to protect himself.
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ALMOST AT ONCE, before the group even got out of Texas, Jake had cause to regret that he had ever agreed to ride with the Suggs brothers. The first night he camped with them, not thirty miles north of Dallas, he heard talk that frightened him. The boys were discussing two outlaws who were in jail in Fort Worth, waiting to hang, and Dan Suggs claimed it was July Johnson who had brought them in. The robbers had put out the story that July was traveling with a young girl who could throw rocks better than most men could shoot.
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Newt saw that the cattle had crossed the wild Canadian, the river that had scared everybody, without much help from the cowboys, who were scattered here and there, naked, crouched under their saddles or, in some cases, their horses. It was a funny sight; Newt was so glad to be alive that suddenly he felt like laughing. Funniest of all was Pea Eye, who stood not thirty yards away, up to his neck in the river, with his hat on. He was just standing there calmly, waiting for the hail to stop.
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Newt saw that the cattle had crossed the wild Canadian, the river that had scared everybody, without much help from the cowboys, who were scattered here and there, naked, crouched under their saddles or, in some cases, their horses. It was a funny sight; Newt was so glad to be alive that suddenly he felt like laughing. Funniest of all was Pea Eye, who stood not thirty yards away, up to his neck in the river, with his hat on. He was just standing there calmly, waiting for the hail to stop.
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“Could have wasted a shell,” he said, if someone pointed this out to him. It was true that when he did shoot he rarely missed, but that was because he rarely shot at anything over thirty yards away.
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Augustus almost laughed, but the Indian kept up the charge with only a lance, a brave thing. Augustus shot him when he was no more than thirty feet away; he let him get that close in hopes of grabbing his horse. The Indian fell dead, but the horse shied away and Augustus didn’t feel he could afford to chase him.
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It became amusing to her, her power over the man. He had never spoken to her, not one word, and yet he would sit for hours, thirty yards away. It was something, what must go through men’s minds where women were concerned, to cause them to behave so strangely.
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She sat under her shed in one patch of shade, and he sat in another about thirty yards away, just watching. He didn’t pretend to gamble or do anything else.
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“You watch this one and I’ll go catch her,” Jim said. “I bet once I do she won’t get away for a while.” “Why, Jim, you can’t catch her,” Hutto said. “In this dark? Remember how she ambushed us? If she was a better shot we’d both be corpses, and if she’s got a rifle hid out there somewhere we may be corpses yet.” “I ain’t scared of her,” Jim said. “Dern her, I should have cracked her with a gun barrel a time or two.” “You should have shot her,” Hutto said. “I know you expected to amuse yourself, but look how it turned out. The girl got away and the deputy only had thirty dollars and some dirty underwear.” “She can’t be far,” Jim said. “Let’s camp and look for her in the morning.” “Well, you can, but I’m going,” Hutto said. “A girl that size ain’t worth tracking.” Just as he said it, a good-sized rock came flying through the air and hit him right in the mouth. He was so surprised he slipped and sat down. The rock had smashed his lips; blood poured down his chin. A second later another hit Jim in the ribs. Jim drew a pistol and fired several times in the direction the rocks came from.
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“The thirty dollars is all I got,” he said several times.
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Of course the men found the thirty dollars he was carrying in his old wallet—it represented a month’s wages, and was all he had to finish the trip with. But they had found that before they made him strip. They seemed reluctant to believe it was all the money he had, and casually proceeded to pick his clothes apart with their knives.
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Blue Duck hobbled the horses, then came and looked down at her. “I got a treatment for women that try to run away,” he said casually. “I cut a little hole in their stomachs and pull out a gut and wrap it around a limb. Then I drag them thirty or forty feet and tie them down. That way they can watch the coyotes come and eat their guts.” He went back and lay down under a tree, adjusted his saddlebags for a pillow, and was soon asleep.
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“It ain’t, either,” Augustus said. “I don’t guess I’ve watched you punish yourself for thirty years to be totally wrong about you. I just don’t know what you done to deserve the punishment.”“You’ve got a strange way of thinking,” Call said.
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Roscoe was half asleep in the saddle when a bad thing happened. Memphis brushed against a tree limb that had a wasp’s nest on it. The nest broke loose from the limb and fell right in Roscoe’s lap. It soon rolled off the saddle, but not before twenty or thirty wasps buzzed up. When Roscoe awoke, all he could see was wasps. He was stung twice on the neck, twice on the face, and once on the hand as he was battling them.
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In one of the flashes Newt saw Dish Boggett, not thirty yards away. Dish saw him, too, and came toward him. In the next flash Newt saw Dish pulling on a yellow slicker.
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The only relief he could find was in the knowledge that he was doing his job and earning the thirty dollars a month the town paid him. There were a few tightfisted citizens who didn’t think there was thirty dollars’ worth of sheriffing to do in Fort Smith in a given month. Going after a man who had killed the mayor was the kind of work people seemed to think a sheriff ought to do, although it would probably be less dangerous than having to stop two rivermen from carving one another up with knives.
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July had heard it all twenty-five or thirty times, the versions differing a good deal, depending upon the teller. He felt derelict for not having made a stronger effort to run Jake out of town before he himself left for the trial in Missouri. Of course it would have been convenient if Roscoe had promptly arrested the man, but Roscoe never arrested anybody except old man Darton, the one drunk in the county Roscoe felt he could handle.
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“I expect to find him down around San Antonio,” July said. “I believe he has friends there.” Roscoe had to snort at that remark. “That’s right,” he said. “Two of the most famous Texas Rangers that ever lived, that’s his friends. July will be lucky not to get hung himself. If you ask me, Jake Spoon ain’t worth it.” “It’s nothing to do with what he’s worth,” Peach said. “Ben was the one who was worth it. He was my husband and July’s brother and the mayor of this town. Who else do you think seen to it your salary got paid?”“The salary I get don’t take much seeing to,” Roscoe said. “A dern midget could see to it.” At thirty dollars a month he considered himself grievously underpaid.
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“Well, we better keep up,” he added nervously—he didn’t want to neglect his responsibilities. Then, to his dismay, he looked back and saw twenty or thirty cattle standing behind them. He had ridden right past them in the dust. He immediately loped back to get them, hoping the Captain hadn’t noticed. When he turned back, two of the wild heifersspooked. Mouse, a good cow horse, twisted and jumped a medium-sized chaparral bush in an effort to gain a step on the cows. Newt had not expected the jump and lost both stirrups, but fortunately diverted the heifers so that they turned back into the main herd. He found his heart was beating fast, partly because he had almost been thrown and partly because he had nearly left thirty cattle behind. With such a start, it seemed to him he would be lucky to get to Montana without disgracing himself.
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But when he raised up on one elbow to look at her in the fresh light, the urge to discourage her went away. It was a weakness, but he could not bear to disappoint women, even if it was ultimately for their own good. At least he couldn’t disappoint them to their faces. Leaving them was his only out, and he knew he wasn’t ready to leave Lorie. Her beauty blew the sleep right out of his brain, and all she was doing was looking out a window, her long golden hair spilling over her shoulders. She wore an old threadbare cotton shift that should have been thrown away long ago. She didn’t own a decent dress, and had nothing to show her beauty to advantage, yet most of the men on the border would ride thirty miles just to sit in a saloon and look at her. She had the quality of not yet having really started her life—her face had a freshness unusual in a woman who had been sporting for a while. The thought struck him that the two of them might do well in San Francisco, if they could just get there. There were men of wealth there, and Lorie’s beauty would soon attract them.
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Pedro Flores was a far cry from being the fighter Kicking Wolf had been. Pedro seldom rode without twenty or thirty vaqueros to back him up, whereas Kicking Wolf, a small man no bigger than the boy, would raid San Antonio with five or six braves and manage to carry off three women and scare all the whites out of seven or eight counties just by traveling through them. But Pedro was of the same time, and had occupied them just as long.
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After all, the man had more or less held nearly a hundred-mile stretch of the border, and for nearly thirty years. Call had known many men who died, but somehow had not expected it of Pedro, though he himself had fired several bullets at him.
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