“I've seen what they call major battles,” Bama said, “without that many men getting killed.” He stared blankly at nothing. He rubbed his hands over his face, through his hair. At last he got up.
“Where are you going?”
“To find my horse.”
Now I knew why Bama had saved that half bottle of whisky.
Chapter Four
IN THE HOTTEST PART of the afternoon we started back for Ocotillo, what was left of us. Kreyler and the Indian had gathered the silver together and loaded it on pack horses that we had brought along for that purpose. There were several riderless horses, but I didn't take the trouble to count and see how many men we had left back there in the canyon. I guess nobody did. I made the mistake once of looking back, and already the vultures that Bama had talked about were beginning to circle over the battleground. It took everything I had to keep my stomach out of my throat. I didn't look back again.
Bama had finished the rest of his whisky and was riding slouched, chin on chest, deep in some bleary, alcoholic dream. I tried to keep my mind away from the battle, but I kept seeing those brown, grinning faces as they fell away in front of my guns. I wanted to think of my cut of that silver. I tried to remember that killing was necessary sometimes to save yourself—and that silver would save me.
Somehow, we got back to Ocotillo. We split up again when we came to the meeting place, and Bama and I rode back into town the same way we had left it. It was a long ride. Bama still didn't say anything.
It was almost dark by the time I got my horse put away. I went up to my room and fell on the mattress in front of the door. I was dog tired. Every muscle in my body screamed for rest, and every nerve was ready to snap. Then I turned loose with everything I had. I vomited until my guts were sore and there wasn't anything left in me to come up, but still I kept gagging.
When it was over I was soaked in sweat and shaking like a whipped dog. It was all I could do to get off the floor and pour some water in the bowl and wash my face.
It was then that I felt the draft float over the back of my neck and I knew that the door was open and somebody was standing there. I think I knew who it was before I looked up. Sure enough, it was Marta.
“What do you want?”
“I think you need Marta.”
“I don't need anybody. Get out of here and stay out.”
She looked at me for a moment, then turned and went down the hall. In a minute she was back with a pan and some water, and began cleaning the floor.
“I don't know why they bother to put locks on these doors,” I said. “How did you get in here?”
She grinned faintly, took a knife from the bodice of her dress, and showed it to me.
“Is easy.”
“It must be.”
I didn't feel like talking or fighting or anything else. If she wanted to clean up after me, all right. All I wanted to do was rest and try to forget that I had taken part in anything that had happened today.
She worked quietly, not looking at me. After she had finished I could feel her standing beside me.
“You need eat,” she said.
“I need nothing.”
She went out of the room, taking the dirty water with her. I didn't bother to close the door.
Maybe five minutes went by, and then she came back with two hard-boiled eggs and a pitcher of cool beer.
“Here.”
“You're crazy as hell,” I said.
She cracked one, of the eggs and peeled it. I took it and bit into it. It tasted good. I washed it down with some of the beer, then reached for the other egg.
“Good?” she said.
I nodded and had some more beer.
“You sick. Why?”
How could I tell her why I was sick? Maybe I wasn't even sure myself. But somehow I felt that the last decent thing in me had been fouled in that massacre. A myth had been shattered. I could no longer tell myself that my killing had been done in self-defense. I was sick with myself, but how could I tell anybody that?
“It wasn't anything,” I said.
“You better now?”
“Sure. Have some beer.”
She grinned uncertainly, then swigged from the mouth of the pitcher. I was beginning to be glad that she had shown up. I needed something or somebody to take my mind off of things. It was just the shock of seeing so much cold-blooded killing, I tried to tell myself. Pretty soon I would get over it, but now it was just as well that I had somebody to help me get my mind on something else.
“Don't you ever take no for an answer?” I said. “Do you always hang on until you get what you want?”
She shrugged as if she didn't understand me.
“What do you want me for, anyway? I'm not such a prize—not even in this God-forgotten place where almost anybody would be a prize.”
She shrugged again and grinned. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, she took my wrist and began inspecting the bandage on my left wrist.
“I am sorry,” she said.
“It's all right now.”
But it still hurt, and it gave me a vicious, animal-like satisfaction to see that her mouth was still swollen and bruised where I had hit her.
It was dark now. Night had come suddenly down on Ocotillo, and we could hear the noises in the saloon below, and in the dusty street there was the rattle of high-wheeled cars as the Mexican farmers came in from the fields, and the lonesome, forlorn chanting of the native herdsmen. I rolled a cigarette and gave it to the girl, then I rolled one for myself and fired them with a sulphur match.
“Where you learn smoke like this?” she said suddenly.
“A friend of mine. He used to roll them this way, in cornshucks. He's dead now,” I added, for some reason.
“You love this friend very much,” she said.
“What makes you say that?”
“You are sad when you say he is dead.” Then, “He was good man?”
I listened to the night and remembered Pappy Garret. “He was good at one thing,” I said. “He could draw faster and shoot straighter than any man who ever lived. He picked me up when I was just a kid running from the State Police and taught me what he knew. I used to wonder why he bothered with me—but I know now that he was a lonely man.”
I knew that she wasn't really interested in hearing about it, but she kept quiet and I went on. “He wasn't really a bad man,” I said, “but once you start a thing like that, there's no end to it. A gunman kills a friend of yours, then you kill the gunman. Then the gunman has a friend and you have to kill him, or be killed, and it goes on and on that way until you think there isn't a man in the world that doesn't have a reason to shoot you.”
Marta stroked my bandaged arm with her cool fingers. “You no bad,” she said.
“I'm rotten to the bone, or I would never have done what I did today, no matter how much money there was in it.”
She looked up, but I couldn't see what she was thinking. “I think you be rich man pretty soon.”