“Just since this morning. How long do you think I've been thinking about it?”
But he only shrugged and let it go.
“The next thing we've got to do is take care of this ledger,” I said. “We can't follow Kreyler around with a gun all the time, and anyway, this thing is better than a gun. It keeps the Marshal tied to us and keeps him from putting a bullet in my back at the same time.”
“You're really going into this, aren't you?” Bama said, and I tried to read some meaning into it, but there wasn't anything there but a thick, heavy drawl.
He sat there looking at me with no expression at all. At that moment he looked as if he had lived a hundred years and every year had been a hard one. “If I had the guts,” he said, “I'd tell you to go to hell. But I haven't got the guts. So if you'll get me a bottle of whisky I'll tell you what you'll have to do about Kreyler.”
I think at that moment he really hated me. But, like he said, he didn't have the guts to do anything about it. Anyway, I was getting used to his moods and the way he talked, so I slapped him on the shoulder and said, “It's not going to be as bad as all that.”
I opened the door and yelled to the bartender, and in a minute we had a bottle and a couple of tumblers on the desk.
Bama said, “I know a lawyer in Tucson who would handle the ledger for you, but I couldn't risk showing myself in a place like that. And neither could you. What you've got to have is a man who isn't wanted by the law here in Arizona. It would be better if he wasn't wanted at all, but it's not likely we'll find a man like that. I think I've got the man you want.”
I waited until Bama finished his drink, then he went on. “He's just a kid—much more of a kid than you are. He came riding into town today sometime after the shooting. From Texas, by the look of his rig. He's out in the saloon and you can talk to him if you want to.”-
“If you think he's the one we need.”
So Bama got up and went into the saloon, and after a minute he came back with a hay-haired kid who looked to be about seventeen years old. He wore blue overalls that had been patched several times around the rump and knees, and heavy brogans, and a dirty felt hat that had part of the brim torn off. He sure didn't look like much, but there was something about him that gave me kind of a shock.
It was almost like looking into a mirror and seeing myself as I had been at that age—except that I had never worn those nester's overalls and brogans. But it was his face, I guess, that got me, and his eyes. His eyes were pale blue and they were kind of bewildered and they didn't know much of anything. And maybe there was a little fear in them, and uncertainty.
“Well, son,” Bama said, reaching for a drink, “how does it feel to be in the presence of the mighty? Of course, you've heard of Talbert Cameron, desperado, killer, as they say on the 'Wanted' posters. The fastest gunman ever to come out of Texas, the scourge of lawmen, soldiers, and just plain downright honest citizens.”
I wished to hell that Bama would shut up, but he kept running on and the kid's eyes got bigger and bigger. And I couldn't get away from that feeling that the kid was myself standing there, getting my first look at a real gunman and being a little stunned and awed by it. I said, “For Christ's sake, Bama, shut up.” Bama grinned a little, sadly, and shrugged. “Go ahead and sit down, son. I don't reckon he'll bite you.”
The kid sat down on the edge of a chair and stared at me. He swallowed a couple of times and his Adam's apple flopped around while he tried to think of something to say.
I said, “Bama tells me you're from Texas. What part?” He gulped. “South,” he said faintly. “Along the Nueces River.”
I'd never been in the brush country, but by looking at the kid I got a pretty good idea of what it was like. It would be blazing sun and blistering wind and men grubbing for a living on land that was never meant to be worth a damn for anything. But those men would love the land, and they would live on it, and fight on it, and die on it. I wondered what had made the kid leave it. “Have you got a name?” I said. “Yes, sir.” He was beginning to find his voice now. “Rayburn. John Rayburn.”
Bama was sitting on the desk, soberly studying the kid, and I guessed that Bama was also seeing something of himself in this lost, bewildered-looking kid who called himself John Rayburn. After a minute he spoke quietly, with a gentleness in his voice that I had never heard before.
“Do you want to tell us about it, Johnny? We're all pretty much in the same fix here, as far as the law goes. And you are running from the law.”
“I've been doin' that, all right,” the kid said, and he looked at me and Bama, “but I sure never figured to wind up in any place like this.” His gaze settled on me. “Are you really the Tall Cameron that they talked so much about in Texas?”
I started to ask him what they were saying about me, but I changed my mind and said, “That's right. Now, who are you, besides just somebody by the name of John Rayburn?”
“Well, gosh,” he said, “I'm not anybody much. My pa owns a little brush-poppin' outfit down on the Nueces, like I said, and I was born there and lived there all my life—until the last month or so.” He hesitated until he became convinced that it was all right to talk. “Well, hell,” he said, “I guess I got into some trouble. There was a dance in Lost Creek—that's a town by our place—and I guess some of the boys kind of got liquored up and there was a fight. The first thing you know there's a deputy sheriff dead on the floor, and then the first thing I know they're claimin' I was one of the boys that done it.”
He looked at us to see what we thought about it. “I didn't have anything to do with it,” he said, “but they locked me up anyway, along with the others. And when they have the trial the jury says manslaughter and sentences all of us to three years on the work gang.” He grinned uncertainly. “But the jail they was holdin' us in wasn't much, so I lit out of there as fast as I could. God knows how I wound up in Arizona.”
For a minute there was silence and I sat there thinking about myself, a kid who had started running just about the same way, and was still running. Then, for no reason I could think of, I began to get mad, and I wanted to get up and shake that kid until his teeth rattled and knock some sense into his head. I wanted to tell him that there were worse things than the work gang. I wanted to tell him how it was when you ran and ran until you couldn't run any more, but you knew that if you stopped it would be all over. There were a lot of things I could tell him— things I wished somebody had told me.
I think Bama's mind was working about the same way mine was, but he just sat there waiting for me to do something. But all I did was to sit back in the chair and say, “Do you want a job?”
“With you, Mr. Cameron? Gosh, yes!”
I looked at him and then looked away. He was building me up in his mind as a big hero, but I didn't feel like a hero right then.
I said, “Bama, give him the ledger and tell him what to do,” and I threw out the sack of Basset's with the five hundred adobe dollars in it. “This ought to be enough to take care of the lawyer.”
Bama took the money and waited a minute for me to look at him. But I didn't look at him.
That night after the saloon had emptied and things had quieted down. I went back to my new quarters behind the office and tried to get things straightened out. The room was a plain affair with the usual bed and chair and washstand. On one wall there was a big framed picture that showed a bunch of battered, dejected, half-frozen soldiers marching through the snow. They had rags tied around their heads and rags on their feet, and they looked as if they had about a bellyful of war. But off to one side there was a cocky little man sitting on a big white horse, and just by looking at him you knew that he was the boss and the war wasn't going to be over until he said so. Down at the bottom of the picture there was some small print that said, “Napoleon in Russia.”