He kept looking at the kid, and then I realized that just three of us knew where that ledger was, me, Bama, and Johnny Rayburn, and if Kreyler wanted to find out where it was he would have to get it out of one of us. I didn't have to do much figuring to guess which one he would work on.
I jerked my head at the kid and said, “Go somewhere and get some sleep.” Then it hit me that just “somewhere” wouldn't be good enough. He had to be someplace where Kreyler wouldn't have a chance to work on him. So I said, “Get your stuff and bring it down here. We'll put up a cot or something and you can bunk with me until we figure out something better.”
“Well, gosh,” the kid said. “Sure, if you want me to, Mr. Cameron.” As he went out of the place he seemed to be walking about a foot off the floor, and he had suddenly developed a curious kind of toe-heel way of walking that reminded me of a cat with sore feet. It wasn't until later that I realized that I walked the same way, because I had learned that it was the quietest way to walk. And with a gunman, the quietest way of doing a thing is the safest way.
It began to dawn on me that Johnny Rayburn was imitating me. A thing like that had never happened before. I had never thought of myself as much of a hero, and it had never occurred to me that anybody would want to pattern his life after mine. But there it was, and there was something about it that pleased me—the same way, I guess, that a man is pleased to have some bawling, yelling brat named after him. It was something like being assured that a part of me would go on living, no matter what happened to Talbert Cameron.
I thought about that, and then I became aware of Kreyler sitting across the desk from me, watching me, reading the thoughts going around in my mind.
“There's something we'd better get straight right now,” I said. “If anything happens to that kid, I'll kill you. All the cavalry and United States marshals in Arizona won't be able to save you.”
He sat there for a while, half smiling. Then he got up and walked out.
It took Bama and the two scouts eight days to make the kind of map I wanted, but when they finally got back and put the finished product on my desk I saw that they had done a good job. The chart was drawn in six different sections, but Bama had the pieces lettered and numbered and the whole thing made sense when he put it together. There were almost a dozen natural traps that Bama had already marked, and there wasn't much for me to do except to post scouts along the various canyons and wait until a smuggler train was spotted.
“And what do we do,” Bama asked, “if the Mexicans decide not to use one of these particular canyons?”
“We'll wait. They'll take one of them sooner or later, and when they do, they won't have a chance.”
“No,” he said wearily, “I guess not. Do you want a drink?”
“No.”
“Well, I do.” And he went to the bar and came back with a bottle and glass. “Did the kid take care of the ledger all right?”
“Sure, he did fine.”
Very deliberately, Bama poured the tumbler brimful and then sat there looking at it. “I saw him out in the saloon,” he said, “when I came in. I thought he was you at first. He walks like you, talks like you, even dresses like you.”
I knew that it didn't mean a thing, but still I couldn't help being pleased that somebody else had noticed. “He picked the new rig out in Tucson,” I said, “with his own money. It's funny that he'd get just the kind of things I wear.”
“Funny?” Then Bama picked up the glass and drained it without taking a breath. He was tired and dirty and his eyes were red-rimmed from long hours of riding in the sun. He said, “I guess I don't see anything very funny about it.”
“What the hell's wrong with you, anyway? You know what I mean.”
“I don't know anything,” he said, “except that I just saw a kid out there blown up with his own conceit and making a goddamned pest of himself. Eight days ago he was just another punk kid who had got off the right track but not so far off that he couldn't have been put back on again. Now he's swaggering like a fighting rooster that hasn't got sense enough to know that he hasn't been equipped with gaffs. But I suppose you're doing something about that. What are you doing to him, anyway— giving him lessons in gun slinging?”
“I'm not doing a damn thing to him,” I said, and in spite of all I could do I was letting him get under my skin again. I stood up and grabbed the front of his shirt and twisted it. “Look,” I said tightly, “there's something we'd better have an understanding about. You're just working for me, like Kreyler and all the others. When I want you to say something or do something, I'll let you know. Until that time, you'll keep your goddamned mouth shut.”
As usual, I was sorry after I had said it. He just stood there looking at me with those sad old eyes and I knew that I would never be able to hate him.
“I'm sorry, Bama,” I said. “I didn't mean what I said, but why do you have to keep prodding me until I fly off the handle that way?”
He kept looking at me and I had the uncomfortable feeling that he was pitying me, and if there was anybody in the world that I didn't want pity from, it was Bama. I sat down and said, “Go on, have another drink and forget it.”
I poured one for him and shoved it across the desk, but he shook his head and said, “I can forget about us because I guess we're not very important to anybody now. But that kid is different.”
I was getting impatient again, but I forced myself to sit tight until he got it off his chest.
Bama said, “Why don't you send him back to wherever he came from? He'd listen to you. Just tell him to go back and put in his time on the work gang and give himself a chance to live like a human being.”
I said, “I'm not holding him here. He can do anything he wants to do.” But that wasn't answering Bama's question and we both knew it. “Anyway, he's the one who has to take care of that ledger.”
Bama sat back and closed his eyes. “Of course, what I think doesn't amount to much, but I was wondering if it wouldn't be better for all of us if we let the kid go—and the ledger, and the smuggler trains, and all the rest of it.”
“Now, that's a hell of an idea. Look, one raid is all we need to make. That will give us enough money to keep a hideout until the law forgets that we were ever alive. But that money, we've got to have that.”
“But is money the most important thing?”
I got up, tired of the senseless bickering that was getting us nowhere. “By God, you're crazy,” I said. “That's the only way to explain the way your brain works.”
And Bama smiled that faraway smile and I knew that he wasn't mad at me, and never would be, really. “Sooner or later it always gets around to that, doesn't it? Everybody's crazy.” He finished off the drink I had poured for him. “Well, maybe that's the right answer. I don't know any more.”
I got to thinking about it later and decided that maybe Bama had been right on a few points. For one thing, the kid was carrying this imitating business too far. God knows where he found them, but somewhere he had picked up a couple of old Prescott revolvers. Navy revolvers, they were called, but the Navy had never bought any of them, and neither had anybody else who had any idea what a good pistol was supposed to be. But the kid had them buckled on with a couple of cartridge belts that I figured he had made himself, and he had his holsters cut away like a real badman and tied down at his thighs.