“I thought I told you to stay with the horses,” I said.
“Well,” he said, “I figured the horses could take care of themselves. Anyway, I wasn't crazy about staying up there on the bluff with Kreyler's men.” He shifted hands with his rifle. “I didn't do wrong, did I?”
I laughed, not because anything funny had happened, but just because it felt good to have a kid like that on my side. I said, “No, you didn't do anything wrong.”
“I told you once I was a pretty good shot.”
“Not too damn good,” and I nodded at the dead Indian, “when you space them a foot apart.” I knew that Bama was listening. And I didn't give a damn. I said, “But there's nothing wrong with your shooting that can't be fixed. And I'll fix it.”
He couldn't have been more pleased if I had just handed him Texas with a fence around it.
From that moment, I guess, it was just me and Johnny Rayburn against the world. Or rather me and Johnny Rayburn, and a fortune in silver. That reminded me— we had to do something about the silver.
We didn't have any horses, and we sure couldn't carry the stuff on our backs. I looked up at the high ground and saw that Kreyler and some of his boys were still up there. I guess they had time to get their guts in shape, and probably they had just been waiting for me and the Indians to finish each other off so they could come back down and take the silver for themselves. But I had something else planned for them.
I stepped out in the open and cupped my hands around my mouth and yelled for them to come on down. I hadn't forgotten the way they had run out on us, but I could take care of that when the time came. This wasn't the time.
They must have been pretty disappointed to see me come out of it alive, and they must have had a pretty good idea that it wasn't purely an act of brotherly love that prompted me to call them back into the fold. I could see them talking it over. There was some arguing, I guess, but in the end they came down, as I knew they would. The silver was still down there and they couldn't resist the temptation of that easy money.
As they started down the slope, I went over our battlefield and found my rifle and salvaged some .44 cartridges for my pistols. I was ready for them by the time they rode up, and there wasn't much doubt as to who was still boss.
Kreyler looked like a man who had been outvoted. Silver wasn't as important to him as it was to some of the others, but he couldn't very well tell them to go to hell, because he still had ideas of running the business himself someday.
I said, “Well, men, we did it. All we've got to do now is get this silver back to Ocotillo and split it up. Let's get at it.”
That jarred them a little. They had expected a good cussing at the very least, and here I was practically patting them on their backs. But they got over their shock. A yell went up and they went scurrying over the battlefield, cutting open the silver-filled aparejos and stuffing the adobe dollars into saddle pouches and war bags. But Kreyler wasn't fooled. He knew that I had to have them, if I wanted to get that money back to Ocotillo.
But there was nothing much he could do about it. Anyway, all that silver was putting a hungry look in his eyes, and the first thing I knew, he was as busy as any of us. Bama sat quietly through all of it, his face getting whiter and whiter. After a while I had the kid bring the horses down, and I found Bama's bottle and gave it to him.
“Here,” I said, “you'd better have a drink of this.”
He took the bottle and looked at it blankly. He turned it up and drank as if it were the last whisky he would ever see. Then he sloshed a little of it on his wound. But not much.
He sat back and closed his eyes for a minute until the pain let up. “You're not fooling Kreyler,” he said.
“I'm not fooling anybody.”
“You're not going to split that silver, are you, when you get back to Ocotillo?”
I just grinned.
“That's what I thought. I guess there's no use telling you that the men won't stand for it. But they won't. You've pushed them around about as long as they'll take it.”
“Why don't you let me worry about that?”
He hit the bottle again. Loss of blood and shock and whisky were beginning to hit him. His eyes were bleary. His mouth didn't seem big enough to hold his tongue. He took another long drink and let the empty bottle slip out of his hand. “You and the kid,” he said thickly, “ought to make quite a team.”
“We might, at that.”
He looked at me for a while. Then he slid over on his elbow. He must have passed out then, because his arm gave way and he fell on his face.
The tourniquet on his leg came loose and blood began spurting again. I grabbed it and tightened it, and stretched him out as well as I could. I looked up and the kid was standing there beside me.
“Get the horses,” I said, “and bring them over here. Then find one of those Indian hatchets and cut a pair of blackjack poles long enough to make a travois.”
He didn't ask a lot of fool questions. In a few minutes he was back with the horses and poles. The poles weren't nearly long enough, but it was the best he could do in this kind of country. We lashed them to Bama's saddle and laced them with a reata that one of the men had. Then we tied Bama on it.
By the time all that was done, the men were ready to go. The silver had all been gathered up and they were anxious to get home and make the split.
So we rode out of the valley and into the high Huachucas, the thud of hoofs mingled with the heavy jouncing of silver. I didn't look back this time. The death and stink of battle seemed a long way off, and I wanted to keep it that way if I could. The kid rode beside me, his eyes thoughtful, and I could see the question coming long before he got up nerve enough to ask it.
“I was just wondering about something,” he said finally. “Did you really mean it, what you said back there? When you said you'd fix up my shooting?”
We rode on for quite a while before I answered. And in my mind there was the memory of empty days and long nights. Tight-wound days and tighter nerves, when the sound of a snapping twig or the rustle of brush was always a cavalryman, or a marshal, or maybe just a reputation-hunting punk anxious to get a notch in his gun butt. Sounds were always sharper when you were on the run, and alone.
But who could you trust when you had a price on your head?
Well, I guessed I had found somebody at last. So I said, “Don't worry about it, kid. I meant it, all right.”
Chapter Ten
IT WAS DARK again when we got to Ocotillo, and the town seemed nice and peaceful and sleepy-looking there at the bottom of the foothills. It seemed a shame to ride in there and get everything all stirred up again. But it had to be done. A few Mexicans came out and watched as we rode into town, and I imagined that their faces had a dull, angry look.
It was a funny thing, but I had never thought of the Mexicans' resenting us and hating us. Well, I thought, they wouldn't be bothered long with me and the kid, and if they got tired of Kreyler and his bunch they could rise up and knock them down. I wondered why they hadn't done it before now.