Basset lurched forward in his chair, got a cigar from a box on his desk, and rolled it between his wet lips. “You just don't know the right man, son,” he said, breathing heavily. “The Cavalry—no. But, then, the Cavalry is busy up north with the Apache uprising. There's no call for them to come down here unless somebody like a federal marshal put them up to it.”
And what makes you think that some deputy marshal won't do just that?”
He went on smiling, holding a match to his cigar, puffing until it was burning to suit him. Then he threw the match on the floor and shouted, “Kreyler!”
The door opened and the big, slab-faced man came in. The last time I saw him he had been headed out of the saloon—but when Basset called, he was there.
“Yeah?”
“Show this boy who you are, Kreyler,” Basset said.
Kreyler frowned. He didn't like me, and whatever it was that Basset had on his mind, he didn't like that either. But he didn't have the guts to look at the fat man and tell him so. Reluctantly he went into his pocket and came out with a badge—a deputy United States marshal's badge.
“That will be your insurance,” Basset said, as Kreyler went out, “if you choose to stay with us here in Ocotillo.”
The whole thing had kind of taken my breath away. I had only known one United States marshal before. He lived, breathed, and thought nothing but the law. I hadn't known that a man like Kreyler could worm his way into an office like that.
Suddenly I began to appreciate the kind of setup Basset had here. In Ocotillo a man could live in safety, protected from the law, his identity hidden from the outside world. I thought of the long days and nights of running, afraid to sleep, afraid to rest, forever looking over my shoulder and expecting to see the man who would finally kill me. Here in Ocotillo I could forget all that—if I wanted to pay the fat man's price.
Basset smiled, puffing lazily on his cigar.
I said finally, “Insurance like that must come pretty high.”
“Not for the right men, like yourself.” He bent forward, his jowls shaking. “Have you ever heard of the Mexican smuggling trains?”
I shook my head.
“There are dozens of them,” he said. “They come across the international line, taking one of the remote canyons of the Huachucas. Thousands of dollars in gold or silver some of these trains carry. They trade in Tucson for merchandise that they smuggle back across the border, without paying the heavy duty, and sell at fat profits. In a way,” Basset smiled, “you might say that Kreyler is upholding his oath to the United States, for he is a great help to us in stopping this unlawful smuggling of the Mexicans.”
I was beginning to get it now, but I wasn't sure that I liked it.
“Take your time,” the fat man said. “Make up your mind and let me know. Say tomorrow?”
“All right,” I said. “Tomorrow.”
I was glad to get out of the office. The bath that I'd had not long ago had been wasted. I felt dirtier than I had when I first rode into the place.
I stopped at the bar on my way out and had a shot of the white poison that the Mexicans were drinking. Business had picked up while I was in the office. Most of the fancy girls had found laps to sit on, and their brassy, high-pitched giggles punched holes in the general uproar like bullets going through a tub of lard. I studied the men in the place with a new interest, now that I knew who they were and what they were doing here. I didn't see anybody that I knew, yet I had a feeling that I knew all of them. Their eyes were all alike, restless, darting from one place to the other. They laughed hard with their mouths, but none of the laughter ever reached their eyes. I didn't see anybody drunk enough to be careless about the way his gun hand hung. And I knew I wouldn't. My friend Kreyler, the deputy United States marshal, wasn't around. Probably he was in some corner, waiting for Basset to yell for him.
I stood alone at the end of the bar, wondering where I was going to sleep that night and listening to three Mexicans sing a sirupy love song in Spanish, when she said:
“Hello, gringo!”
I don't know where she came from. But now she was standing next to me, grinning as if nothing had happened.
“Get away from me,” I said. “When I get tired of living I can get myself killed. I don't need your help.”
She didn't bat an eye. “I think you plenty fast with gun,” he grinned. “You don't be killed.”
“I'll be killed if you keep telling people I'm a government marshal. What the hell did you do that for, anyway? And after that, why did you bother to warn me that somebody was waiting for me? Do you just like to hear guns go off and see men get killed?”
She threw her head back and laughed, as if that was the best one she'd heard in a long time. “Maybe you buy Marta drink, eh?”
“Maybe I'll kick Marta's bottom if she doesn't leave me alone.”
But I didn't mean it and she knew it. She laughed again and I poured her a drink of the white poison. She poured salt in the cup between her thumb and forefinger, licked it with her tongue and then downed her drink in one gulp. She looked more at home here in the saloon than some of the fancy girls. And she was a lot better looking than any of the doxies. But I noticed a funny thing. None of the men looked at her. They seemed to go to a great deal of troublenot to look at her.
“Another one, gringo?” she said, holding up her empty glass.
“Not for me.” But I reached for the bottle and poured her another one. She downed it the same way she had the first one.
“Where you go, gringo?”
“To find a bed. There's a big desert out there and I've been a long time crossing it. I'm tired.”
She took my arm and pulled me toward the door. “Come with me, I fix.”
“Isn't there a hotel over the saloon here?”
“You no go there. You come with Marta.”
God knows she made it clear enough, and she was the best-looking girl I had seen for longer than I liked to remember—but there was something about it that went against me. I felt a sickness that I hadn't felt in a long time, and memories popped up in my mind, sharp and clear like a magic-lantern show I had seen once. We were outside now, on the dirt walk in front of the saloon. At the end of the building there was an outside stairway that went up to the second floor, and on the corner of the building there was a sign: “Rooms.” For no particular reason I began to get mad. I gave her a shove, harder than I'd intended, and she went reeling out into the dusty street.
I headed for the livery barn to get my saddlebags and she cursed me every step of the way in shrill, outraged Spanish. But I didn't hear. I was listening to other voices. And other times.
Other times and other places.... I went through the motions of looking after my horse and getting my saddlebags and going up the shaky stairs over the saloon to see if I could get a room, but they were like the motions that you go through in a dream. They didn't seem to mean anything. I remembered the big green country of the Texas Panhandle, where I was born. I remembered my pa's ranch and the little town near it, John's City. And Professor Bigloe's Academy, where I had gone to school before the war, and the frame shack at the crossroads between our place and John's City called Garner's Store where I used to listen to the bitter old veterans of the war still cursing Sherman and Lincoln and Grant, and reliving over and over the glories of the lost Confederacy. And, finally, I remembered a girl.