“No, thanks,” I said.
He poured himself another one and downed it. “Then I had to kill a Yankee soldier, and there was hell to pay after that. For a while it seemed like the whole damned bluebelly army was after me, but I had some friends and they got me up to New Mexico, and finally I wound up here.” He laughed softly, without humor. “I was lucky, I guess.”
I knew how he felt. With a little switching around his story could have been mine, except that I had taken up with a famous gunman and got the same kind of reputation for myself.
“I had the prettiest little gal you ever saw,” Bama said sadly, “but I had to leave her. I wonder what she's doing now....”
I wished he hadn't said that, because it brought back too many almost forgotten days, almost forgotten faces. And a name that I couldn't forget—Laurin.
I pushed my plate away and Bama watched as I rolled a cigarette and put fire to it. At last he said, “Do you mind if I offer a little advice?”
“I'll listen, but I won't promise to take it.”
“Leave the girl alone,” he said quietly. “The Mexican girl named Marta. She's poison, and a little crazy, too. I've been here for quite a while now, and every man she has looked at always ended up the same way, dead in some gulch or some alley, with a bullet in his back.”
His face was deadly serious.
There was nothing I wanted more than to keep that female wildcat out of my life. But what was all the fuss about? First Kreyler had warned me to stay away from her, and now Bama. Curiosity was beginning to get the best of me.
“Does that mean that somebody's got a claim staked out on her?” I said.
Bama nodded slowly and poured himself another drink. “Black Joseph,” he said. “And he doesn't like you. He doesn't like you at all.”
I was beginning to get impatient with all this hoodoo.
“How the hell does he know he doesn't like me? I've never even seen this famous Indian gun-slinger.”
Bama gulped his drink. “Maybe you ought to meet him,” he said. “He's standing right behind you.”
Chapter Three
WHEN I TURNED, the first thing I saw was a pair of the darkest, emptiest, most savage eyes I had ever seen. There was absolutely no expression in them. They were like twin bottomless wells filled to the brim with black nothingness. His face was dark, angular, beardless, also without expression. A wide-brimmed flat-crowned hat sat squarely on his head, and ropy braids of black hair hung down on his chest almost to his shirt pockets. He didn't say a word. I couldn't tell if he were looking at me or through me. After a moment he turned and went through the door to Basset's office.
“He doesn't like you,” Bama said again.
“I think you're right. Maybe I'll have a drink of that stuff, after all.”
“He makes your flesh crawl, doesn't he?” Bama said, pouring a drink in his glass and shoving it over to me.
I felt cold, as if Death itself had just walked by. How he had managed to walk into the saloon and get that close without me hearing him I didn't know. I downed the whisky quick and in a minute I felt better, except that I somehow felt unclean just having looked at him.
“God, how does she stand it?” I said.
“The girl?” Bama raised his eyes sleepily. “She doesn't have anything to say about it. Black Joseph took a fancy to her, and that's that. Have you met Kreyler?”
I nodded.
“He's crazy about that girl—really crazy. You can see insanity crawl up behind his eyes and stare out like a wild beast when the Indian touches her. Kreyler would have killed him long ago if it had been anybody but Black Joseph.” He stood up, cradling the bottle in his arms. “I think I'll try to get some sleep,” he said. “Joseph's been up in the mountains scouting the canyons for smuggler trains. Probably he's spotted one and we'll be starting on another raid before long.”
He weaved across the floor and out the door, still holding tight to the bottle.
I sat there for a while waiting for the Indian to come out of Basset's office. Some of the fat man's hired men drifted into the saloon to drink their breakfast, and along about noon the fancy girls sneaked in and began putting on their paint for the afternoon trade. I didn't see Marta, and the Indian still hadn't come out of Basset's office. I got tired of waiting, so I went back and knocked on the door.
It turned out that Basset was alone, after all, and Black Joseph must have gone out the back way. The fat man looked up impatiently when I came in. He was poring over a list of names, checking one off every once in a while after giving it a lot of thought. “Sit down,” he wheezed, “sit down.”
I sat down and he checked off one or two more names, then turned and smiled that wet smile of his.
“Well?”
“I'm here to talk about that job.”
“Ha-ha,” he said dryly. “Your twelve dollars didn't last long, did it? Well, that's all right. You'll have plenty of money before long, plenty of money.”
“How much is that?”
He blinked. His little buckshot eyes looked watery and weak behind the folds of fat. “That depends,” he said. “Whatever the smuggler train is carrying, all the boys get a cut, fair and square. Share and share alike.”
“Including yourself?”
He blinked again. “Now look here, I'm the man that organized everything here. I see that you boys don't get bothered by the federal marshals, and keep the Cavalry off our backs. Everything's free and easy here in Ocotillo, thanks to me. I take half of whatever you get from the Mexicans. The rest you split among yourselves, fair and square, like I say.” He paused for a few minutes to catch his breath. “Now, do you want the job or don't you.”
“I have to take it whether I want it or not. You knew that to start with.”
“Ha-ha. Well, all right. That's more like it. There's something I'd better tell you, though. Joseph didn't want me to hire you, even when I told him who you were. I'll tell you the truth, I wouldn't hire you if I wasn't short on men. The last raid cut us down. I want to tell you here and now that it's no fancy tea party you're going on, robbing smuggler trains. What has Black Joseph got against you?”
“I don't know.”
Basset clawed at his fat face, looking faintly worried. “The Indian's a good man,” he said. “Fastest shot with a pistol I ever saw. Dead shot with a rifle, too. He'd as soon kill a man as look at him—maybe he'd rather. I think he actually enjoys killing.”
He sounded like a man who had a tiger by the tail and didn't know how to let go. He was afraid of the Indian. It showed in his watery eyes, on his sweaty face. It showed in the way his hands shook when he reached for a cigar.
He was afraid of the Indian and he wanted me to get rid of him. He wantedme to get rid of him, but he didn't know how to go about it. Maybe he figured that by just throwing us together he could manage it somehow.
I remembered those deadly Indian eyes and the way they had looked at me. It occurred to me that maybe Basset had already started dropping hints that I was making a play for Joseph's girl. That would throw us together, all right, if the Indian ever got wind of it.