We came out of some trees onto an open meadow, a little graze like that was cupped there in the hills, then crossing the meadow and taking the only way out, we went up a pretty long draw that was deep and lined with thick brush and rocks along both sides, the draw being about sixty feet wide and upwards to three hundred or more feet long, that being a calculation from memory.
We made our way up this draw, looking back across the meadow as we went, finally reached the top and almost dropped everything we carried. Not out of tiredness, out of surprise!
For sitting there with his Spencer across his lap and smoking a cigarette was John Russell.
Mendez yelled his name and ran over to him, Mendez assuming just as I did, I guess, that Russell had changed his mind and gotten the mean feeling out of his system, and now wanted to show us the way out of here.
Mendez scolded him a little, but in a kidding way, that he shouldn’t have done what he did. Mendez was too glad to see Russell to be serious or angry at him, telling him how we couldn’t keep up with him and how worn out we got trying to.
Russell moved him aside with his arm and motioned all of us back from the crest so we wouldn’t be seen from below.
From the way Mendez acted, our troubles were over.
Not so according to Dr. Favor. He said, staring at Russell, “You going to sit there for a while, are you?”
Russell didn’t move. “You want to go bad, uh?”
He saw that Russell had no intention of getting up. “Now it comes,” Dr. Favor said. “I want to hear how you’ll say this.”
“You want to go,” Russell said, “go on.”
Dr. Favor kept looking at him. “What else?”
“Leave the saddlebag and the gun here.”
Dr. Favor’s big red face almost seemed to relax and smile. “There,” he said. “Right out in the open. It took you all night to realize you’d run off and left something behind.”
Mendez, not understanding, had that worried look again. “What is it?” he said to Russell.
“It’s my money,” Dr. Favor said. “He’s thinking it looks pretty good. Out here and no law to stop him. But four people against one. Maybe he hasn’t thought about that.”
Russell drew on the cigarette. “Maybe one is enough,” he said.
That was when the McLaren girl stepped in. “Your money,” she yelled at Dr. Favor. I mean yelled it. “After you stole it! We’re supposed to side with you to protect money you stole!” Then her eyes took in Russell too. “You sit here arguing about money and giving Frank Braden all the time he’d ever need.”
“Be careful what you say,” Dr. Favor said to her. “I think you are talking without thinking. This is my money, in my possession, and it will take more than the word of a dead outlaw to prove it isn’t.”
“All this talk,” Mendez said, like he had just thought of it. “We have to move.”
Russell looked up at him. “Where do you want to go?”
Mendez said, “Are you crazy? They’re coming!”
“Tell me where,” Russell said.
“Where? I don’t know. Out of here.”
“I’ll tell you something,” Russell said. “There’s open country. Maybe it takes you two, three hours to cross it. And while you’re there they come with their horses.”
“Then hide somewhere,” Mendez said, “and wait for dark to cross it.”
Russell nodded. “Or do better than that. Wait for them here. Shoot their horses to make it even, uh? Maybe finish it.”
“Finish it,” I said, understanding him, but I guess not believing what he was asking us to do. “You mean try and kill them?”
“If they get close enough,” Russell said, “they’re going to kill you.”
“But they didn’t harm anybody before. Why would they want to now?”
“Do you want to give them your water?”
“They got water.”
“Two canteens which they were drinking out of all day yesterday. Do you want to give them yours?”
“No, but-”
“Then they’ll kill you for it.”
Until then it seemed just a matter of running and getting away or running and being caught and they getting the money after all. But kill them or they would kill us? It was a terrible thing to think about and you couldn’t help looking for other ways. Run or hide. Run or hide. Those ways kept popping into your head while Russell just sat there looking down the draw and waiting.
“And if we don’t finish it,” Dr. Favor said, making those last words sound dumb to have ever been thought of. “What then?”
“You don’t have a say in this,” Russell said, looking up at him. “You can stay or go, but either way you leave the saddlebag.”
“You must have kept awake all night,” Dr. Favor said.
“It came to me,” Russell said back.
“How much you figure I have?”
Russell shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Wouldn’t take much, would it, to keep you in whisky?”
“You leave the belly gun too,” Russell said. And held out his hand for it, turning just a little so that the Spencer in his lap turned with him.
Dr. Favor just stared, not moving. “You’re forgetting something,” he said. “What if the others decide against you?”
“Then they have you to lead them,” Russell answered.
He sat there with his hand still held toward Dr. Favor and you knew he could sit there the rest of his life and never budge. It was his way if we stayed with him. It was either do what he wanted or else go on with Dr. Favor. It was not like choosing between a good thing or a bad thing. Still, one felt to be better than the other and it wasn’t much of a hard choice to make.
The McLaren girl was the one who said it out loud, though not very loud. “I would like to go home,” she said, hardly glancing at Dr. Favor. “I sure would like to go home. And I know he can’t find the way.”
Neither Mendez nor I had to say anything. If we’d sided with Dr. Favor, we would have.
With us watching him, I believe, Dr. Favor didn’t want to get caught looking awkward or nervous. You had to give him credit for that. He took it calmly, not offering any argument, but I will bet thinking fast all the time. He just shrugged and handed his revolver to Russell.
“Chief make plenty war now,” he said. You see how he was passing it off? Like Russell was a bully you had to give in to if you wanted some peace.
Russell didn’t pay any attention. He took the gun, then looked at Mendez, noticing Mendez had Lamarr Dean’s revolver besides his shotgun.
“You shoot all right?” he asked.
Mendez frowned. “I’m not sure.”
“You’ll find out,” Russell said. “First the shotgun. When they’re close. So close you can touch them. Then the other one if you need it.”
“I don’t know,” Mendez said, worried. “Just sit and wait for them like that.”
“If there was a better way,” Russell said, “we would do it.” Just that moment talking to Mendez, Russell’s voice was gentle and you remembered they had known each other before and maybe had been friends.
He looked off down the draw, studying the trees over the other side of the meadow. If they were on our sign, he knew, they would come through there and up the draw.
Then he was looking right at me and handing me Dr. Favor’s revolver. At first I didn’t make any move to take it.
He pushed it out again like telling me, “Come on, take it,” and that time I did.
“You have one thing to do,” he said and shifted his eyes over to Dr. Favor and back again. “Watch him.”
Then it was the McLaren girl’s turn. She stood there, her dark nice-looking face very calm, seeing Russell looking at her then.
“You stay with this one,” Russell said, meaning me.