Anyway, I had done it. Ray Novak and I were through for good now, but I didn't give a damn about that. I turned and started up toward the bend in the creek to get Red saddled up.
But Pappy said, “Just a minute, son. I'd like to talk to you.”
Chapter 3
I TURNED AROUND. Pappy looked at me as he punched the empty cartridge out of his pistol and replaced it with a live round. After a moment he said:
“Thanks.”
“Forget it. I wasn't trying to buy anything.”
“You called me Pappy,” he said. “How did you know who I was?”
“The other fellow figured it out. His old man used to be a town marshal and he saw your picture on one of the dodgers that came through the office.”
Pappy shook his head, puzzled. “I know a man on the run when I see one. And he was on the run, the same as you. He didn't look like a marshal's son to me.”
“His pa was marshal before the carpetbaggers took over.”
Pappy began to understand. He rubbed a hand thoughtfully over his bushy chin. He moved back up the slope a few steps and sat down, leaning back with his elbows on his saddle. After a moment he untied the dirty bandanna and mopped his face and the back of his neck.
There was something about him that fascinated me. Only a minute ago he had come within a hair's breadth of getting a bullet in his brain, and all the emotion he showed was to wipe his face 'with a dirty handkerchief.
“Well,” he asked, “what are you staring at?”
“You,” I said. “I was just wondering how you came to go to sleep at a time like that.”
He thought about that for a moment, and at last he sighed. “I was tired,” he said simply. “I haven't slept for more than two days.”
I should have saddled Red right then and rode away from there. There was trouble in the air. You could feel it all around, and you got the idea that trouble flocked to Pappy like iron filings to a lodestone. But I didn't move.
I said, “Ray Novak will be on your trail again. Sooner or later he'll be riding behind a marshal's badge, and when that happens he'll hunt you down. You should have killed him while you had the chance.”
I half expected Pappy to laugh. The idea of Pappy having anything to fear from a youngster like Ray Novak would have been funny to most people. But Pappy didn't laugh. He studied me carefully with those pale gray eyes.
“A man does his own killing, son, and that's enough,” he said. “I reckon if you want this Novak fellow dead, you'll have to see to it yourself.”
I flared up at that.
“I don't care if he's dead or alive. Ray Novak doesn't mean anything to me.”
Something changed in Pappy's eyes. I had an idea that way down deep he was smiling, but it didn't show on that ugly face.
“Maybe I spoke out of turn,” he said finally. “I guess you're right. I should have killed him... while I had the chance.”
There didn't seem to be any more to say. I turned and headed around the bend to where Red was picketed, and Pappy didn't make any move to stop me. But I could almost feel those eyes on me as I threw the double-rigged saddle up on Red's broad neck and began to tighten the cinches. I got my blanket roll and tied it on behind and I was ready to go. I was ready to leave this creek and Pappy Garret behind. I had enough trouble as it was, and if I got caught, I didn't want it to be with a man like Pappy. I swung up to the saddle and pulled Red around to where the outlaw was still standing.
“I guess this is where I cut out,” I said. “So long, Pappy.”
“So long, son.”
He looked a hundred years old right then. His heavy-lidded, red-rimmed eyes were watery with fatigue, and once in a while little nervous tics of sheer weariness would jerk at the corner of his mouth.
“Well,” I said, “take care of yourself.”
“The same to you, son,” Pappy said. I started to pull Red around again and head downstream, when Pappy added, “Just a minute before you go.”
He moved over a couple of steps to where his saddlebags were. He opened one of them and took out a pair of pistols, almost exactly like the ones he was wearing. Gleaming, deadly weapons, with rubbed walnut butts. He came over and handed them up to me.
“Bad pistols are like bad friends,” he said. “They let you down when you need them most. You'd better take these.”
I didn't know what to say. I looked at Pappy and then at the guns.
“Go on, take them,” he said. “A fellow down on the border let me have them.” And he smiled that sad half-smile of his. “He wasn't in any condition to object.”
I took the guns dumbly, feeling their deadly weight as I balanced them in my hands. I had never held weapons like them before. They had almost perfect balance. I flipped them over with my fingers in the trigger guards, and the butts smacked solidly in my palms, as if they had been carved by an artist specially to fit my hands.
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “All right, Pappy,” I said finally. “You win.”
He looked surprised. “I win what?”
“I'll keep watch while you catch some sleep. That's what you wanted, wasn't it?”
Then I saw something that few people ever saw. Pappy Garret smiled. Not that sad half-smile of his, but a real honest-to-God, face-splitting smile that reached all the way to his gray eyes.
“I think we'll get along, son,” he said.
So that's the way it was. I unsaddled Red again and staked him out, then I took my position up on the creek bank while Pappy stretched out again with his head on the saddle. He raised up once to look at me, still slightly amused.
“My hide is worth ten thousand dollars at the nearest marshal's office,” he said. “How do I know you won't try to shoot me while I'm asleep?”
“If I'd wanted ten thousand dollars that bad,” I said, “I'd have killed you the first time you went to sleep. And I wouldn't have been polite enough to wake you up first. I don't let my conscience bother me, the way Novak does.”
Pappy's mouth twitched, and there was that almost silent grunting sound, and I knew that he was laughing. He was dead asleep before his head hit the saddle again.
I had time to do some thinking while Pappy slept. I decided that maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea, after all, to stick with Pappy until we reached the Brazos. If anybody would know all the outtrails to miss the cavalry and police, Pappy Garret was the man. And avoiding cavalry and police was about the most important thing I could think of right now.
I didn't think much about Ray Novak. We had never been anything in particular to each other, and now that we were separated for good, I was satisfied. I didn't give a damn where he went or what he did.
But I thought of Laurin Bannerman. Laurin, with eyes a little too large for her small face, and her small mouth that always looked slightly berry-stained, and her laugh that was as fresh as spring rain. I thought about her plenty now that I had time on my hands and there was nothing else to do. It was a funny thing, but I had never paid any attention to her until a couple of years ago. I guess that's the way boys are around that age. One minute girls mean nothing, and the next minute they're everything.