I watched Pappy stiffen, just a little, then relax. “That's too bad about Ralph,” he said softly.
“A double load of buckshot the sonofabitch gave him,” Paul Creyton said again. “Right in the face. I wouldn't of known him, my own brother, if I hadn't been standing right next to him and seen him get it.” His little eyes were dark with anger, but I couldn't see any particular grief on his face. He jerked his head toward the shack. “It ain't much, Pappy, but you and your friend are welcome to stay with me. I was just going out to see if I couldn't shoot myself some grub.”
Pappy looked at me. We had been riding a long way and our horses needed a rest, but he was leaving the decision up to me.
“I've got some side bacon and corn meal,” I said. “I guess that will see us through supper.”
We cooked the bacon at a small rock fireplace in one corner of the shack, then we fried some hoecake bread in the grease, and finally made some coffee. Pappy and Paul Creyton talked a little, but not much. Somehow I gathered that Pappy wasn't such a great friend of the Creytons as I had thought at first.
After supper, it was almost dark, and the only light in the shack came from the little jumping flames in the fireplace. Talk finally slacked off to nothing, and Paul Creyton sat staring into the fire, anger written into every line of his face. Whatever his plans were, he wasn't letting us in on them. Whatever was in his mind, he was keeping it to himself.
Pappy got up silently and went outside to look at his horse. I followed him.
“What do you think about that posse?” I said. “Do you think they'll follow Creyton up to this place?”
Pappy shook his head, lifting his horse's hoofs and inspecting them. “Not tonight. This place is hard to find if you don't know where to look, and Paul can cover a trail as well as the next one.”
I rubbed Red down and gave him some water out of a rain barrel at the edge of the shack. His ribs were beginning to show through his glossy hide, and there were several briar scratches across his chest. But there wasn't anything wrong with him that a sack of oats or corn wouldn't fix.
I heard Pappy grunt, and I looked up. He had his horse's left forefoot between his knees, gouging around the shoe with a pocketknife.
“A stone bruise,” he said. “He's been walking off center since noon, but I figured it was because he was tired.” He got the rock that was caught under the rim of the shoe and nipped it out. “Well, there won't be any riding for a day or so, until that hoof is sound again.”
“That means staying here tomorrow?”
“It meansme staying here. You don't have to. Another day's ride will put you on the Brazos.”
For a minute I didn't say anything. I hadn't figured that it would be any problem to pack up and leave Pappy any time I felt like it. But there was something about that ugly face that a man could get to like. He didn't have many friends. Maybe I was the closest thing to a friend that he had ever had. I made up my mind.
“I'll wait,” I said. “We'll ride in together.”
I imagined that I saw Pappy smile, but it was too dark now really to see his face. Then, without looking up, he said, “In that case, you'd better keep an eye on that red horse of yours.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“If you were on foot,” Pappy said, “and in no position to get yourself a horse, what would you do?”
“Like Paul Creyton.”
“We'll say Eke Paul Creyton.” began to get mad just thinking about it. “If he lays a hand on Red,” I said, “I'll kill him.”
Pappy turned, and stretched, and yawned, as if it were no concern of his. “Maybe I'm wrong,” he said, “but I doubt it. He's got to have a horse, and that animal of yours is the closest one around.”
He started back toward the shack, toward the doorway faintly jumping in orange firelight. “Just a minute,” I said. “How are you so sure that he won't try to steal that black of yours?”
Pappy smiled. He was in the dark, but I knew he was smiling.
“Paul Creyton knows better than to steal an animal of mine,” he said.
When I got back to the shack I decided that Pappy had the whole thing figured wrong. Creyton had his blanket roll undone and was stretched out in front of the fireplace when I came in. He didn't look like a man ready to make a quick getaway on a stolen horse. Pappy was sitting on the other side of the room with his back to the wall, smoking one of his corn-shuck cigarettes.
“It seems like Paul just came from your part of the country,” he said.
“John's City?”
Creyton sat up and worked with the makings of a cigarette. “That's the place,” he said. “Me and Ralph and Buck came through there a few days back. About the day after you pulled out, according to what Pappy tells me.”
I looked at Pappy, but his face told me nothing.
“Well, what about it?”
“Nothing about it,” Creyton said bluntly. “We just came through it, that's all. The carpetbag law was raisin' hell. Stoppin' all travelers, police makin' raids on the local ranchers. All because some white punk took a swing at a cavalryman, they said.”
I hadn't been ready for that. I had figured, like Ray Novak, that if the two of us got out of the country for a while it would all blow over. But here the police were raiding the ranches, because of us. Our own place, maybe. Or the Bannerman place, where Laurin was.
If one of the pigs so much as laid a hand on Laurin...
The thought of it made me weak and a little sick. I wheeled and started for the door.
“Where do you think you're going?” Pappy said.
“Back to John's City.”
“Do you plan to go on foot? I don't care what you do with yourself, but I hate to see you kill a good horse out of damn foolishness. Wait till tomorrow. You'll make better time in the long run by giving your horse a rest.”
Pappy was right. I knew that, but it wasn't easy staying here and wondering what might be happening to Laurin, or Ma and Pa, and doing nothing about it. Grey-ton got slowly to his feet, standing there in front of the fireplace, looking at me.
“You'd better listen to Pappy, kid,” he said. “When you need a horse you need him bad. I ought to know.”
I didn't want Creyton's advice. For all I knew, he just wanted me to stick around a while longer to give him a better chance to steal my horse. But I knew they were both right. Red had been pushed hard for the past few days, and if I tried to push him again tonight he might break down for good.
So I stayed. When the fire burned out, we made blanket pallets on the dirt floor, and before long Pappy's heavy breathing told me that he was asleep. He didn't snore. From time to time the rhythm of his breathing would break, he would rouse himself, look around, and then go back to sleep again. That was the way Pappy was. He never slept sound enough to snore. You had a feeling that he never let his mind be completely blanked out, that he always kept some little corner of it open. Being on the run had done that. He was afraid to allow himself the luxury of real sleep. A man like Pappy never knew when he would have to be wide awake and ready to shoot.