The voice cracked and Steuber jumped to his feet. “Sure, Buck, if you say so.”
The man watched vacantly as Steuber went back to the rear where the remuda was ringed in; then he turned to me. I had a crazy idea that I had seen the man before, but at the same time I knew I hadn't. There was something about him that was familiar. His eyes maybe. I had seen eyes like those somewhere, clear, and blue, and deadly. He wore matched .44's converted, the same as mine, and I didn't have to be told that he knew how to use them. There are some things you know without having it proved to you.
“What's your name, kid?” he asked flatly.
“Cameron,” I said. “Talbert Cameron. I don't think I caught yours.”
He looked as if he hadn't heard me. “You're the kid that rode in with Pappy Garret yesterday, ain't you?”
He was asking a lot of questions, in a country where it wasn't polite to ask a stranger too many questions.
But I said, “That's right.”
I thought something happened to those eyes of his. He said flatly, “When you see Pappy, tell him I'm looking for him to kill him.”
For a moment, I just stood there with my back against the wagon wheel. He said it so quietly and matter-of-factly that you wondered afterward if he had spoken at all.
I tried to keep my voice as level as his. “Don't you think that'll be kind of a job? Men have tried it before, I hear.”
His voice took an edge. “You just tell him what I said, kid. That way maybe you'll live to be a man someday.” He turned abruptly and started to walk away. Then he turned again. “Just tell him Buck Creyton is ready any time he wants to show his guts. If there is any question as to why I want to kill him, you might ask if he remembers my brother Paul.”
He was gone before I could think of anything to say. Buck Creyton—a name as deadly as a soft-nosed bullet. A name as well known as Pappy Garret's, when the talk got around to gun-fighters.
I thought, Have you lost your guts? Why didn't you tell him that you were the one that killed his brother, and not Pappy?
I didn't know. I just thought of those deadly blue eyes and felt my insides turn over. He would kill me without batting an eye. Then I thought, Just like I killed his brother, and the three policemen, and the cavalryman.
I walked over to Red and swung up to the saddle. “Come on, boy,” I said. “Let's get out of here.”
Chapter 7
I waited for pappy at the camp we had made, up the river from the herds. I wasn't sure whether I wanted to run or to stay with Pappy and see the thing through with Creyton. Maybe I would have the decision made for me, if Pappy ran into Creyton before he got back to camp.
Then—out of nowhere—I heard the words: Don't worry about me. I'm not going to get into any more trouble. They sounded well worn and bitter. They were words I had said to Laurin, and a few hours later I had killed another man, a soldier.
Now I had the government officers on my tail as well as the state police. Laurin ... I'd hardly had time to think about her until now. I could close my eyes and see her. I could almost touch her. But not quite.
I picked up a rock and flung it viciously out of sheer helplessness and anger.
I hadn't asked to get into trouble. It was like playing a house game with the deck stacked against you. The longer you played, the harder you tried to get even, and the more you lost. Where would it stop? Could it be stopped at all?
I realized what I was doing, and changed my thinking. You'd go crazy thinking that way. Or lose your guts maybe, and get yourself killed. And I wasn't planning on getting killed, by Buck Creyton, or the police, or anybody else. I had to keep living and get back to John's City. I had to get back to Laurin.
They didn't really have anything against me—except, of course, that one trooper that I had shot up at Daggert's cabin. But a jury of ranchers wouldn't hang me for shooting a bluebelly. Just lay quiet, I told myself, and wait for the right time.
But there was still Buck Creyton to think about. My mind kept coming back to him. I wondered vaguely if Paul Creyton had any more kinfolks that would be bent on avenging him. Or the policemen, or the trooper.
At last, when I finally went back to the beginning of the trouble, there was Ray Novak. He was the one who had started it all. I realized then that I hated Ray Novak more than anybody else, and sooner or later...
But caution tugged again in the back of my mind. Lie quiet, it said. Don't ask for more trouble.
Pappy came in a little before sundown, covered with trail dust and looking dog tired. I didn't know how to break it to him about Buck Creyton. I wasn't sure what he would do when he found out that Creyton was after him for something he hadn't done.
“I got us fixed up with a job of work,” he said, wetting his bandanna from his saddle canteen and wiping it over his dirty face. “The Box-A outfit needs a pair of swing riders to see them through the Territory. Forty dollars a month if we use our own horses. That all right with you?”
“I guess so,” I said.
He wrung his bandanna out and tied it around his neck again. “You don't sound very proud of it,” he said. But he grinned as he said it. I could see that Pappy was in good spirits. “It seemed like I rode halfway to the Rio Grande looking for that outfit,” he went on. “But it's what we want. The trail boss is a friend of mine and he don't allow anybody to cut his help for strays. Cavalry included.” He patted his belly. “Say, is there any of that bacon left?”
“Sure,” I said. I got the slab and cut it up while Pappy made the fire. I decided I'd better let him eat first before saying anything.
It was almost dark by the time we finished eating. Pappy sat under a cottonwood as I wiped the skillet, staring mildly across the wide, sandy stretch of land that was Red River. There was almost no river to it, just a little stream in the middle of that wide, dusty bed. Quicksand, not water, was what made it dangerous to cross.
I put the skillet with the blanket roll and decided that now was as good a time as any.
“Pappy,” I said abruptly, “we're in trouble.”
He made one of those sounds of his that passed for laughter. “Wewere in trouble,” he said. “Not any more. We've got clear sailing now, all the way to Kansas.”
“I don't mean with the police. With Buck Creyton.”
I saw him stiffen for a moment. Slowly, he began to relax. “Just what do you mean by that?” he asked. Some people, when they get suddenly mad, they yell, or curse, or maybe hit the closest thing they can find. But not Pappy. His voice took on a soft, velvety quality, almost like the purring of a big cat. That's the way his voice was now.
But I had gone too far to back down. I said, “I saw him today. He's working with one of the outfits getting ready to make the crossing. He's looking for you, Pappy. He says he's going to kill you.”
Pappy sat very still. Then he said, “You yellow little bastard.”
The words hit like a slap in the face. I wheeled on him, my hands about to jump for my guns, but then I remembered what Pappy had done to Ray Novak, and dropped them to my side.