I heard myself laugh abruptly. “So that's the man you're going to marry! A man with a yellow streak up his back that shows all the way through his shirt!”
But I stopped. That wasn't what I wanted to say at all. Anyway, I knew that Ray Novak wasn't yellow. He might be a lot of things, but a coward wasn't one of them.
Laurin said, “Tall, please. You're hurting me.”
I turned loose her arm. My thoughts were all mixed up in my mind and I couldn't get the words arranged to tell her what I wanted to say. I found myself standing there dumbly, rubbing my face with my hands and wondering how I was going to explain it to her. If I could only explain it in a way she could understand, then everything would be all right again. But she didn't give me a chance to get my thoughts arranged.
She said flatly, “Why don't you go away, Tall? Go far away so that we'll never see you or hear from you again. Ray will give you that chance, because he knows what you meant to me once. He has been sworn in as a special deputy to get you. He's working for the government, Tall, a United States marshal—but he'll give you a chance if you'll only take it.”
I said, “I don't need any favors from Ray Novak!” But that wasn't what I wanted to say, either. “Laurin, Laurin, what's wrong? What have they said... what have they done to turn you against me like this?”
She shook her head, a bewildered look in her eyes. “You actually believe that your trouble is caused by other people, don't you?”
Think? Iknew there wouldn't have been any trouble if it hadn't been for the Creytons, and Thorntons, and Hagans, and Novaks. But how could I explain that to her? Women didn't understand things like that. I remembered what my ma had said, long ago, about my fight with Criss Bagley: But, Tall, why didn't you run?
I said quickly, “Laurin, listen to me. This isn't the end of us. It's only the beginning. It won't be the same as we planned, but we can make it good. We can be together.” I took her arm, gently this time, and she didn't try to pull away. “They'll never catch me,” I said. “The army, Ray Novak, nobody else. We'll go away. Pappy knows a place in New Mexico. We can go there. We'll be together, that's the only thing that counts. You don't mean it about marrying Ray Novak, it's just because you've heard wrong things about me. You love me, not him.”
The words came rushing out in senseless confusion, and they stopped as abruptly as they had begun. The look of bewilderment went out of Laurin's eyes, and amazement took its place.
“Love you?” she said strangely. “I don't even know you. I don't suppose I ever knew you. Not really, the way you get to know people and understand them, and be a part of them. You're...” She shook her head helplessly. “You're nobody I ever saw before. You're some wild animal driven crazy—by the smell of blood.”
Her voice was suddenly and painfully gentle, cutting worse than curses. She dropped her head.
“I'm sorry I said that, Tall.”
But she meant it. She didn't try to get out of that. I turned loose of her and walked woodenly to the door. I pushed the door open, went down the steps and into the yard.
Ray Novak said, “Tall.”
I went on toward the barn where I had left Red. I don't know where I thought I was going from there. To catch up with Pappy, maybe, and try to make it to New Mexico with him. Maybe I wasn't going anywhere. It didn't make any difference.
Ray Novak caught up with me as I was about to climb back into the saddle. “I'd better tell you the way things are,” he said. “I'm giving you a day's start to get out of John's City country. Then I'll be coming after you, Tall.”
I said flatly, “Don't be a goddamned fool all your life. I don't want any favors from you. I'm right here. Take me now if you think you can.”
He shook his head. “That's the way Laurin wants it.” He hesitated for a moment, then added, “Don't underrate me, Tall. I've learned things about guns and gunmen since you saw me last. I won't be as easy as Hagan, and Paul Creyton, and some of the others. Don't think that I will, Tall.”
“You and your goddamned two bullets in a tin can,” I said. “You don't even know what shooting is. But I'll teach you. You come after me and I'll teach you good, Ray.”
I got up to the saddle and rode south, without looking back. Without thinking, or wanting to think. I didn't know where I was going and I didn't care. I just knew that I had to get away and I had to keep from thinking about Laurin. I should have hated her, I suppose. But I couldn't. And I suppose I should have killed Ray Novak while I had the chance, but, somehow, I couldn't do that either. Not with Laurin looking. I felt a hundred years old. As old as Pappy Garret, and as tired. But, like Pappy, I had to keep running.
I didn't see the buckboard until it was too late. And by that time, I didn't care one way or another. It was old Martin Novak coming up the wagon road from Garner's Store, and I vaguely remembered Ray saying that his pa was coming by the Bannermans' to pick him up. I had forgotten all the rules that Pappy had gone to so much trouble to teach me. I let him get within fifty yards of me before I even noticed him, and by that time things had boiled down to where there was only one way out.
It's the same thing all over again, I thought dumbly. But they never understand that.
Nobody could understand it, unless maybe it was Pappy, or others like him. The monotonous regularity with which it happened would almost have been funny, if it hadn't been so deadly serious. It was like dreaming the same bad dream over and over again until it no longer frightened you or surprised you—you merely braced yourself as well as you could, because you knew what was going to happen next.
Martin Novak had the buckboard pulled across the road. I could just see the top of his head and the rifle he had pointed at me, as he stood on the other side, using the hack for a breastwork.
“Just keep your hands away from your pistols, Tall,” he called, “and ride this way, slow and easy.”
I didn't have a chance against the rifle, not at that range. But I felt a strange calm. I never doubted what would happen next. I didn't even wonder how it would end this time, because this time I knew.
But I played it straight, the way Pappy would have done. I said, “What's this all about? What's that rifle for, anyway?”
“I think you know, Tall,” he called. “Now just do as I say. Ride in slow and easy, and keep your hands away from your guns.”
I nudged Red forward, keeping my hands on the saddle horn. If it had been Pappy, he would have been wearing his pistols for a saddle draw, high up on the waist, with the butts forward. I had forgotten to make the switch, but even that didn't bother me now. I looked at Martin Novak and thought: There's only one way, I guess, to teach men like you to leave us alone.
When I got within about twenty yards of the buck-board, he motioned me to stop. He was wondering how he was going to disarm me, and probably remembering stories he had heard about what had happened to Bass Hagan.
He said, “I don't want to have to kill you, Tall, but I will if you don't do exactly as I say. Now just reach with one hand, where I can see, and unbuckle your cartridge belts.”
I said, “Just a minute, Mr. Novak. Hell, I never did anything to you.”