“Get out of it. It’s over,” Hugh said. Then, “Do you hear me? They’re dead, except for scab-face, and he ain’t far from it.”
“What happened with your second shot?” Son’s voice sounded far away from him.
“I just missed, that’s all. I hit the first one so clean I figured I could catch scab-face in the side without even aiming. But ain’t this some beautiful pistol? I had that sonofabitch cocked and ready to fire again two seconds after the first shot. If the Texians get a bunch of these they’ll run Santa Anna plumb back to Mexico City.”
“Ain’t you got enough of that dead man?”
“I always admire good shooting, boy. And before you start to lecturing me again, you think about what they had in mind for us, not to say nothing about Sana.”
“What’d you want to do with that other one?”
“That depends a whole lot on him.”
They walked over to the unconscious man in the grass. Blood dripped from his nose into his unshaved face.
“Wake up, sweetheart,” Hugh said, touching the man on the shoulder with his boot.
“He looks like his brains is busted loose,” Son said.
“No, I think he’s just turned into a possum. But we’ll see.” Hugh knelt beside the man and began pushing divots of grass into his mouth. The man gagged and spat and tossed his head sideways. His eyes rolled wildly.
“That’s a little better, my friend,” Hugh said. “Now, you listen to me real careful. We killed your bunkies and you’re all on your own. So you’re going to tell us why you was dogging us through them trees back there, and don’t tell us you was running no deer.”
“We seen you leave out of Tyler’s this morning with all them supplies,” the man said.
Hugh raised his fist high over his head and smashed it down into the man’s face.
“Hold up, Hugh,” Son said.
“My ass. The next one is going to have his brains running out his nose,” Hugh said. “Why was you dogging us?”
“We rode into Tyler’s about two hours before light. I seen you was drunk and you was trading off that string, and I figured we’d take you easy today.”
Hugh hit him again, this time a short blow that brought the man’s lips into his teeth.
“I reckon you just lie by habit, don’t you?” he said. “There was a dozen men that left out of there this morning, most of them riding single with more money and supplies than we got. So I reckon we’re going to get it out of you the Indian way. What do you think about that, Sana?”
“He tell,” she said.
“We was going to kill you and take your supplies and animals, mister. The man your partner shot was after the squaw. What else you want out of me?”
“I can tell you’re a toughie that don’t get broke down easy,” Hugh said. He slipped his bone-handle knife out of the buckskin scabbard on his side and began sharpening the edge with a flint over the man’s face.
Then he pulled the man’s flaxen hair back in his fist and placed the knife’s edge between his ear and skull.
As Son stared at Hugh and the man lying on the ground, he didn’t know which of their expressions looked more horrible. Involuntarily, he stepped forward to pull Hugh away, but Sana held his arm with both her hands.
“You only make worse,” she said.
Hugh twisted the man’s hair tighter in his fist and pressed the flat of the knife blade against his scalp.
“Last chance or say good-bye to it forever.”
“Don’t do it. Please,” the man said. His mouth was trembling and tears ran out of his eyes. “A Frenchy named Landry has got two hundred dollars out on each of you.”
“Where’d you see this Frenchy at?” Hugh said.
“In a saloon where the trace branches off toward San Felipe.”
“What made you figure it was us he had the money out on?” Son said.
“He described that walleye. He said it looked like a black clam shell.”
“You ain’t off the point of my knife yet, asshole,” Hugh said.
“There ain’t anything else to tell you.”
“Where’s he supposed to pay you at?” Son said.
“Bexar or Matagorda Bay.”
“So you was going to put us in a salt barrel and haul us around half of south Texas. You’re lying again, boy,” Hugh said.
The man was silent, his eyes reaching upward into the blue sky. Hugh hit him on the ear with the butt of the knife.
“He said to pickle your heads in a jar and leave the rest,” the man said.
Hugh wiped the knife blade on the grass, slipped it in his scabbard, and got to his feet.
“This is the sonofabitch you thought I was being cruel on,” he said to Son.
“What do we do about him?”
“Kill him,” Sana said. Son turned and stared at her.
“She’s right. He knows who we are and where we’re at,” Hugh said.
“Hugh, we got to stop it somewhere.”
“He kill Indians’ food and then show off Indian scalp.”
“I got a feeling this boy would skin a skunk’s bottom if it’d put some money in his pocket,” Hugh said.
“I’m against it, and my say is half the vote here,” Son said. Hugh looked down at the man on the ground.
“You see, me and my partner vote on everything,” he said, “and he votes for your life. That’s lucky for you, ain’t it? The problem is that he don’t have a ball in his rifle, and I still got three in this Colt. So that’s unlucky for you.”
“I ain’t going to tell nobody,” the man said.
“I know you ain’t,” Hugh said.
“Please, mister. I’m heading for Galveston, and you won’t never see me again.”
“Galveston is right down the pike from Matagorda Bay, ain’t it?” Hugh said.
“I swear before Jesus I’ll get out of Texas. You can kill me if you ever see me anywhere again.”
Hugh took the revolver out of his belt and cocked the hammer back with his thumb. The man shook his head from side to side in the grass.
“Where’d you get that black ear you wear on your shirt?” Hugh said.
“I took it off a Comanche buck.”
“You never fought an Indian buck in your life. Who’d you cut it off of?”
“A squaw that used to tote for us.”
“Eat it.”
“What?”
“You heared me,” Hugh said, and placed the pistol barrel to the man’s temple.
A few minutes later he had the man take off his boots and buckskin breeches. The man’s white buttocks were puckered in the cold.
“I got a big bean fart working up in me right now,” Hugh said. “I’ll give you till it breaks loose to make them pine trees over yonder. Then I’m going to blow your skinny nuts all over this field.”
They watched the man race through the grass toward the stand of pines, the unnatural whiteness of his legs flashing in the sun.
“I guess you was with the Harpe gang, wasn’t you?” Son said.
“What you just seen is one way of doing it, boy. You either kill a man like that, or you shame him so he don’t ever bother you again. He’ll be afraid to sleep at night because of the dreams he’ll have about us.”
Behind them they heard the drone of deer flies in the grass.
“Let’s get out of here,” Hugh said.
“You reckon he was telling the truth about Landry being over in Bexar?”
“Shit, who knows? Landry might have lied to him, figuring scab-face would come out second best when he caught up with us and we’d cover him up in an ant pile. Piss on it, anyway. I need a drink. Sana, get that rum bottle out of my sack.”
“Let’s take their guns. We can sell them on down the trace.”
“You’re growing up all the time, ain’t you?”
As they rode away with the looted guns and powder horns and flints, the wind blew out of the pines and pressed the green and yellow grass flat in the field, exposing the booted leg of a man twisted on his knee like a tilted cross.