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.”
He raised up from behind the buckboard and I could see the star pinned to his vest. The Novaks and their god-damned tin stars, I thought.
“It's more than that, Tall,” he said solemnly. “You're wanted by the law. It's my job to arrest you, and that's what I intend to do.” He studied my hands, which still hadn't moved toward my belt buckles. But he still had that rifle aimed at the center of my chest, and he wasn't too worried.
He said, “You've... been to the Bannermans', I guess.”
I said, “Yes. I've been there.”
He nodded soberly. “Ray shouldn't of done it,” he said thoughtfully, almost to himself. “He should of took you in himself. But,” he added, “I guess Laurin wanted you to have one more chance.”
I said, “I guess she did.” I didn't particularly want to kill him. I didn't have anything against him except that he insisted on making my business his business. And if I killed him I knew I wouldn't get that day's start that Ray Novak had promised. But that didn't bother me. Ray Novak could come after me any time he felt like it. I was ready for him.
For a moment, I thought I'd try to talk the old man out of it, but I knew that it wouldn't do any good. Like Pappy, I had grown tired to trying to talk to people in a language that they didn't understand. It was easier to let my guns speak for me.
