But he only smiled that sad half-smile of his. Then he shook a boot out of a stirrup and held it out. “Just step up here,” he said. “I guess this black horse won't mind riding double for a little piece.”
“Pappy, you're crazy. You can't expect to outrun a posse by riding double.”
He shrugged again. “But we can find a better place than this to fight from. Come on, son. There isn't much time.”
Pappy's word was law. I knew that he wouldn't budge until I did as he said. Dumbly, I put my foot in the stirrup and swung up behind him.
I glanced at the posse. They were already in rifle range, but they were holding their fire until they had us cold. Then I looked at Red, knowing what I had to do, but not knowing if I had the guts for it.
“Just look away, son,” Pappy said softly.
There was one pistol shot, and Red lay still.
Good-by, Red. Good-by to the last thing I ever gave a damn about, except Pappy. And I wasn't even sure that I cared a damn about Pappy. Maybe he was just something to hold to, a device that men like us used in order to live a little while longer. I felt empty and angry and there wasn't much sense to anything.
The big black took us as far as the top of the ridge, and that was the end of the line. We could hear the hoofs pounding now as Ray Novak pushed his posse of ranch hands on up into the hills after us. The black was a good horse—as good as Red, maybe—but he couldn't carry two men and be expected to outrun the sturdy range horses chasing us. When we hit the crest of the rise Pappy dumped out of the saddle, clawing that fancy rifle of his out of the saddle boot. I came off after him and the black went on down to the bottom of the slope.
“Over here, son!” Pappy yelled. And when I stopped rolling I saw that he already had a private fortress picked out for us. Three big rocks gave us cover on three sides and we could sweep the hill with fire in all directions. As I crawled up beside him, Pappy already had that rifle in action. He fired twice and two of the posse dumped out of their saddles and lay still. That cut the original five down to three, and I thought maybe we would get out of this after all, if we could catch one of the loose horses, and get rid of Ray Novak.
But Novak and the two ranch hands began to scatter before Pappy could cut any more of them down. They scrambled for rocks near the base of the hill and for a few moments it was quiet. Those two dead riders gave them something to think about before trying anything foolish.
Pappy looked at me, grinning slightly. “Well,” he said, “we've been in worse places. That's always some consolation, they say.”
I said nothing. I searched the land below us, but nobody was moving. It was quiet—deadly quiet. I wondered what Ray Novak was thinking down there. The Novaks and their tin badges! After looking at his pa, he would know that tin badges didn't make a man immune from bullets.
Pappy stacked his rifle against the rock, got out his makings, and began to roll a cigarette. Like a man knocking off work for a few minutes to take a breather. There was no way of knowing what he was thinking. For a moment he stared flatly down the side of the slope; then he looked at me.
“It didn't work out, did it, son?” he said. “I didn't think it would, but I was hoping....”
I knew he was talking about Laurin. And I didn't want to talk about Laurin. I didn't want to think about her.
Nodding his head toward the bottom of the hill, he said, “He got her, didn't he?” meaning Ray Novak. “I think maybe I knew from the first that he would. It was just a feeling, I guess, after you told me how things were.”
“Cut it off, will you, Pappy?” I said angrily.
“Sure, son, I didn't mean to butt in.” He sat back against the rock, with that cigarette dangling between his lips. “He's a good man, though,” he said thoughtfully. “He damn near put a bullet in me that day. Probably he's learned some things since then. I don't think I'd be in any hurry to stand up to him now.”
“He's a goddamned tin soldier riding behind a tin badge,” I said. “His pa was the same, but he died just as easy as anybody else.”
Pappy's eyes widened. “You killed his old man?”
“Sure I did. He tried to arrest me.”
Pappy shook his head sadly from side to side. “Maybe we're going to have trouble,” he said heavily. “Maybe we're going to have more trouble than we ever saw before.”
It was still quiet down on the slope. I said, “This is no good. We can't run, and we can't fight if they don't come out from behind those rocks. But we can't just sit here. By now, somebody from the ranch will be headed toward John's City for more help. We've got to get away from here before that comes.”
Pappy nodded and spat out his cigarette. Then a horse nickered back behind us and I could almost see Pappy's ears prick up. “Just a minute,” he said. “I'd better look after that black of mine.”
He crawled on his hands and knees to the naked side of the hill and peered down below. Suddenly, something jabbed me in the back of the brain. Intuition, they call it. Or hunch. Some men have it and some don't. Sometimes, when it hits you, it tells you to put your stack on the red and all you have to do is watch the roulette ball drop in. Or it may tell you that around the next corner is sudden death. When I felt it, I whirled and yelled:
“Pappy, look out!”
But the moment had passed. It had come and gone and I hadn't got my bet down in time. I heard a rifle crack in the afternoon, and I turned just in time to see Pappy go down.
“Pappy!” I yelled again.
But I knew it was too late. I ran over to where he was, silhouetting myself against the sky, but not caring now. Then I saw the rifleman—that sober, stone-cold face that was past anger, or grief, or any emotion at all. It was Ray Novak.
I didn't stop to wonder how he had slipped around to the naked side of the hill. He had done it, and that was enough. Dumbly, he was looking at me now. Probably, he had figured it out cold and clear in his mind what he was going to do to me when he caught me, but suddenly finding himself face to face with me startled him. And that was
