This rotten, maggoty mess of filth and corruption and death that I call brains, I'd splatter them all over these filthy walls!” He made a sweeping gesture with his arm and almost fell.
“Come on,” I said. “You need that drink worse than I thought.”
He was better after he'd had a couple of glasses of the stuff. His eyes cleared, his hands became steady.
“How do you feel?” I said.
He looked at me. “How do I feel? I can't tell you, Tall Cameron, but maybe by sundown you'll know.” He took the bottle off the bar and walked out of the place swinging it in his hand. He was the goddamnedest guy I ever saw.
We went around to the livery barn where our horses were, and as the liveryman saddled up for us he slipped boxes of cartridges into our saddlebags.
“Compliments of Basset,” Bama said dryly. He swigged from the neck of his bottle and then put it in his saddlebag with the ammunition. As we rode out of town he began to sing in that thick, black drawl of his:
“Oh, Susanna, don't you cry for me,
For I'm goin' to Alabama with a banjo on my knee.”
“But her name wasn't Susanna,” he said. “It was Myra. And I won't be going to Alabama, with anything.”
It wasn't a long ride to the foothills of the Huachucas. Bama knew all the short cuts, and before long the town was far behind and there were just those naked, dark hills of rocks and boulders and cactus and greasewood. We climbed higher and higher until we got into the mountains themselves, and the going got slower.
“We won't be able to make it today,” Bama said. “It'll be near sundown before we'll meet Joseph and Kreyler and the rest of Basset's army. The battle won't start before tomorrow, I guess.”
I wondered if it was going to be as bad as Bama made it out to be. I doubted it. But something kept me from asking questions.
We rode for a long while without saying anything. Every half hour or so Bama would take a belt at the bottle.
“You know,” he said finally, “this stuff doesn't really do any good unless you've got enough to make you sleep the deep and dreamless sleep of the dead.” He shook the bottle thoughtfully. “There's not enough here for that.”
“Then why do you drink it?”
He smiled sadly. “I'm afraid,” he said mildly.
“You're also crazy.”
He bobbed his head up and down, soberly, as if I had just said something very profound.
“It's surprising how much of the stuff you can drink when you're afraid,” he went on. “For instance,” he said abruptly, “I was awake last night when hell broke loose in that room of yours. I heard the girl in there and I thought to myself, Well, there's one more scalp the Indian can hang on his belt. Of course, I didn't know at the time that my neighbor was the famous Tall Cameron. He'll kill you, you know. The first chance he gets.”
“He can go to hell,” I said. “I don't want any part of his girl. She's crazy, like everybody else in this Godforsaken place. Last night she tried to kill me.”
For a moment Bama looked at me. Then he threw his head back and howled with laughter. “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned!” he said when he got his breath. “No, my friend, I'm afraid your days are numbered. If the Indian doesn't kill you, there's always Kreyler. To get that girl, Kreyler would kill you in a minute, if Black Joseph was out of the way.”
“I tell you I don't want anything to do with her. Joseph or Kreyler can have her.”
There was another long silence while Bama studied the contents of his bottle. He allowed himself a short drink, corked it good and tight, and put it away. “Why don't you tell me about her?” he said finally. “Maybe it will do you good to get it off your chest.”
“Tell you about who?”
“The girl you left back in Texas, or wherever you came from. The girl you grew up with and loved and planned to marry. The girl who loved you once but can't stand the sight of you now because you're a killer. The girl who will be the mother of another man's children because—”
He must have seen the anger and sadness in my eyes, because he stopped abruptly and dropped his head.
“Goddamn you,” I said, “if you ever mention her again I'll kill you.
We rode the rest of the way in silence.
We finally reached a place where a great stone ledge reached out over a barren canyon, and that was the marshaling ground for Basset's army.
An army was just what it was. There must have been fifteen or twenty horses grazing down the canyon on the short, dry sprays of bunch grass. And under the ledge the men hunkered or sat or slouched, like so many soldiers awaiting their orders to march into battle. There were a few small fires, and with the smell of horses and sweat there was the heavier, richer smell of boiling coffee and frying bacon. Kreyler was standing at the entrance of the canyon, tally book and pencil in his hands, checking the riders off as they came in.
Bama was watching me, smiling that lazy, crooked smile of his. “What do you think of our little army?” he said.
