of my mind I knew that somebody—Basset, Kreyler, one of the Indian's friends—was probably planning a way to kill me. That didn't seem important either. I was getting out of Ocotillo. I was getting out tomorrow. The girl was standing there beside me, looking at me and not saying anything. She was still smiling, but it was a different, sweet, almost holy smile: It reminded me of old women on their knees in front of altars saying their prayers. It made me uncomfortable having her look at me that way.
I got up and went out of the room and went into Bama's room and lay across the bed in the darkness. I knew that she would be there in a few minutes. And she was.
She didn't say a word. She just lay down beside me and pressed that hot animal self of hers against me and waited. We both waited, and nothing happened. She came closer and those soft arms crawled over me, and then she was breathing her hot breath in my face and mashing her bruised mouth against mine. Still nothing happened. I could have been kissing a stone statue and it would have been about the same. For a while we just lay there. Maybe she thought that it was the excitement of the fight that made me the way I was, but it was more than that. She just wasn't what I wanted. After a while she went away.
Chapter Five
THE NEXT MORNING I awoke to the sound of sloshing water behind the thin partition that separated Bama's room from mine. I got up and sloshed water on my own face, drying it on the tail of one of Bama's shirts. Then I went into the hall and knocked.
“Bama, are you up?”
He opened the door, bleary-eyed, licking his cracked lips. “Well,” he said. “I was wondering what happened to you.”
“I spent the night in your room. It seemed easier than trying to move you. How do you feel?”
“Fine,” he said thickly. “Like I always feel on mornings like this.” He touched the knot behind his ear and winced.
“That's where I hit you.”
“I know,” he said. “You didn't bring a bottle along, did you?”
“Don't you think it's about time to lay off the stuff for a while?”
He looked at me hazily. He sat on the bed, holding his head as if he thought maybe it would roll off his shoulders if he didn't. “God,” he said flatly, “what a rotten, lousy life. You killed the Indian, didn't you?”
“The sonofabitch asked for it.”
Then he thought of something. “The girl—Marta— where is she?”
“How should I know? I guess she went home, down in the Mexican section. I don't care where she went.”
“She—she wasn't with you last night?”
“Not after we got you up here.”
He thought for a while, then he said a funny thing. “Maybe there's some hope for you, Tall Cameron. As unlikely as it seems, maybe there's some hope for you, after all.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
But he seemed to have forgotten what he was talking about. “Sometimes I think that memories are the only things that are real. I wish they were. Are you sure you haven't got a bottle?”
Then I remembered that bottle of greaser poison that Marta had used oh my wrist. I dug it out from under some dirty clothes and poured him a small one. “I'm sorry about that lick I gave you,” I said. “But you butted into something that was none of your business.”
“Yes,” he said, “I suppose I did.” And then he polished off the drink and shuddered. “But that temper of yours,” he said when he got his breath, “you ought to learn to control it. It'll turn on you like a bad woman, and that will be the end of Tall Cameron.”
“Let me worry about my temper,” I said. Suddenly I began to get an idea—or rather, an old idea that had been floating around in the cellar of my mind suddenly came to the top. I said, “Bama, if you hate this place so much, why don't you get out of it?”
He just looked at me.
“What's holding you here?” I asked. “Take your cut of the silver that we got off the smugglers and go down to Mexico somewhere like I'm going to do.”
I was telling Bama something that I hadn't even admitted to myself. I was telling him that I was tired of being alone, that I was even afraid of being alone. I was asking him to ride with me. God knows why a man like me would want Bama with him. He would be no earthly good, and his drinking would probably cause trouble wherever we went.
Then it hit me that maybe I could feel the day coming when I would look around me and discover how far down I had gone. When that day did come I would want somebody around that I could still look down on. And that somebody was Bama.
I think he could see the way my mind was working, but there was no anger in his eyes, except possibly an old anger at himself. He started to say something, but he changed his mind at the last moment and had another drink.
“Think it over,” I said. “Maybe I could use some company if you want to ride along.”
Looking at the bottle, he said, “Do you really think you'll get out of Ocotillo?”
“Why shouldn't I? I've got enough money coming to keep me below the border for a while. After that, something will show up.” Then I said, “Speaking of money, I think I'll go down and pick up my cut from Basset. Do you want to come along?”
