“I think maybe that will do it,” he said. “They're talking it over now among themselves, and we'll know within an hour or so if they're going to work for you.” He looked at Kreyler and then at me. “No matter what they decide,” he went on, “you'll never get away with it.”
“Kreyler's been telling me the same thing,” I said, “but look at this.” And I showed him the ledger and after a minute he caught on what I was going to do with it.
“I think I'd better have a drink.”
“I'll have one with you. We've got something to celebrate here. Kreyler?”
“If it's all right with you,” the Marshal said flatly, “you can celebrate by yourself.”
“Sure, if that's the way you feel about it.” Then I picked up his gun and threw it at him. “You can have this, only don't get any funny notions. That Marshal's badge won't stop a bullet.”
Kreyler buckled his belt on and walked out of the place, and Bama and I went out to the bar and had the bartender bring us a bottle. Bama downed three fast ones then leaned on the bar and held his head in his hands.
“What's the matter with you?
“I guess I'm just a little sick.”
“You'll get over it. In a few weeks we'll have all the money we need and we'll leave this town behind.”
“Are you sure?” he said, looking at me. “What happened to you, anyway? Yesterday you were as sick of this mess as I was and all you wanted was to get out.”
“I still want to get out,” I said. “It's just that I've found a better way to do it. What's the sense in going off half-cocked? This business of Basset's fell right in my lap. Why shouldn't I take it long enough to get a little money?”
“No reason, I guess,” he said. “I was just hoping that it wouldn't work out this way. But then, nothing ever seems to work out, does it?”
I couldn't figure the guy out, and I never did figure him out completely. I didn't say so in as many words, but here I was offering a partnership in a well-paying business and he seemed to be sorry about the whole thing. It wasn't the prettiest business in the world—I could see that—but what the hell, he had been in it longer than I had.
After a while we heard boot heels hit the dirt walk outside the saloon and we had company. Four men pushed through the batwings and stood looking at us.
“Basset's scouts,” Bama said. “They're probably acting as spokesmen for the other men.”
One man stepped out in front of the others, then walked around the tables till he could see Basset where he was still sprawled out. For a long minute he just looked at the dead fat man, and then he said, “By God, he's dead, all right.”
Then he walked over to Bama and me and poured himself a drink from our bottle.
“I hear you're the one that did it,” he said to me.
I didn't say anything. He was a lean, leathery man with about fifteen cents' worth of tobacco working in one cheek, causing a brown dribble at the corner of his mouth, which disappeared into a bushy, dirty beard. He looked about as excited as a dead armadillo. He sure didn't look like a man stricken with grief.
“Well, maybe you done us a favor, but that's to be found out later, I guess. I hear you're settin' yourself up in Basset's place.”
“That's right.”
“What makes you think you're big enough to hold a job like that?”
“Any man that feels bigger can take it from me the way I took it from Basset.”
He considered that carefully, over another drink. He studied my guns. He studied the dead man. “Look,” I said. “I'm offering you men a better deal than you ever got out of Basset. You'll get a fair cut from every raid. The men can watch the money while it's being counted and split up. And, starting now, those brass buttons of Basset's are no good. I'll buy them up with real silver.”
He sipped his drink thoughtfully. “How about Kreyler? We can't do anything without him.”
“Kreyler's staying with us. Never mind why, but he'll be with us to the end.”
Another long minute went by while the scout weighed things in his mind. He had the power to make or break me, and we both knew it. I hadn't made up my mind what I was going to do if he said no.
Luckily, I didn't have to worry about it. The scout shifted his cud and said, “Well, I never liked the sonofabitch much, anyway.” And he motioned to the men standing in the doorway. “You might as well come on in, boys, and have a drink with the new boss.”
There wasn't anything to it after that. We buried Basset in a gully near the Huachuca foothills, and by night the saloon was doing business as usual. I threw Basset's things out of the back end of the place and moved my things in, what there were of them, and called Kreyler and Bama and the scouts together for a pow-wow.
“I haven't been here long enough to know just how Basset ran things here,” I said, “but what I saw of it I didn't like. First, there's that business of letting the smuggler outriders get behind us while we were sitting in ambush. I want a map drawn of those mountains and foothills, and I want every cut and gully and rock and sage brush on it. Like the maps they use in the Army when they're getting ready to plan a battle. Bama, you used to be a soldier. Can you draw a map like that?”
Bama shrugged. “I guess I can try.”
We were sitting in the office, the four scouts, me, Bama, and Kreyler. The door was closed but we could still hear the saloon noise on the other side. The scouts looked sleepy. Bama looked thirsty. Kreyler didn't look any way in particular, but I had an idea of what was going on inside him.
