“No.”
“Well, I do.” And he went to the bar and came back with a bottle and glass. “Did the kid take care of the ledger all right?”
“Sure, he did fine.”
Very deliberately, Bama poured the tumbler brimful and then sat there looking at it. “I saw him out in the saloon,” he said, “when I came in. I thought he was you at first. He walks like you, talks like you, even dresses like you.”
I knew that it didn't mean a thing, but still I couldn't help being pleased that somebody else had noticed. “He picked the new rig out in Tucson,” I said, “with his own money. It's funny that he'd get just the kind of things I wear.”
“Funny?” Then Bama picked up the glass and drained it without taking a breath. He was tired and dirty and his eyes were red-rimmed from long hours of riding in the sun. He said, “I guess I don't see anything very funny about it.”
“What the hell's wrong with you, anyway? You know what I mean.”
“I don't know anything,” he said, “except that I just saw a kid out there blown up with his own conceit and making a goddamned pest of himself. Eight days ago he was just another punk kid who had got off the right track but not so far off that he couldn't have been put back on again. Now he's swaggering like a fighting rooster that hasn't got sense enough to know that he hasn't been equipped with gaffs. But I suppose you're doing something about that. What are you doing to him, anyway— giving him lessons in gun slinging?”
“I'm not doing a damn thing to him,” I said, and in spite of all I could do I was letting him get under my skin again. I stood up and grabbed the front of his shirt and twisted it. “Look,” I said tightly, “there's something we'd better have an understanding about. You're just working for me, like Kreyler and all the others. When I want you to say something or do something, I'll let you know. Until that time, you'll keep your goddamned mouth shut.”
As usual, I was sorry after I had said it. He just stood there looking at me with those sad old eyes and I knew that I would never be able to hate him.
“I'm sorry, Bama,” I said. “I didn't mean what I said, but why do you have to keep prodding me until I fly off the handle that way?”
He kept looking at me and I had the uncomfortable feeling that he was pitying me, and if there was anybody in the world that I didn't want pity from, it was Bama. I sat down and said, “Go on, have another drink and forget it.”
I poured one for him and shoved it across the desk, but he shook his head and said, “I can forget about us because I guess we're not very important to anybody now. But that kid is different.”
I was getting impatient again, but I forced myself to sit tight until he got it off his chest.
Bama said, “Why don't you send him back to wherever he came from? He'd listen to you. Just tell him to go back and put in his time on the work gang and give himself a chance to live like a human being.”
I said, “I'm not holding him here. He can do anything he wants to do.” But that wasn't answering Bama's question and we both knew it. “Anyway, he's the one who has to take care of that ledger.”
Bama sat back and closed his eyes. “Of course, what I think doesn't amount to much, but I was wondering if it wouldn't be better for all of us if we let the kid go—and the ledger, and the smuggler trains, and all the rest of it.”
“Now, that's a hell of an idea. Look, one raid is all we need to make. That will give us enough money to keep a hideout until the law forgets that we were ever alive. But that money, we've got to have that.”
“But is money the most important thing?”
I got up, tired of the senseless bickering that was getting us nowhere. “By God, you're crazy,” I said. “That's the only way to explain the way your brain works.”
And Bama smiled that faraway smile and I knew that he wasn't mad at me, and never would be, really. “Sooner or later it always gets around to that, doesn't it? Everybody's crazy.” He finished off the drink I had poured for him. “Well, maybe that's the right answer. I don't know any more.”
I got to thinking about it later and decided that maybe Bama had been right on a few points. For one thing, the kid was carrying this imitating business too far. God knows where he found them, but somewhere he had picked up a couple of old Prescott revolvers. Navy revolvers, they were called, but the Navy had never bought any of them, and neither had anybody else who had any idea what a good pistol was supposed to be. But the kid had them buckled on with a couple of cartridge belts that I figured he had made himself, and he had his holsters cut away like a real badman and tied down at his thighs.
He was in the saloon talking to Marta when I first saw him in that getup, and I figured it was about time we had a talk.
Marta was laughing at something when I came up, and I said, “I'm glad to see that everybody's in a good humor for a change.”
She laughed again and pointed at Johnny. “Juanito say he be big man like you someday.” The kid's face turned red and he fiddled with a whisky glass that was about a quarter full of clear tequila. “Maybe bigger, he say,” and Marta's eyes had the devil in them again, that look she got whenever she got two men together. It was the kind of look that you see in Mexicans' eyes when they take their roosters to the fighting pit and start roughing them up before the battle.
But I knocked a hole in some of her fun when I said, “Yes he'll be a bigger man than me.” Which, after all, wasn't saying so much. “But not the way he means,” I went on. “Not with guns.”
The kid's face had started to brighten, but it fell quickly. Then it took on a half-angry, defiant look. “I never said anything about it,” he said, “but I was considered a pretty good shot down in the Nueces River country. I guess I know as much about guns as most people.”
“You don't know a hell of a lot,” I said, “or you wouldn't be making a fool of yourself with those old Prescotts.”
Blood rushed to his face as if I had just slapped him. “Look,” I said, any my voice was as deadly serious as I
