crowding into the room.
“Who did it, Malloy, can you tell us that?”
It took a long time to get his mouth working, and when . finally did get it working, no sound would come out. I put the wet cloth to his face again and squeezed a little of the water between his lips. He tried again, and this time I could make out the words “Smugglers... Indians...” His mouth kept working, but those were the last words he ever said.
I turned around and said, “Get out of here, all of you.” Then I saw that Bama had come back with Marta and I motioned for Bama to come in.
The girl came in with him and I said, “Not you. He's already dead.”
She looked at me in that flat way of hers, and then she crossed herself. “I say prayer.”
It looked like it was a little late to pray for Malloy, but what difference did it make?
She knelt down by the bed where the dead man was and I turned to Bama. “Smugglers. Indians. What the hell did he mean by that? Apaches don't run in this part of the country.”
“Mexican Indians,” Bama said. “They're even more expert at torture than Apaches.”
“Do these Indians run smuggler trains of their own?”
Bama shook his head. “The Mexicans hire them sometime, when they have to, as guards, and that's what we've run into this time. The Mexicans don't like them, but your men like them even less. They won't go up against a smuggler train with an Indian guard, if they know about it.”
I thought a minute. “They will this time, because we can't wait for another one.”
Bama didn't believe me. He thought that I had run up against something that I couldn't knock over.
I said, “You'd better be getting your horse ready.”
He just stood there. “They won't follow you. They won't go up against those Indians. They're scared to death of them.”
“They'll be scared of something else if they don't.”
I walked into the saloon and Bama came after me, more out of curiosity than anything else. The men were ganged up at the bar pouring whisky down their gullets to settle their guts. I saw Johnny Rayburn and motioned him out of the way, and then I heard Kreyler saying:
“Mexicans are one thing but Indians are something else. If you men want to follow Cameron and wind up like those two scouts, that's fine, but not me.”
I was behind him before he knew it. Instinct told me that arguing with him would only be a waste of time, so I stepped in and hit him as hard as I could behind the ear.
It stunned him. It stunned all of them. From the corner of my eye I saw that Bama and Johnny had their hands on their guns, in case it came to that.
But it didn't. I jerked Kreyler around before his head cleared and hit him in the face. I slammed the heel of my hand on his chin and snapped his head back, then I hit the corner of his square jaw. It was a fool thing to do, maybe, using my hands when I had guns, but I was still remembering that he was a United States marshal. And I didn't want to kill a United States marshal, no matter who he was.
The way it turned out, I didn't need the guns. It hurts to get hit like that, behind the jaw when you're not expecting it. It hurt Kreyler. I could see pain flare up in those dull eyes as his head snapped back. He began to go down, gasping for breath and grabbing for something to hold to. But there wasn't anything there, and he fell to his knees, and then he went over on his side.
I stood back for a minute, panting, and looking at the men.
“Has anybody else got any ideas about not going on this raid?”
Nobody said anything for a minute. Then Bama yelled:
“Look out!”
But I had already seen Kreyler making a grab for his gun. I could have shot him, or I could have kicked the gun out of his hand, but I didn't do either one of those things. I stepped in and slammed the toe of my boot in his gut.
His mouth flew open and his face went from a dead white to an ashy gray. He folded up like a jackknife and began to gag. The Marshal would never be any sicker than he was at that minute, not if he lived to be a hundred. All the fight had gone out of him. The fight seemed to have gone out of everybody.
I said, “Bama, have you got a list of the men who are to make this raid?”
“I've got it,” he said.
Then I looked at the men, still standing at the bar with their mouths hanging open stupidly. “We'll check the list at the meeting place,” I said. “Any man who's not there by sundown, I'll find him. I'll find him if it's the last thing I do.”
They began to get the idea that this raid was coming off, no matter what Kreyler or anybody else thought about it. They stood there for a minute, shuffling uneasily. Then one of them hitched his belt and started for the door, and the rest of them followed, one and two at a time.
“Well,” Bama said, “I guess that takes care of that. You always get what you want, don't you?”
“If I want it bad enough.”
Kreyler was still doubled up on the floor, too hurt and sick to move. I said, “What I told the other goes for you too. You'll meet with the rest of us, before sundown.” Then the three of us, me and Bama and Johnny Ray-burn, walked out of the place. Bama stopped at the bar just long enough to take a bottle out of the bartender's numb hands.
