glancing blow from the Indian's hatchet. A smothering black fog rolled in. It was a cool, comfortable fog where there was no noise and no pain, and the most pleasant thing in the world would be just to lie down and let it wash over me.
But I kept fighting. Reflex, I guess, took over where the brain left off, and I grabbed hold of an arm and held on until the fog drifted off somewhere. We seemed to wrestle for a week, kicking, biting, scratching there on the rocky ground. He was gouging at my eyes and giving me the knee every chance he got, but I still held onto that arm. I seemed to be covered with blood and I couldn't tell if it was coming from me or him, or maybe both of us. I held onto that arm.
When it was over it was over all of a sudden. He went limp and the hatchet dropped out of his hand and that's all there was to it. I shoved him away. I knelt on my hands and knees and tried to gulp all the air in Arizona into my lungs. “Well,” I heard somebody say, “the sonofabitch finally decided to die.” It didn't sound like my voice, but it was, I guess. And then—finally—I remembered the other Indians.
I couldn't move. I squatted there like a poled steer and wondered why I wasn't dead. What had happened to the other Indians that had been in on the charge? It worried me, but I didn't have the strength to do anything about it.
I gulped some more air into my lungs. My stomach was sick and fluttery and the muscles in my legs were as weak as buttermilk. Maybe a minute went by while I got a hold on myself. I was pretty sure that those Indians hadn't decided to knock off work and go home just when they had us where they wanted us. Maybe it was one of those miracles that you hear about but almost never see. Like Daniel and the lions. But I didn't put much stock in it. I hadn't led the right kind of life for that sort of thing.
I had a few more theories, but I discarded them. It was time to take a look.
The first thing I saw was Bama. He was still sitting there behind the mule, holding onto the bandage around his leg. He looked as if he knew the answer, but he wasn't saying anything unless I asked him, and I was still too addled to think up words to put into questions. I stood up, finally, and saw that the Indians had been taken care of. They were scattered around carelessly like dirty laundry in a bunkhouse, and just as lifeless. One of them had reached our mule fortress and had died with a knife in his hand just as he was about to go over the top. His trouble had been two rifle bullets in the chest, spaced almost a foot apart. Not very good shooting. But good enough. By that time I had the answer. Johnny Rayburn was walking across the flat with a rifle cradled in the crook of his arm.
I don't know how he did it, but he must have slipped down from the high ground some way and then crawled for about a quarter of a mile on his belly across the flats. The important thing was that he had done it. While all the others had been running, he had been figuring out a way to save my hide.
I guess I hadn't realized before just how close I had been to dying. The thought of it put a watery feeling in my guts.
“He's going to be a big help to you, isn't he, Tall Cameron?” Bama said dryly.
The words jarred me, because that was exactly what I was thinking as the kid came toward us. With some training, with some of the greenness rubbed off and some experience rubbed in, he would be a big help. He would be somebody I could trust; that was the important thing.
That was when I started changing my plans, putting the kid into them, taking Bama out of them. Bama couldn't help me. Not with that leg. But the kid... That was something else again.
Johnny Rayburn grinned nervously as he came up to where we were. He looked awed by the thing he had just done.
“I thought I told you to stay with the horses,” I said.
“Well,” he said, “I figured the horses could take care of themselves. Anyway, I wasn't crazy about staying up there on the bluff with Kreyler's men.” He shifted hands with his rifle. “I didn't do wrong, did I?”
I laughed, not because anything funny had happened, but just because it felt good to have a kid like that on my side. I said, “No, you didn't do anything wrong.”
“I told you once I was a pretty good shot.”
“Not too damn good,” and I nodded at the dead Indian, “when you space them a foot apart.” I knew that Bama was listening. And I didn't give a damn. I said, “But there's nothing wrong with your shooting that can't be fixed. And I'll fix it.”
He couldn't have been more pleased if I had just handed him Texas with a fence around it.
From that moment, I guess, it was just me and Johnny Rayburn against the world. Or rather me and Johnny Rayburn, and a fortune in silver. That reminded me— we had to do something about the silver.
We didn't have any horses, and we sure couldn't carry the stuff on our backs. I looked up at the high ground and saw that Kreyler and some of his boys were still up there. I guess they had time to get their guts in shape, and probably they had just been waiting for me and the Indians to finish each other off so they could come back down and take the silver for themselves. But I had something else planned for them.
I stepped out in the open and cupped my hands around my mouth and yelled for them to come on down. I hadn't forgotten the way they had run out on us, but I could take care of that when the time came. This wasn't the time.
They must have been pretty disappointed to see me come out of it alive, and they must have had a pretty good idea that it wasn't purely an act of brotherly love that prompted me to call them back into the fold. I could see them talking it over. There was some arguing, I guess, but in the end they came down, as I knew they would. The silver was still down there and they couldn't resist the temptation of that easy money.
As they started down the slope, I went over our battlefield and found my rifle and salvaged some .44 cartridges for my pistols. I was ready for them by the time they rode up, and there wasn't much doubt as to who was still boss.
Kreyler looked like a man who had been outvoted. Silver wasn't as important to him as it was to some of the others, but he couldn't very well tell them to go to hell, because he still had ideas of running the business himself someday.
I said, “Well, men, we did it. All we've got to do now is get this silver back to Ocotillo and split it up. Let's get at it.”
