That jarred them a little. They had expected a good cussing at the very least, and here I was practically patting them on their backs. But they got over their shock. A yell went up and they went scurrying over the battlefield, cutting open the silver-filled aparejos and stuffing the adobe dollars into saddle pouches and war bags. But Kreyler wasn't fooled. He knew that I had to have them, if I wanted to get that money back to Ocotillo.
But there was nothing much he could do about it. Anyway, all that silver was putting a hungry look in his eyes, and the first thing I knew, he was as busy as any of us. Bama sat quietly through all of it, his face getting whiter and whiter. After a while I had the kid bring the horses down, and I found Bama's bottle and gave it to him.
“Here,” I said, “you'd better have a drink of this.”
He took the bottle and looked at it blankly. He turned it up and drank as if it were the last whisky he would ever see. Then he sloshed a little of it on his wound. But not much.
He sat back and closed his eyes for a minute until the pain let up. “You're not fooling Kreyler,” he said.
“I'm not fooling anybody.”
“You're not going to split that silver, are you, when you get back to Ocotillo?”
I just grinned.
“That's what I thought. I guess there's no use telling you that the men won't stand for it. But they won't. You've pushed them around about as long as they'll take it.”
“Why don't you let me worry about that?”
He hit the bottle again. Loss of blood and shock and whisky were beginning to hit him. His eyes were bleary. His mouth didn't seem big enough to hold his tongue. He took another long drink and let the empty bottle slip out of his hand. “You and the kid,” he said thickly, “ought to make quite a team.”
“We might, at that.”
He looked at me for a while. Then he slid over on his elbow. He must have passed out then, because his arm gave way and he fell on his face.
The tourniquet on his leg came loose and blood began spurting again. I grabbed it and tightened it, and stretched him out as well as I could. I looked up and the kid was standing there beside me.
“Get the horses,” I said, “and bring them over here. Then find one of those Indian hatchets and cut a pair of blackjack poles long enough to make a travois.”
He didn't ask a lot of fool questions. In a few minutes he was back with the horses and poles. The poles weren't nearly long enough, but it was the best he could do in this kind of country. We lashed them to Bama's saddle and laced them with a reata that one of the men had. Then we tied Bama on it.
By the time all that was done, the men were ready to go. The silver had all been gathered up and they were anxious to get home and make the split.
So we rode out of the valley and into the high Huachucas, the thud of hoofs mingled with the heavy jouncing of silver. I didn't look back this time. The death and stink of battle seemed a long way off, and I wanted to keep it that way if I could. The kid rode beside me, his eyes thoughtful, and I could see the question coming long before he got up nerve enough to ask it.
“I was just wondering about something,” he said finally. “Did you really mean it, what you said back there? When you said you'd fix up my shooting?”
We rode on for quite a while before I answered. And in my mind there was the memory of empty days and long nights. Tight-wound days and tighter nerves, when the sound of a snapping twig or the rustle of brush was always a cavalryman, or a marshal, or maybe just a reputation-hunting punk anxious to get a notch in his gun butt. Sounds were always sharper when you were on the run, and alone.
But who could you trust when you had a price on your head?
Well, I guessed I had found somebody at last. So I said, “Don't worry about it, kid. I meant it, all right.”
Chapter Ten
IT WAS DARK again when we got to Ocotillo, and the town seemed nice and peaceful and sleepy-looking there at the bottom of the foothills. It seemed a shame to ride in there and get everything all stirred up again. But it had to be done. A few Mexicans came out and watched as we rode into town, and I imagined that their faces had a dull, angry look.
It was a funny thing, but I had never thought of the Mexicans' resenting us and hating us. Well, I thought, they wouldn't be bothered long with me and the kid, and if they got tired of Kreyler and his bunch they could rise up and knock them down. I wondered why they hadn't done it before now.
As we pulled up in front of the livery barn, beside the saloon, the Mexicans sort of melted away in the darkness and I forgot about them. I watched the men while they unsaddled and lugged their saddlebags and war bags back to the rear of the saloon and into the office. After they were all finished we had silver scattered all over the middle of the room and it looked like a hell of a lot of money stacked up there in one big pile. The men were all ganging up in the room to watch the split. Something had to be done about that.
So I said, “It looks like a pretty good haul, doesn't it?” And everybody agreed. I laughed and kicked the saloon door open and yelled for the bartender to set them up.
That broke it up. They all flocked out and ganged up around the bar—all but Kreyler, that is. He stayed in the office with me and the kid, and I had an uneasy feeling that he had picked my brain and knew as much about my plans as I did.
I said, “You might as well get your share of the free drinks.”
But he shook his head. He leaned against the door-jamb, looking careful and crafty, but not very healthy.
“Well, I am,” I said. I looked at the kid and we went into the saloon and left Kreyler in the office. He couldn't carry off much of that silver by himself, if that was what he had in mind.
