“Then get out of here and get the whisky!”
She got out, and I got the bandage back on Bama's leg and stopped the bleeding.
“My God, I thought I was finished,” I said. “I guess I forgot that a man's never finished as long as he has friends around.”
Bama didn't say anything. He lay there with his eyes closed, and maybe he was remembering that just a few minutes ago I was ready to run out on him. More than likely, though, he was thinking about that whisky that Marta was going to bring.
I went in the other room and the kid was just picking himself off the floor and trying to get the blood out of his eyes. I've seen men lose their seats in the van of a stampede and not look much worse than Johnny Rayburn did at that moment. But I took him over to the washstand and threw a couple of dippers of water in his face and he didn't look so bad. His nose was swollen, maybe broken, and his mouth was split and puffed, but there was nothing wrong with him that time wouldn't cure. I poured out some more water for him, and then I went outside.
I found Bucky's and Kreyler's horses by the side of the house, and that was going to save me a trip back to the livery barn. I didn't see anything or hear anything out of the way. Those thick adobe walls had probably absorbed most of the noise of Bama's shooting.
I went back in and the kid was drying off his face and looking a lot better. Papacito was crumpled up in one corner of the room like next week's washing. I went in where Bama was.
“How's your leg?”
He opened his eyes and shrugged.
“Are you going to be able to ride?”
“Ride where?”
“To Mexico, where do you think? You sure can't stay here. You've just killed a United States marshal.”
Bama studied that over quietly, turning it over in his mind and looking at it from all sides. Finally he said, “No, I think I'll just stay here, Tall Cameron. I don't feel much like running any more.”
I could see that he was getting all wound up to make a long speech, but about that time Marta came in with two tall bottles of clear tequila. I uncorked one of them and put it in his hands.
“Here, you're going to need this.”
He lay there, holding the bottle up and looking at it, and finally he put it aside. “No,” he said, “I don't think I want it.”
That jarred me.
“What the hell's wrong with you, anyway?” Then I raised him up and put the bottle to his mouth and poured. It went up his nose and over his chin and down the front of his shirt, but some of it went in his mouth too. He coughed and choked, but I kept pouring until almost a quarter of the bottle was gone.
“This isn't just whisky, it's medicine. Drink it.”
I went back in the other room and lifted the old man off the floor and put him in a chair. “Don't forget what I said about the silver, old man,” I told him. “If you want your worthless daughter back, don't forget.”
He couldn't understand my language, but he knew what I was talking about.
Chapter Twelve
WE RODE OUT OF THE moonlit town that night and into the dark hills, with Kreyler and Bucky lashed behind our saddles like blanket rolls. About a mile out of town we found a dry wash with a bed of soft sand, and the kid and I dug a long ditch with our hands, and that was where we buried the Marshal and his pal. We covered our trail as well as we could and we scattered brush and leaves over the grave. I figured nobody would find them for a few days. Maybe a month, if we were lucky. Marta and Bama watched from a little knoll while we finished the job; then we got on our horses and rode again toward the south.
Three Mile Cave, it turned out, wasn't a cave at all, but a kind of box canyon eating its way back into the side of a hill. The entrance was just barely wide enough for a horse and rider to get through, but after a little way it widened out to maybe twenty yards in the widest place. There was a little grass for the horses, but there wasn't any water. Well, I could do without water for a day, and so could the others. Bama wouldn't miss it at all as long as the tequila held out.
So that was where we stayed, and it didn't turn out to be so bad after all. The next day I got my rifle and went out and beat the brush until I scared out a couple of swamp rabbits, and we ate them for supper that night.
The next day Bama's leg began to act up. It began to swell until we had to loosen the bandage around it, and the flesh around the bullet hole had a red, angry look. By the middle of the afternoon little red fingers began crawling away from the wound and down the leg, and I knew what that meant.
But I didn't know what to do about blood poison. And Marta didn't either. All we could do was sit there and watch the fever spread and keep him hopped up on tequila.
But he ran out that night. I heard the empty bottle when it hit the ground and I went over to where he was.
“It's beginning to stink,” he said. “In a couple of days it'll turn black and smell like all the cesspools in the world come together.” He laughed abruptly. “This is a hell of a way to die, Tall Cameron. But then, I guess there isn't any good way to die, is there?”
“What are you talking about?” I said. “The old man will be here tomorrow with the silver and we'll buy you the best doctor in Mexico.”
But I don't think he heard me. “There was a lot of blood poison during the war,” he said. “I've seen men rub blisters on their heels and in a few days there would be a surgeon amputating the whole damn leg. I was in a field hospital after the battle of Chickamauga—did I tell you about that?”
