had never figured on winding up like this, being chased out of the country and being hunted by half the lawmen in Arizona.
I watched him closely, because now was the time to find out if he had the guts it took to face it put. I had taken it for granted that he was the kind of kid that could be some help to me. It came as a shock when I realized that maybe I had guessed wrong.
We sat there for a long time, not saying anything. He knew what he was in for if he stuck with me. If he wanted to get out of it, all he had to do was ride off toward Texas and that would be the end of us.
The stars were very clean and cold and superior that night. The kid lay back and watched them, and maybe he was thinking that those very same stars were shining on that wild piece of Texas brush country that he called home—a place that he might never see again.
It all depended on what he decided. If he wanted to know about guns and how to cut aces from the middle, I was the one who could teach him. If he wanted something else... Well, that was up to him.
And still we sat. An orange slice of moon came up behind the hills and a coyote came out and barked at it. A slight wind came up and rattled the parched grass. I listened to the thousand little night sounds, and to Bama's labored breathing, and finally the kid got up.
“Well,” he said, “if we're going to travel tomorrow I guess I'd better get some sleep.”
It took me a few minutes to realize that it was all over. He had thought it over in that slow, deliberate way of his, and he had decided to stay. He had built himself a hero to follow. And I was it.
We traveled about twenty miles the next day before Bama's leg stopped us again. He suddenly dumped out of the saddle and hit the ground, and my first feeling was relief. No sorrow. No regret, or feeling of loss. Only relief, because Bama was finally dead and now we could push across the border.
But I was wrong about Bama. At that moment he was as close to death as a man can get, but he wouldn't die. He lay there clutching like a drowning man at that razor-thin piece of life and he wouldn't let go. For a moment I hated him. He was going to die anyway, so why didn't he do it now while it would do us some good? Why did he have to hold on with that death grip and pull us down with him? I just sat there on my horse, watching, waiting. Die, goddamn you! But he wouldn't turn loose.
“He's bad,” Johnny said. “Real bad.”
The kid was already out of the saddle, wiping the dust off Bama's flushed face.
Well, that was that. I couldn't just ride off and leave him, so I helped get him back on his horse and we held him in the saddle for a hundred yards or so until we came to a washed-out place in the side of a hill. That was where we laid him out. Then I sent the kid out to look for water.
“Bama.”
He didn't say anything. His face got as white as tallow, and it seemed that he would go for minutes at a time without breathing. At last he began to shake, and I knew the chills had started.
The kid came back with the water, but we didn't need it now. We stripped the horses and piled the saddle blankets on top of Bama. We lugged the silver into the wash and staked the horses out. Then we settled down to wait.
Night came finally, and there was no change that I could see. My stomach growled and knotted and ached, and I tried filling it up with water, but that didn't help.
I said, “Get some sleep, kid. When you wake up in the morning it'll be all over.”
But it wasn't. Bama was shaking when I went to sleep and he was still shaking when I woke up. When the sun came up I took my rifle out again and this time I came back with two rabbits.
We skinned them and cooked them like the other time. Me and the kid finished them off because Bama couldn't eat. He couldn't do anything except lie there and shake.
The day dragged on somehow, and to pass the time I got to figuring on our chances of getting out of this. I counted up and discovered that about fifty-six hours had gone by since we left Marta and Papacito at Three Mile Cave. Three days gone and we hadn't traveled more than thirty miles at the outside. Three days. Marta could have got the word all the way to Tucson in that length of time. More than likely a detachment of cavalry was already headed south. Under forced march they would be right in our front yard by this time tomorrow.
The future wasn't exactly bright. I made my mind up once to pull out of there, but when the time came to do it I didn't have the guts for it. For one thing, I wasn't at all sure that the kid would be willing to leave Bama and come with me. And, too, I kept remembering Kreyler and Bucky. It was Bama's time that we were living on now.
The next morning Bama began freezing with chills one minute and burning with fever the next. He kept us busy piling blankets on him and then taking them off and putting wet rags on his head. Along toward noon he went to sleep again. The kid walked out in the sun and stood there breathing in deep gulps of clean air. For a moment I thought he was going to be sick.
“Isn't there anything we can do?” he said. “Anything at all?”
“We're doing everything we can.”
“But he's going to die, don't you see that?” There didn't seem to be anything to say after that, so the kid went over and sat on a rock and held his head in his hands. All this was new to him. He had never seen a friend of his die like this before.
I found a rock for myself and sat down, wondering about the cavalry. What if they had already picked up our trail? Well, it was too late to worry about it now. We'd have to shoot it out with them, and if there weren't too many of them maybe we'd have a chance after all. The kid would be a help. He was good enough with a rifle, he had already proved that in the smuggler raid. And thinking of that made me feel better. We'd fight our way out of it somehow, just the two of us.
I don't know just when it was that those thoughts turned on me, but suddenly I found myself thinking, And then what?
There would be more cavalry, and more U.S. marshals, and you couldn't go on killing them forever. Where
