Basset seemed to think that the Indian's name should have done something to me. Maybe I should have started sweating, or loosened my guns, or something. When I didn't, the fat man seemed slightly annoyed.
“You've heard of Black Joseph, haven't you?” he panted.
“I've heard of him,” I said.
That seemed to make him feel a little better. “Well,” he said, “I began to get an idea the minute that Indian murderer rode into Ocotillo—not that I've got anything against him,” he added quickly. “It's just that he doesn't bother to think before he shoots. Anyway, I figured maybe there were a lot of boys like him, things getting too hot for them back in Texas.”
He smiled that damp smile, as if to say, “You ought to know, Cameron.”
I said, “Has all this got anything to do with me?”
“That depends on you,” Basset said carelessly. “Now, you look like a man on the run. Would you like to have a place to settle down for a while and give the United States marshals a chance to forget about you? Would you like to be sure that you won't run into my cavalrymen? Would you like to have some insurance like that?”
“You can't get insurance from a United States marshal,” I said, “or the Cavalry, either.”
Basset lurched forward in his chair, got a cigar from a box on his desk, and rolled it between his wet lips. “You just don't know the right man, son,” he said, breathing heavily. “The Cavalry—no. But, then, the Cavalry is busy up north with the Apache uprising. There's no call for them to come down here unless somebody like a federal marshal put them up to it.”
And what makes you think that some deputy marshal won't do just that?”
He went on smiling, holding a match to his cigar, puffing until it was burning to suit him. Then he threw the match on the floor and shouted, “Kreyler!”
The door opened and the big, slab-faced man came in. The last time I saw him he had been headed out of the saloon—but when Basset called, he was there.
“Yeah?”
“Show this boy who you are, Kreyler,” Basset said.
Kreyler frowned. He didn't like me, and whatever it was that Basset had on his mind, he didn't like that either. But he didn't have the guts to look at the fat man and tell him so. Reluctantly he went into his pocket and came out with a badge—a deputy United States marshal's badge.
“That will be your insurance,” Basset said, as Kreyler went out, “if you choose to stay with us here in Ocotillo.”
The whole thing had kind of taken my breath away. I had only known one United States marshal before. He lived, breathed, and thought nothing but the law. I hadn't known that a man like Kreyler could worm his way into an office like that.
Suddenly I began to appreciate the kind of setup Basset had here. In Ocotillo a man could live in safety, protected from the law, his identity hidden from the outside world. I thought of the long days and nights of running, afraid to sleep, afraid to rest, forever looking over my shoulder and expecting to see the man who would finally kill me. Here in Ocotillo I could forget all that—if I wanted to pay the fat man's price.
Basset smiled, puffing lazily on his cigar.
I said finally, “Insurance like that must come pretty high.”
“Not for the right men, like yourself.” He bent forward, his jowls shaking. “Have you ever heard of the Mexican smuggling trains?”
I shook my head.
“There are dozens of them,” he said. “They come across the international line, taking one of the remote canyons of the Huachucas. Thousands of dollars in gold or silver some of these trains carry. They trade in Tucson for merchandise that they smuggle back across the border, without paying the heavy duty, and sell at fat profits. In a way,” Basset smiled, “you might say that Kreyler is upholding his oath to the United States, for he is a great help to us in stopping this unlawful smuggling of the Mexicans.”
I was beginning to get it now, but I wasn't sure that I liked it.
“Take your time,” the fat man said. “Make up your mind and let me know. Say tomorrow?”
“All right,” I said. “Tomorrow.”
I was glad to get out of the office. The bath that I'd had not long ago had been wasted. I felt dirtier than I had when I first rode into the place.
I stopped at the bar on my way out and had a shot of the white poison that the Mexicans were drinking. Business had picked up while I was in the office. Most of the fancy girls had found laps to sit on, and their brassy, high-pitched giggles punched holes in the general uproar like bullets going through a tub of lard. I studied the men in the place with a new interest, now that I knew who they were and what they were doing here. I didn't see anybody that I knew, yet I had a feeling that I knew all of them. Their eyes were all alike, restless, darting from one place to the other. They laughed hard with their mouths, but none of the laughter ever reached their eyes. I didn't see anybody drunk enough to be careless about the way his gun hand hung. And I knew I wouldn't. My friend Kreyler, the deputy United States marshal, wasn't around. Probably he was in some corner, waiting for Basset to yell for him.
I stood alone at the end of the bar, wondering where I was going to sleep that night and listening to three Mexicans sing a sirupy love song in Spanish, when she said:
“Hello, gringo!”
I don't know where she came from. But now she was standing next to me, grinning as if nothing had happened.
“Get away from me,” I said. “When I get tired of living I can get myself killed. I don't need your help.”
