We nodded at each other. Paul Creyton said, “You haven't seen Buck, have you?”
“Not for about two years,” Pappy said.
“We split up down on the Black River,” Creyton went on flatly, as if he had gone over the story a hundred times in his mind. “A Morgan County sheriff's posse jumped us just south of the river. Ralph's dead. A sonofabitch gave him a double load of buckshot. My horse played out about four miles off, down in the flats, and I had to leave him in a gully.”
I watched Pappy stiffen, just a little, then relax. “That's too bad about Ralph,” he said softly.
“A double load of buckshot the sonofabitch gave him,” Paul Creyton said again. “Right in the face. I wouldn't of known him, my own brother, if I hadn't been standing right next to him and seen him get it.” His little eyes were dark with anger, but I couldn't see any particular grief on his face. He jerked his head toward the shack. “It ain't much, Pappy, but you and your friend are welcome to stay with me. I was just going out to see if I couldn't shoot myself some grub.”
Pappy looked at me. We had been riding a long way and our horses needed a rest, but he was leaving the decision up to me.
“I've got some side bacon and corn meal,” I said. “I guess that will see us through supper.”
We cooked the bacon at a small rock fireplace in one corner of the shack, then we fried some hoecake bread in the grease, and finally made some coffee. Pappy and Paul Creyton talked a little, but not much. Somehow I gathered that Pappy wasn't such a great friend of the Creytons as I had thought at first.
After supper, it was almost dark, and the only light in the shack came from the little jumping flames in the fireplace. Talk finally slacked off to nothing, and Paul Creyton sat staring into the fire, anger written into every line of his face. Whatever his plans were, he wasn't letting us in on them. Whatever was in his mind, he was keeping it to himself.
Pappy got up silently and went outside to look at his horse. I followed him.
“What do you think about that posse?” I said. “Do you think they'll follow Creyton up to this place?”
Pappy shook his head, lifting his horse's hoofs and inspecting them. “Not tonight. This place is hard to find if you don't know where to look, and Paul can cover a trail as well as the next one.”
I rubbed Red down and gave him some water out of a rain barrel at the edge of the shack. His ribs were beginning to show through his glossy hide, and there were several briar scratches across his chest. But there wasn't anything wrong with him that a sack of oats or corn wouldn't fix.
I heard Pappy grunt, and I looked up. He had his horse's left forefoot between his knees, gouging around the shoe with a pocketknife.
“A stone bruise,” he said. “He's been walking off center since noon, but I figured it was because he was tired.” He got the rock that was caught under the rim of the shoe and nipped it out. “Well, there won't be any riding for a day or so, until that hoof is sound again.”
“That means staying here tomorrow?”
“It means
For a minute I didn't say anything. I hadn't figured that it would be any problem to pack up and leave Pappy any time I felt like it. But there was something about that ugly face that a man could get to like. He didn't have many friends. Maybe I was the closest thing to a friend that he had ever had. I made up my mind.
“I'll wait,” I said. “We'll ride in together.”
I imagined that I saw Pappy smile, but it was too dark now really to see his face. Then, without looking up, he said, “In that case, you'd better keep an eye on that red horse of yours.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“If you were on foot,” Pappy said, “and in no position to get yourself a horse, what would you do?”
“Like Paul Creyton.”
“We'll say Eke Paul Creyton.” began to get mad just thinking about it. “If he lays a hand on Red,” I said, “I'll kill him.”
Pappy turned, and stretched, and yawned, as if it were no concern of his. “Maybe I'm wrong,” he said, “but I doubt it. He's got to have a horse, and that animal of yours is the closest one around.”
He started back toward the shack, toward the doorway faintly jumping in orange firelight. “Just a minute,” I said. “How are you so sure that he won't try to steal that black of yours?”
Pappy smiled. He was in the dark, but I knew he was smiling.
“Paul Creyton knows better than to steal an animal of mine,” he said.
When I got back to the shack I decided that Pappy had the whole thing figured wrong. Creyton had his blanket roll undone and was stretched out in front of the fireplace when I came in. He didn't look like a man ready to make a quick getaway on a stolen horse. Pappy was sitting on the other side of the room with his back to the wall, smoking one of his corn-shuck cigarettes.
“It seems like Paul just came from your part of the country,” he said.
“John's City?”
Creyton sat up and worked with the makings of a cigarette. “That's the place,” he said. “Me and Ralph and Buck came through there a few days back. About the day after you pulled out, according to what Pappy tells me.”
I looked at Pappy, but his face told me nothing.
“Well, what about it?”
