other.
Ray Novak didn't look scared exactly, but he looked worried. He took off his hat and ran his fingers through thick, straw-colored hair. “I played the fool down in John's City this afternoon,” he said. “I let myself get suckered into a scrape with the police. I guess I'll have to get out of the country for a while, until things cool off a little.”
Pa looked at him sharply. “You... didn't kill anybody, did you, Ray?”
Killing a state policeman in Texas, in 1869, was the same as buying a one-way ticket to a hanging. The blue-bellies from the North had their own judges and juries, and their verdict was always the same.
But Ray shook his head. “It was just a fist fight,” he said. “But they're pretty riled up. I was in the harness shop getting a splice made in a stirrup strap and this private cavalryman came in and started passing remarks about all the families around John's City—all the families that amounted to anything before the war. When he started on 'that goddamn Novak white trash that used to be town marshal,' I hit him. I busted a couple of teeth, I think. I expect a detachment of cavalry will be along pretty soon, looking for me. I don't aim to be around.”
Pa nodded soberly. “It was a damn fool thing to do all right,” he said. “And you won't be able to fix it with the police this time. First Tall, and now you. The Yankees'll feel bound to do something about it this time.”
Ray looked down at his feet and shifted uncomfortably. “Yes, sir,” he said. “That's about the way I figured it. That's one reason I came by your place. If they don't find me they might get to remembering Tall and start on him again.” Then he looked up at me, his big bland face as serious as a preacher's. “I'm sorry, Tall, I didn't figure to get you mixed up in it.”
“What the hell,” I said. “The only thing I'm sorry about is that you didn't put a bullet in the bluebelly's gut.”
“Tall?” Pa said.
“Yes, sir.”
“Now just hold your head. Ray's right. This could be serious for both of you. We better take a little time and figure something out. Ray, have you figured on anything?”
“I thought maybe I'd go up to the Panhandle for a while, sir. I've got an older brother up there that has a little spread. I could work with him through the spring gathering season and come back in the summer. That ought to be time enough to let it blow over.”
Pa thought about it, standing there in his nightshirt, still holding that shotgun in the crook of his arm. “Maybe,” he said. “But the Panhandle isn't far enough. Tail's got an uncle down on the Brazos. You boys could stay there. I could write you a letter when it looks all right to come back.”
Maybe I was still half asleep. Anyway, it was just coming to me what they were talking about. I said, “Just a minute, Pa. I don't aim to run. This isn't my scrape, it's Ray's.”
“Tall?”
“Yes, sir,” I said from force of habit.
“Now listen to me,” Pa said soberly. “Pretty soon they'll be coming. When they don't find Ray they're going to be mad, and it won't take them long to remember that carpetbagger you clubbed with a rifle stock. You know what kind of a chance you'll have if the scalawags decide to bring it to court.”
For a minute I didn't say anything. I knew Pa was right. If they didn't find Ray, they would be coming for me. The smart thing to do would be to get out of the country for a while. But knowing it didn't make me like it.
I liked things just the way they were. I liked it here on the ranch—being able to ride over to the Bannerman spread every day or so to see Laurin, going into John's City once a month when they held the dances in Community Hall. I liked it just fine right where I was, and I hated the idea of being chased away by a bunch of damned Yankee bluebellies and blacks who had been slaves only a few years ago. And pretty soon some of that hate began to direct itself at Ray Novak.
I looked at Ray and he knew how I was beginning to feel about it. He was sorry. But a hell of a lot of good that was going to do. He stood there shifting from one foot to the other, uncomfortably. He was a big man, and he couldn't have been more than twenty-one years old. But that didn't make him young. In this country a boy started being a man as soon as he could strap on a gun. And about the first thing a boy did, after he learned to walk and ride, was to strap on a gun.
Before I could say what I was thinking, before Ray Novak could put his discomfort into words, Ma came out of the bedroom and stood looking at us with worried eyes. Ma was a thin, work-weary woman, not really old, but looking old. There were deep lines around her pale eyes that came from worry and trying to gouge a living from this wild land. Ma had been pretty as a girl. There were faded pictures of her in an old album that gave you an idea how she must have looked when she married Pa. The pictures showed a young girl dressed in the rather daring fashion of the day—those low-cut dresses that all the great ladies of the Confederacy used to wear with such a casual air, as they sat queenlike, smiling and pouring tea from silver pots into delicate china cups. It was hard to believe that Ma had been one of those great ladies once. Her father had been a rich tobacco buyer in Virginia, but he lost everything in the war and died soon afterward.
I never saw Virginia myself. And those pictures in the album were just pictures to me, but I guess Pa still saw her as she had looked then, because something happened to him every time he looked at her. His wind- reddened face softened and his stern eyes became gentle — even as they did now as he saw her standing in the doorway.
She stood there, holding her cotton wrap-around together, smiling quickly at Ray.
“Good evening, Ray,” she said.
“Good evening, Mrs. Cameron,” Ray said uneasily.
“Mother,” Pa said, “why don't you go back to bed? I'll be along in a few minutes.”
But she shook her head. “I want to know what it's about. Tell me, Rodger, because I'll find out sooner or later.”
“It's nothing serious,” Pa said gently. “Ray just had some trouble in John's City with the state police. It's nothing to worry about.”
“I don't understand,” Ma said vaguely. “What has that to do with Talbert?”
