“Can you spare a couple of cups of that?” Pappy-said to the cook, nodding at the big tin coffee pot.
The cook, a grizzled old man half asleep, grunted and got two tin cups and poured. The other men looked at us curiously, probably wondering where the hell we came from and where we left our slickers. I took a swallow of the scalding coffee, and another man ducked in under the canvas, cursing and shaking water from his oilskin rain hat. He looked at me and said:
“Well, I'll be damned.”
For a minute, I stopped breathing. The man was Bat Steuber, the remuda man I had met back at Red River Station. We had run onto the same outfit that Buck Creyton was working for.
Chapter 8
BAT STEUBER looked at us for a long minute, but I couldn't tell what he was thinking. Finally he turned to the other men and said, “The boss says, every man in the saddle that's supposed to be on night watch.”
Cursing, the men left one at a time, got on their horses, and rode toward the herd again. Bat got his coffee and came over to the edge of the canvas where Pappy and I had moved.
“Is this Pappy Garret?” he said to me.
“That's right.”
For a moment, he looked at Pappy with a mixture of awe and admiration. “I'm glad to know you, Pappy. I've heard about you.” Then he laughed abruptly. “As who hasn't?”
Pappy nodded, looking at me. Steuber's voice went down almost to a whisper as he turned to me again. “Kid, it looks like I got you in a mess of trouble without meaning to. He's after you now instead of Pappy. Me and my goddamned big mouth.”
“Who's after me?” I said.
“Buck Creyton.” Steuber wiped his face nervously. “Hell, kid, I wasn't trying to get you into trouble. I was just trying to get Buck cooled down. He wasn't worth a damn on the herd as long as that temper of his was boiling. Anyway, after you left that day Buck was hellbent on a shoot-out with Pappy here. And I said, 'Hell, Buck, what makes you think Pappy Garret killed your brother? It don't stand to reason. He wouldn't have no call to shoot Paul for nothing—and you know damn good and well that your brother wasn't going to pick a fight with a man like Pappy.'”
Steuber wiped his face again. “That was all I said,” he went on. “I remember Buck didn't say a word for a long time, and I could see him thinking about it, way at the back of those eyes of his. And finally he said, 'That goddamned punk kid.'”
I felt my insides freeze as I remembered those kill-crazy eyes of Buck Creyton's. Pappy didn't say anything. He didn't move.
I said, “Where's Creyton now?”
“Out with the herd somewhere.” Steuber made a helpless gesture. “Hell, kid, I'm sorry....”
“Ferget it,” I said. “If you see him, tell him the punk kid is down at the chuck wagon. Tell him if he wants to shoot off his mouth to do it to my face.”
I could feel Pappy stiffen. Bat Steuber's eyes flew wide and he searched around for something to say, but the words wouldn't come. After a minute he made that same helpless gesture again. “All right, kid, if that's the way you want it.” He ducked out into the rain.
Pappy said flatly, “Now that was a damn-fool thing to do.”
I said, “Maybe. But a showdown has got to come sometime, and it might as well be now. I should have told him that first day when he was gunning for you, but I guess I lost my guts for a minute.”
“You're not ready for a man like Creyton,” Pappy said. “Now get that red horse of yours and we'll ride toward Kansas.”
“And get taken by the cavalry?”
I looked at Pappy and his eyes were sober and sad. I said, “It's no good like this, Pappy. I appreciate what you've done for me, but you can't fight my fights for me. Remember what you said: 'A man does his own killing, and that's enough'? Well, this is between me and Buck Creyton. I don't want to go along for a month, or six months, or a year, looking over my shoulder every time I hear a sound and expecting Buck Creyton to be there. And sooner or later he
For a long moment Pappy didn't move, didn't say anything. Then, at last, he got out a soggy sack of tobacco and his corn-shuck papers and began rolling a cigarette. After he had finished, he handed the makings to me.
“If that's the way it has to be,” he said, “then I can't help you. It'll be between just you and Buck.”
We stood there watching the rain, listening to the crooning of the night watch, and the nervous bawling of the cattle. After a while, I got a rag from the cook, wiped my guns dry, and put in fresh cartridges. After that there was nothing to do but wait.
Pappy didn't try to change my mind again. I guess he knew what it was like to be hunted, not only by the law, but by other killers like himself. And he knew it was better to get it over with now before the slow rot of time ate your guts away.
There was no way of knowing how long it would take the word to get to Creyton, but it would get to him. All I had to do was stand here, and before long he would be coming after me. I couldn't tell if I was scared or not. I wasn't very curious about it. There was an emptiness in my belly, and a dull ache... and maybe I was scared, after all. But not so much of Buck Creyton. My mind kept going back to better days and better lands, and, no matter how I fought it, I couldn't keep my thoughts away from Laurin.
That was what I was afraid of, not of getting killed, but of leaving Laurin.
