Max said, 'You expect me to believe that?'
Terry shrugged. 'Why shouldn't you?'
Max just looked at Terry, then grinned and shook his head slowly like saying: You think I was born last week? Terry might have told him what he thought, but Repper stomped out, dragging the boy and his new shoes with him.
I said to Terry, 'The boy really tell you that?'
'Sure he did.'
'What about the past three years?'
'He's been with Chiricahuas. Made blood son of Juh, who's chief of the whole red she-bang.' Terry said the boy had wandered off on a lone hunt; his horse lamed and he was cutting back home when he came across Max's place.
'Terry,' I said, 'I imagine a boy could learn a lot of mean things from Chiricahuas.'
And Terry said, 'That's why I'm almost tempted to feel sorry for old Max.'
Terry went back to outfitting for his expedition, but now he actually put his list down and asked Deelie to fill it. He didn't stay more than ten minutes after that, talking to Deelie, telling her what the boy said. And when he was gone I asked Deelie what his big hurry was.
'I never saw a man so eager to get back to a mine camp,' I said.
'Terry's anxious to make this one pay,' Deelie said. There was a soft smile on her face and she dropped her eyes quick, which was Deelie's way of telling you she had a secret--though I suspected it was something more akin to wishful thinking. Terry McNeil was never too anxious about anything.
He took everything in long, easy strides, even pretty little seventeen-year-old things like Deelie. I know he was taken with her, ever since the first day he set foot here, which was two years ago. He came through on his way to Dos Fuegos, riding dispatch for General Stoneman, and stopped off to buy a pound of Arbuckle's (he said that ration coffee put him to sleep); Deelie waited on him and I remember he looked at her like she was the only woman between Whipple Barracks and the border. Deelie ate it up and stood by the window after he was gone. Three weeks later he showed up again with a shovel, a pick, and boards for a sluice box; and said he'd once seen a likely placer up in the Dragoons and he'd always wanted to test it and now he was going to.
He must have saved his dispatch-riding money, because the first year and a half he paid his store bill cash and carry though he never struck anything likelier than quartz. Lately, he hadn't been buying so much.
I NEVER HAVE disrespected him for not wanting to work steady. That's his business. Max Repper called him a saddle tramp--not to his face--but whenever he referred to Terry. You see, the big war between those two started over Deelie. Max thought he had priority, even though Deelie practically told him right out she didn't care for him. Then Terry came along and Deelie about strained her back putting on extra charm. Max saw this and blamed Terry for stealing her affections. Max himself, being close to pushing forty and with those yellow snag teeth, couldn't have stole her affections with seven hundred Henry rifles.
Maybe Deelie and Terry were closer now than when they first met, but I didn't judge so close as to make Terry run back to his diggings to work on the marriage stake. Right after he left, it dawned on me that he would have to pass Repper's place on the way. So that was probably why he left on the run: to look in there. Repper was burning when he left, and a man of his sour nature was likely to take out his anger even on a boy.
Terry came back about three weeks later. He tied his horse, stood on the porch, and took time to stretch the saddle kinks out of his back while Deelie waited behind the counter dying. And when he came in she gave him a smile brighter than the sun flash of a U.S. Army heliograph. Deelie's smile would come right up from her toes.
'Terry!'
He gave her a nice smile.
I told him, 'You look happy enough, but not like you're ready to celebrate pay dirt.'
'Getting warmer, Mr. Patterson,' he said. Which is what he always said.
'Have you seen the boy?' I asked. And was a little surprised when he nodded right away.
'Saw him this morning.'
'How so?'
'Well,' Terry said, 'I was over to Dos Fuegos last week, and you know that big black-haired lieutenant, the married one with the little boy?' I nodded. 'He sold me one of his son's shirts. A red one from St. Louis.'
'And you gave it to the boy.'
Terry nodded. 'Regalo.'
'You rode all the way over to Dos Fuegos to buy a shirt for the boy.'
'A red one--'
'From St. Louis. How'd he like it?'
'He liked it fine.'
'How'd Repper like it?'
'He was in the shack.'
Terry asked me if I'd seen the boy and I told him no. Repper had kept to his horse camp since the first time he brought the boy in. Terry said the boy looked all right in body, but not in his eyes.
LATER ON, AFTER I'd closed up, the three of us were sitting in back having something to eat--Deelie showing off what a good cook she was--when I heard someone at the front door.
Everyone in Banderas knows what time I close; still, it could have been something special, so I walked up front through the dark store and opened the door.
Maybe you've guessed it. I sure didn't. It was the boy, Regalo. He just stood there and I had to take him by the arm and bring him inside. Then, when we reached the light, I saw what was the matter.
He had on the red shirt but the back of it was almost in shreds, and crisscrossing his bare skin were raw welts, ugly red-looking burns like a length of manila had been sanded across his back a couple of dozen times.
Terry was up out of the chair and we eased the boy into it and made him lean forward over the table. Terry knelt down close to him and started to talk in Spanish. Ordinarily I know some, but not the way Terry was running the words together. Then the boy spoke. While he did, Deelie went out and came back with some cocoa butter and she spread it over his back gently without batting an eye. I think right then she advanced seven hundred feet in Terry McNeil's estimation.
The boy said, Terry told us, that Repper had come out of the house and when he saw the new shirt he tried to rip it off the boy, but Regalo ran. That made Repper mad and when he caught him at the barn he reached a hackamore line off a nail and laid it across the boy's back until his arm got tired.
Leaning over the table, the boy didn't cry or whimper, but you knew his back stung like fire.
Terry was saying, let's fix him some eggs, when we heard the door again...then heavy footsteps and there was Max Repper in the doorway with his Henry rifle square on us.
'The boy's coming with me.' That's all he said. He took Regalo by the arm, yanked him out of the chair, marched him through the front part, and out the door. It happened so fast, I hardly realized Max had been there.
Terry was in the doorway looking up toward the front door. He didn't say a word. Probably he was thinking he should have done something, even if it had happened fast and Max was holding a Henry. Whatever he was thinking, he made up his mind fast. Terry took one last glance at Deelie and was gone.
Of course we knew where he was going. First to the boardinghouse for his gun, then to the livery, then to Repper's place. We didn't want him to do it...but at the same time, we did. The only thing was, someone else should be there. I figured whatever was going to happen ought to have a witness. So I saddled up and rode out about fifteen minutes behind Terry.
I thought I might catch him on the road, but didn't see a soul and finally I cut off to Repper's. There was Terry's claybank and just over the rump a cigarette glow where Terry was leaning next to the front door.
'He's not here?'
Terry shook his head.
'But we would have passed him on the road,' I said.
'Well,' Terry said, 'he's got to come sooner or later.'
As it turned out, it was just after daybreak when we heard the wagon.
