that gal maybe I'll elope with her,' he said, just to remind everyone that he was still his own man.
The closer he got to the girl, the better he liked her looks. She had fine features, and her thin, worn-out dress concealed a swelling young bosom. She realized Jake was coming her way, which agitated her a little. She looked off, pretending not to notice him.
At close range she looked younger, perhaps only fifteen or sixteen. Probably she had scarcely even had beaux, or if she had, they would only have been farm boys with no knowledge of the world. She had a curling upper lip, which he liked-it indicated she had some spirit. If she had been a whore, he would have contracted with her for a week, just on the strength of that lip and the curve of her bosom. But she was just a barefoot girl sitting on a wagon, with dust on her bare feet.
'Hello, miss,' he said, when he walked up. 'Going far?'
The young girl met his eye, though he could see that she was agitated that he had spoken to her.
'My name's Jake Spoon,' he said. 'What's yours?'
'Lou,' she said, not much more than whispering the information. He did like the way her upper lip curved, and was about to say more, but before he could get the words out something slammed him in the back and his face was in the dirt. He hit the ground so hard he busted his lip.
He rolled over, wondering if somehow one of the mules had got in a kick-it wouldn't have been the first time he was surprised by a mule. But when he looked up and blinked the dust out of his eyes he saw an angry old man with a long sandy beard standing over him, gripping a ten-gauge shotgun. It was the shotgun that had knocked him down-the old fool had whacked him across the shoulder blades with it. The man must have been standing behind the wagon.
Jake's head was ringing, and he couldn't see good, though he could tell the old man was gripping the shotgun like a club-he wasn't planning to shoot. Jake got to his knees and waited until he caught his wind.
'You git,' the old man said. 'Don't be talking to my wife.'
Jake looked up in surprise-he had assumed the old man must be her father. Though certainly a brusque greeting, it was not much more than he would have expected from a father-fathers had always been touchy when he attempted to talk to their daughters. But the girl on the wagon seat was already a wife. He looked at her again, surprised that such a fresh pullet would be married to a man who looked to be in his seventies, at least. The girl just sat there, pretty as ever, watching the scene without expression.
That Jake had deigned to look at her again infuriated the farmer more, and he drew back the shotgun to deliver another blow.
'Hold on, mister,' Jake said. One lick he might let pass, but not two. Besides, the ten-gauge was a heavy gun, and used as a club it could break a shoulder, or do worse.
When Jake spoke, the old man hesitated a second-he even glanced at the girl on the wagon seat. But at the sight of her he drew back his lips in a snarl and raised the shotgun again.
Before he could strike the second blow, Jake shot him. It surprised him as much as it did the nester, for he was not aware of having pulled his gun. The bullet caught the nester in the breast and knocked him back against the wagon. He dropped the shotgun, and as he was sliding to the ground, Jake shot again, the second shot as much a surprise to him as the first. It was as if his arm and his gun were acting on their own. But the second shot also hit the old nester in the breast. He slid to the ground and rolled partly under the wagon on top of his own shotgun.
'He never needed to hit me,' Jake said to the girl. He expected her to scream, but she didn't. The shooting seemed not to have registered with her yet. Jake glanced at the nester and saw that he was stone dead, a big bloodstain on his gray work shirt. A line of blood ran down the stock of the shotgun he lay across.
Then nesters began to boil out of Doan's Store-it seemed there were twenty or thirty of them. Jake felt discouraged by the sight, for it reminded him of how people had boiled out of the saloons in Fort Smith when they discovered Benny Johnson lying dead in the mud. Now another man was lying dead, and it was just as much an accident: if the old nester had just announced himself politely as the girl's husband, Jake would have tipped his hat and walked off. But the old man had whacked him and offered to do it again-he had only shot to protect himself.
This time he was up against twenty or thirty nesters. They were grouped in front of the store as if puzzled by the situation. Jake put his gun back in its holster and looked at the girl once more.
'Tell 'em I had to do it,' he said. 'That old man might have cracked my skull with that gun.'
Then he turned and walked back toward the Suggs brothers. He looked back once at the girl, and she smiled at him-a smile that was to puzzle him whenever he thought about it. She had not even got down from the wagon to see if her husband was dead-yet she gave him that smile, though by that time the nesters were all around the wagon.
The Suggs boys were already mounted. Little Eddie handed Jake his rein.
'I guess that's the end of that romance,' Dan Suggs said.
'Dern, I just asked her name,' Jake said. 'I never knowed she was married.'
The nesters were all grouped around the body. The girl still sat on the wagon seat.
'Let's cross the river,' Dan Suggs said. 'It's that or hire you a lawyer, and I say, why waste the money?'
'That store don't sell lawyers anyway,' Roy Suggs remarked.
Jake mounted, but he was reluctant to leave. It occurred to him that if he went back to the nesters he might bluff his way out of it. After all, it had been self-defense-even dirt farmers from Missouri could understand that. The nesters were looking their way, but none of them were offering to fight. If he turned and rode into the Territory, he would be carrying two killings against his name. In neither case had he meant to kill, or even known the man he killed. It was just more bad luck-noticing a pretty girl on a wagon seat was where it started in this case.
But the law wouldn't look at it like that, of course. If he rode across the river with a hard bunch like the Suggses he would be an outlaw, whereas if he stayed, the nesters might try to hang him or at least try to jail him in Fort Worth or Dallas. If that happened, he'd soon be on trial for one accident or another.
It was a poor set of choices, it seemed to him, but when the Suggs brothers rode off he followed, and in fifteen minutes was across the Red River. Once he looked back and could still see the wagons grouped around the little store. He remembered the girl's last smile-yet he had killed a man before he had even seen her smile. The nesters made no pursuit.
'Them punkin' rollers,' Dan Suggs said contemptuously. 'If they was to follow we'd thin them out in a hurry.'
Jake fell into a gloom-it seemed he could do nothing right. He hardly asked for more in life than a clean saloon to gamble in and a pretty whore to sleep with, that and a little whiskey to drink. He had no desire to be shooting people-even during his years in the Rangers he seldom actually drew aim at anyone, although he cheerfully threw off shots in the direction of the enemy. He certainly didn't consider himself a killer: in battle, Call and Gus were capable of killing ten to his one.
And yet, now Call and Gus were respectable cattlemen, looked up to everywhere they went, and he was riding with a gang of hardened outlaws who didn't care who they killed. Somehow he had slipped out of the respectable life. He had never been a churchgoer, but until recently he had had no reason to fear the law.
The Suggs brothers kept plenty of whiskey on hand, and Jake began to avail himself of it. He stayed half drunk most of the time as they rode north. Even though he had killed a man in plain sight of them, the Suggses didn't treat him with any new respect. Of course, they didn't offer one another much respect either. Dan and Roy both poured scorn on little Eddie if he slipped up in his chores or made a remark they disagreed with. The only man of the company who escaped their scorn was Frog Lip-they seldom spoke to him, and he seldom spoke, but everyone knew he was there.
They rode through the Territory without incident, frequently seeing cattle herds on the move but always swinging around them. Dan Suggs had an old pair of spyglasses he had brought back from the war, and once in a while he would stand up in his stirrups and look one of the cattle outfits over to see if they contained enemies of his, or any cowboys he recognized.
Jake watched the herds too, for he still had hope of escaping from the situation he was in. Rude as Call and Gus had treated him, they were still his
