"Soon as he opens the door," Ward said, and his shoulders seemed to relax.
As soon as he opens the door.
He heard Ca.s.s saying something and a key rattled in the lock. The squeak of the door hinges- He groaned, bringing his knees up. His heart was pounding and a heat was over his face and he kept his eyes squeezed closed. He groaned again, louder this time, and doing it he rolled to his side, hesitated at the edge of the mattress, then let himself fall heavily to the floor.
"What"s the matter with him!"
Four steps on the plank floor vibrated in his ear.
165 165 A hand took his shoulder and rolled him over. Opening his eyes, he saw Ca.s.s leaning over him.
Suddenly then, Ca.s.s started to rise, his eyes stretched open wide, and he twisted his body to turn. An arm came from behind hooking his throat, dragging him back, and a hand was jerking the revolver from its holster.
Hanley Miller tried to push away from the bars to bring up the shotgun. It clattered against the bars and on top of the sound came the deafening report of the revolver. Hanley doubled up and went to the floor, clutching his thigh.
Ca.s.s"s mouth was open and he was trying to scream as the revolver flashed over his head and came down. The next moment Ward was throwing Ca.s.s"s limp weight aside. Ward stumbled, clattering over the tray in the middle of the floor, almost tripping.
Given saw Ward go through the wide-open door. He glanced then at Hanley Miller lying on the floor. Then, looking at Ward"s back, the thought stabbed suddenly, unexpectedly, in his mind- Get him!
He hesitated, though the hesitation was in his mind and it was part of a moment. Then he was on his feet, moving quickly, silently, in his stocking feet, stooping to pick up the sawed-off shotgun, turning and seeing Ward near the door. Now Given was running down the hallway, now swinging open the door that had just closed behind Ward.
Ward was on the back-porch landing, starting down the stairs, and he wheeled, bringing up the revolver as the door opened, as he saw Pete Given on the landing, as he saw the stubby shotgun barrels swinging savagely in the dimness.
Ward fired hurriedly, wildly, the same moment the double barrels slashed against the side of his head. He screamed as he lost his balance and went down the stairway. At the bottom he tried to rise, groping momentarily, feverishly, for his gun. As he came to his feet, Pete Given was there-and again the shotgun cut viciously against his head. Ward went down, falling forward, and this time he did not move.
Given sat down on the bottom step, letting the shotgun slip from his fingers. A lantern was coming down the alley.
Boynton appeared in the circle of lantern light. He looked from Obie Ward to the boy, not speaking, but his eyes remained on Given until he stepped past him and went up the stairs.
A man stooped next to him, extending an already rolled cigarette. "You look like you want a smoke."
Given shook his head. "I"d swallow it."
167 167 The man nodded toward Obie Ward. "You took him by yourself?"
"Yes, sir."
"That must"ve been something to see."
"I don"t know-it happened so fast." In the crowd he heard Obie Ward"s name over and over- someone asking if he was dead, a man bending over him saying no...someone asking, "Who"s that boy?" and someone answering, "I don"t know, but he"s got enough guts for everybody."
Boynton appeared on the landing and called for someone to get the doctor. He came down and Given stood up to let him pa.s.s. The man who was holding the cigarette said, "John, this boy got Obie all by himself."
Boynton was looking at Ward. "I see that."
"More"n I would"ve done," the man said, shaking his head.
"More"n most anybody would"ve done," Boynton answered. He looked at Given then, studying him openly. He said then, "I"ll recommend to the judge we drop the charges against you."
Given nodded. "That"d be fine."
"Anxious to get home to your wife?"
"Yes, sir."
For a moment Boynton was silent. His expression was mild, but his eyes were fastened on Pete Given"s face as if he were trying to read something there, some mark of character that would tell him about this boy.
"On second thought," Boynton said abruptly, "I"ll tear your name right out of the record book, if you"ll take a deputy job. You won"t even have to put a foot in court."
Given looked up. "You mean that?"
"I got two jobs open," Boynton said. He hesitated before adding, "Look, it"s up to you. Probably I"ll tear your name out even if you don"t take the job. Seeing the condition of Obie Ward, I wouldn"t judge you"re a man who"s going to be pressured into anything."
Given"s face showed surprise, but it was momentary, his mouth relaxing into a slow grin-almost as if the smile widened as Boynton"s words sank into his mind-and he said, "I"ll have to go to Dos Cabezas and get my wife."
Boynton nodded. "Will she be happy about this?"
Pete Given was still smiling. "Marshal, you and I probably couldn"t realize how happy she"ll be."
7.
The Kid.
I remember looking out the window, hearing the wagon, and saying to Terry McNeil and Delia, "Here comes Repper." And when the wagon came even with the porch, I saw the boy. He was sitting with his legs hanging over the end-gate, but he came forward when Max Repper motioned to him.
That was the first time any of us laid eyes on the boy, and I"ll tell you frankly we weren"t positive at first it was a boy, even though Max Repper referred to a "him," saying, "Don"t let his long hair fool you," and even though up close we could see the features didn"t belong to a girl. Still, with the extent of my travel bounded by the Mogollon Rim country, central Sonora, the Pecos River, and the Kofa Mountains-north, south, east, and west respectively-I wasn"t going to confine my judgment to this being either just a boy or a girl. There are many things in the world I haven"t seen, and the way Terry McNeil was keeping his mouth closed I suspect he was reserving judgment on the same grounds.
Terry was in to buy stores for his prospecting site in the Dragoons. He came in usually about every two weeks, but by the little bit he"d buy it was plain he came for Delia more than for flour and salt-meat.
It was just the three of us in the store when Max Repper came-Terry, taking his time like he was planning to outfit an expedition; Deelie, my girlchild, helping him and hoping he"d take all day; and me. Me being the first line of the sign outside that says patterson general supplies. banderas, arizona, terr.
Now, this Max Repper was a man who saddle-tamed horses on a little place he had a few miles up the creek. He sold them to anybody who needed a horse; sometimes a few to the Cavalry Station at Dos Fuegos, though most often their remounts were all matched and came down from Whipple 171 171 Barracks. So Max Repper sold mainly to the one hundred and eighty-odd souls who lived in and around Banderas.
He also operated a livery here in the settlement, but even Max admitted it wasn"t a paying proposition and ordinarily he wasn"t one to come right out and say he was holding a bad guess. Max was a hard-nosed individual, like a man had to be to mustang for a living; but he also had a mile-high opinion of himself, and if any living creature sympathized with him it"d have to have been one of his horse string. Though the way Max broke a horse, the possibility of that was even doubtful.
Repper came in with the boy behind him and he said to me, "Pat, look what the h.e.l.l I found."
I asked him, "What is it?"
And he said, "Don"t let the long hair fool you. It"s a boy...a white white boy." boy."
We had to take Max"s word for it at first, for that boy cut the strangest figure I ever saw. Maybe twelve years old, he was, with long dark hair hanging to his shoulders Apache style, matted and tangled, but he didn"t have on a rag headband and that"s why you didn"t think of Apache when you looked at him, even though his skin was weathered mahogany and the rest of his getup might have been Indian. His shirt was worn-out cotton and open all the way down, no b.u.t.tons left; his pants were buckskin, homemade by Indian or Mexican, you couldn"t tell which, and he wasn"t wearing shoes.
The bare feet made you feel sorry for him even after you looked close and saw something half wild about him. You wondered if the mind was translating what the eyes saw into man-talk or into some kind of gray-shadowed animal understanding.
Terry McNeil was toward the back, leaning on the counter close to Delia. They were just looking. I got up from the desk (it was by the front window and served as "office" for the Hatch & Hodges Line"s Banderas station), but I just stood there, not wanting to go up and gawk at the boy like he was P. T. Barnum"s ten-cent attraction.
"The good are rewarded," Max Repper said. He grinned showing his crooked yellow teeth, which always took the humor out of anything funny he ever said. "I was thinking about hiring a boy when I found this one." He looked at the boy standing motionless. "He"s going to work for me free."
I asked now, "Where"d you find him?" "Snoopin" around my stores." "Where"s he from?" "d.a.m.n" if I know. He don"t even talk."
173 173 Max pulled the boy forward by the shoulder right up in front of me and said, "What do you judge his breed to be?" Like the boy was a paint mustang with spots Max hadn"t ever seen before.
I asked him again where he"d found the boy and he told how a few nights ago he"d heard something in the lean-to back of his shack, and had eased out there in his sock feet and jabbed a Henry in the boy"s back as he was taking down Max"s fresh jerky strings.
He kept the boy tied up the rest of the night and fed him in the morning, watched him stuff jerked venison into his mouth, asked him where he came from, and got only grunts for answers.
He put the boy to work watering his corral mounts, and the way the boy roughed the horses told Max maybe there was Apache in his background. But Max didn"t know any Apache words and the boy wasn"t volunteering any. Max thought of Spanish. The only trouble was he didn"t know Spanish either.
The second night the boy tried to run away and Max (grinning as he told it) beat him blue. The third morning Max decided (reluctantly) he"d have to bring the boy in for shoeing. Shoes cost money, but barefooted a boy don"t work so good-not on a south Arizona horse ranch.
I realized then Max was honest-to-goodness planning on keeping the boy, but I mentioned, just to make sure, "I suppose you"ll take him to Dos Fuegos and turn him over to the Army."
"What for? He don"t belong to them."
"He don"t belong to you either."
"He sure as h.e.l.l does. Long as I feed him."
I told Max, "Maybe the Army can trace where this boy came from."
But Repper said he"d tried for two days to get something out of the boy, and if he couldn"t, then no lousy Army man could expect to.
"The kid"s had his chance to talk," Max said. "If he don"t want to, all right, then. I"ll draw him pictures of what to do and push him to"ard it."
Max sat the boy down on a stool and I handed the shoes to him and he jammed them on the boy"s feet until he thought he"d found the right size. When Max started to b.u.t.ton one of them up the boy yanked his foot away and grunted like it hurt him. Max reached up and swatted the boy across the face and he kept still then.
I remember thinking: He handles the boy like he would a wild mustang, not like a human being. And Terry McNeil must have been thinking the same thing. He came up to us, then knelt down next to the boy, ignoring Max Repper, who was ready to put on the other shoe.
The boy looked at Terry and seemed to back off, 175 175 maybe just a couple of inches on the outside, but the way he tensed you knew an iron door slammed shut inside of him.
Max said, "What in the name of George H. h.e.l.l you think you"re doing?" Max had no use for Terry-but I"ll tell you about that later.
Terry looked up at Repper and said, "I thought I"d just talk to him."
Max most probably wanted to kick Terry in the teeth, especially now, worn out from trying on shoes, and on general principle besides. Terry was the kind of boy who never let anything bother him, never raised his voice, and I know for a fact that burned Max, especially when they had differences of opinion, which was about every other time they ran into each other.
Max was near the end of his short-sized temper, but he held on and forced out a laugh to show Terry what he thought of him and said to me, "Pat, I"m going to buy myself a drink."
I kept just a couple of bottles for customers who didn"t have time to get down to the State House. Serving Max, I watched Terry and the boy.
Terry was sitting cross-legged in front of him now slipping off the shoe Max had b.u.t.toned up.
He took another from the pile of shoes and tried it on, the boy letting him, watching curiously, and I could hear Terry saying something in that slow, quiet way he talked. First, I thought it was Spanish, and maybe it was, but the little bit I could hear after that was a low mumble...then bit-off crisp words like sik-isn sik-isn and and nakai nakai-yes and pesh-klitso, pesh-klitso, though not used together. The kind of talk you hear up at the San Carlos Reservation. though not used together. The kind of talk you hear up at the San Carlos Reservation.
Then Terry leaned close to the boy and for a while I couldn"t see the boy"s face. Terry leaned back and said something else; then he touched the boy"s arm, holding it for a moment, and when he stood up the boy"s eyes followed him and they no longer had that locked iron door behind them.
Terry came over to us and said, "The boy was taken from the Mexican village of Sahuaripa something like three years ago. He was out watching the men herd cattle when a Chiricahua raiding party hit them. They killed the others and carried off the boy."
Max didn"t speak, so I said, "I thought he was white."
Terry nodded his head. "His Mexican father told him that his real parents had died when he was a small boy. The Mexican had hired out to them as a guide, but they both died of a fever on the way to wherever they were going. So the Mexican went 177 177 home to Sahuaripa and took the boy with him. He explained to the boy that he and his wife had never had a child, but they had prayed, and he believed the boy to be G.o.d"s answer. They named the boy Regalo."
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, 179 179 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 run back to his diggings to work on the marriage stake. Right after he left, it dawned on me that he would have to pa.s.s 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. back to his diggings to work on the marriage stake. Right after he left, it dawned on me that he would have to pa.s.s 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."