Читать книгу Tiger Eye - B. M. Bower - Страница 4

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WITHOUT moving his gaze, the kid tilted his head slightly toward the twisted figure on the ground.

"Yo'all heahd what he said?"

"Yeah, I heard 'im. He had it comin', Kid."

"I aimed to shoot his gun ahm down. I didn't aim to kill him."

"You'd been outa luck, Kid, if you hadn't. He'd'a' got you."

"Plumb crazy," said the kid. "Comin' at me that-a-way."

"Sure was. You from the South?"

"Brazos," the kid answered succinctly.

"Yeah. Well, it's lucky I happened along. My name's Garner. Babe Garner. How come you're ridin' to Wheeler's?"

The kid gave one further look at Garner, decided that he was all right and holstered his gun. He pulled the folded paper from his breast pocket, opened it and tilted it so that the other, riding closer, could see.

"This place over heah was the closest," he explained, pointing a finger at the name and the X. "This Wheelah?"

"Yeah." Babe Garner looked from the paper up into the kid's face. His own steely eyes were questioning, impressed. "You sure as hell don't waste any time. Mind tellin' me your name?"

"Bob Reeves." The kid looked full at Garner, a defiant expression around his mouth. "Folks call me Tiger Eye back home. They gotta be friends to do it, though."

Babe Garner glanced obliquely at the heap on the ground, nodded and looked away, up the road and down.

"Say, you better fog along to my camp with me," he said uneasily. "These damn nesters is shore mean. Let the pinto go. Anybody come along and catch you here, it's fare ye well. What kinda gun you got?"

"Colt forty-five."

"Good. That won't tell nothin' if the nesters get snoopy. Come on, Tiger Eye. I'll see yuh through this."

He wheeled his horse, and led the way back up the hill, and the kid followed without a word. Talking was never his habit and he certainly was not in the mood now for conversation. The damned, dirty luck of it! Having to shoot the first man he saw in the country, the one he was going to strike for a job! Of course, having Babe Garner show up as a friend was sure lucky, but it couldn't offset that other catastrophe. Another thing bothered him; how had he happened to miss, like that? He had aimed at Wheeler's gun arm. How had he shot so far wide that the bullet went through Wheeler's head? Killer Reeves' son shooting wide of the mark!

"Pap shoah would peel me foh that, if he knowed about it," the kid thought glumly, again and again. It never occurred to him that his father or any one else would disapprove of the shooting. That would be called a case of "have to." And as he meditated gravely on the necessity of defending himself, he remembered the jerk of his big hat and took it off to see just what had happened.

There it was—a smudged hole right in the middle of the crown. The kid passed one hand over his head and brought it away with a lock of hair the size of his forefinger; a curl, to be exact. Locks of hair were quite likely to stand out from the kid's scalp in half-moons and circles. He was regarding the reddish-yellow curl soberly, his lips pursed a little, when Babe Garner glanced his way.

"Damn close," Babe commented. "You want to keep your eye peeled hereafter. These nesters'll shoot a man on sight."

"What foh?"

"'Cause they're damn' cow thieves and the Poole has called the turn," Babe said savagely. "They hang together like sand burrs to a dog's tail. Us Poole riders is fair game to them. You heard what he hollered."

"Yeah, I heahd."

"That's the nester's war whoop, these days. The Poole has had four men fanned with bullets in the last month. We're needin' riders that can shoot. You come in time."

The kid rode for awhile in silence, his bullet-scarred hat pulled low over his eyes, his fingers absently toying with the reddish curl. Abruptly he turned his tiger stare on Babe.

"How many men has the nestahs lost?"

Babe hesitated, gave his head a shake, laughed one hard chuckle.

"You know of one, anyway," he said meaningly.

The kid questioned no further but followed silently in Babe's lead. Over a lava bed they went, where the horses must pick their way carefully but where they left no track. Down along the rim of the benchland, past the head of the coulee marked on the map as Wheeler's. Once, the kid looked down almost upon the roof of the cabin. A woman came out and began pulling the clothes off the line, her back to the bluff. A baby in a pink dress toddled out on the doorstep, sat down violently and began to squirm backward off the step. Wheeler's baby. Only there wasn't any Wheeler, any more. Just a heap of dressed-up bones and meat, back there in the trail.

They swung back from the rim, and the kid saw no more of the cabin and the woman taking clothes off the line, and the baby crawling backward down off the step. Cute little devil. Run to meet his pappy, most likely, and want a ride on the pinto horse.

What devil's luck was it that had made the kid shoot wide, like that? Used to shoot the pips out of cards somebody held out for him—sis would hold cards out for him to shoot, any time. Never had missed that-a-way before. The kid could not understand it. It worried him almost as much as the killing.

Babe Garner had a snug cabin, not to be approached save from one direction, up a bare, steep little ridge to a walled-in basin where two springs bubbled out from the rock wall and oozed away through ferns and tall grasses with little blue flowers tilting on the tops. Babe made him welcome, stabled the horses and cooked a good meal. He talked of many things, but not again of Nate Wheeler.

The kid did not talk at all, except to reply to direct questions, and never then with two words if one would carry his meaning. He washed the dishes while Babe wiped them, and swept the cabin, corners and all, and upended the broom behind the door as his mother had taught him to do. According to Killer Reeves' wife, boys must learn to cook and keep a house clean in a country where women were few, and the kid was well trained in more things than shooting. When all was done Babe took a paper-bound novel down off a high shelf where many more were piled. He glanced at the kid inquiringly.

"Lots to read if you want it," he offered, lying down on the bed with his folded coat under the pillow for greater height, and his loaded gun close to his right hand. "Make yourself to home, Bob."

"Reckon I'll take a ride," the kid said quietly, brushing off the stove top with a wild duck's wing. "Aim to get the lay of the land."

"Oh, sure." Babe studied the kid from beneath his lashes. "Want any help? We're pardners from now on—Tiger Eye."

"Don't need he'p right now, thanks," said the kid, flushing with shy gratitude. "Yo'all lay still and read yoah book, Babe. I'll come back."

"Take care of yourself," Babe gave warning and farewell together, still covertly eyeing the kid.

"Shoah will, Babe," promised the kid, and let himself out into the warm, slanting sunlight. Babe got off his bunk and went to the doorway.

"Give this signal when you come up the trail, Tiger Eye," he directed, and whistled a strain like the cry of some night bird. "Us Poole boys hail each other that way at night. Safer. You hear that call, you know it's a friend."

"Thanks," said the kid, and repeated the signal accurately. "Shoah will remember it, Babe."

"Shore yuh don't want no help?"

"I'll make out, I reckon."

"Well—take care of yourself, Tiger Eye."

"Shoah will, Babe."

Babe waited in the doorway until the kid came riding by the cabin, his long legs swinging gently with the easy, pacing stride of Pecos. Babe waved his hand and the kid waved back, his mouth smiling in wistful friendliness, his glance not tigerish at all, though there was in it something vaguely disturbing. Babe went back to his bed and his book, but though he stared at the open page he did not read a line for five minutes. He was wondering about the kid.

The kid was wondering too, but not about Babe. He was wondering who would do Nate Wheeler's chores, and he was wondering who would take in the body and who would bury Wheeler. He kept wondering who would tell that woman down there in the coulee that her husband was dead, and who would meet that baby when it toddled out in its little pink dress, and give it a ride on a horse.