Читать книгу Tiger Eye - B. M. Bower - Страница 7

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ONCE more the kid was running away, but he was not taking any more time than was necessary. He ran lightly, silently, a swift-moving shadow in the gloom. He went so quietly that he did not startle the four horses standing grouped before the cabin and he did not frighten Pecos, when he suddenly appeared in that dark niche behind the stable. He was in the saddle and waiting, peering forth like a fox from its burrow, when he heard the cabin door open, saw a dim shape steal out. Then another, and after a minute one more.

Afraid of him, the way they acted. Afraid he would hide outside in the dark and pick them off one at a time as they came out. That's about their notion of what a Texas killer would be like. That was about the way they would fight—Pete Gorham, anyway. The kid remembered that name and he remembered the place on the map where Pete Gorham had his ranch. Over across the valley, it was, kind of off by itself. His brand was the IV. Now he would go earmarked the rest of his life. He'd hate the kid for that. Go gunning for him, maybe—but that was all right. Save him the trouble of trying to make out he was a friend. Shoah was a neat trick, and tempting too, with his ears sticking up like a field mouse under his black hat. Shoah made a fine mark, easier than shooting the pips out of cards. The kid gave a sudden boyish laugh at the thought of those ears with their round bullet holes.

The three went in again, slipping in one at a time. The kid grinned again. He'd bet Pete Gorham was the man that stayed inside and didn't come out.

After awhile they came out again, this time with a lantern, one man walking ahead as if he were on guard. The kid didn't know about that lantern. If they went snooping around, and if they looked behind the stable, he might have to shoot somebody. Better not take a chance. So he backed Pecos a step at a time, back and back until they were out beyond the stable. There he could ride around behind the corral and off down toward the gate, away from the trail where a deep little dry gully would hide it from view. The kid called it an arroyo, after the manner of the South.

There, within sight of the gate—within easy shooting distance too—the kid waited, off his horse so his head wouldn't stick up like a signpost above the bank and tell them where he was. They thought he had ridden away from the ranch, for they went back and forth now with the lantern, the legs of the three men black against the fitful light. The kid watched and saw them hooking the team to the wagon. They were going to take the woman and baby over to Hans Becker's, then. The kid was glad of that.

Half an hour more, while the kid waited with the patience of an Indian in the gully not far from the gate. They drove away from the house at last, coming his way. One man was driving the team, his horse following behind the wagon. The little woman was on the seat beside him. Two riders went ahead. That left one man in the cabin with Nate Wheeler—but the kid would bet the man that stayed wasn't Pete Gorham with the bullet holes through his ears.

Half a mile behind them, he followed the little cavalcade. Easy enough, with the cluck of the wagon coming faintly through the starlight. The kid wondered if they were afraid he might be on their track. Probably not. His little argument with Pete was kind of personal. One of the men didn't like Pete's remarks any too well. He'd be glad Pete got himself earmarked that-a-way.

Nice and accommodating, the little woman had said. The kid's lips twisted in a smile too bitter for his young face. Shoah, he was accommodating! He was accommodating enough to pack her husband home and not let him lay out all night—after he'd killed him! Nothing very damn' accommodating about that; but still, the kid was guiltily glad she thought that way of him. He wouldn't want her to know the truth.

And then his thoughts returned in their weary circle to the cruel starting point of his misery. To-night was not like any other night in his life. He had killed a man. Accident or not, a man was dead by his gun hand. Every night of his life, from now on, he would have to go to sleep thinking of that. Tiger Eye Reeves—in Texas they had joshed him and told him his tiger eye was a killer eye, and he had cussed them back and said it wasn't so. They knew it wasn't, too. But it was true now. Why couldn't he have killed one of those old varmints that hated the Reeves blood, if he had to kill? Why did he have to ride away up here, hundreds of miles, just to fix it so that red-headed little baby would grow up without its pappy?

The kid wondered a good deal about that, on that slow ride to Hans Becker's place. He looked up at the stars and wondered what they thought about the world, anyway. Did they think up there that this was just a speck of light? And if folks lived on the stars like the school books claimed, did they kill folks and wish they had let themselves get shot first?

But a man had to defend his own life. Pap had always hammered that into the kid. Everybody did. The law stood back of yo'all in that. But somehow, to-night, the law and Pap's stern teaching could not comfort the kid.

He followed the wagon to Becker's ranch and saw the men gathered there, and knowing the signal, he softly whistled the first two bars of "When Johnny Comes Marching Home," and so got by the man on guard at the gate. The room would not hold all the men gathered there, and some stood outside in the dark and talked and smoked. Drank, too, from bottles that went from hand to hand until they were emptied and thrown away.

The kid did not talk, for he knew his Texas drawl would bring him no good. Men up here, they yapped like coyotes, and he couldn't talk like them nohow. So he kept his mouth shut and his ears open, like old Killer Reeves always had advised. And when the gathering showed signs of breaking up, he melted into the shadows so quietly he never was missed, and presently he rode past the unsuspecting guard at the gate and went his way.

The kid remembered the plain story of the map and cut straight across an arm of the valley on a trail he had not traveled before, until he was sure he had not been followed. Then he swung to the left and climbed over one ridge and followed up a canyon and left that for another bare ridge. After a while, Pecos caught onto the fact that he was getting close to Barney, and began to tilt his ears forward and pull at the bit, wanting to lope up hill after all his travel that day. But the kid made him walk, the blame fool; wanting to bust his lungs on the last mile.