Read Online The Desperado by Clifton Adams - Free Book Online

gathered, was figuring on tying up with a trail
herd headed for Kansas, but he never said so. He never said anything
much after we got to riding, except for things like: “Loosen your
cartridge belt, son. Let your pistols hang where your palms can brush
the butts. Boothills are full of men that had to reach that extra inch
to get their guns.” Or, at the end of a day maybe, when we were sitting
around doing nothing: “Clean your pistols, son. Guns are like women; if
you don't treat them right, and they turn against you, you've got
nobody to blame but yourself.”
    It was almost sundown of the fourth day when we raised the wooded
high ground with a sagging little log shack partly dug into the side of
a hill. A thin little whisper of smoke was curling up from a rock
chimney.
    “It looks like they're expecting us,” Pappy said, squinting across
the distance.
    I looked at him, and he saw the question before I could ask it. “They,” he said, “could be almost anybody. Anybody but the law,
that is. The shack was built a long time ago by a sheepherder, but the
cattlemen chased him out of Texas before he had time to get settled
good. Some of the boys I know use it once in a while. I use it myself
when I'm in this part of the country.”
    Well, I figured Pappy ought to know. We rode up toward the shack, and
before long a man came out of it and stood there by the front door—the
only door the cabin had—nursing what looked like a short-barreled
buffalo gun. A Sharps maybe, about a .50 caliber, I guessed, when we
got closer.
    The man himself wasn't much to look at. About twenty-three or so,
with a blunted, bulldog face, and long hair that hung down almost to
his shoulders. His clothes were in about the same shape as Pappy's, and
that wasn't saying much.
    Pappy grunted as we pulled up near the crest of the hill. “It looks
like one of the Creyton boys,” he said.
    I had a closer look at the man. The Creyton boys had hard names in
Texas. They were supposed to have been in on a bank robbery or two down
on the border. There were three of them: Buck, and Ralph, and a younger
one called Paul. I figured the one at the shack was Paul Creyton,
because he looked too young to have done the things that Buck and Ralph
had to their credit.
    The man recognized Pappy as we drew up into the thicket that passed
for a front yard. I saw there was a lean-to shed on the side of the
shack—a place for keeping horses, I supposed—but there was no horse
stable there. The man lowered his gun and came forward.
    “Pappy Garret,” he said flatly, “I had an idea you was up in Kansas.”
    Pappy grinned slightly and leaned across his big black's neck to
shake hands. “A Texan likes to see the old home place once in a while.
How are you, Paul?”
    The man glanced sideways at me, and Pappy said quickly, “This is Tall
Cameron, a friend of mine. He's going as far as the Brazos with me.”
    We nodded at each other. Paul Creyton said, “You haven't seen Buck,
have you?”
    “Not for about two years,” Pappy said.
    “We split up down on the Black River,” Creyton went on flatly, as if
he had gone over the story a hundred times in his mind. “A Morgan
County sheriff's posse jumped us just south of the river. Ralph's dead.
A sonofabitch gave him a double load of buckshot. My horse played out
about four miles off, down in the flats, and I had to leave him in a
gully.”
    I watched Pappy stiffen, just a little, then relax. “That's too bad
about Ralph,” he said softly.
    “A double load of buckshot the sonofabitch gave him,” Paul Creyton
said again. “Right in the face. I wouldn't of known him, my own
brother, if I hadn't been standing right next to him and seen him get
it.” His little eyes were dark with anger, but I couldn't see any
particular grief on his face. He jerked his head toward the shack. “It
ain't much, Pappy, but you and your friend are welcome to stay with me.
I was just going out