Read Online The Desperado by Clifton Adams - Free Book Online Page A

to see if I couldn't shoot myself some grub.”
    Pappy looked at me. We had been riding a long way and our horses
needed a rest, but he was leaving the decision up to me.
    “I've got some side bacon and corn meal,” I said. “I guess that will
see us through supper.”
    We cooked the bacon at a small rock fireplace in one corner of the
shack, then we fried some hoecake bread in the grease, and finally made
some coffee. Pappy and Paul Creyton talked a little, but not much.
Somehow I gathered that Pappy wasn't such a great friend of the
Creytons as I had thought at first.
    After supper, it was almost dark, and the only light in the shack
came from the little jumping flames in the fireplace. Talk finally
slacked off to nothing, and Paul Creyton sat staring into the fire,
anger written into every line of his face. Whatever his plans were, he
wasn't letting us in on them. Whatever was in his mind, he was keeping
it to himself.
    Pappy got up silently and went outside to look at his horse. I
followed him.
    “What do you think about that posse?” I said. “Do you think they'll
follow Creyton up to this place?”
    Pappy shook his head, lifting his horse's hoofs and inspecting them.
“Not tonight. This place is hard to find if you don't know where to
look, and Paul can cover a trail as well as the next one.”
    I rubbed Red down and gave him some water out of a rain barrel at the
edge of the shack. His ribs were beginning to show through his glossy
hide, and there were several briar scratches across his chest. But
there wasn't anything wrong with him that a sack of oats or corn
wouldn't fix.
    I heard Pappy grunt, and I looked up. He had his horse's left
forefoot between his knees, gouging around the shoe with a pocketknife.
    “A stone bruise,” he said. “He's been walking off center since noon,
but I figured it was because he was tired.” He got the rock that was
caught under the rim of the shoe and nipped it out. “Well, there won't
be any riding for a day or so, until that hoof is sound again.”
    “That means staying here tomorrow?”
    “It means me staying here. You don't have to. Another day's
ride will put you on the Brazos.”
    For a minute I didn't say anything. I hadn't figured that it would be
any problem to pack up and leave Pappy any time I felt like it. But
there was something about that ugly face that a man could get to like.
He didn't have many friends. Maybe I was the closest thing to a friend
that he had ever had. I made up my mind.
    “I'll wait,” I said. “We'll ride in together.”
    I imagined that I saw Pappy smile, but it was too dark now really to
see his face. Then, without looking up, he said, “In that case, you'd
better keep an eye on that red horse of yours.”
    “What is that supposed to mean?”
    “If you were on foot,” Pappy said, “and in no position to get
yourself a horse, what would you do?”
    “Like Paul Creyton.”
    “We'll say Eke Paul Creyton.” began to get mad just thinking about
it. “If he lays a hand on Red,” I said, “I'll kill him.”
    Pappy turned, and stretched, and yawned, as if it were no concern of
his. “Maybe I'm wrong,” he said, “but I doubt it. He's got to have a
horse, and that animal of yours is the closest one around.”
    He started back toward the shack, toward the doorway faintly jumping
in orange firelight. “Just a minute,” I said. “How are you so sure that
he won't try to steal that black of yours?”
    Pappy smiled. He was in the dark, but I knew he was smiling.
    “Paul Creyton knows better than to steal an animal of mine,” he said.
    When I got back to the shack I decided that Pappy had the whole thing
figured wrong. Creyton had his blanket roll undone and was stretched
out in front of the fireplace when I came in. He didn't look like a man
ready to make a quick getaway on a stolen horse. Pappy was sitting on
the other side of the room with his back to the wall, smoking one of
his