At midnight Tad went outside to call Kipp for guard duty. He found
the old officer sitting on a tarp-covered bed, smoking. “Herd’s a
layin’ peaceful, Joe. I done found a jug uh licker and Slim and the
yaller ’un has drunk theirselves tuh sleep. Black Jack’s the fust
breed I ever run acrost that don’t tech t’rant’lar juice.”
Kipp smiled absently and got to his feet. Tad was pulling off his
boots already. The sheriff’s form was silhouetted against the
lighted doorway for a moment, then the door closed.
Tad, in the act of pulling off a second tight-fitting boot, paused,
his wide brow furrowed in thought. For as long as a minute he sat
thus. Then he pulled the boot back on his foot and donned its mate.
He listened for a moment to Shorty’s snoring then, moving
stealthily, Tad made his way to the cabin, crouching by the window,
the glass of which had been broken earlier in the night.
“Hurry up and cut these ropes,” Tad heard Black Jack command in a
low-pitched tone.
“No,” came Kipp’s answer.
The sheriff’s voice sounded tired, the voice of an old man who
carried too heavy a burden.
“Yuh know what it means fer us both if I talk?”
“Yes. I’ve done figgered it all out. I’m takin’ my medicine and
givin’ you yourn. There ain’t no use talkin’. I’m goin’ through with
this. I aim tuh come clean with the hull story. How you killed a man
when he ketched yuh stealin’ hosses. How yuh got life fer it. How I
filed the bars uh the window on that Los Cruces jail and staked yuh
to a hoss tuh git away into Mexico. Yuh said you’d never bother me
no more. I come north, changed my name and lets the past lay dead.
Then you and this Fox hunts me out and makes me play yore dirty
game. I’m tellin’ all that when the time comes. They kin do what
they —— please with me. I’ll die in the pen knowin’ I’ve squared my
accounts here on this side uh the Big Divide.”
The breed made no reply. Tad, peering through the logs where a bit
of chinking had dropped out, saw the sheriff squatted with his back
against the door, a Winchester across his knees.
Black Jack’s back was toward Tad. He could see the brown, muscular
hands, one of them swollen and discolored, twist at the tightly
knotted rope.
“You’d bust the promise yuh made to a dyin’ woman?”
“I’ve kept that promise,” replied Kipp slowly, “more than kept it. I
reckon you know that as well as I do.”
“Yes,” came the breed’s answer, “I reckon I do. You done yore share
and more. I aim tuh do mine.”
One of those brown hands had so maneuvered that it had slipped
inside the waistband of the overalls and was hidden. Unseen by Kipp,
it now came forth, holding a tiny derringer. Before Tad grasped the
import of the breed’s intention, Black Jack had pressed the muzzles
of the little double-barreled gun into his own back. A dull roar as
the hammer fell and the soft-nosed .44 slug ripped its way upward
through Black Jack’s spine and into his chest. A second thudding
roar. Then the smoking gun dropped to the floor.
Kipp was on his feet, staring strangely at the breed. Tad saw Black
Jack’s face twist upward, white teeth showing in a twisted grin.
“Yuh see I’m keepin’ my word,” said the breed through smiling lips.
“I won’t bother yuh no more. I’m—goin’ now. So long.”
The bearded head sagged forward. The body swayed sidewise. Kipp
caught it and lowered him gently to the floor, dead.
Tad, entering the cabin, saw dimly outlined in the blue smoke haze
Kipp squatting beside the body of the dead outlaw, staring into the
glazing black eyes of the half-breed who had made the old sheriff’s
life a living hell.
Kipp looked up. Tad was amazed to see the sheriff’s eyes wet with
unshed tears.
“He was my son, Ladd,” said Kipp simply.
Tad stared stupidly for a moment, stunned at the sheriff’s words.
Then he nodded understandingly. Slim and the other outlaw, stirred
in their drunken slumber and slept on. Tad looked up to see Shorty,
gun in hand, framed in the doorway.
“Black Jack done killed hisse’f, Shorty,” Tad explained. “Pete
awake?”
“Awake and on the way, Tad. Yonder he comes, limpin’. Bet he stepped
on a cactus in his sock feet.”
“I reckon Joe wants tuh be left alone, pard. Tell——”
“Hold on, Ladd,” said Kipp quietly, rising. “Let Pete come. The time
has come fer explainin’ off a few things. Come in and set.”
The three younger men, awed into respectful silence by Kipp’s
gravity, did as he asked.
“I won’t take long, boys,” Kipp began. “Ner will I try fer tuh git
yore sympathy. Yonder lays my boy, the only child by a marriage that
never should uh bin. She was Apache, I was a white man. We was both
kids at the time and mistook lonesomeness fer love. We run off and
was married down in Mexico.
“When she run off with me, she outlawed herself from her folks. They
hated white men. I was —— fool enough tuh think I could make her
over into a white woman. —— knows she was purty enough and as decent
as ary white gal that ever lived. But in the towns, the white women
shied off from her. Men called me a squaw-man and treated me as
such. We wa’n’t so happy as we might uh bin them days, and we stuck
clost to the little cow ranch I had down on the border. Then the boy
come and fer a while it looked like we was goin’ tuh be happy onct
more.
“But it didn’t last long. I was gone a heap, round-ups and hoss
huntin’ and such. She was left alone on the ranch. There was a good
lookin’ Mexican that used tuh drop in sometimes. Fancy outfit and
always shaved and wearin’ of a clean shirt. He had money. I didn’t
know till later that he made it sellin’ stolen hosses. She was a
right purty little thing. I come in from a week’s work in the hills
tuh find her gone. She’d took the boy, then a kid ten years old,
with her.
“I oiled my gun and hit their trail. But ——, they was plumb gone. I
rode over half uh Mexico, then come home tuh find my cattle
scattered and run off and nary hoss left. The Mexicans had stole me
blind, durin’ the twelve months I’ve bin gone. Travelers has tore
down my corrals tuh build camp fires. A rattler strikes at me as I
steps into the gutted cabin which I’d called home, and I’m that low
in speerits that I goes back to my hoss without shootin’ the snake’s
head off. Keepin’ clear uh town er the ranches where I’m known, I
quits that range fer keeps.
“Cowpunchin’, ridin’ grub-line, breakin’ broncs, night-hawkin’, even
takin’ a whirl at cookin’, and I’m driftin’ like a tumbleweed afore
a norther. Doin’ my share uh drinkin’ and —— raisin’ with the rest,
aimin’ tuh fergit that I got a wife an’ kid a strayin’ somewheres.
But it ain’t noways easy tuh fergit and I keeps driftin’ back across
the border hopin’ tuh cut their trail and always I got a shell in my
gun fer the greaser that’s mavericked my wife an’ kid.
“It’s ten years from the day they run off from me, that I finds
Mister Mex. I’m ridin’ into a li’l’ ol’ Mex town when I hears
shootin’. I rounds the corner uh the _adobe rurale_ fort in time tuh
see a _rurale_ firin’ squad blowin’ the smoke from their carbines. In
a heap against a _’dobe_ wall is my Mex, plumb full uh lead. They’ve
done ketched him stealin’ hosses. His pardner, a ’breed kid, has out
rode ’em and got away after killin’ three uh their men. That ’breed
kid, understand, is my son.
“That night I finds my wife down in a stinkin’, dirty _’dobe_ shack in
Gopher town. She’s got fat and black lookin’ and she’s dyin’ from
pneumonia. I stays by her till she dies. The kid, a good lookin’,
black-eyed young tough, drifts in as she’s goin’ out. Not knowin’
me, he stands there in the door a-coverin’ me till she tells him
he’s linin’ his sights on his own dad. He’s there when I promises
her to look after him and get him weaned off from his wild ways.
He’s laughin’ at me and her when she closes her eyes and I feels her
hand go limp in mine.
“‘We’ll be startin’ fer Arizona when we’ve buried yore mother,’ I
tells him.
“‘The —— we will,’ he says, blowin’ cigaret smoke in my face. ‘You
shore got a good imagination. Diggin’ graves is outa my fine uh work
and yore ways is too tame fer me. I jest dropped in tuh git some
ca’tridges and a bottle uh mescal. My father, eh? A —— of a father,
you are. And —— yuh, don’t go tryin’ tuh reform me, _sabe_? Bury the
squaw if yuh feel like it, then go back to where yuh belong.’
“He steps out into the dark and is gone. The next time I sees him,
he’s in jail at Los Cruces, bound fer Florence tuh serve a life
sentence. I brings him some smokin’ and pays off his law sharp and
figgers I’ve done my best. But he gits under my hide about this here
promise I done made his mother. He swears he’ll quit the country
complete and reform if I gits him loose. I weakens and that night I
lets him out.
“I changes my name and drifts to Montana, aimin’ tuh begin fresh and
thinkin’ the kid has gone tuh South America and made a clean start.
Fifteen years passes and I’m sheriff here. Then him and Fox shows
up. The kid’s older now and his whiskers keeps me from recognizin’
him.
“Me and Hank Basset rides into the brakes follerin’ the sign uh the
stolen cattle. We splits up. I gits my hoss shot out from under me
and takes to the brush. I jumps this Black Jack sudden, shootin’ the
gun outa his hand. I’m puttin’ the ’cuffs on him when he tells me
who he is.”
Kipp paused. His hands went out in a weary gesture.
“You kin guess the rest, boys. Fox and him a houndin’ me. They tell
me that the night uh the Los Cruces jail break, a deputy was killed.
The kid shot him, like as not. Him er Fox who was in town at the
time, dickerin’ fer stolen hosses that the kid brung across the
line. But they’ve laid the killin’ on to me and I’m wanted down
there. Likewise the kid plays on this promise I done made his
mother, sayin’ how I done wrong by her all the way through and if
he’d had the right kind uh raisin’ he’d uh turned out different.
Mebbe so, by gittin’ Fox and cleanin’ up this gang, I kin make up a
mite fer what or’nariness I’ve done. Then I’m goin’ back tuh Los
Cruces and let ’em do what they want with me. That’s the hull ——
story, boys. The story that’s writ in black and white and lays in my
safe. I want that you should know this afore I meets up with Fox.”
* * * * *
Opening the door, Joe Kipp stepped out into the night, his hair
silvery white in the bright moonlight.
“I wonder,” said Pete Basset, as if musing aloud, “what we can say
to make him know we’re for him?”
“Leave it tuh Tad,” whispered Shorty. “He kin do ’er. Hop to it,
Taddie. Do it and I’ll give yuh them Chihuahua spurs yuh bin
wantin’.”
Tad gave his little partner a withering look, then stepped over to
Black Jack’s dead body, looking down into the upturned face. Then he
jerked the blanket off the snoring Slim and covered the body of Joe
Kipp’s son.
“I wish you would say something to him, Tad,” said Pete earnestly.
“I’m afraid I’d make a mess of it.”
“If I gotta, I gotta,” replied Tad grimly. “Shed them spurs, runt.”
Tad met Kipp at the corral. He held out his hand to the old sheriff.
Kipp’s eyes were misty as he gripped it. “That goes fer all of us,”
said Tad simply.