A Noose for the Desperado by Clifton Adams

anger. And in
the back of my mind I knew that somebody—Basset, Kreyler, one of the
Indian's friends—was probably planning a way to kill me. That didn't
seem important either. I was getting out of Ocotillo. I was getting out
tomorrow. The girl was standing there beside me, looking at me and not
saying anything. She was still smiling, but it was a different, sweet,
almost holy smile: It reminded me of old women on their knees in front
of altars saying their prayers. It made me uncomfortable having her
look at me that way.
    I got up and went out of the room and went into Bama's room and lay
across the bed in the darkness. I knew that she would be there in a few
minutes. And she was.
    She didn't say a word. She just lay down beside me and pressed that
hot animal self of hers against me and waited. We both waited, and
nothing happened. She came closer and those soft arms crawled over me,
and then she was breathing her hot breath in my face and mashing her
bruised mouth against mine. Still nothing happened. I could have been
kissing a stone statue and it would have been about the same. For a
while we just lay there. Maybe she thought that it was the excitement
of the fight that made me the way I was, but it was more than that. She
just wasn't what I wanted. After a while she went away.

Chapter Five
    THE NEXT MORNING I awoke to the sound of sloshing water behind the
thin partition that separated Bama's room from mine. I got up and
sloshed water on my own face, drying it on the tail of one of Bama's
shirts. Then I went into the hall and knocked.
    “Bama, are you up?”
    He opened the door, bleary-eyed, licking his cracked lips. “Well,” he
said. “I was wondering what happened to you.”
    “I spent the night in your room. It seemed easier than trying to move
you. How do you feel?”
    “Fine,” he said thickly. “Like I always feel on mornings like this.”
He touched the knot behind his ear and winced.
    “That's where I hit you.”
    “I know,” he said. “You didn't bring a bottle along, did you?”
    “Don't you think it's about time to lay off the stuff for a while?”
    He looked at me hazily. He sat on the bed, holding his head as if he
thought maybe it would roll off his shoulders if he didn't. “God,” he
said flatly, “what a rotten, lousy life. You killed the Indian, didn't
you?”
    “The sonofabitch asked for it.”
    Then he thought of something. “The girl—Marta— where is she?”
    “How should I know? I guess she went home, down in the Mexican
section. I don't care where she went.”
    “She—she wasn't with you last night?”
    “Not after we got you up here.”
    He thought for a while, then he said a funny thing. “Maybe there's
some hope for you, Tall Cameron. As unlikely as it seems, maybe there's
some hope for you, after all.”
    “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
    But he seemed to have forgotten what he was talking about. “Sometimes
I think that memories are the only things that are real. I wish they
were. Are you sure you haven't got a bottle?”
    Then I remembered that bottle of greaser poison that Marta had used
oh my wrist. I dug it out from under some dirty clothes and poured him
a small one. “I'm sorry about that lick I gave you,” I said. “But you
butted into something that was none of your business.”
    “Yes,” he said, “I suppose I did.” And then he polished off the drink
and shuddered. “But that temper of yours,” he said when he got his
breath, “you ought to learn to control it. It'll turn on you like a bad
woman, and that will be the end of Tall Cameron.”
    “Let me worry about my temper,” I said. Suddenly I began to get an
idea—or rather, an old idea that had been floating around in the
cellar of my mind suddenly came to the top. I said, “Bama, if you hate
this place so much, why don't you get out of it?”
    He just looked at me.
    “What's holding you here?” I asked. “Take your cut of the silver