The Desperado by Clifton Adams Page A

didn't surprise me the way it should have. Maybe I knew all along that
sooner or later all of that law-and-order his old man had pounded into
him would come to the top. Well, that was all right with me. He could
put in his time on the work gang if he wanted to, but not me. Not while
I had two guns to fight with.
    Joe Bannerman was studying me quietly, through those purple slits of
eyes. Something was going on in that mind of his, but I couldn't make
it out at first. There was something about it that made me uneasy.
    “The police,” I said, “they came back today to have another go at
finding out where I'd gone. Is that how you got that face?”
    He nodded and looked away. It hit me then, and I knew what it was
about his eyes that worried me. For some crazy reason, Joe Bannerman
was feeling sorry for me. That wasn't like him. Refusing to give
information to the bluebellies was different—any honest rancher would
have done the same thing—but that look of sympathy—I hadn't been
ready for that. Not from Joe Bannerman.
    He said, “Tall, have you been home yet?”
    “Not yet,” I said. “I wanted to make sure that Laurin was all right.”
    He looked at his hands as if there was something very special about
them. As if he had never seen another pair just like them before.
    “I thought maybe you knew,” he said. “I figured maybe that was the
reason you came back.”
    I looked at him. “You thought I knew what?”
    “About your pa.”
    “Goddammit, Joe, can't you come out and tell something straight,
without breaking it into a hundred pieces? What about Pa?”
    Then he lifted his head and he must have looked at me for a full
minute before he finally answered.
    “Tall, your pa's dead.”
    I don't know how long I stood there staring at him, wanting to curse
him for a lousy liar, and all the time knowing that he was telling the
truth. That was the answer to the feeling I'd had. It all made sense
now. Pa, a part of me, had died.
    Somehow I got out of the house. I remember Joe Bannerman saying,
“Tall, be careful. There's cavalry and police everywhere.”
    I punished Red unmercifully going across the open range southeast
toward our place. I rode like a crazy man. The sensible part of my
brain told me that there was no use taking it out on Red. It wasn't his
fault. If it was anybody's fault, it was my own. But the burning part
of my brain wanted to hit back and hurt something, as Pa had been hurt,
and Red was the only thing at hand.
    But all the wildness went away the minute our ranch house came into
sight, and there was nothing left but emptiness and ache. There were
several buggies and hacks of one kind or another sitting in front of
the house, and solemn, silent men stood around in little clusters near
the front porch. I swung Red around to come in the back way, and the
men didn't see me.
    I didn't see any police. All the men were ranchers, friends of Pa's.
The womenfolk, I knew, would be inside with Ma. As I pulled Red into
the ranch yard, Bucky Stow, one of our hands, came out of the
bunkhouse. When he saw who it was, he hurried toward me in that
rolling, awkward gait that horsemen always have when they're on the
ground.
    “Tall, for Christ's sake,” he said, “you oughtn't to come here. The
damn bluebellies are riled up enough as it is.”
    I dropped heavily from the saddle and put the reins in his hands. I
noticed then that I had brought blood along Red's glossy ribs where I
had raked him hard with my spur rowels, and for some crazy reason that
made me almost as sick as finding out about Pa. Pa had loved that
horse.
    But I slapped him gently on the rump and he seemed to understand. I
said, “Give him some grain, Bucky. All he wants.”
    “Tall, you're not going to stay here, are you?”
    I left him standing there and headed toward the house. I went into
the kitchen where two ranch wives were rattling pots and pans on the
kitchen stove. They looked up startled, as I