The Hell Bent Kid Read online

  Amos hogged him high, I hogged him low, the horse started to sit down, the brave slid back. I then grabbed him around the neck from behind. Amos got back some and on balance and gave him another rush. We held him down while Amos beat in his head with a rock.

  I looked and saw Amos breathing hard, tears coming out of his eyes. He staggered around groaning, pulling at his chest. The girl was halfway between a sweat and the screaming fantods, but she ran like a deer back up the rise and brought down a bottle of whiskey for Mr. Bradley. He quieted a little after the whiskey, but complained of heart pains. Then he took another swig and felt better. The Indians on the bluff started to move along. It seemed about over.

  We got back to our place and saw the whole crowd on the rim move out of sight. We were worried for a while, then ate, and Amos said: “Well, I made you kill today, Bub, and it probably is just as well you did, aside from the idea killing a man is not like killing an Indian.”

  I said I thought Indians were men. He grunted and said: “Maybe so—looks also as if you might have to fight your way down there through the Boyds.”

  Said I did not want to kill any Boyds.

  “You may not, but it appears they want to kill you, which makes it complicated.”

  We rebuilt the fire finally. Amos said he thought the Utes were trying to dodge a platoon of the 9th Cavalry sent to shoo them in, but were picking up a horse where they could. They had been considering other more important things than us, but it was just as well all told they did not spot our horses. They might have taken all. Not the mule. Indians do not seem to care for mules. I never saw a mule and an Indian together.

  To help his heart, Amos had drunk considerable, but now did not stop. He grew very talkative. He kept sucking at that bottle. I refused a drink but Nita took a sip. It was then I noted her right hand behind her, and when I spoke of it she started yelling and crying. Amos snatched at her hand. She had balled up a strip of cloth inside her fist to soak up the blood. Right through the leftwards side of her hand there was a bullet hole. It was the only blood the Utes drew on us.

  She was afraid of being burned with the ramrod. But she let us wash and dress the hole, which was as clean a wound as I ever saw. She whimpered a little when Amos soaked a cloth in something he had in a bottle and ran it through her hand.

  But then he motioned toward the goose gun. We had to run that little squaw all over the mountain, dodging behind trees. She kept up her yelling. At last Amos caught her.

  She kept hitting him and crying. It touched me a good deal. Amos pointed out to me that the hole was a clean one, fresh made, not like mine. The heat of the slug going through had probably cleaned it up enough. We did finally get a bandage on it.

  Amos told me how to do it, so I axed off a little branch of oak or pine, I forget which, and shaped her down to a kind of square block and strapped it down but not too tight. But Amos warned her if there was a smell or least sign in the morning, he would have to stick her with the ramrod.

  She was gentled down then. I cooked the supper.

  After supper Amos then told Nita he wanted to show me something, so we jigged up the fire and left her there, walking to a big rise but where we could see her. We kept a close watch of her. We had our guns with us, and left her with the Colt. We had seen no signs of Utes but were taking no chances.

  “Now there—look over there,” Amos said.

  I looked and saw a little grab of lights on the plain.

  “Now that is Clayton. She’s on high ground so you can see her quite a while. That is your bearing point for a starter. Keep that on the left of your tail as long as you can. Maybe even at night you can get up a rise and see her quite a ways down. I would not know. But anyway that will be for a starter.” He pointed south and west. “Now if you go too far west, the first thing you may notice is a kind of runty hill that looks like a covered wagon. You can’t miss that if you ride fairly near. For me, if I was you, I would keep to the center of things. The Boyds might figger you would parallel the Santa Fe trail south, but they don’t like riding rough ground any better than you do. You have got a bigger reason than they to move slower through struck-up country. Down mostly directly south of us is some caves where gas comes from the ground. You may probably see them.

  “The way I figger it you should out to shoot straight south for Santa Rosa. Minute you get there, get to my casa and hand the stuff I’ve written to the womenfolks. Now the towns you will want to avoid—like Springer and Maxwell—they are far to the west from where I am aiming to send you. Now if I was you I would shack up a whiles with this sheepherder I know. I wrote his name down back there on that stuff I fixed for you. His name is Bawbeen. Remember that. Bawbeen. He’ll do anything for me.”

  I asked him if the man’s name was Irish, as it sounded so.

  “No,” said Amos, “it is French. Maybe I don’t give it the proper sound but it’s near enough. Everybody calls him that, and he’s known all through the country there, even up here. He’ll give you the right steer and will not let down on you.”

  I said I understood.

  “Now,” he said further, “just before you fetch Santa Rosa, which is nearly all Mex, you’ll find a little place called Anton Chico. If you get there there is one saloon and a bartender I know. I gave you a note for him. He can’t read but will get someone to read it for him. The real name of the place is Sangre de Cristo, which means Blood of Christ. But that is too much of a mouthful for irreligious, ignorant people like us so we call it Anton Chico. The reason I advise against Fort Union is that the Boyds will surely scout up the place, and no telling what they might say. The military might get to pondering about you. However, that’s for you to decide. Just one thing, if you hit the fort or the hill that looks like a prairie schooner, you will be too near the trail. Better ease off to the eastward and middle part. At Santa Rosa they will tell you whether to take the north or south pass to Socorro.”

  I told him I understood and he made me a map.

  He said: “The Boyds have a lot of people depending on them for a living, and that gives them plenty of room to work. Then they have a lot of small-fry relations, ranging from poor to well-to-do. If it’s a Big Hunt, you’ll find out soon by the amount of money they throw out, for they got plenty of that same stuff. But I just figure you are a boy who is not to be fooled with much with shooting-weapons. I figger that word has kind of gotten around. I know I would not want to fool much with you. Now this Bawbeen, he is on the good side of the cattlemen because he traps wolves for them, but he hates cattlemen just the same because he is a sheepman. Also in killing wolves, recollect he is at the same time protecting his sheep. I know he hates the Boyds from something away back. I know Old Man Maxwell likes him.”

  We walked back to the fire and the girl.

  Amos had been writing some stuff before supper, but now he started writing again with a pencil so old and small you could hardly see it in his hand. He wrote notes for me to take, and gave me paper and another dinky pencil when I begged them off him. From back when my father wanted me to make a sale-list of stuff from our farm when it was sold, harness, tools and all, I had tried to keep a record of myself without more than half regularity, but now caught up some with what I had been through. Amos had good, ruled paper for me to write on, but the pencil wore down fast. When I looked up from what I was trying to put down, Amos was taking off his moccasins and jacket, and next rolled up in a horse blanket and started snoring to wake the dead.

  In my sleep that night there was a weight on my chest. I woke up fast, and the girl Nita was bending over me and I wondered did I dream that she kissed me, but then she proved it by doing it again.

  When I started to say something she let me have her block-splinted hand right across the mouth hard. Then she kissed me again and kept saying, “Keep still—keep quiet.” She talked through her teeth as if she was angry.

  I was never so surprised. I moved enough to look at Amos. He was complete out with the whiskey.

  Now I kne
w she was crazy. She went back under the tent lining she was using that night. I lay listening to the wind in the jacks. I could again see her hot, beautiful eyes and feel her wet mouth.

  I dozed off. But I was not to sleep much that night. Amos jerked my arm. I thought it was morning. I heard him say: “I want to talk to you.” So then I got awake and rose up gradually.

  Walked to the fire he had jigged up. Refused a drink from the bottle. He took a swig and said: “Sit down, I want to talk to you. I am concerned.”

  Then he said nothing. I sat there rubbing my eyes and listening to the wind. Finally he said: “Listen, you will never make Socorro. Bub, I cotton to you. Come on up northways with the girl and me.”

  I shook my head.

  “You can easy take the stage line. And with her in St. Loo, you can get something for a whiles to occupy you. You will never make Socorro and are worth saving. You know somewhat but you are a green kid.”

  He took a swig: “This here is uncivilized country. Over there in your native Texas they don’t kill a man except about once a month or so, but over here they kill all the while. There is cattle rustling, stealing money, claim jumping, whoring around and a right deal of degeneracy. Over there they have the old West Texas crowd. Then they have some native people too who are sad because they missed the education in crime the others got in West Texas. But they tried hard and just developed their own brand of orneriness. And they are doing well, I hear. Doing well. They tell me they have some of the Dillons over there, and one of the Jameses. But just for show, you understand. They have a good deal of pride in their meanness and want to advertise it. They don’t entirely need fancy reputations to help them. There are people I know of there that I actually do not want to meet—anywhere. And you don’t know how mean I can get when sore. Rather than meet these people I would prefer Injuns. And also, the Boyds would not stop at hiring a whole town to turn out and kill you, if you keep pushing of them. Stop pushing. Just ease yourself and come up north with me.”

  I said nothing but showed him I was interested.

  “Now to show you the Boyds. When you were still standing away from Hunter and me today, know what he told me? When Tom Boyd came home a few days back from the trouble you made him, Old Man Boyd larruped him with an alder cane. Whopped him, larruped him. Growed man, twenty-two, twenty-three years old. He said to me ‘I busted two canes on him, Amos, and grabbed for the third.’ Now I show you this to show you the Boyds. You think you are tough. To them you are baby-soft.”

  I told Amos how I had figured the Boyds. That they were always out to take something from somebody. I told him how I had figured the Boyds back by the dry.

  “Yes,” he said, “they are gettin’-people.”

  I told Amos I had to help my father.

  “You can’t help him if you die, Bub.”

  I agreed to this.

  “How much do you value your life?”

  I said I would have to think that over.

  “Think it over?” He spit, took a swig and said: “Now I know you’re crazy.”

  I asked Amos if he thought the dead are happy.

  He gave me a sour look and said he would have to think that one over.

  Finally he said: “Well, Bub, I warned you.”

  Then I told him what I had decided: “No more of this foolishing around with scare-shots and cattle. I will shoot first from now on and will aim for one of two places, the head or the heart.”

  Amos looked at me a long time. “Well,” he finally said, “if you aim at either one, you kill a man as a rule, and you don’t have to prove to me that you can hit where you aim. I hope you get a bagful of Boyds. But in the end they’ll get you. Yep.”

  We rolled up then and went to sleep.

  Amos was sore and touchy when we called him and cussed a little but he at length got up. He kept groaning and rubbing his face with his hands. Then as it got lighter, the gray sliding down south and west among the canyons, he had a drink he called doghair which was no different from the others. Sat looking at the fire and finally went to the falls to fill the cans and bags.

  He stayed a long while there, and she came down to me and said she now knew both my names and liked Tot better than Bub. She wanted to give me the pin like an H. And here she had melted it on a split stick in the fire and torn off the one bar of the H, as cattlemen do to change a brand, and it was now a T. I just stared at her. She then calmly lifted up her blue skirt showing her beautiful white thigh well above her knee-high leggins and then said that crazy girl, “I will brand myself T and I will be Tot Lohman’s girl forever.”

  I grabbed her and held her, feeling sick, but also having another feeling. She was hurt when I grabbed her hard, and squealed a little—Amos looked back from the falls in time to see her lean in to me right under my chin and then reach up and kiss me long and good. I was afraid but Amos just smiled and went back to can filling.

  I told her she was crazy but I took the pin and put it under my shirt—on the left side as she wanted, she reaching in and closing the clasp of the pin herself, then patting my bare chest under the pocket there. But when she moved I ducked away so she could not kiss me again, feeling sure Amos might forgive us once, but might after then be scandalized. Amos had been very kind to me, and I wanted to show him plenty of respect, and the thought came to me, What would my people think of all this?

  When we were ready to start and part, I was sad, but Amos kept drawing it out. Nita sat her pony awhile looking at him and me. I did not want to mount until he was ready to go with politeness and he kept sitting there at the fire with a few more drinks going down now and again.

  “Amos,” she kept saying. “Amos.”

  Shortly he put the bottle away, roused up and together we killed the fire, but while we did he said: “The little grain and stuff you borrowed from us, and the pair of saddlebags to go with your cut one, you can pay back someday.”

  I said yes sir.

  “Sorry you will have to ride blanket and strap, but I have no saddle to spare.”

  I told him that was all right.

  He was dousing the last of the fire.

  “Anybody ever tell you what color your eyes are?”

  Well, now that is a strange thing for one man to say to another but I knew how much he had drunk, though in all movements he was perfectly steady and sure.

  I said I thought they tended to be blue.

  “Bet Nita knows.”

  She turned red like fire there in the saddle.

  Amos laughed at her and then me. “Yes, they are blue but there is a kind of smoky color in them. This morning I am just thin-minded enough to see it good.”

  I looked at the sun and said the light was getting better.

  “Ever been mad in your life, Tot?”

  I said sure.

  “But ever real good and mad? I ask this because I don’t think you have and are a cool galoot for one of your age.”

  Told him I did not really know.

  “Well, I know,” he said. “I know. You have possibly never been really good and mad, but when that day comes I do not want to be around. No sir, I do not want to be around whether you have anything to shoot with or not at that time. I will fix it to be in other parts of the country. But there is no reason why I should not try to imagine what your eyes will look like at that moment, no sir.”

  He took a long swig of liquor and then began to look at the bottle and then to mumble to himself.

  He got on his horse. I got on mine, he said goodbye to me still with the mumbling voice but once he turned and smiled and waved his hand. Nita swung in behind then. The pack mule started after her. She turned and called good luck.

  I felt bad when I turned my little horse down the steep, with a blanket and surcingle under me, and with two borrowed saddlebags from Amos and my own. I had that pin, which I could feel cold against my chest. I watched them moving out. I never felt so bad.

  9

  Letter from Amos Bradley to Henry Restow

 
Dear Henry Restow: Though it has been a long, long time since we met, I believe you will recall me, as I do you. I am giving this letter to one of the Boyd riders tomorrow, on the chance that he is drifting over to the state line and might drop it to one of your boys. This Lohman Kid with whom I have spent several days—why did you let him get away from your ranchero to descend on me? I have had the responsibility of looking after him and my daughter for a few days, and I sat up most of the night trying to argue with the crazy Kid that he should not ride south to certain death. But it was no use. He has one idea on his mind which is to get to his father, who I understand is mixed up in his life, his health and his thinking, as he is cooking for this Britisher Gerard who is getting off the lawside without probably knowing it.

  But I could not tell all these matters to the Kid, not being sure of some of them. You know how Dame Rumor has a way of getting things twisted. But I did make it perfectly plain to the Young Man that he has about as much chance of reaching Socorro as a rabbit has of killing a wolf.

  The terrible thing about all this is that I have grown fond of this boy—never having had a son of my own—and he is worth saving. This boy is not a bad boy. Luck merely has been against him. He is underneath some crudities a manly boy. He is all right. He has been kind to me and my daughter, after meeting up with us, though that is not the way to put it. What happened was we pulled him back from the brink of the grave, finding him horseless and having had no food or water for days. The Boyds shot his horse and he walked I don’t know how far across the dry. When we found him it was just in time. A couple more hours and I believe he would have cashed in.

  It is much on my mind that I have not told him all that Boyd told me. They are determined to get the boy between here and his destination and as for his father, they probably figure on hitting the father through the boy or vice versa. You know the Boyds and how they think, except that they don’t think. It seemed to me that if I made it too strong to the boy he would be more determined. But on the other side it was the consideration of warning him enough for his own safety. The Boyds have got it firm in their minds that the boy is a crazy killer. Or they merely pass this out to ease their consciences and set the country against him.