XIIAt 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 theadobe ruralefort in time tuh see aruralefirin’ squad blowin’ the smoke from their carbines. In a heap against a’dobewall 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’dobeshack 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 line 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.
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 theadobe ruralefort in time tuh see aruralefirin’ squad blowin’ the smoke from their carbines. In a heap against a’dobewall 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’dobeshack 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 line 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.