Between Hell and Texas (13 page)

Dawson could see that it pained him to even talk. “Here, put this on it,” he said, holding the wet rag down to him without taking the tip of the rifle barrel away from his chest.

Jewel Higgs looked first at the rifle barrel, then up at Dawson’s face. “Obliged, Mister,” he said. Then
as recollection caught up to him he asked in a strained, halting voice, “You— You didn’t kill Joe Poole and Eddie Grafe, did you?”

Dawson noted the two names for future reference. “If you mean the two men riding with you, no,” said Dawson. “They lit out and left you laying in the dirt.”

Higgs took the wet rag and touched it carefully to his forehead. “That figures,” he said flatly, the pain in his forehead throbbing with no letup. “I never…left a pal behind in my life. First time something…like this happens to me, there they go.” He looked hurt and disgusted. “It’s a wonder they didn’t steal my boots, I reckon. If you hadn’t been up there shooting at us…I expect they would have.”

“What were you doing up here, anyway?” asked Dawson. “I mean, besides watching something that was none of your business.”

“We was looking down that way…but we never saw nothing, Mister,” said Higgs, his face reddening. “I swear we never. It’s too far away.”

“Even with this?” asked Dawson, taking the dusty telescope from inside his shirt and wagging it back and forth.

“Well, hell, all right. You got me straight up,” said Higgs, holding the wet rag to his forehead as he spoke. “It ain’t something worth killing a man over, is it?”

“No,” said Dawson, “it’s not.”

“I mean…if you two hadn’t been doing it, we couldn’t have been watching. Any red-blooded man sees something like that going on, Lord!” said Higgs, shaking his head carefully. “I reckon he’s bound to watch for a little while. Just long enough to see what’s—”

“That’s enough,” said Dawson, cutting him off. Now it was his face that reddened. “I told you it’s not worth killing a man over.” He stuck the telescope back inside his shirt. “But that wasn’t what you came here to see. Who are you? What were you doing here?”

“All right, I’m going to be honest with you, Mister Dawson,” Higgs said, wincing slightly from the pain. “We knew who you are. Martin Lematte sent us to check up on you. He was worried that you might be coming back to Somos Santos to even the score for what Henry Snead did to you.”

“Henry Snead?” Dawson asked. “Is that the name of the man who hit me?”

“Are you going to tell anybody I told you?” Higgs asked, slipping a glance back and forth as if someone might be listening.

“No, I won’t tell,” said Dawson.

“All right then, yes, it was Henry Snead who hit you. He’s a tough
hombre
…it’s nothing to be ashamed of, being beaten up by Snead.” He looked Dawson up and down, appraising him, then asked, “What was wrong with you anyway? You don’t look like a weakling. One punch in the gut and you folded like a busted army tent.”

Dawson wasn’t about to tell him about his stomach wound. Instead he said, “I was just caught off guard, that’s all. It never happened before. It won’t happen again.”

“Can I have a drink of that water?” asked Higgs, pointing his free hand toward the canteen hanging by its strap from Dawson’s shoulder.

“Sure,” said Dawson, dropping it off his shoulder and handing it down to him. “Why did Lematte think I would blame him? Does this Snead fellow work for him?”

“Yep, Henry is one of the deputies in Somos Santos,” said Higgs. “Lematte didn’t want a big gunman like you carrying a mad-on at him. So he sent us to see if you was still around.”

“That’s all? Just check on me?” Dawson asked.

“Yes, so help me that was all,” said Higgs. “Me and those other two ain’t fools. We wasn’t about to try and do you any harm.”

“And you three came straight here?” asked Dawson, just to see how persistent they had been in their search.

“No, we started at the old house where he heard you’d be staying. We followed your tracks from there toward here, what was left of them anyway.”

“This Snead, what does he look like?” asked Dawson, already having a pretty good picture of the broad, powerful young man who’d dragged him outside the saloon and shoved him up into his saddle.

“He’s your height, or thereabout,” said Higgs. “He’s got a big old gold tooth right up in front of his mouth.” He took a drink of tepid water and poured a thin trickle onto the wet bandanna. “Strong as an ox, he is. Got broad shoulders like a bare-knuckle fighter. He lifts nail kegs, whiskey barrels, and such…just to keep himself strong.” He looked Dawson up and down. “That’s why I say, it’s nothing to be ashamed of, him knocking you down that way.”

“I’m not ashamed of it,” said Dawson. He considered it for a moment then said, “A gold tooth, eh?” He pulled up a vague image of Henry Snead’s smirking face standing above him while he lay on the ground wracked by pain.

“Yep,” said Higgs, dabbing the wet bandanna to his swollen forehead. “The word is he didn’t even
have a missing tooth there. He just wanted to wear a shiny gold tooth…had the dentist yank one out and replace it.”

Higgs eyed him closely. “I reckon you’ll be calling on him now that you know who to look for?”

“I’m not looking to even the score,” said Dawson.

“You’re not, sure enough?” Higgs asked, giving him a dubious look.

“No, I’m not,” said Dawson. “If I send you back to Somos Santos, will you tell him so? Tell him and Lematte both that as far as I’m concerned it’s over. I don’t want any trouble.”

Higgs’s look turned to one of disbelief. “You
are
Crayton Dawson, ain’t you? The man who helped bring down the Talbert Gang?”

“That’s right, I am,” said Dawson. “And if I wanted to even any scores, I could have killed all three of you men up here. But I didn’t, did I?”

“No, and I’m obliged for that,” said Higgs.

“Then tell Lematte and Snead that all I want is to be left alone. Can you make them understand that for me?”

“I’ll try my best,” said Higgs. “Can I walk on back to town now?”

“You’re free to leave here when you feel like it,” said Dawson. “But you don’t have to walk to Somos Santos.” He nodded over his shoulder. “There stands your horse. I caught him for you.”

Higgs squinted as if there might be some trick. “Alls I got to do is get on my horse and ride?”

“That’s all,” said Dawson. “But don’t let me catch you snooping around spying on me and the woman again.” He looked embarrassed. “Now get up and go.” He raised Higgs’s pistol from behind his gun
belt, unloaded it into the dirt and pitched it to him. “Here’s your side arm.”

“Obliged,” Higgs said, struggling to his feet, still looking suspicious. “How come you’re being so good to get along with, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“I want to be able to ride into Somos Santos when I feel like it and not have to be looking over my shoulder,” said Dawson.

“No kidding?” Jewel Higgs chuckled, dusting the seat of his trousers and shoving his pistol into his holster.

“That’s right,” said Cray Dawson, ignoring Higgs’s bemused laugh. “Is that going to be a problem?”

“Not to me it ain’t,” said Higgs, walking toward his horse, still holding the wet bandanna to his swollen forehead. He unhitched his horse and climbed up into his saddle. “I can see where Henry Snead might have a hard time with it.”

“Then I’ll have to deal with that when the time comes,” said Dawson. He watched Higgs turn his horse and ride away. Before Higgs’s dust had settled on the trail, Dawson raised himself into his saddle and said to his horse, “Come on, Stony. Let’s hope that’s the end of it.”

Dawson rode back to the
hacienda
and found Carmelita watching for him through the front window. She hurried out to him carrying a rifle, but then she dropped it on the ground and threw her arms around him as he stepped down from Stony’s back. Dawson felt her trembling against him. “Take it easy,” he said, hoping to soothe her. “Everything’s all right, see?” He held her back for a second at arm’s length, letting her get a reassuring look at him.

But she only looked him up and down quickly,
then pressed herself back against him, saying close to his chest, “I heard shooting! I was afraid you had been killed!”

“Those were
my
shots, Carmelita,” he said, holding her, letting her settle down in her own time. “I fired those shots to scare them away. We’re all right. They’re gone.” He stroked her dark hair.

“They?” she asked. “How many were there?”

“Three of them,” he said. “But don’t worry, they’re gone now.”

“Three of them, and they were watching us?” she said, trembling again. “I can’t stand thinking that their eyes were on us while we—”

“No, no,” said Dawson, “put it out of your mind. They were too far up to see anything if they’d wanted to. But they weren’t watching us,” he lied. “They had only gotten there about the time I saw the flash of the sunlight off of a canteen.” He wasn’t about to mention the telescope he’d kept and shoved down into his saddlebags on his way back.

“Oh?” She seemed to ease down. She looked up into his eyes, saying, “They were not watching us?”

“No,” said Dawson.

“But how do you know if you scared them away?” she asked.

“Because I caught one of them,” Dawson said, seeing that he would have to tell her the whole story, except for the part where the three men had been taking turns staring at them through the telescope. “They’re deputies for Martin Lematte, the new sheriff in Somos Santos. The one I caught told me that Lematte sent them to check up on me. They tracked me all the way here from my place.”

“Check up on you?” Carmelita drew back from
against his chest and looked up into his eyes. “Check on you? How? Why? Haven’t they done enough to you already?”

“It sounds like Lematte mostly just wanted to know my whereabouts,” said Dawson. “The man who hit me works for him. A tough fellow by the name of Henry Snead. Lematte is afraid I’ll think he was behind this.”

“And
was
this Sheriff Lematte behind this?” Carmelita asked.

“That’s a good question. I don’t know.” Dawson looked away from her for a moment. She saw something cross his mind. Then he said, “Snead is no doubt wondering if I’m going to come looking for him, to even the score.”

“Are you?” Carmelita asked.

“That’s not the message I sent to him,” said Dawson, appearing to not want to give her a straightforward answer.

“Yes, I understand that it is not the message you sent. But are you?” she asked pointedly.

“I think I’m going to have to,” Dawson said grudgingly.

Carmelita shook her head. “Even though you have told his man that you want no trouble with him?”

“I’ll give this man no better than he gave me, Carmelita,” said Dawson. “He hit me without warning. When and if I hit him, I’ll do it the same way. He didn’t try to kill me, so I won’t try to kill him, unless he brings it to that level.”

“Listen to yourself! You say you want to put an end to this thing,” said Carmelita. “There will be no end to it until somebody is willing to take their loss in order to stop the violence.”

“I thought that was what I did,” said Dawson. “I took my loss. I came here and tried to put it behind me.” He shrugged. “After all, except for the pain it caused me, it was only a punch in the gut.” A silence passed as he seemed to run it all through his mind. “Had this happened to me a year or two ago, it would have been over before I rode out of town. Now, because I’m thought of as a
big gun
, this thing is going to keep on going whether I want it to or not.”

“Then you will soon be going to Somos Santos looking for trouble?” Carmelita asked.

“No,” said Dawson, “I won’t go
looking
for trouble. But I’d be a fool not to go
prepared
for it.”

“Why go at all?” she asked.

“Because it’s my home town. It’s the only place to go for supplies in forty miles,” Dawson said. “How would it look, riding forty miles out of my way over somebody punching me in the stomach.”

“Oh, I see,” said Carmelita. “So it is a matter of your pride, and of
appearance
. You are concerned with what others will think of you.”

“If you think that, you don’t know me as well as I thought you did,” said Dawson. “I’ve never cared about pride, or what kind of showing I make to the rest of the world, Carmelita. But folks call me a gunman now. Whether I want to be one or not, it doesn’t matter. That’s how folks are seeing me and that’s how it is, I reckon. It’s bad enough that other gunmen want to try me on. If the word gets out that I’m ducking a man who has already made me crawl in the dirt, even saddle tramps and backshooting cowards will want to try to put a bullet in me, just to be able to say they did it.”

“But if you do not go to Somos Santos, who will know that you are ducking anyone? Perhaps in time this incident will die down and be forgotten.”

“I wish it were so,” said Dawson. “But I didn’t go looking for those three. They came here looking for me. There’ll be others now that they know where I am. The more I let them push, the harder they
will
push. The more I let them take, the more they will take from me.” Without mentioning the telescope or the fact that the three men had been spying on them, he added, “I can’t let them have the next move, Carmelita. I’ve got to get ahead of them and turn this thing around…for both of our sakes. Do you understand what I mean?”

She nodded in silence, avoiding his eyes on hers. Then she took a step back from him in resolve, put an arm around his waist, and said, “Come. I must feed you and help you keep up your strength.”