Carmody and Garrison were drunk, more or less. There was no other way to be after finishing a quart and a half of good bourbon. With the two Hatten brothers leading the way, they started to climb the narrow ledge that dipped and snaked along the face of the thousand-foot cliff. Carmody was behind the Hattens. Garrison came last.
Carmody led his horse on a short rein. He had tied a bandanna over the animal’s eyes; it still whinnied with panic as they edged their way up over the rock. Behind him, Garrison hummed and whistled some goddamned tune, making the animal even more nervous. That was how Garrison was, with cockroaches and horses and men. Something mean was always chewing on Garrison’s insides. It was right under the smiles and the jokes; the meanness was always there, rattling quietly like a sidewinder in thick sand.
Carmody figured there was only one way to teach Frank Garrison good manners; this wasn’t the time and place to try.
It took them thirty minutes to reach the top. A half-breed in a fancy sombrero and a serape draped over his shoulders watched them from between two rocks. Carmody remembered him from the old days. Blackie Sangster, a bad mixture of Mexican and Apache and colored.
He didn’t say anything as they mounted their horses and rode across the wide shelf of rock that sloped back from the edge of the cliff.
On the other side of the rock shelf the trail went through a growth of limber pine. Past that the trail began to climb sharply. Carmody remembered the rock as big as a house and shaped like a man’s head. The trail went around the big rock and Carmody could see the twin peaks high up on the mountain. Through there was the mouth of the long twisting canyon that led to the old Dutchman’s place. It was, he thought, one hell of a hideout.
Holding a bottle, Garrison rode up beside him. Carmody took it and drank. “See old Blackie looking at you, Carmody?” Garrison asked.
“Nice feller,” Carmody answered.
“A good man for a half-breed. Blackie don’t know what to make of you. Blackie’s the simple kind. Blackie don’t understand what you’re doing back here. Blackie and some of the boys took it kind of personal when you rode off like that.”
Carmody said, “I never knew Blackie to think so much. What do you think?”
“Truth to tell, Carmody, I took it kind of personal myself. We’d travelled a lot of miles together. You quitting the bunch like that caught me at sort of a bad time.”
“But you managed.”
“Didn’t I, though. I guess I did better than that. Things were bad for awhile, the law dogging me and everything, but damned if I didn’t make out all right.” Garrison looked sideways at Carmody. “I guess I did. I got that girl.”
Carmody busied himself touching a match to a cigarette. After the business back at the pool with Milo, the tobacco was a trifle damp. It took some long pulls to get it burning right.
Carmody knew Garrison could draw and fire three times in half a second. Drunk or sober. Carmody could do that too, and maybe—maybe—he could put the three bullets closer together. Gun-wise, that was the only difference between them. That and the fact that Garrison talked more than usual when the liquor burned in his belly.
“I got the Yates girl and fifty thousand,” Garrison said again. He passed the bottle back to Carmody.
Carmody knew Garrison wasn’t trying to out-drink him. Garrison wasn’t like that, not with whisky anyway. In the old days, before Frank turned totally mean, they had gone on some memorable drunks together. Once for the hell of it they had unbuckled their gun belts and mixed it up with ten tough Cornish miners in a saloon in Leadville. They could have knocked down the Cornishmen if somebody had been helping them with sticks of dynamite. It was one hell of a fight.
“I got the girl,” Garrison boasted. “That’s why I ain’t interested in your goddamned bank. I got fifty thousand, a good part of it. ’Course you know, Carmody, a man like me’s got to take care of his people.”
“Sure thing,” Carmody said. He pretended to be somewhat drunker than he was. Garrison was drunk himself, the careful way they both were, but he was watching. Old Frank was always watching, always figuring out the other feller’s moves. That could be why he stayed alive so long.
“Jesus, you ought to see her, Carmody. You remember the way Tessie Betz used to look? You remember—Tessie that worked for Lady Shack in Fort Griffin?”
Carmody nodded.
“Like that,” Garrison said. “Only more so. Real red hair, like Tessie. A lot better teeth than Tessie. Smaller behind and I like that. Talks like a lady.”
“Sounds like a prize heifer, the way you do it.”
Garrison liked that. He let loose a yelp of laughter that echoed all the way down the mountain. The two Hatten boys up ahead didn’t turn around; they were used to Garrison.
Garrison howled. “You ever seen a heifer fetched fifty thousand?”
“Not lately,” Carmody said. “I can figure why that bank in Raton don’t seem so enticing. Even so, it’s a nice little bank.”
Garrison was riding a Morgan horse that looked to have some Arabian in him, not too much Arabian though, just enough to give the dependable, levelheaded Morgan some of the Arabian’s fire.
Carmody didn’t think Garrison had to curse the animal the way he did when a ground squirrel twittered and darted off the trail in front of it.
Garrison was busy cursing the horse. When he finished he said, “No bank. The hell with the bank. I got something better than banks.”
Carmody wondered what it was, but he could let it wait. There was a chill wind coming down from the peaks. It knifed through the sheepskin coat. It used up the bourbon in his belly. This was cold country for a man who lived in the desert, and loved it, too. He was tired and didn’t feel like talking any more for awhile.
Garrison was feeling that way himself. No matter how much any man drank the chill sound of the mountain wind got to him after a while. The mountains loomed over a man, reminding him of how small he was, even a man like Frank Garrison who thought he was bigger and tougher and better than any man alive. It occurred to Carmody that Frank Garrison liked him, or had liked him a lot once so that he still liked him a little now. After what Frank had become over the years, whisky bad in the beginning, then sober mean as the killing got to him, Carmody thought a wounded snake would have been more welcome as a friend. At least, a dying rattler’s instinct to kill was natural. A snake was a snake and a man was supposed to be better than that. That was what they said about men and snakes. Carmody thought, not deciding the question because it was too old a question, too old to decide about—much too old.
As the horses climbed the mountain, the iron-shod hooves scratching on loose rock, ringing when the rock got hard again, and then crunching over rocky gravel, Carmody thought about the Yates girl and the ten thousand the fat man had promised if and when he brought her back, willing to go back with him, rescued as they said in the tales of long lost girls and Indian captives, or tied hand and foot—feet lashed under a horse’s belly and hands tied just enough to steer a horse.
Carmody thought of the ten thousand. There was nothing like money to make a man come hundreds of miles to country he didn’t like and didn’t want to like. He came to take a woman worth ten thousand dollars away from a man he once liked, and still liked in spite of it all.
Garrison was still watching Carmody. Carmody knew he was still thinking about him, still turning his story about the Raton bank over in his mind. Carmody knew that his old sidekick, Frank, didn’t believe him; not altogether, anyway. That was natural for Frank. It would have given him something extra to chew on if Frank had swallowed his story right-off.
“Here, you finish it,” Garrison said, slinging the bottle at Carmody. That could be the signal for the Hatten boys to wheel and start shooting. The bottle hit Carmody’s left hand. It wasn’t a signal for anything, he decided. He drank what was left in the bottle and tossed it into the air and yelled, “Luck!”
Garrison’s six-shooter yanked free of the holster and fired. He fired once. The bullet took the neck off the bottle. Carmody’s .44 broke the rest of the bottle. The Hatten boys wheeled about in their saddles, pistols ready to shoot. They were ready to shoot Carmody, and he laughed at them. Frank Garrison laughed, too. He laughed at them and then he roared at Carmody. Carmody put his gun away, still drunk but not sounding half as funny as Garrison when he laughed.
“Seems to me you’re getting a mite slow, Carmody,” Garrison yelled, feeling good again, shaking off the mountain cold. “If that bottle was a bushwhacker you’d of been dead. Lucky thing old Frank’s along to look out for you.”
Frank was testing him again, Carmody knew. Old Frank, it looked like, never stopped testing people. Frank was proud of his good looks with the ladies. With men it was the gun—always the gun.
Carmody said, “You got another bottle, Frank? If you have, throw it far this time. It appears to me any farm boy with a rabbit gun could of broke that last jug.”
The two Hatten brothers were still faced about in their saddles. They didn’t know what to make of the wild gun-play and laughter. Garrison pointed at the Hatten boys and yelled, “There’s two targets dead ahead! What do you say, Bud? Ready, Corey?”
Garrison’s gun jumped out of its holster into his hand. Carmody began his draw after him but his gun came out at the same time. Even if the Hatten boys had elected to draw they would have been dead. The way Frank was carrying on was too much for them.
“Bang!” Garrison said, pretending to shoot. “Bang! Bang! Bang!”
Carmody had his gun out, but he didn’t say “Bang!” Like the Hatten boys wouldn’t pick up that steak, he wouldn’t say “Bang!” That was something for Frank Garrison to do.
Garrison slid his six-shooter back in its holster. He was still able to shoot, but the whisky was getting to him. A doubtful look crept across his handsome face. The look was doubtful and mournful when it stopped being anything. The horse was stepping high again and he slapped it across the ears with his hat.
“You didn’t say bang, Carmody—you missed,” he announced, happy and gloomy at the same time.
Carmody figured his old sidekick, Frank Garrison, had gone that much farther along the road. It wasn’t what he would have figured to be an everyday situation. Garrison was ready to bring his gun out again. That was what didn’t make it every day.
Garrison figured it another way. That was how Garrison often was, but since his gun had always come out first, Carmody didn’t think more about it than anything else he’d thought about Frank Garrison.
Garrison wasn’t pretending to be drunk any longer. He was drunk. At another time Carmody would have welcomed that. Now it was just a problem. It could be a problem. “We could have taken them,” Garrison told him. “You and me, Carmody—we could have taken them. You could do it. I could do it. You didn’t even say bang!”
The Hatten brothers heard it all and kept going. As Carmody had figured, they were used to Garrison, like the horses coming up the cliff. Carmody was used to Garrison too—but not lately. There was no use trying to get used to Garrison as he was. There wasn’t time. Before that he’d be down the mountain with the girl. Or he wouldn’t be anything at all—he’d be dead. Or even if he got down off the mountain, with or without the girl, he might still be dead. Anything to do with Frank Garrison was a might and a maybe.
There was another man posted at the entrance to the long canyon. He was another of Carmody’s old friends, Emmett O’Bryan, an Alabama redneck who once stabbed a man to death at a crossroads dance. After that he went on killing and joined the cavalry long enough to desert. O’Bryan never said much of anything until he got drunk, and then he fought the Civil War all over again with anybody who happened to be handy, even though he wasn’t old enough to have served in the war, not even as a drummer boy.
O’Bryan had been in the West for about ten years, but he still looked like an Alabama poor white. That was what some people thought until they saw him use the single action Army .45 strapped about his waist.
O’Bryan stared at Carmody as they started into the canyon. Like the others, he didn’t like Carmody because Carmody had been with the gang, never a part of it. Carmody decided that outlaws were even touchier than lodge brothers and Grangers.
The mouth of the canyon was narrow, with high rock walls crowding in on both sides. They rode single file for a while. When there was room to do it, Garrison rode beside Carmody again. The liquor was wearing off. Garrison said, “The reason I’m not interested in that bank, I got better things frying on the fire. I tell you, Carmody, we’re going to bust the State of Colorado wide open. Old man Yates ain’t just big in copper. That old boy’s got his fat fingers in just about everything. Silver and gold, especially. Silver’s all right but it’s hard to carry. But we’ll talk about that later. You interested, Carmody?”
“You ain’t really asking me, are you, Frank?”
Garrison’s laugh sent waves of noise along the narrow canyon. “I guess not, old pard. You understand how it is. Riding off that first time was all right. Now it’s different. Now it’s big business and big money. That’s why I’d say—don’t even think about it. You’d never make it.”
“You don’t think so, Frank?”
“Well, old pard, that’s what I think. I got nine men and I got myself.”
“You got eight men now, Frank. I had to kill Milo.”
That was the funniest thing Garrison had heard all day. It took a while for old Frank to pull himself together—he was laughing so hard. “Milo always said he’d kill you the next time you fellers met. Goes to show how good intentions ain’t enough. Only listen, Carmody, you got to stop killing my boys. We’re going to need all the help we can get for what I have in mind.”
It was getting dark now and the canyon narrowed again, turning and twisting over jagged rocks that made travelling hard and slow. Carmody knew Garrison could defend that canyon till kingdom come with the eight men he had, with half that number if he had to. By now Garrison’s men knew every twist and turn of the trail. They were still only part way through the canyon and he had stopped counting the places where a perfect ambush could be set up. Any attacking force with men to waste could still be stopped with a few sticks of dynamite. A charge of dynamite, well placed, would bring thousands of tons of rock crashing down. When the dust cleared men might well climb up and over the rock fall. It wouldn’t be easy with Garrison’s men picking them off as they reached the top, but it could be done. Men could climb over a rock fall like that, never horses.
Long before Carmody started out for Silver City, he’d thought about dynamite. He hadn’t brought along the dynamite for the same reason he’d burned the picture of the Yates girl provided by the fat man. It would be kind of hard to explain what he was doing with either. More than likely there was some dynamite up at the hideout. It was something to think about. He knew Garrison wasn’t just talking when he said it wouldn’t be easy to get out. It wouldn’t be easy, even by himself. With a girl along—a girl who might not want to go—it would be hell.
The trail widened and the rock walls dropped away. There was a light up ahead. It was full dark now. The moon was up, throwing strong, yellow light. On the trail it was still dark. A guard Carmody couldn’t see challenged them and one of the Hatten brothers said who they were. Even this far up, old Frank wasn’t taking any chances. Frank knew his business sure enough, Carmody had to admit. He would have worked it the same way himself.
Out of the canyon, they rode into the small valley Carmody remembered so well. There was the sound of water and willows moving in the wind.
Before they reached the old Dutchman’s house the door opened and a woman stepped out on to the porch, outlined against the light.