The Desperado Read Online Free PDF Page A

Simpson would always sit, fat and watchful, in one corner
of the parlor, peeling potatoes or paring apples. She always arranged
to have a murderous-looking butcher knife in her hands, just in case
Old Man Bigloe had a “spell” and tried to kill somebody. But he never
did.
    So that was Professor Bigloe's Academy. Professor Bigloe's Academy
for Learning and Culture, if you want the whole name. We went there
three times a week, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, the boys riding
in on horseback. There was a lot of hell raised, and a lot of fights;
but now that I came to think of it, Ray Novak hadn't figured in any of
them.
    Maybe it was because of his size. He was a year or two older than
most of us, and big for his age anyway. But then Criss Bagley had been
bigger than any of us, and that hadn't kept him out of fights. I
thought about that and finally had to admit that there was something
about Ray Novak—but I didn't know what—that made you think twice
before starting anything with him. He always had that quiet, sober
look, even as a kid, and he didn't go in much for horseplay, as most of
us did. He came to Old Man Bigloe's academy for a curious reason, it
seemed to the rest of us. To learn.
    And, too, Ray's pa was the town marshal, and that made him something
a little different. His pa had taught him everything there was to know
about guns and shooting, and he was the only boy around John's City who
could throw a tin can in the air and put two .44 bullets through it
before it hit the ground. I only saw him do it once, but he did it so
easily and perfectly that I knew it was no accident.
    I don't think I ever liked Ray Novak much after that, although I had
never thought about it until now. I remember practicing with Pa's old
.44, the one I was wearing now, until my thumb was raw from pulling the
hammer back, but one bullet in the can was the best I could do. I think
that hit me harder than anything. I didn't mind it much when Ray would
make one of his occasional rides over to the Bannerman ranch—trying to
act as if he was just out looking for strays, and just happened to be
on that part of the range. I knew that Laurin Bannerman was the real
reason for his drifting off the home range. But I also knew that he was
too bashful to do anything about it, except gawk. And, anyway, Laurin
was mine.
    Which was fine, but it didn't tell me the reason for that scared look
on Ray Novak's face back there at the arroyo, while the cavalry was
pounding by.
    The sky in the east began to pale and we pulled our horses up to let
them blow. Ray dropped down from his saddle and stretched, and I did
the same. The morning was cool, and sharp with the early-spring smell
of green things. I began to think of bacon, and coffee, and
fresh-cooked cornbread.
    “I figure we've got about another hour of riding time,” Ray said.
“We'll have to start looking for a place to bed down before long.”
    I said, “We'll ride until we find a place.”
    But Ray shook his head in that sober, solemn way of his. “I don't
want to run into any more cavalry or police. Not in the daylight. We're
in enough trouble as it is.”
    I asked a question then, one I had been remembering about: “Are you
afraid of trouble?”
    He looked at me and answered in one word: “Yes.”
    Then, after thinking a moment, he went on, “I don't like this
running. If we run into the state police and they recognize us there'll
be a fight, and almost always when there's a fight, somebody doesn't
walk away from it. That's the kind of trouble I'm afraid of. We're on
the wrong side of the law.”
    “What law?” I said. “The Davis police? The Yankee soldiers, and the
carpetbaggers, and scalawags, and bureau agents? If that's the law, I'm
just as glad to be on the other side.”
    But he kept shaking his head. “There has to be law.”
    He was a nut on the subject. The law was all he knew, I guess. He had
lived it, talked it, breathed it,