Boot hill payoff, p.7
Boot-Hill Payoff,
p.7
"Let's go. Buck. You need some attention on them wounds."
"Go ahead. Bob. I'll be along. I wanta kind set here and rest."
Anders glanced sharply at him and then made a hidden gesture to Slim Jones, and turned away. The cavalcade moved down the trail in the growing darkness, armed men riding toward a new era of peace and prosperity; gaunt, haggard bound men riding toward the penitentiary and the gallows.
Laramie sat motionless, his empty hands hanging limp on his knees. A vital chapter in his life had closed, leaving him without a goal. He had kept his vow. Now he had no plan or purpose to take its place.
Slim Jones, standing nearby, not understanding Laramie's mood, but not intruding on it, started to speak. Then both men lifted their heads at the unexpected rumble of wheels.
"A buckboard!" ejaculated Slim.
"No buckboard ever come up that trail," snorted Laramie.
"One's comin' now; and who d'you think? Old Joel, by golly. And look who's drivin'!"
Laramie's heart gave a convulsive leap and then started pounding as he saw the slim supple figure beside the old rancher. She pulled up near them and handed the lines to Slim, who sprang to help her down.
"Biggest fight ever fit in San Leon County!" roared Waters, "and I didn't git to fire a shot. Cuss a busted laig, anyway!"
"You done a man's part, anyway, Joel," assured Laramie; and then he forgot Joel Waters entirely, in the miracle of seeing Judy Anders standing before him, smiling gently, her hand outstretched and the rising moon melting her soft hair to golden witch-fire.
"I'm sorry for the way I spoke to you today," she said softly. "I've been bitter about things that were none of your fault."
"D-don't apologize, please," he stuttered, inwardly cursing himself because of his confusion. The touch of her slim, firm hand sent shivers through his frame and he knew all at once what that empty, gnawing yearning was; the more poignant now, because so unattainable.
"You saved my neck. Nobody that does that needs to apologize. You was probably right, anyhow. Er--uh--Bob went down the trail with the others. You must have missed him."
"I saw him and talked to him," she said softly. "He said you were behind them. I came on, expecting to meet you."
He was momentarily startled. "You came on to meet /me/? Oh, of course. Joel would want to see how bad shot up I was." He achieved a ghastly excuse for a laugh.
"Mr. Waters wanted to see you, of course. But I--Buck, I wanted to see you, too."
She was leaning close to him, looking up at him, and he was dizzy with the fragrance and beauty of her; and in his dizziness said the most inane and idiotic thing he could possibly have said.
"To see me?" he gurgled wildly. "What--what you want to see /me/ for?"
She seemed to draw away from him and her voice was a bit too precise.
"I wanted to apologize for my rudeness this morning," she said, a little distantly.
"I said don't apologize to me," he gasped. "You saved my life--and I--I--Judy, dang it, I love you!"
It was out--the amazing statement, blurted out involuntarily. He was frozen by his own audacity, stunned and paralyzed. But she did not seem to mind. Somehow he found she was in his arms, and numbly he heard her saying: "I love you too, Buck. I've loved you ever since I was a little girl, and we went to school together. Only I've tried to force myself not to think of you for the past six years. But I've loved the memory of you--that's why it hurt me so to think that you'd gone bad--as I thought you had. That horse I brought you--it wasn't altogether because you'd helped Bob that I brought it to you. It--it was partly because of my own feeling. Oh, Buck, to learn you're straight and honorable is like having a black shadow lifted from between us. You'll never leave me, Buck?"
"Leave you?" Laramie gasped. "Just long enough to find Watkins and tell him I'm takin' him up on a proposition he made me, and then I'm aimin' on spendin' the rest of my life makin' you happy." The rest was lost in a perfectly natural sound.
"Kissin'!" beamed Joel Waters, sitting in his buckboard and gently manipulating his wounded leg. "Reckon they'll be a marryin' in these parts purty soon, Slim."
"Don't tell me yo're figgerin' on gittin' hitched?" inquired Slim, pretending to misunderstand, but grinning behind his hand.
"You go light on that sarcastic tone. I'm liable to git married any day now. It's just a matter of time till I decide what type of woman would make me the best wife."
THE END
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Robert E Howard, Boot-Hill Payoff
