After another minute there wasn’t even that. Only a kind of a helpless fallin’ feeling, like I was slippin’ off into some bottomless hole without no way of catchin’ myself.
I reckon I must of faded out there for a pretty good while, what with Jube’s big fingers shuttin’ off my windpipe and his weight pressin’ the air an’ life out of me. If he’d waited another half second before gettin’ up from what he was doin’, I expect I’d of been ever bit as dead as I prob’ly appeared to him an’ Lila right then. But luck was with me, ’cause somethin’ they’d heard was makin’ ’em skittish and anxious to leave out before they could be real certain the job was finished proper.
None of this come into my head right away, you understand. It weren’t until I felt a woman’s fingers goin’ through my pockets real quick and thorough that I begun to even halfway recollect where I was. Then I could hear Lila’s harsh whisper as she called out to the others:
“Mount up and let’s ride! That buggy’ll be showin’ itself over the rise yonder in just another couple minutes!”
It didn’t take no partic’lar effort for me to keep lyin’ real still like the corpse they thought I was. Her voice got fainter when she stood up and moved off into the road. “Purv, you got a lead rope on that roan? All right then, let’s be travelin’!”
While the sounds of their harness an’ hoofbeats faded out to the south, I decided to see could I drag my hands up underneath me and push my shoulders a couple inches off the ground. Turned out that weren’t near the easy job it appeared at first glance. Took me a couple, three tries to manage it, and then it seemed like my head wasn’t stayin’ attached to my body the way it was accustomed to a mite earlier. I couldn’t hardly keep my eyebrows from scrapin’ the dirt.
After another minute I gagged an’ coughed up a mouthful of earth and sandspurs. Then I rolled real slow over onto my back.
The sky was a pale robin’s egg blue, with only a couple fleecy clouds away off in the distance. It was a right pretty sight, and I just let myself lay there, breathin’ kind of shallow and thinkin’ how lucky I was to look up an’ see any kind of a sky one more time. Finally I begun to notice the clip-clop an’ rattle of some kind of a rig movin’ down the road towards me.
When it got up close enough to make stirrin’ worth the effort, I turned my head to find out who my new visitors was.
What I seen was this brand new lookin’ surrey, all shiny black with fringed tassels an’ black leather seats, being drawed by a high-steppin’ charcoal gelding what had these red ribbons tied in its mane and tail. I got a real close look at that outfit when it slowed down for a couple seconds to steer past where I was sprawled there in the sand.
“Hey!” I croaked, tryin’ to push myself up onto one elbow but not quite able to manage it. “Hey, mister!” The voice what come out of my crushed windpipe weren’t hardly much stronger than a whisper.
This gent in a white straw hat an’ broadcloth suit peered back over his shoulder at me, his face all twisted up like he’d just finished a big old dinner of lemon seeds an’ pickles. Then he turned round and whipped his gelding into a trot, mutterin’ something real spiteful ’bout “drunken Southern trash” to the woman on the seat next to him. Just before they went out of sight round the bend up ahead, I heard her answer him with a couple remarks of her own, what had to do with “in-breeding,” and somethin’ sounded to me like “Miss Seegy Nation.”
And there I was again, all by my lonesome an’ feeling helpless as a new-hatched sparrow in a yard full of chicken snakes. I figured it was gettin’ to be a plumb miserable world whenever a hurt man couldn’t even expect no help nor sympathy from passin’ travelers.
After a little while I got up the strength to hitch myself into a sittin’ position, with my arms hugging my knees and my chin restin’ on top of ’em. I sat there for a time longer, takin’ in a couple deep breaths what made me want to yell out from the pain in my ribs, before finally openin’ my eyes. When I’d had a quick glance up an’ down the road, I begun to take stock.
2
NOT THAT THERE WAS so awful much left to take stock of. My Ole Roan horse was gone, which was bad enough. But along with him was just about my entire outfit: a big Texas saddle with some good years of use left in it, a bedroll and saddlebags what carried a week’s worth of provisions that I’d bought only the day before yesterday when I got paid off from that cow-hunt an’ cattle-drivin’ job up to Lake City. And worst of all, my Winchester .44 in the saddle boot with a couple hundred rounds of spare ammunition.
My pistol belt had been stripped off too, along with the Bowie knife in its sheath at the side; and I knew there weren’t no point to go lookin’ for my Dragoon Colt now, what Jube had took and throwed on the ground. With them weapons missin’ I felt about as naked as if they’d done stole my pants an’ boots at the same time they was stealin’ everthing else.
Speakin’ of boots, I realized of a sudden I wasn’t wearing any. A quick look around showed ’em both layin’ off to the edge of the road next to my hat. So at least them no-counts had left me that much. But then I remembered somethin’ else had happened before Lila an’ them others rode away, and I started checkin’ through the pockets of my shirt and britches real careful-like, gruntin’ and cussin’ ever time I come acrost a bruise or some other hurt Jube had give me.
When I got done, I took my time and did a more thorough job of cussin’.
That Lila had cleaned me out en-tire, from my Barlow knife and whetstone to even the cigarette makin’s in my shirt pocket. ’Course there wasn’t no sign of the money I’d had left from what I bought in Lake City. And when I crawled over to fetch my hat an’ boots, I realized she’d found the gold double eagle I’d had hid inside there too.
Now, that made me mad. I’d been holding onto that gold coin special, meanin’ to pay back a loan from a certain lady over to the Gulf coast soon as I could make it up there again. Stealing from me was one thing, and it done a pretty good job of gettin’ my dander up all by its ownself. But takin’ something I’d thought of as belonging to a partic’lar good friend of mine was just addin’ insult to injury.
There was goin’ to be some settlin’ of accounts over this here business today, or my name wasn’t Tate Barkley. And it ain’t ever been anything else since my Mam an’ Pap brought me into the world.
It’s a name folks in some circles has found reason to fight shy of here an’ about. I been spoke of all the way from Arizona to the Florida panhandle as a feller what can become mighty unsociable once his toes get stepped on hard enough. And I could feel my corns startin’ to pain me, right about now.
Some might of thought it foolish for me to be havin’ ideas like that, considerin’ the shape I was in just then. And maybe they’d be right. Good sense ain’t never been commented upon as a partic’lar Barkley trait.
But on t’other hand, stubbornness is. And they’s only one way I ever heard of for a man to get from here to there, no matter where “here” an’ “there” turn out to be. That’s by hitchin’ up his galluses and startin’ in to set one foot before the other.
So once I’d put on my hat and stomped back into my boots, I just pointed my nose in that southward direction where them bushwhackers rode off after they got finished leavin’ me for dead, and I set out to walkin’.
If I passed that settlement Lila mentioned this side the river, I never did see it. They was a few scattered cabins here an’ about, most of ’em well back off the road. But nothin’ what struck me as lookin’ anything like a town. And no folks I could see close enough to holler to.
Not that it concerned me a awful lot right at the moment. I wasn’t in no mood for idle conversation, and there weren’t anything I wanted to know about them outlaws what couldn’t be read in the sand road at my feet. Their sign was plain