“One night we was setting by the fire and Lisha he looked over at me and he says, “Boys, the melons’ll be ripe in the bottom land now, an’ the horses will be headin’ up from the flats for the high meadows.’ So then we knowed we was heading home.
“We rode down the Snake to the Grey and down the Grey to the Bear, and we followed her south to the border, staying clear of ranches and towns. Of a night we built our fires small and covered them well, and then at last we come riding down to the hills near Durango.
“Lisha, he chuckles and says to me, “You all sure been a-talkin’ a lot in your sleep, boy. If’n you ever said those things to a girl awake she’d sure be bakin’ your corn pone from here on out.’
“Me, I git all redded up. “Don’t give me that,’ I say, “I never talked none. Anyway, it wouldn’t matter. What woman would care for me?’
“Both Lisha and Johnny looked up sharp. “You damn fool!’ they says, “they’d never git a better man, nowheres. An’ that Marge, she’s been eatin’ her heart out for years over you!’
“Me, I just stood there…I never figured nothing like that. I sure thought they was wrong, but both them boys, they knowed a sight more about women than ever I would.
“Lisha, he rides off to town, and he ain’t gone an hour afore he comes back and then Ellie, she and Marge comes a-running, and with them is Betts Warner, Lisha’s girl. Marge, she just stopped, took one look, and then run to me and went to crying in my arms.
“We made her a triple weddin’ just two days later, but folks heerd about it, and one morning Lisha come to the door for his horse and Dick Watson, his brother and four-five friends, they shot him down. Shot him down with him only getting one shot off.
“Betts, she come a-running to warn us, thinking of us even when her heart was gone within her, her man laying dead back there full of Watson lead.
““Saddle up,’ I says to Johnny, “I’ll be coming back soon.’ Me, I buckled on my guns.
““I’m goin’ with you,’ Johnny says, and I told him no. He’d have to git us packed and ready. Marge, she just looked at me strange and soft and proud. She says, “You go along, Boone, I’ll saddle up for you, and I’ll be a-waiting here when you get back.’
“Never a mite of complaining, never a word again it. She was a man’s woman, that one, and she knowed my way was to ride for the man who fetched this trouble down upon us.
“It was bright noonday when I fetched up to town. I swung down from the saddle and I asked old Jake. “You go along,’ I said, “and you tell that Dick Watson I’m here to put him down.’
“Standin’ there, I wondered if it was I’d never have me a home, or see the light in my baby’s eyes, or see the sunlight on the green corn growing, or smell the hay from my own meadows. Them things was all I ever wanted, all I ever fixed to have, and now it seemed like all my life I toted a gun, shooting and being shot at.
“All I ever wanted in this here world was a bit of land and peace, the way man was meant to live. Not with no gun in his hand a-killing folks.
“I seen Dick Watson step from a door down the way, I seen him start, and I pulled down my hat and stepped out, stepped out and started walking to kill a man.
“Then Watson stopped and I looked across the forty paces at him and I made my voice strong in the street. “Dick Watson, you brung hell to my family. You was sore because that black mare beat your horse! You lied about us stealing! You made us into outlaws and caused my brothers to be kilt and some other men too. It’ll be on your conscience whether you live or die.’
“He stood there staring at me like he’d looked right in the face of death, and then he slapped leather. His gun came up and I shot him, low down in the belly where they die slow and hard. God forgive me, but I done it with hate in my heart. And then…I should have knowed he’d framed it, a half dozen of his friends stepped out and opened up on me.
“Son, what come over me then I don’t know. I guess I went sort of crazy. When I seen them all around me, I just tore loose and went to shooting. I went up on the porch after them, I followed one up the stairs and into his room. I chased another and shot him running, and then I loaded up and turned my back on both the dead and the living and I walked down that street to my horse. I was halfway home before I knowed I’d a bullet in me.
“When I was patched up some we rode on and Betts went back to her folks, a widow almost afore she was a wife. We fetched up, final, in the Blue Mountains of Utah, and there we built us a double cabin and we ketched wild horses and hunted desert honey, just the two boys of us left from the five we’d been. We lived there and for months we was happy.
“Your Ma was the finest ever, Son. I never knowed what it could be like to live with no woman, nor to have her there, always knowing how I felt inside when nobody had ever knowed before. We walked together and talked together and day by day the running and shooting seemed farther and farther away.
“Johnny was happy, too. Them days his mouth organ laughed and cried and sang sweet songs to the low moon and the high sun, and he played the corn out of the ground and the good sweet melons. We hunted some and we lived quiet-like and happy. How long? Three months, five months…and then Marge comes to me and says Ellie’s got to go where she can have a doc. She’s to have a baby and something, she’s sure, ain’t right about it.
“We knowed what it meant, but life must go on, Son, and you were to be born and I aimed to give you what start I could. The same for Johnny. So we gathered our horses and we rode out to Salt Lake with the girls. We sold our horses for cash money to some Mormons, and then we drifted north. The girls had to stay with the Doc awhile, so we got us a riding job each.
“One day a gent comes into a bar where we was with a star on him and he sees me setting by the window. Marge’s time is coming nigh and we’re all a-waiting like. This man with the star he comes over and drops into a chair near Johnny and me. “Mighty hot day!’ he says. “Too hot to hunt outlaws, especially,’ he says, “when they size up like good, God-fearin’ folks.
““I got me a paper says them Tremaynes is hereabouts. I’m to hunt ’em up an’ arrest ’em, what do you boys think about that?’
““We reckon,’ Johnny says, very quiet, “them Tremaynes never bothered nobody if they was let alone.’
“He nods his head. “I heard that, too,’ he says, “Leastways, if they’ve been in town they sure been mighty quiet an’ well-behaved folks. Worst of it is,’ he got up, wiping the sweat-band of his hat, “I took an oath to do my duty. Now, the way I figure that doesn’t mean I have to go r’arin’ out in the heat of the day. But come sundown,’ he spoke slow and careful, “I’m gonna hunt them Tremaynes up.’
“That sheriff, Son, he looked up at Johnny and then over at me. “I got two sons,’ he said quietly, “and if the Tremaynes left family in this town, they’d be protected as long as me and my sons lived.’
“We didn’t take long about saying goodbye, although we never knowed it was our last. We never guessed we was riding out of town and right to our death.
“It was fifty miles east that we passed a gent on the trail. We never knowed him but he turned an’ looked after us. And that done, he hightailed it to the nearest town and before day a posse was in the saddle.
“At noon, from a high ridge, we drawed up and looked back. We seen four separate dust clouds. Johnny, he looked at me and grinned. “I reckon we ain’t in no hurry no more,’ he said, “they got us again’ the mountains.’ He looked up at them twelve, and thirteen thousand foot peaks. “I wonder if any man ever went through up there?’