A Noose for the Desperado Read Online Free

said.
    “Black Joseph,” he said with satisfaction.
    I wasn't particularly surprised. I hadn't heard of the famous Indian
gunman for a year or more, so I knew that if he wasn't making buzzard
food of himself he had to be in New Mexico or Arizona. I had never seen
him, but I knew him by reputation. The artists' drawings on “Wanted"
posters always showed him as a hungry-eyed, hawk-nosed, Osage, with a
battered flat-crowned hat pushed down over his black, braided hair. He
had been a scout for the Union Army during the war, but it seemed that
even the bloody battles of Shiloh and Chickamauga hadn't blunted his
craving to kill. He was supposed to be fast with a gun. According to
some men who ought to know he was the fastest. I didn't know about
that, and I didn't care. Black Joseph didn't have anything against me,
and I had nothing against him.
    Basset seemed to think that the Indian's name should have done
something to me. Maybe I should have started sweating, or loosened my
guns, or something. When I didn't, the fat man seemed slightly annoyed.
    “You've heard of Black Joseph, haven't you?” he panted.
    “I've heard of him,” I said.
    That seemed to make him feel a little better. “Well,” he said, “I
began to get an idea the minute that Indian murderer rode into
Ocotillo—not that I've got anything against him,” he added quickly.
“It's just that he doesn't bother to think before he shoots. Anyway, I
figured maybe there were a lot of boys like him, things getting too hot
for them back in Texas.”
    He smiled that damp smile, as if to say, “You ought to know,
Cameron.”
    I said, “Has all this got anything to do with me?”
    “That depends on you,” Basset said carelessly. “Now, you look like a
man on the run. Would you like to have a place to settle down for a
while and give the United States marshals a chance to forget about you?
Would you like to be sure that you won't run into my cavalrymen? Would
you like to have some insurance like that?”
    “You can't get insurance from a United States marshal,” I said, “or
the Cavalry, either.”
    Basset lurched forward in his chair, got a cigar from a box on his
desk, and rolled it between his wet lips. “You just don't know the
right man, son,” he said, breathing heavily. “The Cavalry—no. But,
then, the Cavalry is busy up north with the Apache uprising. There's no
call for them to come down here unless somebody like a federal marshal
put them up to it.”
    And what makes you think that some deputy marshal won't do just
that?”
    He went on smiling, holding a match to his cigar, puffing until it
was burning to suit him. Then he threw the match on the floor and
shouted, “Kreyler!”
    The door opened and the big, slab-faced man came in. The last time I
saw him he had been headed out of the saloon—but when Basset called,
he was there.
    “Yeah?”
    “Show this boy who you are, Kreyler,” Basset said.
    Kreyler frowned. He didn't like me, and whatever it was that Basset
had on his mind, he didn't like that either. But he didn't have the
guts to look at the fat man and tell him so. Reluctantly he went into
his pocket and came out with a badge—a deputy United States marshal's
badge.
    “That will be your insurance,” Basset said, as Kreyler went out, “if
you choose to stay with us here in Ocotillo.”
    The whole thing had kind of taken my breath away. I had only known
one United States marshal before. He lived, breathed, and thought
nothing but the law. I hadn't known that a man like Kreyler could worm
his way into an office like that.
    Suddenly I began to appreciate the kind of setup Basset had here. In
Ocotillo a man could live in safety, protected from the law, his
identity hidden from the outside world. I thought of the long days and
nights of running, afraid to sleep, afraid to rest, forever looking
over my shoulder and expecting to see the man who would finally kill
me. Here in Ocotillo I could