• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Terry was up out of the chair and we eased the boy into it and made him lean forward over the table. Terry knelt down close to him and started to talk in Spanish. Ordinarily I know some, but not the way Terry was running the words together. Then the boy spoke. While he did, Deelie went out and came back with some cocoa butter and she spread it over his back gently without batting an eye. I think right then she advanced seven hundred feet in Terry McNeil’s estimation.

The boy said, Terry told us, that Repper had come out of the house and when he saw the new shirt he tried to rip it off the boy, but Regalo ran. That made Repper mad and when he caught him at the barn he reached a hackamore line off a nail and laid it across the boy’s back until his arm got tired.

Leaning over the table, the boy didn’t cry or whimper, but you knew his back stung like fire.

Terry was saying, let’s fix him some eggs, when we heard the door again… then heavy footsteps and there was Max Repper in the doorway with his Henry rifle square on us.

“The boy’s coming with me.” That’s all he said. He took Regalo by the arm, yanked him out of the chair, marched him through the front part, and out the door. It happened so fast, I hardly realized Max had been there.

Terry was in the doorway looking up toward the front door. He didn’t say a word. Probably he was thinking he should have done something, even if it had happened fast and Max was holding a Henry. Whatever he was thinking, he made up his mind fast. Terry took one last glance at Deelie and was gone.

Of course we knew where he was going. First to the boardinghouse for his gun, then to the livery, then to Repper’s place. We didn’t want him to do it… but at the same time, we did. The only thing was, someone else should be there. I figured whatever was going to happen ought to have a witness. So I saddled up and rode out about fifteen minutes behind Terry.

I thought I might catch him on the road, but didn’t see a soul and finally I cut off to Repper’s. There was Terry’s claybank and just over the rump a cigarette glow where Terry was leaning next to the front door.

“He’s not here?”

Terry shook his head.

“But we would have passed him on the road,” I said.

“Well,” Terry said, “he’s got to come sooner or later.”

As it turned out, it was just after daybreak when we heard the wagon.

Crossing the yard Max looked at us, but he kept on heading the team for the barn. We walked toward him, approaching broadside, then Max turned the team straight on toward the barn door and we could see the wagon bed. Regalo wasn’t in it.

Max stepped off the wagon and waited for us with his hands on his hips.

“He ain’t here.”

Terry asked him, “What happened?”

“He jumped off the wagon and I lost him in the dark.”

“And you’ve been looking for him.”

Max grinned that ugly grin of his. “Sure,” he said. “A man don’t like to lose his top hand.”

Then, glancing at Terry, seeing a look on the boy’s face I’d never witnessed before, I knew Max Repper was about to lose his top teeth.

Sure enough. Terry took two steps and a little shuffle dance and hit Max square in the mouth. Max went back, but didn’t go down and now he came at Terry. Terry had his right cocked, waiting, and he started to throw it. Max put up his guard and Terry held the right, but his left came around wide and clobbered Max on the ear. Then the right followed through, straightening him up, and the left swung wide again and smacked solid against his cheekbone. Max didn’t throw a punch. He wanted to at first, then he was kept too busy trying to cover up. I thought Terry’s arms would drop off before Max caved in. Then, there it was, for a split second—Max’s chin up like he was posing for a pro- file—and Terry found it with the best-timed, widest-swung roundhouse I’ve ever seen.

Max went down and he didn’t move. Terry stepped inside the barn and came out with a hackamore. He looked down at Max and started to roll him over with his boot. But then he must have thought, What good will