Panhandle Read Free Page A

along in his wake.
    â€œI was hoping you boys had some coffee on,” Andy said in his squeaky voice.
    â€œWe were just fixing to chop up the ark and burn it when you walked up.” Billy was trying to wring the water from his blankets.
    â€œFine horse you got there.” I pointed at Andy’s feet.
    â€œHe quit me.”
    â€œThey seem to do that to you.”
    â€œThe son of a bitch stopped in his tracks and sulled up. I couldn’t move him for anything. He finally fell over on his side, and I tried almost everything to get him going again.” Andy flopped down on his saddle and scratched his scrawny whiskers thoughtfully.
    â€œI like to have never dug my saddle out from under him,” he added.
    â€œHe might get back up and come trailing in later,” Billy said.
    â€œNo, he won’t,” Andy said forcefully.
    â€œI admit you know something about wind-broke, rode-down, sulled-up horses, but you could be wrong,” Billy threw back at him.
    â€œNo, I ain’t.”
    â€œHow’s that?”
    â€œI shot him, that’s why!”
    â€œYou sure ain’t a lover of animals, Andy,” I said.
    Andy Custer might have been sixteen, although he claimed to be older. He was just short of six feet tall, and rail thin. He was blond and fair as white linen. He wore a thin mustache and goatee that he claimed to have patterned after a picture of General Custer he saw once. He had a voice that tended to get higher and squeakier the more excited he became.
    Andy fancied himself a sure-enough desperado. You didn’t have to ask him, because he’d tell you without your asking that he was a bad man—hell on the men who crossed him, and worse on the women who dared to love him. He had a habit of always pulling out his pistol and playing with it when he was sitting around. Billy and I wondered which he played with more, his gun or his pecker.
    Andy’s image of himself might have been shattered if he could have seen himself then, sitting there muddy and shivering, with his hair sticking out every which way. He idly played with the flopping sole of his right boot, and his big toe poked out of a hole in the other.
    None of us had much in the way of clothes, and we were a ragged lot. Our hats were the best, our neckerchiefs were of silk, and our fancy-topped boots were too fine to walk in. But, in between, we were mostly just faded rags. My own shirt had so many holes it looked like somebody set me afire and put me out just before it all went.
    Now Billy was as opposite from Andy as could be. He had a way of looking good no matter what. Even in his rain-soaked rags, he somehow stood out over us. He always seemed to find a way to spruce himself up a mite. I don’t know when or where he did it, but he did. That morning he had shaped up the brim of his hat a little, and he had dug a fresh, red silk wild rag from somewhere in his bag. It beat me, but it was dry, and so was the white shirt he’d donned. He always had to have a white shirt. It may have been stained and patched, but he looked like a thousand dollars compared to Andy and I.
    Some men just have a way about them. Billy Champion had that way. He did everything bigger, faster, and wilder than anyone I ever ran across. I guess that is why I followed him down from the D-Cross in the spring of ’81. I’ve heard men say that he was a man’s man, whatever that is. I know horses and women liked him to uncommon extremes, and he liked them with equal enthusiasm.
    There are a lot of stories about Billy, and you can believe what you want. Billy was like that; he made people talk. Billy Champion’s downfall was that there wasn’t any backup in him. He was double-bred stubborn. I loved him to death, but men like him can be hard to ride with, because you will get your nerve tried from time to time.
    Billy was coal-black-headed, and a little on the dark side. I always figured he had some Indian in him,