“That night I finds my wife down in a stinkin’, dirty ’dobe shack in Gopher town. She’s got fat and black lookin’ and she’s dyin’ from pneumonia. I stays by her till she dies. The kid, a good lookin’, black-eyed young tough, drifts in as she’s goin’ out. Not knowin’ me, he stands there in the door a-coverin’ me till she tells him he’s linin’ his sights on his own dad. He’s there when I promises her to look after him and get him weaned off from his wild ways. He’s laughin’ at me and her when she closes her eyes and I feels her hand go limp in mine.
“‘We’ll be startin’ fer Arizona when we’ve buried yore mother,’ I tells him.
“‘The —— we will,’ he says, blowin’ cigaret smoke in my face. ‘You shore got a good imagination. Diggin’ graves is outa my line uh work and yore ways is too tame fer me. I jest dropped in tuh git some ca’tridges and a bottle uh mescal. My father, eh? A —— of a father, you are. And —— yuh, don’t go tryin’ tuh reform me, sabe? Bury the squaw if yuh feel like it, then go back to where yuh belong.’
“He steps out into the dark and is gone. The next time I sees him, he’s in jail at Los Cruces, bound fer Florence tuh serve a life sentence. I brings him some smokin’ and pays off his law sharp and figgers I’ve done my best. But he gits under my hide about this here promise I done made his mother. He swears he’ll quit the country complete and reform if I gits him loose. I weakens and that night I lets him out.
“I changes my name and drifts to Montana, aimin’ tuh begin fresh and thinkin’ the kid has gone tuh South America and made a clean start. Fifteen years passes and I’m sheriff here. Then him and Fox shows up. The kid’s older now and his whiskers keeps me from recognizin’ him.
“Me and Hank Basset rides into the brakes follerin’ the sign uh the stolen cattle. We splits up. I gits my hoss shot out from under me and takes to the brush. I jumps this Black Jack sudden, shootin’ the gun outa his hand. I’m puttin’ the ’cuffs on him when he tells me who he is.”
Kipp paused. His hands went out in a weary gesture.
“You kin guess the rest, boys. Fox and him a houndin’ me. They tell me that the night uh the Los Cruces jail break, a deputy was killed. The kid shot him, like as not. Him er Fox who was in town at the time, dickerin’ fer stolen hosses that the kid brung across the line. But they’ve laid the killin’ on to me and I’m wanted down there. Likewise the kid plays on this promise I done made his mother, sayin’ how I done wrong by her all the way through and if he’d had the right kind uh raisin’ he’d uh turned out different. Mebbe so, by gittin’ Fox and cleanin’ up this gang, I kin make up a mite fer what or’nariness I’ve done. Then I’m goin’ back tuh Los Cruces and let ’em do what they want with me. That’s the hull —— story, boys. The story that’s writ in black and white and lays in my safe. I want that you should know this afore I meets up with Fox.”
