Joe Pepper by Elmer Kelton

Author:Elmer Kelton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 2011-01-20T00:00:00+00:00

By and by I had added five or six rewards to my bank account, probably two or three thousand dollars in all. I still had it in my head that I wanted to be a rancher, even though all my attempts at it had come to considerable grief. That wasn’t the part of the country I especially wanted to do it in, though. For one thing it was a heap dryer than the land I was used to, back home. It was really a lot better than it looked, I know now, but it always appeared to be in the midst of a drouth if you was from a greener part of the country. Another thing, I still figured they was looking for me back yonder, and sooner or later somebody might come straying through who knew me. I’d already had to leave a ranch in South Texas and another in Mexico. I didn’t aim to leave one here.

Time came when one office seemed a little close for me and Sheriff Smathers. We come to something of a disagreement over a five-hundred-dollar reward on a feller that had shot a woman back in East Texas. Now, you’re probably wondering how me, on the dodge myself, could go out and bring in other people on the dodge and keep my conscience clear. Truth is, I didn’t. Like with old Gotch there; if I’d of turned him over to that fat banker and his laws, I’d of lost some sleep over it. I always hurt a little over most of them, and I couldn’t of done it if money hadn’t been such a cool balm for a troubled conscience.

One like that woman-killer, of course, didn’t trouble me a bit except that he hadn’t given me any excuse for shooting him. I always figured the best cure for a man like that is a deep burying. The reward was the same dead or alive.

Anyway, I had to catch him all by myself. I didn’t get three cents’ worth of help from old Smathers or anybody else. So when the reward came through, naturally I was inclined to figure I ought to keep it myself. Old Smathers seen it different. He wasn’t overly strong at sharing danger, but he was real apt with pencil and paper when it come to sharing money.

Things didn’t improve a bit when some old boy breezed into town one day and robbed our old Dutch banker in broad daylight. I was off at the time, looking for suspicious tracks on the trails south of town. First I heard of it was along late in the day when I was heading back toward town, tired and in bad need of a drink. I ran smack into a wild-eyed citizen posse, carrying more guns than Lee had at Gettysburg. You take the majority of them posses, they’re more danger to each other than to the people they’re hunting.

Feller in charge was that sour-faced loudmouth, Clopton, from the bank. I always figured

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