The Transgressors (4 page)

That sounded reasonable and right to Tom Lord, but he was getting a little nervous. After all, there are no underground surveyor’s stakes, and no oil field, however rich, is inexhaustible. His land could still be drained dry, even though there were no wells on it. The wells on surrounding property would siphon it off.

Lord’s nervousness was getting hard to live with when he was offered exactly the kind of deal his lawyer demanded. The man who made it to him was Aaron McBride.

He liked McBride instantly, liked his direct speech and economy with words. He liked the simple contract that McBride tendered him, a document that was almost terse in its simplicity, and completely devoid of irritating legalisms.

For a flat twenty-five per cent of Tom’s holdings, McBride’s employers—Highlands Oil & Gas—would undertake all production costs. This twenty-five per cent would cover the drilling of wells, the laying of pipelines, the setting up of storage tanks—everything that needed to be done to market the oil. Tom would have no expenses whatsoever, and seventy-five per cent of the oil would be his. Or, more accurately, one hundred per cent of the oil would be his on the
seventy-five per cent of the land remaining to him.

It sounded good to Lord. It sounded equally good or better to his lawyer.

Still, even as the lawyer pressed a pen into his hand and pointed to the dotted line, he found himself drawing back. So very much depended on this. Not mere money, but the very life of a man.

He slowly looked up from the contract, and into McBride’s eyes.

“Should I sign this or not, Mr. McBride?” he asked. “You tell me I should, that it’s a good contract, and I’ll sign it.”

“I’m not a lawyer,” McBride said.

“That’s not what I asked you.”

“But, man”—McBride began a protest—“you’re asking me to—to—” He broke off, reached into his pocket, and took out a certified check for twenty thousand dollars. He shoved it cross the desk and leaned back. “There,” he said, “I wasn’t supposed to give you that if you’d sign without it. But—well, now, I feel better.”

“And so do I,” said Tom warmly. “Always thought you were on the level. Now, I know it.”

And he signed the contract.

He bought his convertible with a fraction of the money. The rest was promptly absorbed by attorney’s fees and his old debts.

Wisely, he held onto his job. For the twenty thousand dollars was the only money he ever received.

When his first suspicions arose, he was ashamed of them. He chided himself with impatience, told himself that McBride was a very busy man and that any seeming wrong would be righted as soon as McBride could get around to it.

McBride had proved his honesty, hadn’t he? And he certainly was busy, wasn’t he? Tom had hailed him a time or two, approached him with the intent to talk over his situation if the opportunity presented. But he could never get past a polite feeler or so before McBride was forced to rush away.

A very busy man, the field boss. Still, Tom thought, this
was
business, the matter that he wished to discuss. It was very big business, and he was entitled to a few minutes of McBride’s time.

The few minutes were not easy to obtain. He only got it, after three days of pursuit, by pulling his car in front of McBride’s.

The field boss scowled as Lord came tramping back to his vehicle. He said, as Lord climbed into the seat with him, that he didn’t think he liked this. He didn’t like it at all, and he didn’t have to put up with it.

“Sure, you don’t,” Tom agreed. “But I figured maybe you’d want to. You got a choice of doin’ this or something else, and I got a notion you’d be happier doing this.”

McBride hesitated, seeking some means of equivocation and finding none. At last, he said curtly, “All right. We signed our agreement approximately a year ago. Now, you’re wondering when we’re going to drill on the seventy-five per cent of the lease land owned by you.”

Lord nodded. “Can’t blame me for that, can you? seein’ that you’ve sunk more than fifty wells on your twenty-five per cent.”

“The answer is that I don’t know.”

“No idea, huh? You’re the field boss. You’ve got to plan a long ways ahead, keep all your rigs and men working with no lost motion. But you got no notion of when you’ll drill on my property.”

McBride’s mouth tightened doggedly. He said nothing.

“The fact is,” Lord said, “you won’t be puttin’ down no wells at all on my seventy-five per cent. That’s about the size of things, ain’t it? There won’t be nothin’ but offset wells, taking all the oil for Highlands and givin’ me nothing.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“But you know it’s true. You knew it right in the beginning. Now, I’m asking you to make it square with me.”

“I—How do you mean?”

“Go before a judge with me. Just tell what you know—what you got to know. That the contract was made in bad faith with intent to defraud.”

“But I—” McBride hesitated, swallowed heavily. Then, he continued in flat, dull tones, seeming to recite from some carefully memorized lesson in a distasteful subject. “You had a lawyer,” he said. “The contract was entirely legal. It was not my job to interpret its contents.”

Lord gave him a long, thoughtful look. Slowly he took out a cigar and lighted it. “This legal stuff,” he said. “I always felt it was meant to protect people. Might go astray now and then; ain’t perfect no more than the people that use it. But if it did, you could pick it up again an’ pry things back on the track. That’s what I was askin’ you to do…”

He waited, taking another puff from the cigar. McBride was silent, his hands clutching the steering wheel tightly, his eyes fixed straight ahead.

“Been a lot of people like you around,” Lord went on, “right from the beginning of history. Burnin’ and torturin’ and killing—slappin’ other people into the gas ovens. And it’s always done legal, y’know. They always got a law to back ’em up. If there ain’t one on the books, someone’ll think one up in a hurry. Anyways, they’re just followin’ orders, ain’t they? It’s no skin off their nose if—”

“Mr. Lord!” McBride’s head snapped around. “I was a combat infantryman during World War II! I spent one year in a German hell camp!”

“And I guess it didn’t learn you a thing,” Lord said sadly. “Didn’t teach you that a man’s got certain obligations to do what’s right, regardless of whether it’s convenient or what the law will let him get away with. Well”—he opened the car door and paused as he slid from the seat—“I guess I’ll just have to plug up a few holes in your ed-u-cation, Mis-ter McBride. Looks like it was my bounden duty.”

He nodded, grinning coldly, and departed.

It was two weeks later that, having caught McBride without a gun permit, and McBride having “resisted arrest,” he beat him insensible.

And now he was face to face with McBride again. And McBride’s gun was aimed at him.

And McBride, obviously, was more than prepared to use it.

All he needed was a reason, an excuse, the slightest provocation or justification.

Perhaps, judging by the half-crazed look in his eyes, he did not even need that.

I
n retrospect, it seemed to Tom Lord that there were a dozen ways that he could have handled the situation, any of them better than the one he chose. But that was later. At the time, he was not even conscious of making a choice; what he did was inevitable, a course that was thrust upon him. At the time he could think of only one thing: that he had made the biggest mistake of his life in coming here. That he should never have come here, regardless of his need to, or of his nagging anger with McBride.

The facts were, of course, that he would not have done so if he had been aware of the severed cable and the drill tools lost down the hole. He would have realized that McBride would blame him for the disaster, that he would take this—a seeming attack on his, McBride’s, work and company responsibilities—every bit as hard as, or harder than, he had taken the beating.

But Lord hadn’t known about the lost tools. And there was no way now to compensate for this vital bit of ignorance.

He should have got away from the place faster. He simply shouldn’t have been there to begin with.

“I want to tell you something,” Lord heard himself saying. “I didn’t cut your drill cable. I can prove that I was in town all last night.”

McBride’s lips drew back from his teeth in a broad, humorless grin. He laughed a high-pitched cackling laugh.

“Yes, you can,” he said. “I’m sure of it. You’d lie and the whole town would swear to it.”

He had aged ten years since the beating, Lord saw. He had lost almost forty pounds. He was haggard and deathly sick-looking, a man disintegrating under the conflicts of his job and his conscience. Lord had made him see the basic wrong of his existence, the only one he had ever lived or was capable of living. And because Lord had done so, and because he himself could not accept the responsibility, it became Lord’s fault.

Everything. All of it…That woman in the compensation court, where he had testified for the company. That Negro ’cropper, watching dully as the huge tractors rolled through the family burial plot. The way his men looked at him. The way his dead wife had treated him. The…
the starved bodies hanging in the barbed wire, and the long trench with the bubbling quicklime and the smell of roasting flesh, and…

“I had a broken spring on my car,” Lord said very slowly, letting each word sink in. “I had to come here for help. I was going to pay for everything I used or broke.”

McBride let out another high-pitched cackle. He said that, of course, that was the way it was and that was what Lord had intended to do. It was a lie, but Red and Curly and the woman would swear to it.

“You,” he said, his voice suddenly sharp, slanting a glance at the two workmen. “You’ve drawn your pay. Now I’ll give you ten minutes to get off this lease.”

“We’re sticking with Tom,” Norton said. “We figure—”

McBride swerved the gun abruptly and let loose a shot between them. Then, as they fell back, he swung the gun back on Lord.

“You’re my prisoner,” he said. “I’m making a citizen’s arrest.”

“You can do that,” Lord said. “Don’t make much sense, though.”

“Trespassing!” said McBride. “Willful destruction of property!” His voice rose. “Breaking and entering!” Now yelling. “Larceny!”—screaming.

The screaming continued through a jumbled, run-together, incoherent mass of accusations. And then, abruptly, he began to giggle. This went on for a full minute, then ended as suddenly as the screaming had.

“You there,” he said, jerking his head at Joyce. “Get that piece of rope and tie your boy friend’s hands behind him.”

Joyce smirked nervously, either unable or unwilling to follow the command. Lord caught her eye, silently indicated that she was to obey. But still she could not or would not.

McBride eyed her terribly, the cords in his throat swelling. “Do you hear me, you whore? Do as I tell you!”

“W-Whore?”
Joyce suddenly came to life. “You calling me a whore, mister?”

“Yes, whore!” McBride seemed to delight in the word. “The lowest kind of whore! A filthy, slimy whore! A cheap, stinking, rotten—”

She was not an unduly sensitive person, except where her own feelings were concerned. Neither was she inclined to look ahead to the potential consequences of her acts. This character had called her a whore. She didn’t take that kind of talk from anyone; period; end of story.

She was gripping her purse in her right hand. Without a word, in one furious unbroken motion, she drew her arm back, swung, and let go. The heavy bag zipped toward him, trailing a tinkling stream of cosmetics, bobby pins, and small change. Instinctively, he threw up his arms to ward it off.

In the next instant, Lord hit him with a flying tackle. McBride dropped like a rock, but he held onto the gun. He and the deputy went rolling and sprawling among the weeds. They came to their feet, and were as quickly down again, scrambled together in a struggling, tangled mass of flailing feet and slugging fists. It was impossible to intervene, but Joyce moved closer, eyes still blazing with offended dignity, and the two oil-field workers stood poised alertly, ready to leap into the fray at the slightest opportunity.

Then, the gun began to explode, and the three scampered backward. They were still running, heads ducked, bodies crouched, when there was a final shot, dully muffled this time.

And then there was silence.

McBride lay spread-eagled on his back, his outflung right hand still gripping the gun. Lord was slowly rising from his body, staring down at him. Then, jerkily pulling his gaze away, he brushed his mouth with the back of his hand. Dully he watched the approach of Joyce and his two friends.

Joyce was the first to reach the body. She took a quick glance at it, then spoke, half-defiantly, a small sob in her throat. “He shouldn’t have done that. H-He had no right to call me a whore.”

“He sure shouldn’t have,” Lord agreed. “He sure didn’t.”

“We shouldn’t have come here in the first place! I told you we shouldn’t! I begged and pleaded and—and—”

She began to weep, childlike, hands hanging at her sides, great glossy tears squeezing from her squinted-shut eyes. Lord took her by the shoulders and gently helped her into the car. Forcing a reassuring smile, he dabbed at her tears with a polka-dot bandanna.

“Better now, honey? Want to honk the old schnozzle?” He held the handkerchief while she blew into it. “What about old Tom gettin’ you a drink of water?”

“I—I g-guess not. I’ll j-just”—She got a look at herself in the car mirror—“oh, my God! Just look at me! Now, where is my—”

“You just sit tight. I’ll get it for you.”

He gathered up the contents of her purse, making sure that nothing was left behind. She grabbed the compact from him and went to work with it almost feverishly. Tom’s mouth twisted as he turned away. She called to him sharply.

“Now, where do you think you’re going? Let’s get out of here!”

“We will. Got a little talkin’ to do first.”

“What’s there to talk about? He’s dead isn’t he?”

“I reckon. Be pretty hard to live with no brains in his head.”

She made a disgusted, sickish sound. Curly and Red looked up from the body as he approached them, then moved away at an angle as he nodded his head, joining him as he went up a gentle rise in the land and paused, back turned, at the crest.

“Didn’t want to look at him no more,” he explained. “Just didn’t feel like I could take it.”

They murmured sympathetically. Red asked him how it had happened.

“I don’t rightly know; everything happened so fast. Of course, I was trying to get the gun away from him, but I don’t think I had a hold of it when he got killed. Just seemed like he flung it against his head and pulled the trigger.”

“It wasn’t your blame, Tom.”

“Well, it sure wasn’t intentional. But it wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t been here.”

“You got no call to blame yourself,” Curly insisted, “an’ nobody can fault you for it. Any trouble about it, you got us and the lady to tell what happened.”

“You think about that for a minute,” Lord said. “See if you can’t find just a leetle somethin’ wrong with the picture.”

He rubbed his eyes tiredly, looked down the slope among a stand of blackjack trees. Several oblongs of natural rock had been laid there, abutting to form a building foundation. Affixed to them were the edge-up timbers of the studding.

“McBride’s house,” Norton answered his silent question. “He was bringin’ his wife out here as soon as she had her baby. Wanted to have ’em a good long way from town, I reckon.”

“I thought his wife was dead.”

“This is his second one. Used to be what you’d call his ward, I guess.” Norton grinned feebly. “One way of gettin’ a wife. Raise her yourself.”

Lord looked down at the ground. Curly frowned at Red.

“About what you was sayin’ a minute ago, Tom. What…?”

“Well, suppose the killin’ had been my fault. You’re my friends, and you didn’t have no use for McBride. What would your story have been?”

“Well…” said Curly. “Oh, yeah, I see what you mean.”

“You’re sayin’,” said Norton, “that our word don’t amount to nothin’?” He frowned, scratched his head uneasily. “Come to think about it, I guess it don’t either.”

“Oh, it amounts to something, all right. If you said this was all my fault, folks’d believe you right off. It’s only if you back me up that they won’t.”

“What do you want to do, Tom?”

“Well, that kinda depends on you boys. Don’t want you puttin’ your tail in a sling for me, but…”

He explained his plan. The two men were agreeing to it long before he had finished. He was not asking them to perjure themselves; only to say nothing unless he later told them to. And that seemed safe enough. They had been fired along with the other workmen on the well. Like the others, they
could
have left soon after the firing; they could have no knowledge of McBride’s death or, of course, of Lord’s presence at the well. Someone would be stopping by the lease tomorrow; some supply man or mud-washer [
geologist
] or company scout. Let him discover the body, and report it.

Red and Curley were both confident that the scheme would work. Lord was not so sure, but conceded that the death did look like suicide.

“And it kind of was in a way,” he added dully. “Might be it really was.”

They walked back down the hill with him. They shook hands. As he drove off, they were hastily repairing the tool-house door and disposing of the other mementos of his visit.

With the approach of sunset, the August evening had turned cool. And as the sun dropped abruptly below the horizon, the cool became cold. Lord put up the car top and closed the windows. Then, moodily, he drove on again.

He had hardly spoken since leaving the lease. Now, as Joyce began to prod him insistently, he told her of his talk with Red and Curly and about what they had agreed.

She started to nod. Then, instead, her eyes narrowing slightly, she withdrew to her own side of the seat and sat there, looking straight ahead, a strange primness modifying the lines of her hard-pretty face. Lord gave her a quickly covert look. Grinning sadly to himself, he fumbled for a cigar, found none, and dug a wooden match from his pocket. He tucked it into the corner of his mouth and began to chew on it.

“ ’Course, I didn’t ask how you felt about it,” he observed. “Didn’t figure I had to. Just thought you’d go along with whatever I said.”

“We-el, I’d certainly
like
to, Tom. You know I’m always anxious to do whatever you want.”

“Uh-huh?”

“I—I’m not what I used to be, Tom. I haven’t been since we started going together.”

“So I noticed,” Lord said. “Been wonderin’ how you got by fi-nan-shelly.”

“Well, I haven’t been really. I’ve had to do without a lot. But I haven’t minded. I’d do anything for you, Tom; anything! But maybe—well, you know—a girl like me, a girl that’s been what I’ve been…”

Lord’s grin became open. He gave her a jovial slap on the thigh. “Now, why don’t you just come right out and say it? Shouldn’t be so hard. Might choke on it, if you hold it in any longer.”

“Well.” Joyce took a deep breath, bracing herself. “We’d better get married, Tom. A woman can’t testify against her own husband.”

Lord nodded; he said idly, “There’s something else a woman can’t do.”

“Yes?”

“She can’t testify if she’s dead.”