The Gun Fight (16 page)

“Oh dear God!” Jane Coles slumped over, pressing
her shaking hands to her face. “Dear God, it’s your father talking, it’s not you. It’s him, him! Oh, dear God, dear
God
. . .” The tears ran between her trembling fingers.

Robby sat there stiffly, staring at his mother with half-frightened eyes, desperately afraid that he was going to cry too. He leaned back in the chair looking at her with an expression in his eyes that shifted from resolution to pitying contrition and back to resolute strength again.

“You don’t have to cry, mother,” he said, feeling a twinge at the cold sound of his voice. “I’m not afraid of John Benton. I . . . I’m not a little boy anymore, mother, I’m twenty-one.”

His mother looked up with an anguished sob. “You’re not old enough for this!” she cried, almost a fierce anger in her voice. “You mustn’t fight him, son, you mustn’t!”

She kept crying and, for some strange reason, Robby felt suddenly remorseless and cold toward his sobbing mother. There was no strength in her, the thought crept vaguely through his brain, there was only weakness and surrender. He was a man now and he had a job to do. He was going to do it no matter what happened.

He wished it was morning so he could buckle on his gun and get it over with. He found to his astonishment that he actually
wasn’t
afraid of Benton now, that he wanted only to get the job over with. Louisa was his intended bride; someday she would be his wife. His father was right; he had to defend her, now and always, it was his responsibility. When men stopped fighting for their women, the society
would
fail, he was certain of it.

“Go to bed, mother,” he said in a flat, emotionless tone, “there’s nothing to cry about.”

Jane Coles sat slumped on her chair, still weeping, her thin shoulders palsied with sobbing. Robby sat looking at her as he would look at a stranger. He felt cold inside, hollowed out by determination, drained of fear, empty of all but the one resolution he knew he had to obey.

He had said tomorrow. Tomorrow it would be.

Slowly, consciously, his fingers closed on the table top; they made a hard, white fist.

Twelve twenty-one, the end of the second day.

J
ulia was just putting the rack of loaves into the hot oven when the hound began barking outside the kitchen door at the muffled drumming of hoofbeats. Pushing up the oven door, she moved quickly across the floor toward the window and looked out.

A sudden weakness dragged at her and she caught at the windowsill, her heart suddenly pumping in slow, heavy beats as she saw who it was.

The chestnut gelding was reined up to a careful stop before the house and stood there fidgeting while the hound cringed nearby, ears back, head snapping with each hoarse, excited bark it gave.

“
Benton!
” Julia heard Matthew Coles call out and her stomach muscles shuddered at the sound.

“No,” she murmured without realizing it, gasping to draw breath into her lungs.

“Benton!” Coles shouted again, his voice sharp and demanding. Julia stared out at him, hoping desperately that he would think no one was home and ride away.

Then Matthew Coles started to dismount and she pushed from the window and opened the door with a spasmodic pull.

Matthew Coles twitched back, face whitening.

“I am unarm—!” he started to cry out, then broke
off with a tightening of his mouth when he saw it was her.

“Where is your husband, Mrs. Benton?” he asked quickly, trying to cover up his momentary panic. The hound dog backed toward Julia as she stood in the doorway.

“Why do you want to know?” she asked, weakly.

“Mrs. Benton, I expect an answer.”

She drew in a shaking breath. “He’s not here,” she said.

“Where
is
he?”

She swallowed quickly and stared at him, feeling sick and dizzy.

“Mrs. Benton, I demand an—”

“Why do you want to know?”

“That is not your concern, ma’m,” said Matthew Coles.

“It’s about Louisa Harper, isn’t it?” she asked suddenly.

His face hardened. “Where is your husband, ma’m?” he asked.

“Mister Coles, it isn’t true! My husband had nothing to do with that girl!”

“I’m afraid the facts speak differently, ma’m,” Matthew Coles said with imperious calm. “Now, where is he?”

“Mister Coles, I beg of you—listen to me! My husband had nothing to do with Louisa Harper, I sw—”

“Where is your husband, Mrs. Benton?”

“I swear to you, Mister—”

“Where
is
he, Mrs. Benton?” Matthew Coles asked, his voice rising.

“Why won’t you listen to me? Don’t you think I’d know?”

“Mrs. Benton, I demand an answer!”

“What are you trying to do—kill your son?!”

The hint of a smile played at Matthew Coles’ lips. “I don’t believe it’s my son you’re concerned for,” he said.

“Who else would I be concerned for?” she answered heatedly. “You don’t think he’d have a chance against my husband, do you? For the love of God, stop this terrible thing before—”

Matthew Coles turned on his heel and lifted his boot toe into the stirrup.

“Mister Coles!” Her cry followed him as she took a quick step into the morning sunlight, face pale and tense.

He said nothing but swung up into the saddle and pulled his horse around.

“You’ve got to believe me!” she cried. “My husband didn’t—”

The rest of her words were drowned out by the quickening thud of the gelding’s hooves across the yard.

“
No!
” She screamed it after him.

Then she stood there in the hot blaze of sunlight, shivering uncontrollably, watching him ride away while the hound dog stood beside her, whining.

Suddenly she started running for the barn on trembling legs, breath falling from her lips in gasping bursts. Then, equally as sudden, she stopped, realizing that she didn’t know how to hitch up the buckboard for herself. She stood indecisively, halfway between the barn and the house, her chest jerking with frustrated, frightened sobs.

“W
ell, them damn churnheads is in the bog again,” was the first thing Joe Bailey said as Benton and Lew Goodwill rode up to him.

“Oh, for—!” Benton hissed angrily. Then he shrugged. “Well . . . stay here with the rest of the herd and Lew and I’ll fetch ’em out.”

“Okay, boss,” Joe Bailey said and Benton and Goodwill rode off toward the mud hole, stopping off at the small range shack for short-handled shovels.

“It’s this damn heat,” Lew said as the two of them dismounted by the bog. “They try to get cool and all they get is stuck.”

Benton grunted and they walked across the rilled ground toward the almost dry spring. As they walked, they saw the two steers struggling in the wire and heard the bellowing of their complaints.

“Sure. Tell us your troubles,” Benton said to them under his breath. “If you weren’t so damn mule-headed, you wouldn’t get
stuck
in there.” But he knew it was really because he didn’t have enough men to keep a closer watch on the herd. How could one man keep tabs on two hundred head?

As they came to the edge of the mud hole, Benton
and Lew unbuckled their gunbelts and lay them on the top of a boulder.

“Let’s get the wrinkle-horn out first,” Benton said.

“Right,” Lew said and they struggled out into the viscous mud toward the older steer with its wrinkled, scaly horns. Benton gritted his teeth as the smell of hot slime surrounded him.

“Oh,
shut
up!” he snapped as the steer bellowed loudly, trying, in vain, to dislodge its legs.

Quickly, with angrily driven shovel strokes, Benton dug around the steer’s legs. The steer kept struggling, sometimes sinking deeper into the hot, reeking muck, its angry, frightened bellows blasting at Benton’s eardrums.

Once, its muzzle crashed against Benton’s shoulder as he straightened up for a moment and knocked him onto his side, getting his Levi’s and shirt mud-coated. Jumping up, he grabbed hold of the scaly horn and shoved the steer’s head away with a curse, then started digging again.

Finally, he’d freed most of the front leg and, stepping over the back leg, he started working on that quickly so the mud wouldn’t come back around the free leg. On the other side of the struggling steer, he heard his own curses echoed by Lew Goodwill.

“Damn fool!” Lew snapped. “Stop
fussin’
so!”

As he dug, trying to breathe through his clenched teeth, Benton felt great sweat drops trickling down the sides of his chest from his armpits. He kept digging, plunging the shovel point in and hurling the black mud away with angry arm jerks. It’s times like this—he thought—when I wish I was back in the Rangers where the only thing a man has to worry about is getting shot.

He hadn’t slept much the night before. Julia had kept talking about Robby Coles and he was still thinking about it when he fell into an uneasy doze.

He dreamed that Matthew Coles was tying him to a
hitching post while Robby stood nearby, waiting to fire slugs into him. When the first bullets had struck, he’d jolted up on the bed with a grunt, wide awake.

Then Lew Goodwill had ridden in from the first night watch and said he thought there better be another man to help Joe Bailey on the second watch because there was some electric lightning in the sky and the herd was getting spooky.

Benton had dressed and ridden out to the herd and stayed with Joe a couple of hours until the lightning was gone. Then he’d ridden back to the house. In all, he’d gotten about three hours of sleep.

“All right, get on your horse,” he said to Lew.

“Ain’t finished the back leg, boss.”

“I’ll get it, I’ll get it,” Benton snapped. “Get on your horse.”

“Okay.” Lew slogged out of the mud hole and moved up to where his horse was tied. He cinched up the saddle as tightly as the latigo straps could be drawn, then led the animal down to the edge of the mud hole.

“All right, toss in your rope,” Benton said.

Lew lifted the rope coil off his saddle horn and shook it loose, then tossed one end of it to Benton who tied it securely around the steer’s horns. While he did that, Lew fastened the other rope end around his saddle horn and drew it taut. Mounting then, he backed off his sturdy piebald until the lariat was taut.

“All right,” Benton called, “drag her out!”

The piebald dug in its hooves and started pulling at the dead weight of the steer. Dust rose under its slipping, straining legs and the muscles of its body stood out like sheathed cables. In the mud hole, Benton shoved at the steer from behind, trying to avoid the spray of mud from its flailing legs but not always succeeding.

“Come on, you wall-eyed mule!” Benton gasped furiously as he shoved the steer, his muscles straining violently.

Slowly, the steer was pulled loose and dragged up
onto hard ground. When they tailed it up, it charged Benton and he had to make a zig-zag dash for the bush. Then Lew chased the steer off and they went back into the mud for the second one.

By the time they had that one out, they were both spattered with mud from head to knee and caked solid below that. They sat in the shade a little while, panting and cursing under their breath.

They were sitting like that when the gelding came over the rise. “Who’s that?” Lew asked.

Benton looked up and sudden alarm tightened his face. “My gun,” he muttered, and stood up quickly as Matthew Coles spurred his gelding down the gradual slope and reined up.

“What do you want?” Benton asked, realizing that Coles was unarmed.

“I’m here as second for my son,” Coles said, stiffly.

“You’re what?” Benton squinted up at the older man.

“You will be in town by three o’clock this afternoon to defend yourself,” stated Matthew Coles.

Benton stared up incredulously. “What did you say?”

“You heard what I said, sir!”

Benton felt the heat and the dirt and the exhaustion all well up in him and explode as anger. “God damn it, get off my ranch! I told you that girl lied! Now—”

“Either you come in like a man,” Matthew Coles flared, “or my son will ride out after you!”

Benton felt like dragging the older man off his horse and pitching him head first into the mud hole. His body shook with repression of the desire.

“Listen,” he said. “For the last time, you tell your kid that—”

“By three, Mister Benton. Three o’clock this afternoon.”

“Coles, I swear to God, if you don’t—”

Matthew Coles pulled his horse around and rode quickly up the incline as Benton started forward, his face suddenly whitening with fury.

Benton stopped and watched the older man ride away.

“He’s loco,” Lew Goodwill said then and Benton glanced over at the big man. “He’s tryin’ to kill his own kid,” Lew went on. “He
must
be loco.”

Benton walked away on stiff legs and stood by the boulder buckling on his gunbelt. What was he supposed to do now, he wondered. Did he stay out on the ranch and wait to see if Robby Coles really would come after him? It was what he felt like doing. Without any trouble at all, he could convince himself that the kid wasn’t going to commit suicide.