After the sheriff was gone, Dunc Lester took a chair on the other side of Cushman's desk. “Marshal,” he said slowly, “would you tell me somethin'?”
“What is it?”
“Why did you do it? Go huntin' for the Brunners, I mean. It wasn't your job. Nobody could have made you do it.”
For some reason, Owen remembered what Judge Lochland had told him once about civilization and heroes, and he laughed. “Dunc,” he said, “if you have to have a reason, maybe you'd better just put it down to damn foolishness.”
“I think it was more than that,” the boy said.
And the way he said it made Owen squirm uncomfortably, and he was glad to see Doc Linnwood's thick figure appear in the doorway. “So you made it back,” the doctor said, shooting quick glances at Owen and Dunc. He stood quietly for a moment. “I'm sorry about Deland. He was a good man.”
“Yes,” Owen said. “Thanks.”
“Well!” Linnwood said after another short pause. “I guess I'd better take a look at that side.”
The doctor's big, blunt hands had the gentle touch of a woman as he helped Owen off with his shirt, then bathed and dressed the raw furrow about three inches above the left hip. “You're by way of becoming a hero, Owen.” Linnwood smiled. “Cushman's got the whole town talking.”
Owen smiled and said, “Are Elizabeth and the boys all right, Doc?”
“Fine. I was out that way yesterday.”
Owen saw the eager look in Dunc Lester's eyes, and added, “How about Leah Stringer?”
“You wouldn't know her,” Linnwood laughed. “Elizabeth decked her out in some of her own dresses, and damn if she didn't turn out to be a looker.”
Dunc sagged with relief, but said nothing. The small talk continued for several minutes, and at last they heard the solid crack of boot heels on the rock flooring and Cushman and Bern McKeever came into the office.
“Well, Owen,” the banker said heartily. “Will tells me you cleaned up the Brunners! That's just the thing I wanted to hear!”
“I had some help,” Owen said quietly. “Arch Deland and Dunc Lester, here.”
“Oh, yes.” McKeever blinked at the quiet rebuke. “Too bad about Deland, but he was an old man. The important thing is that the Brunners are dead. It'll be a simple matter to take a posse into the hills and clean out the rest of the gang.”
Owen and Dunc looked quickly at one another and then stared at the fat banker. “I'd sort of thought,” Owen said mildly, “that the matter was closed. The gang is broken up. I don't think they'll give you any more trouble.”
McKeever was clearly outraged at such an idea. “Toller, have you taken leave of your senses? They're a bunch of killers and thieves up there, every one of them. They've got to be brought to trial and punished. The sooner we clean them out of the hills, the better!”
The banker's fat jowls quivered in righteous indignation, and he shot a finger at Dunc Lester. “And that young hoodlum is to be treated the same as the others! He was one of the gang, and I'll permit no favoritism when it comes to justice!”
“Just a minute, Ben,” Owen said quietly.
“You listen to me, Toller,” the banker broke in. “What you've done was a big help, and we appreciate it, but we can't tolerate softness toward a gang of criminals.”
Owen slipped into his shirt, looking at McKeever as he buttoned it. He said, “They're not criminals, Ben. They're just farmers, like myself.”
“They're killers!” McKeever said angrily.
“The Brunners were killers,” Owen corrected. But he knew that he had no legal ground to stand on, and he was not sure that his moral ground was as completely steady as he would have liked. And yet he had met Gabe Tanis face to face, and Ben McKeever hadn't. He could not believe that men like Tanis were willful criminals.
At last he said, “Ben... maybe you're right.”
“Of course I'm right!”
Although Owen did not look in Dunc Lester's direction, he could feel the boy's instant hostility in the room. “If the gang was really disbanded,” Owen went on, “it would be an impossible job weeding out the gang members from the others.”
“They're all equally to blame, members or not,” the banker said bluntly. “The gang could not have existed without the approval of hillfolks.”
“Then all of them should be punished,” Owen said, “rounded up like cattle and brought into Reunion to stand trial.”
Ben was puzzled but pleased. “That's right, Owen! I thought you'd see it my way.”
Dunc Lester came half out of his chair, his face flushed with anger. But before he could speak, Owen went on in his mild, disinterested voice. “It looks like Ben has the law on his side, Will,” he said to the sheriff. “What you'll have to do is round up a big posse, scour those hills from top to bottom until you have every last family.”
Will appeared suddenly uncomfortable at this turn of events. “Wait a minute, Owen,” he said quickly. “I know how Ben feels about this, but it would take months, maybe years, to clean out those hills!”
“I know,” Owen agreed. “They have pride. They'll fight every inch of the way together against a posse of outsiders. But they'll have to give in eventually. It might take five, ten years, but they'll finally have to give in.”
“Five years!” Ben McKeever said. “Ten!”
“You have the hills to deal with,” Owen explained. “Why, a few of those farmers could hold up a hundred-man posse almost as long as they wanted in one of their passes. Of course you'll have to plan on a long fight.”
“But Ihadn't planned on a long fight!” the banker sputtered. “Why, in five years the railroad would be dead and forgotten!”
“Justice doesn't always come the easy way,” Owen told him.
McKeever wiped his red face with a crisp linen handkerchief. “Now, wait a minute, Will. We've got to look at this another way. We've got to think of the good of the community as a whole. We've got to think of the prosperity that a spur line would bring to Reunion. Owen, if we... well, say we kind of let this matter sit for a while, do you think those hillpeople would co-operate with the building of a railroad?”
Owen smiled so faintly that the expression was hardly noticeable. “Maybe,” he said, “you'd better ask Mr. Lester. He knows the people better than I do.”
McKeever came angrily erect, but he was much too smart to allow his emotions to control his business sense. “Well, son,” he snapped, glaring at Dunc, “what do you say?”
Dunc had begun to see the purpose behind the queer turn of the marshal's talk. “I don't know,” he said carefully. “Maybe they'd listen to me, and maybe they wouldn't.” But his mind was thinking far ahead, and he was thinking that McKeever's railroad would mean work for the hill-people, something to fill the gap that the Brunner raids had opened. There would be sawmills and timber to cut, and roads and settlements would change the face of the hills. Dunc thought that all these things might be to the good.
He looked first at Owen, and the marshal nodded. Then to McKeever he said, “I can't promise it'll do any good, but maybe I can talk to them.”
“You do that,” the banker said quickly, wiping his face again. “I'd appreciate it, son.”
Owen sat for one long moment, quietly at peace with the world and with himself. He felt no obligation toward anyone but Elizabeth and the boys, and he was eager to see them. He was anxious to experience the pungent smell of fresh-turned earth again. Duty—if that was the name for it—no longer held him. The glories of the past did not entice him as they enticed Arch Deland. What he had done, he told himself, was not so much. A million men before him had left their plows for various reasons, for causes as subtle as the act of breathing, to fight for certain beliefs that they could not put into words. And they would do it again in the future.
Owen Toller stood up and looked at Dunc. “Are you ready, son?”
The boy rose from his chair. “I'm ready.” Owen unpinned his deputy's badge and laid it carefully on Will Cushman's desk
. “Then,” he said, “I guess it's time we went home.”
THE END
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The Law of the Trigger Page 18
