by Lauran Paine
Sitting now in Mike Mulaney’s office, wearing the murdered sheriff’s badge, Knight knew without any supporting evidence that Hobart and his crew would have worked diligently at spreading the story of Knight’s having torched the town. As things stood now, Hobart was dead, and his riders, under Ace Dwinell, who Ben did not know except by sight, were likely to attempt the carrying out of their dead employer’s wishes.
They would still fire Gunsight.
It was the imminence of this graver trouble which made him push his own reason for being in Gunsight into the background. But he did not mean to abandon it, either, and when Morgan Hyatt returned to the sheriff’s office in company with Richard Blakely, Ben had worked both dilemmas into a dovetailed plan of his own.
“Sit down,” he told Hyatt, and waited until the saloon proprietor had complied before speaking again.
“You’ve been a rider,” he said to Hyatt. “I know how you feel. I’m the same breed of cat, Hyatt. I’m not a townsman and I’ve always resented the way townsfolk take advantage of range men.”
Morgan Hyatt squirmed but said nothing.
Ben spoke on. “I’ve been told all the trouble didn’t lie with Diamond H. That a good part of it was caused by folks here in Gunsight.”
“That’s true,” Hyatt said, speaking for the first time since entering the office.
Ben touched the badge he wore. “It isn’t true any longer. As long as I’m wearing this, riders will get a fair shake in Gunsight. Do you favor this, Hyatt?”
“I do.”
“Good, then you can help me make it come about.”
“How?”
“Do you know a man named Frank Bell?”
“Yes.”
“And I reckon you know Bob Hogan?”
“I do.”
“I’m going to deputize you, Hyatt, and you’re going to arrest them both and fetch them here to be locked up.”
Morgan Hyatt scowled. He began drumming with the fingers of one hand on the arm of his chair. Finally, he said: “Were they mixed up in the lynching?”
“Hogan was the leader. Bell was a participant.”
Hyatt’s scowl lessened but his drumming continued. “How about the others?” he asked.
“Slim Evans is already jailed here. Balfrey is dead by now. Someone shot him through the lungs from the back. Will Holt ”
“Is also dead,” Hyatt said, arising. “I know. I heard about it.”
Ben watched the burly barman pace the room. He said nothing, nor did he take his eyes off Hyatt until the roadside door swung open and several men ambled in, accompanied by old Jacob, who was still carrying his buffalo gun.
Hyatt, too, stopped to stare.
Jacob pushed through and halted beside Knight’s desk. After shooting only a brief glance at Hyatt, he said: “Here are your posse men. All good men, boy. I’ll vouch for every man jack of ’em.”
Ben arose but before he could speak Morgan Hyatt crossed to the desk with his hand out, palm upward. “Give me a badge,” he said. “I’ll bring them in.”
Ben rummaged Mulaney’s desk, found some dented deputy’s stars, and gave one to Hyatt. He grinned. “I don’t recollect the oath,” he told the barman, “but you know what we want to accomplish here.”
Hyatt grinned as well. Between the tall lawman and the burly saloon proprietor something warmly mutual passed. Then Hyatt lowered his glance to pin on the badge.
At this moment Jacob broke in. “Who you sending him after?” he demanded of Ben.
“Frank Bell and Bob Hogan.”
“Well now,” exclaimed the old saddler gruffly, “Morg’s a good man, Sheriff, but it’s been a spell since he’s gun-tangled with anyone. Let’s just send some of my boys here along with him.”
Ben brought forth more stars. He selected from among Jacob’s recruits the hardest-looking men with guns and gave three of them badges. “You’re deputy sheriffs under Morgan Hyatt,” he told them. “Go along with him and do what he tells you to do.” His gaze ranged among them. “Any questions?”
One of the tough-set faces relaxed long enough to dryly ask: “You reckon we could get a drink on the house at the Cross Timbers if we mind Morg real good, Sheriff?”
There was general laughter over this. Then the men with badges trooped out of the office into the yonder night.
Ben waited until their diminishing boot noises faded out before he turned a speculative gaze upon the remaining men. “We’ll need a rider,” he said. “Someone who can ride beyond town, locate the Diamond H crew, then come back and tell us which way they’re coming to town and how they are.”
A younger man stepped up. “I’ll do it,” he volunteered.
Ben looked at old Jacob. The saddler made an infinitesimal nod of approval.
“Here’s your badge,” Ben told the younger man. “Be careful.”
Accepting the star, this man said: “I’ll be back with the information as soon as I can.”
He then also departed, leaving seven men still in the office, including old Jacob with his buffalo gun. Jacob obviously had something on his mind, but since he made no attempt to speak out, Ben did not urge him. He detailed the balance of his posse men to patrol the town in pairs, and as he passed out their badges he admonished them not to use their guns unless necessity made it mandatory. Then, when the last of the deputies left the office, he turned on Jacob.
“Something bothering you?” he asked the old man.
Jacob cleared his throat. He colored. He frowned fiercely at the tip of his .45-70 barrel and cleared his throat a second time. “I got something to say, yes,” he conceded, “but this ain’t isn’t exactly the time to say it.” He shot a quick, darting upward look at Ben Knight. “Now don’t blame me, boy. I had nothing to do with this.”
“All right, I won’t blame you. What is it? We don’t have all night you know.”
Jacob muttered a curse. “Kathy wants you to come by the house.” Seeing the fixed look Knight put upon him, Jacob rushed on. “I told her you was too busy to pay social calls tonight. I said to her—”
“Which is your house, Jacob?”
The old man paused to consider Knight’s face. “You know where Doc Parmenter lives?”
“Yes.”
“Our place is two doors north of there.”
Ben Knight ran a hand over his jaw and heard the scratch of beard stubble. “I’m not exactly presentable,” he mused aloud.
Jacob stood up, saying with a head wag: “A heap of things get by in the dark, young fellow.” Then, shocked at his own boldness, he added: “Course, a fellow’s got his job to do, too.” Then, red-faced, Jacob took up his big-bore carbine and stood uncomfortably waiting for Ben Knight to speak.
All Knight said was: “Yeah.” He uttered this in a dry tone as he started across the office toward the door. From a position half in, half out of the sheriff’s quarters, he faced old Jacob. “Stay here and watch things for me. I’ll be back directly.”
Jacob nodded without speaking. He waited until the door closed behind Ben Knight, then he turned back to his chair, sat down, and placed the .45-70 across his knees. In the midst of a man’s troubles, he privately thought, there seemed always to be a little ray of hope to keep him going, to encourage him, something he could look forward to. Thus, it always was in life. Nothing was ever so bad that it obscured that which promised to be better in the future.
When Jacob’s son and daughter-in-law had been killed in a flash flood nearly two decades earlier, they had left behind the little child which old Jacob’s life had gradually fused around. Kathy had been his salvation. He had for all those intervening years lived only for her. But lately, he had been troubled. He was very old now and she had grown to be very lovely. Without admitting it, he knew the parting was close. He must soon go one way, she must go another way. And yet, among all the men who had come cou
rting, he had found none he had thought worthy. Not that he was actually a difficult man in this respect, but he clung to the old virtues. He wanted her to have a man who was brave and resourceful and honest. This fitted some of her past suitors. But also, being an old-time frontiersman, he wanted for Kathy a man who was not as glib as he was sound in judgment, and this, in an age of dawning erudition, was less common.
Now, he told himself, the ray of hope was shining through again. In the midst of great peril, Ben Knight had appeared. He was all an old frontiersman could ask in a man. Maybe, with God’s good help, he would prove the answer to Jacob’s secret hope.
If beauty and desirability were determining factors, then Knight would find Kathy as attractive as Jacob knew she had already found his rugged good looks and quiet good humor.
He sat there in the sheriff’s office with orange lamp glow softening those lines and planes which a harsh existence had indelibly stamped upon him, hoping with his full heart that this might be so. He was certain, too, that Ben Knight’s breed of individualists was constantly getting scarcer in this world of steadily increasing sameness and regimentation.
His thoughts were abruptly scattered by the bursting inward of the office door. Several thick shapes pushed inside from the roadway, herding ahead of them two disheveled, unkempt men whose faces were askew with fear.
Morgan Hyatt shouldered past to gaze upon old Jacob. “We got ’em both,” he said. “Where’s Knight?”
“He’ll be back directly,” Jacob declared evasively, and gazed upon the prisoners. “They give you any trouble?”
Hyatt went to the sheriff’s desk, sought and found a ring of keys, and took them up in one hand. “Bell didn’t. He was in bed when we busted in on him.” Hyatt looked long at Bob Hogan. “Bob there he was saddling up to leave town.” Hyatt tossed the key ring to a posse man and pointed to an unoccupied cell. As the procession started forward across the room, he sighed and looked back at Jacob again.
“You know who shot Colt Balfrey?”
“I got no idea,” replied Jacob.
“Hogan.”
“Hogan? You sure?”
“He told us he did. I reckon he thought that was why we were after him. Anyway, when he put up a little scrap, his shirt got torn. He’s got a bandage around his left upper arm. There’s a bullet hole under that bandage. We roughed him up and he said Colt shot him when they met out of town.”
“Whoa up!” exclaimed Jacob, frowning after the posse men who were locking Hogan into a cell. “Knight and Doc Parmenter said Balfrey was shot from behind.”
“I know,” Morgan said. “That’s what stuck in my craw. Colt was hard hit. He couldn’t have turned around and shot Hogan, so Hogan got that bullet wound somewhere else. But notwithstanding, he did shoot Colt Balfrey and in my book that’s murder.”
“I reckon I’d best go tell the sheriff,” said Jacob. “You wait here, Morg. I won’t be long.”
Hyatt went behind the only desk in the room and sank down. “I’ll wait,” he agreed. “Anyone come in with word about Diamond H yet?”
“No.” Jacob started forward. “If word arrives, keep the messenger here until I get back with Knight.”
“Sure.”
Jacob passed out into the star-washed night. Around him, Gunsight was breathlessly silent. Southerly and across the roadway two men were leisurely strolling side by side. Where the light of a belated moon struck downward, there shone reflected light off deputy’s badges on dark shirt fronts.
Jacob hesitated for only a moment longer to breathe in the perfumed night air, then ambled northerly, trailing his buffalo gun after him.
Chapter Thirteen
Jacob was an old man and he walked slowly. This night, heading toward his home, he deliberately walked even slower than usual, and it was well that he did so, for the fates in which old Jacob believed were on his side this time, but they needed a little more time.
* * * * *
Ben Knight had found Kathy sitting upon a porch swing made of creek willows when he had earlier approached Jacob’s house. She had arisen to stand in soft night light as he had swung up onto the porch to stop toweringly before her. He could not see past the shadowed darkness of her eyes, but there was no mistaking the gravity of her expression.
“How is your wound?” she asked him.
He had forgotten the scratch acquired in Colt Balfrey’s yard until that moment. “It’s fine,” he assured her.
She turned slightly from him. “I don’t want to keep you long, but sit down for just a moment, won’t you?”
Ben sat. The old porch swing creaked under his weight.
Kathy eased down at his side. He was not making this easy for her with his silence and his steady gaze.
“You know that we gave your brother a Christian burial,” she said.
“Yes. I visited his grave in the night. Before I came into Gunsight. I knew from the flowers you folks had feelings.”
“I heard a rumor that you said you hated Gunsight.” Before Knight could reply, Kathy continued: “As my grandfather said, a person couldn’t really blame you.” She turned now to look into his face. “I’m not going to apologize for the town. I don’t think anyone could rightfully do that, Ben. What I wanted you to know is that, even with the bad feeling here between the people of the town and Arthur Hobart’s Diamond H Ranch, none of us would have participated in that lynching, even if we’d believed your brother had been Hobart’s hired gunfighter.”
She paused before going on. “Ben, I’ve lived all my life in Gunsight. I know these people. They’ve had reasons for disliking cattlemen. But they aren’t murderers.”
“I think I understand that now,” said Knight. “A man in my line of work gets so that he can pretty well gauge a town when he rides into it, Kathy. And I didn’t actually say I hated Gunsight. I said I had reason to hate it. And I have.”
“Yes,” she murmured, lowering her eyes from his face.
“As for the cattlemen I’ve been told there’s been cause for dislike on both sides. That’s the way it usually goes when there’s bad trouble.” He leaned forward slightly. “The thing is, Kathy, neither side can exist without the other. Cowmen need merchants, and you folks need the cow outfits to support your town.”
“That,” she told him now, her voice growing stronger, “is exactly why I asked grandfather to send you up here. I wanted to impress that upon you.”
He smiled. “You didn’t have to do that. I didn’t come down in the last rain.”
She flushed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it to sound that way, Ben. I’m not trying to do your thinking for you.”
He hung fire over his next words for a pensive moment, then said: “In a way, I’d like for you to do that, Kathy. No man is sufficient unto himself.” He put out a hand to touch her. She did not draw away. “If two heads are better than one head, then one beautiful head like yours must equal two ordinary heads.” His hand closed down over her fingers. “I gave you my word about Slim Evans and you doubted me. I want you to—”
“No. No, Ben, it wasn’t like that, really. I was afraid.”
“Afraid?”
“Yes. I feared you might destroy something. I wasn’t thinking only of Slim. I was thinking of you.”
“Of us?”
“Yes,” she conceded huskily. “Of us. I didn’t want you to do something that would destroy the respect I had for you the admiration.” She looked swiftly up at him as her fingers came gradually to return the pressure of his holding hand, and her face flamed scarlet in the porch shadows. He could not see that, but he could easily discern the sturdy beating of her heart where a powerful pulse pounded in her throat.
“I wouldn’t have destroyed it, Kathy. But I’ll be honest with you. I meant to challenge Hogan. I wanted to kill him. The others the law could have them. But Hogan no.”
“What have you done
about him?”
“Sent some posse men after him. Unless he got out of town, I reckon they’ve got him by now.”
She looked down at their clasped hands. In a quiet voice she asked: “Can I request a favor of you, Ben?”
“Yes. Anything within my power.”
“Stay in Gunsight. Be our sheriff here.”
His face smoothed out a little, became less mobile now. “I am a lawman. I have a job in Denver, Kathy.”
“It’s not the same, though. There are lots of US deputy marshals. But Gunsight needs a lawman. It needs the kind of lawman who isn’t favorable to either the town or the cattlemen. It needs you, Ben. I can’t recall this town ever needing your kind of a man as desperately as it needs him now.”
He shifted his gaze from her face to the night beyond. There was a brooding thoughtfulness in his stare. After a time, just before she drew his attention back to her with hand pressure, he swung his head slightly to peer ahead in the direction of Gunsight’s cemetery.
“My brother was the only living kin I had,” he told her. “He’s buried here. I reckon you might say Gunsight does have a hold on me.”
“In your heart, Ben,” she murmured to him. “He will always be in your heart. But life is for the living, and Gunsight has another claim on you, too.”
He turned toward her. In that moment she freed her hand, pushed both arms upward, and drew him to her. His lips felt the sweet pressure of her mouth, and in a transformed second the run of his temper responded. He caught her to him, returned her kiss with a fire that drowned her passion and left her weak when she drew back to lean against the porch swing’s willow-slat backboard.
This, for both of them, was a confused and confusing moment. Neither said anything for a while, then Ben put up one arm to draw her down into the curve of his shoulder.
“For a person no older than you are,” he said softly to her, “you understand a lot about life.” He paused, then repeated her earlier words. “Life is for the living.”
The moments passed with neither of them moving. Kathy, with hot tears just short of brimming over, finally said: “A woman’s love and her worry about equal each other out, Ben.”
