Radigan (1958)
Page 16
So all their fancy dreams of wealth were empty. All Harvey’s confident talk, his striding up and down, his gestures-they were as empty as he was-all those big ideas from men who would rather steal than do an honest day’s work with their fine contempt for men who did work. Fools, Harvey called them, hayshakers, so now where was he?
“Can we get out of here?”
For the first time she saw hope in Wall’s eyes. “I think so. I think they’d be glad to be shut of us. We couldn’t take any thing, of course. Just personal stuff. But we could ride out, ma’am. …
“Don’t call me ma’am,” she said irritably. “My name is Gelina. “
They were coming down Vache Creek now, six of them, one with his skull tied in a bloody bandage, one with a broken arm, now in a sling. Their horses’ hoofs dragged and the men slumped wearily in the saddle.
Harvey Thorpe was numb as well as exhausted. They were all numb.
The ride had been cold and they had been anxious to get on with the holdup. The stage showed up on time and they had ridden out and stopped it, confident of their numbers, confident of their guns.
Only the man on the box had a shotgun and he didn’t drop it, he didn’t hold up his hands. His first charge of buckshot had torn a man’s face off and the second dropped a man, screaming. Amid plunging horses and wild shots he had coolly picked up a Winchester and opened fire. Other men were shooting from the stage itself and horses were down, men screaming, and Harvey Thorpe had been among the first to break into flight. A few miles away they had come together, and they had kept on going. And nobody had anything at all to say.
The thing none of them wanted to say was that the men they had called hayshakers, the men who worked for their money, had been ready for them.
What happened to the others Harvey never was to know. All he did know was that one man sitting up on the box of that stage had not thrown up his hands: he had simply opened fire. From then on it had been nightmare, pure nightmare.
It was not supposed to happen. Their guns were supposed to frighten the stage driver and express messenger into immobility while they were robbed. That was the way it was supposed to happen.
Harvey knew but one thing, and he knew deep within him self that when he heard that shotgun blast and saw that man’s face vanish in a mask of blood, his own guts had turned to water.
They rode into the ranch yard and somebody said, “Harvey!” And it wasn’t one of his own men.
The exclamation made him look up and he saw Radigan standing there in the middle of the ranch yard.
He was standing there with his hands empty, just waiting. And then Harvey saw Loren Pike in the barn door, and Charlie Cade at the corner of the corral, and lean, round-shouldered Adam Stark leaning against the doorpost of the house. And beside the corral and still farther away was John Child. And even a less wary man than himself would have read the story in their presence here, in their manner.
A man behind him said, “Count me out, Harvey,” and Harvey Thorpe heard a gun drop into the dust. And behind him other guns dropped.
Harvey looked at Radigan and felt the hatred inside himself like something raw and sore. Radigan had been nowhere near that stage, but suddenly it seemed as if Radigan had been the man on the box who lifted that shotgun. Without him every thing would have been all right.
Out of the welter of thoughts left in his brain came a slow, cool knowledge that he could not win but he could still defeat Radigan. Alive, Radigan was the victor, but dead he was nothing at all, simply nothing.
“Gelina let you come here?”
“She’s gone,” Radigan said. “She rode out with Wall and a pack horse. Heading for California, I think.”
So that was over, too.
Behind him he heard horses walking away, getting clear of him, and Radigan stood there, waiting. Nobody had asked him to drop his gun, nobody suggested he surrender.
Of course, within a few days they would know all about what happened in Colorado, and he would be a wanted man. It was strange he had not considered that, but all his plans had been predicated on success.
Why, they could hang him! And they might.
And Radigan, standing there with his feet apart, just waiting for him to draw and die.
“I’ll be damned if I will!” Harvey said angrily. “You’re all just waiting for me to make a move so you can kill me! I’ll surrender! You think I’ll hang, but I won’t!
I’ll beat it! I can still win! I tell you-!”
He meant every word of it, believed it all. Why, so many things could happen in a trial, and he still had friends, he could still dig up some money, he’d show them, he’d …
Harvey Thorpe had no intention of drawing, but he did. He felt his hand dropping for the gun and something in his brain screamed that it was madness, he could not win, but he could kill Radigan, he could… .
“I didn’t think he was going to, there at the end,” Pike said. “I thought he was throwing in his hand.”
“Even a coyote in a trap,” somebody else said, “he’ll snap at anything, just to hurt, to kill.”
“How’d you guess, Tom?” Cade said. “Because you had to guess, it was that fast.”
“Can we do anything for him?” That was John Child. “I mean, is it too late?”
“Sure,” Pike replied, “the man’s dead.” And he was.