“Then Burkett will go on,” Collins said, “and absorb everything around him, until he owns everything…and there’s nothing we can do about it.”
“I’ve done something about it, don’t forget.”
Collins made a face.
“Those damned telegrams. Do you really expect Sam McCall to ride in here to the rescue?”
“I expect Sam and his brothers to ride in here to find out what happened to their parents,” Miller said.
“Those boys have long ago forgotten they even had parents.” Collins’ distaste for such sons was plain in his voice.
“You’re wrong, Ed,” Miller said. “They’ll be here, all right.”
“It’s been months…”
“Two months,” Miller said, “but don’t forget, Sam would have to find both Evan and Jubal and then they’d all have to find their way back here. They’ll be here, don’t you worry.”
“Come on, Dude,” Collins said, “give it up. What makes you so sure they’ll come?”
“Serena.”
“What? What about Serena?”
“She says that no child could let the death of their parents go uninvestigated,” Miller said. “She says the bond between child and parent is too strong, too deep to ignore even if the child wanted to—in this case, three children.”
“That may be,” Collins said, “but the McCall boys are not children any longer, Dude—especially Sam.”
“Serena says they’ll be here,” Miller said, “and I believe her.”
“Well,” Ed Collins said, grudgingly, “both you and she would know more about this subject than I would, wouldn’t you?”
Dude Miller laid his empty glass aside and stood up. His friend was about to descend into a well of self pity, and he had no desire to stay and watch.
“I’ve got to get home to Serena, Ed,” Miller said. “We’ll talk again.”
“Sure,” Collins said, “when the McCall boys get here.”
“Goodnight, Ed.”
Dude Miller left the Collins house. Even though he knew Ed Collins was inside, he felt as if he were leaving an empty house behind.
He wondered how it must feel from the inside.
As Dude Miller entered the wood-frame, two-story house he shared with his daughter Serena his nostrils Texas Iron were assailed—no, rewarded—With the smells of Serena’s wonderful cooking. If she had succeeded in replacing her dead mother in no other way, Serena was almost as fine a cook as her mother was.
Actually, Miller wished that Serena would stop trying to replace her mother. At twenty-eight she was much too old to be living at home with her father. True, at that age she was considered something of an old maid in Vengeance Creek, but to Miller she was still a beautiful young woman who should be married and giving him grandchildren.
“Father?” Her voice came from the kitchen.
“It’s me,” Miller said, removing his top coat and hanging it on a wall rack that he had built.
Serena came from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron. A tall woman, she needed only to lift her chin slightly to kiss her father, who was six feet tall. Along with being tall she was slender, almost rangy. To his prejudiced father’s eye she was a beauty, with hair the color of corn, smooth, unblemished skin, naturally rosy lips and very white, even teeth. He was glad that he made enough money at the store that she didn’t have to work unless she wanted to, and then it was not work that would weather her skins or her hands, or give her a weary look. Her mother, God rest her, as beautiful as she was, had to work hard almost all her life, and paid for it. When she died she was tired looking, and slightly stooped; her hair had lost its natural luster and her flesh its resiliency. A finer woman had never lived, though, and Miller loved her with all his heart to the day she died—and more that day than ever before.
“What smells so wonderful?”
“You should be able to tell,” she said, smiling. “It’s your favorite.”
“Yes,” he said, sniffing the air, “it is’meat loaf!”
“It’s ready,” she said. “Just go upstairs and clean up and I’ll put dinner on the table.”
“Have you eaten?”
“Not yet.”
“You should have.”
“I knew you’d be home soon. Go and clean up.”
“All right, all right,” he said. “Next you’ll want to check behind my ears.”
“I’m not trying to be your mother.”
“No,” he said, “you’re trying to be yours.”
Her smile disappeared and she said, “Let’s not go through that again, please?”
“You’re right,” he said, raising his hands in a gesture of supplication. “I’m sorry. I’ll wash up.”
While cleaning up he chided himself for the remark. They had had many hours of arguments over her staying to live with him, and he should have known by this time that further argument was futile. Just like her mother, Serena was doggedly stubborn when she set her mind to something.
At sixty-three Miller felt he still had many years on this earth. He despaired at the thought of Serena staying with him for every one of them. Once he was gone she’d be in her late forties or early fifties, and it would be she who was alone. The thought of his beautiful daughter wasting her youth and then living the final thirty or forty years of her life alone made him shake his head. If only he could think of a convincing argument.
If only she’d fall in love…and all right, old man, he told himself, that’s another reason you want the McCall boys to come home. None of them would remember Serena as anything but a little girl. Maybe when they met her now, all grown up, she’d fall in love with one of them. Lord knew they were strong men and would certainly not beunattractive at this point in their lives. Sam had to be in his early forties, Evan in his late thirties. Jubal, the youngest, would only be several years younger than Serena; it was certainly not an insurmountable age difference.
Miller could imagine the kind of grandchildren a union between Serena and Sam McCall would produce.
“Father,” her voice called from the kitchen. “Dinner is on the table.”
“I’m coming,” he called out.
Drying his hands, he thought, and so are the McCall boys…I hope.
The taste of the steel gun barrel frightened him, but he left it there, in his mouth, lying on his tongue. His finger tightened on the trigger, and even as it did he knew he would not have the nerve to give it the last, final twitch that would fire the gun, ending his life.
Because he could not shoot himself Ed Collins considered himself a coward. With a sob he jerked the gun from his mouth, catching a tooth on the raised sight and almost snapping it. The pain brought tears to his eyes, tears of pain and of humiliation.
On the one hand he enjoyed the visits of his friend Dude Miller. They had been friends for a very long time, and he now counted Miller as perhaps his only friend.
He knew that since his wife’s death he had become a sour, bitter, unfriendly old man, and Dude Miller was the only one who still came around. True, they were allied together against the onslaught of Lincoln Burkett, but beyond that was something deeper and more important—friendship.
And yet every time his friend left, Collins would pick up his gun and lay it upon his tongue. Miller had also lost his wife, but he’d had the courage to go on with his life, aided by his daughter. If only Ada had been able to give them a son or a daughter, things might be different today.
Ed Collins wouldn’t feel so utterly alone.
He eased the hammer of the gun down and replaced it in his desk drawer. As always, after just a few minutes of trying to pull the trigger, he felt exhausted.
As he dragged his worthless carcass to his bedroom he wondered what took more courage, to kill himself, or to go on living.
“Did you see Mr. Collins?” Serena asked at the dinner table.
“I did.”
“And?”
Miller chewed the food in his mouth, taking the time to choose his words
carefully.
“He is a sad, sad man, Serena,” he finally said. “Every time I visit him I thank God for you, for without you I would probably be as sad and pitiful as he is.”
He closed his eyes and spitefully bit his tongue. Even taking a few moments to form his words he had said the wrong thing. For every argument he had ever given Serena for leaving and going out on her own, he had given a powerful one for her staying with him.
Stupid old man, he chided himself.
“This meat loaf is like heaven,” he said, to cover the annoyance he felt with himself.
“Perhaps tomorrow I will take some to Mr. Collins,” Serena said. “Do you think he’d like that?”
“He’d like that, and a visit from you, very much, my girl,” Miller said, feeling a great pride in her.
“Well, if that’s the case,” she said, taking the meat loaf pan up from the center of the table, “don’t eat it all.”
“Hey,” he protested, “I’m not finished.”
“Yes, you are,” she said, walking to the stove. “You don’t want to get fat, do you?”
“What does it matter?”
She turned and stared at him with mock severity.
“Don’t think I don’t see you when you’re looking at the widow Jones, Papa.”
“Ah,” Miller said, “the widow Jones is an old woman.”
“She’s fifty-eight,” Serena said, “and five years younger than you.”
“If I ever took up with another woman,” he said, “it would be one much younger than the widow Jones.”
“Like who?”
“Oh…”
“Never mind,” Serena said, turning to face the oven again, “I don’t want to hear it.”
“Is there coffee?”
“It’s coming.”
Whenever they even joked about Miller and women Serena ended up embarrassed by it—or maybe she was thinking about her own social life.
Where the hell were those McCalls, Miller thought to himself, and in the next moment voiced his thought.
“They’ll come,” she said, her back still turned.
“How can you be so sure?” He asked the question, even though only hours before he had been explaining her logic to Ed Collins.
She carried a cup of coffee to the table. She placed it in front of him and leaned her elbow on his left shoulder.
“No child can ignore the death of a parent, let alone two parents, Pa,” she said. “It cannot be done. They will come, if only to stand at the graves.”
“When they do come,” Miller said, “they’re not going to like what they find…not at all.”
“Well,” Serena said, her voice firm, “that’s as it should be.”
Lincoln Burkett looked up as his foreman, Chuck Conners, entered his office.
“Well?”
“Me and the boys got him bedded down, Mr. Burkett,” Conners said. “He was real upset when he couldn’t get into Louise’s and went right to the saloon. He got real drunk and tried to pick a couple of fights, but the boys got him out of there.”
“Who was with him?”
“Earl Murray, Mike Gear, and Greg Tobin.”
“And they kept him out of a fight?”
“Yessir.”
“See to it that they each get a bonus.”
“I’ll take care of it, sir.”
Burkett sat back in his leather chair and stroked his chin thoughtfully.
“Is there anything else, sir?”
“Yes,” Burkett said, sitting forward again. “That storekeeper, Miller?”
“Dude Miller.”
“He’s starting to get on my nerves,” Burkett said. “Every time I pass his store he’s staring out that damned window.”
“Why is that annoying, sir?”
Burkett slammed his hand down on the desk. The noise it made was so loud it made Conners flinch.
“He’s watching for that damned Sam McCall.”
“Sir,” Conners said, “if McCall does show up, me and the boys can handle him.”
“I wouldn’t bet my life on that, Chuck,” Burkett said. “We all know McCall’s reputation—and if he does show up, he’s likely to have his brothers with him. No, I think maybe we’d better import some talent.”
“Who?”
“I’ll let you know in the morning,” Burkett said. “Meanwhile, I don’t want that storekeeper looking out his window for a while.”
“What would you like—”
“Just handle it, Chuck,” Burkett said, clearly dismissing the man, “tonight.”
When the front door of his house slammed open Dude Miller was sitting in the living room reading a book. He turned his head and saw the three men burst through the door, their faces masked. The nearest gun was in his desk in the den and he knew he’d never get to it, but he rose anyway.
As he turned to face them the first man hit him flush in the face with a massive fist. Miller went down, smashing against a coffee table.
“Pa!”
The three masked men looked up toward the voice and saw Serena Miller on the staircase. When she saw them she started to pull the front of her housecoat tightly closed, but when she saw her father on the floor she forgot about that.
“Pa!”
As she hurried down the steps two of the men hauled Dude Miller to his feet and one of them stepped into Serena’s path.
“Let me by!” she screamed. “What are you doing?”
“Just teachin’ the old gent a lesson,” one of the men said.
“Let me by!”
She tried to shoulder past him but he grabbed her by the upper arms, squeezing them hard. The smell of his sweat made her wrinkle her nose in disgust.
“You wanna watch?” he asked. “Be my guest.”
He turned and walked to the door, pulling her with him.
When they stepped out onto the porch she saw what the other two men were doing to her father. One of them was holding him with his arms pinned behind him, and the other man was hitting him, methodically, first a left, then a right, with no passion whatsoever. It was then that she knew they were doing a job, and it wasn’t hard to figure out who for.
“That’s enough,” she shouted. “You’ll kill him.”
The man doing the hitting had been alternating his punches between the body and the head, and Dude Miller’s face was livid with bruises and blood.
“She’s right,” the man holding her said. “We weren’t told to kill him.”
The man doing the hitting looked at the man on the porch, then gave Dude Miller one more punch in the face. The man who was holding Miller released him, and he sprawled into the dirt face first, lying as still as death.
“What about her?” the other man asked.
“We weren’t told anything about her,” his friend said.
“Why, you wanna punch her?”
“Yeah,” the man said. “I wanna punch her with this.” He grabbed his crotch.
Suddenly the pit of Serena’s stomach went icy cold and she started to shiver in fear. As the man advanced on her she realized that she had never felt terror like this before.
“No…” she said, and she was dismayed to hear that it came out as a whimper.
“Forget it,” the man holding her said. Abruptly he released her arms. “We wasn’t told to touch the girl. Let’s go. We’re finished here.”
The man who had grabbed his crotch stared at Serena for a few moments and then said, “That’s too bad, Missy. You woulda liked what I got for you. Maybe another time, huh?”
The other two men were walking away and now the third one turned and followed.
Serena stood there for a few moments, struck motionless by the fear she’d experienced, and then suddenly she leaped from the porch to her father’s side, feeling ashamed.
Where the hell are you, Sam McCall? she thought viciously.
The intensity of her anger was as foreign to her as had been the intensity of the fear she’d felt a moment ago.
Come and
kill these bastards!
Chapter Six
“Well, there it is,” Evan McCall said. “Vengeance Creek.”
They were on a steep hill from which they could look down at the town. Vengeance Creek had a wide radius because it had been laid out in such a sprawling fashion. There were two main streets which contained the bank, the general store, the hotel, the saloon, other shops, and the sheriff’s office, but the livery, the feed and grain, the undertaker’s, and the whorehouse were all spread about with a decent amount of elbow room between them.
Sam, Evan, and Jubal McCall sat atop the hill, with black chaparral spread about them, and a single Joshua tree, taking their first look at the town of their birth in a long time.
Sam McCall was riding a seven-year-old black coyote dun, a dun with a black stripe running down its back, and distinctive markings on its legs.
True to the McCall predilection for individuality, Evan’s horse was a four-year-old claybank, a yellowish breed achieved by breeding a sorrel and a dun.
Jubal, as if it were a symbol of his lifelong efforts to be like one or both of his brothers, was riding a sorrel.
“Yep,” Jubal said, “there it is.”
“Looks the same, don’t it?” Evan asked.
“When was the last time you were here?” Jubal asked his brothers.
“Jeez,” Evan said, “I don’t—probably seven, eight years, something like that. What about you?”
“Less,” Jubal said, “about five.”
“Did you ever write?” Evan asked.
“Some,” the younger brother answered.
Evan and Jubal looked over at Sam, who had remained silent throughout their exchange.
“Sam?” Evan said.
Sam McCall looked at them.
“I don’t like being here.”
“Why not?” Jubal asked.
“Didn’t I ever tell you?” Sam asked. “I hate this place.”
McCall kicked his horse’s ribs and sent him jogging down the hill.
“When was the last time he was here?” Jubal asked.
Evan looked at Jubal, said, “When did he leave?” and sent his horse down the hill after Sam. Jubal thought a moment, shrugged, and followed.
Dude Miller was not standing at his shop window when the McCall brothers rode into town. He was lying in his bed, where he had been confined by the doctor following the beating he’d received several days before. He had several cracked ribs, and one eye had only recently reappeared from behind a huge swelling.
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