by Lauran Paine
Tex rolled over, got to his knees, and braced with both hands against the ground. He shook his head and bubbling sounds came from his throat.
“Put the boots to him,” a freighter growled. “He ain’t goin’ to get up.”
Ingersoll moved menacingly forward as though to comply and a soft, silken voice only slightly roughened by feeling said: “Keep it fair, Ingersoll. No boots.”
Tom found the face; it was Gerald Finnerty. He had one hand resting lightly on his holstered gun. Around him were other cowmen, their faces closed down around a similar feeling for fairness.
Ingersoll drew up slightly, still holding his fists cocked. “Maybe you’d like some, too,” he shot at the cowman.
Finnerty smiled very thinly. “Sure, put on your gun. I don’t dog fight.”
Ingersoll’s gaze went back to Tex, who was getting clumsily to his feet. He waited only until Earle was staggering upright, then he went in. Fists crunched off bone and battered numb flesh, and Tex went down, rolled over, and lay breathing shallowly.
“He’s out,” a freighter crowed. “Dump some water on the whelp.”
“He’s had enough,” an older man said, moving up into the reflected light of the barn. It was Tim Pollard. Tom stared in astonishment. “All right, it was a fair scrap. Now let’s forget about it.”
“The hell,” Ingersoll said. “It’s only just started.”
“Dammit,” Pollard snapped, “can’t you see he’s out?”
“Well, I ain’t out, and I’m just gettin’ warmed up.”
Tom moved from behind Grogan’s arm, stepped into the yellow glow facing Ingersoll. “I’d hate to see you go away unsatisfied,” he said. “Anyway, I reckon your fight’s more with me than with him.”
Ingersoll turned heavily and glared. His lips parted. “Well, I’ll be damned if it ain’t top lash himself. Where you been hidin’, Barker? We been all over town lookin’ for you tonight.”
There was a bloodshot brightness to the man’s eyes and a flush of dark blood from throat to temple. Ingersoll had been drinking, yes, but more than that his blood was heated by the will to fight. Tom recognized this and a spasm of animal shock passed over him; it was an instantaneous flash that touched every nerve end, leaving him coldly calculating. An ancient, brutal eagerness flooded his mind. He knew what Ingersoll was going to do; it was as though they were thinking through one mind. The breath in his chest went deeper; his stomach pinched down, and the hard sloshing of his heart sounded loud in his own ears. His muscles turned loose and sweat ran under his clothing. Tim Pollard said in a high voice: “Hold it! You can’t fight, Tom. Your lung ain’t healed yet.”
Then Ingersoll lunged for him, drove his big body forward, both fists flailing. Tom dug in his heels and shifted aside with a grunt. He grunted a second time as Ingersoll swept past and he threw a right fist at the freighter’s ear, missed, and nearly lost his balance.
Ingersoll spun back and came on again. This time Tom settled himself and waited. But he missed again, and Ingersoll’s momentum caught him, carried him back against the rough boards of the barn, and slammed him hard against wood. Through a roaring that did not altogether come from the bystanders he saw Ingersoll’s big fists through a blur; he weaved away from them but caught one along the point of his jaw and his shoulders sagged; his arms partially dropped.
He turned away to take the beating along the side but each strike hurt him. It was like being struck with a pick handle; his ribs flashed pain into his skull and cleared that injured portion of his brain. He rolled along the wall, then dropped low, jammed his feet down hard, and shot forward, driving Ingersoll back, wrestling with him, their straining arms locked briefly, then he was clear to maneuver again, and he broke away, looping a hard blow to Ingersoll’s chest that jarred the freighter and drove him off. They circled, weaving, ducking low, seeking openings. Ingersoll flung out a pawing hand and Tom knocked it aside. Ingersoll’s next blow had the power of a lowered shoulder behind it. But Tom had seen him get set and moved farther out, leaving the freighter fanning air.
Next, the freighter feinted Tom closer and loosed a whipping uppercut. It grazed Tom’s jaw raising an instantaneous red welt. But Ingersoll was off balance and still moving forward against his will. Tom’s big arms fired twice, staggering the freighter with two hard strikes across the mouth. Ingersoll shuffled backward, great gulps of whistling breath gushing past torn lips, foamy and blood-flecked now. He circled, moving his shoulders and keeping his fists well forward, only slightly bent at the elbows. Someone was hanging a lantern near the barn’s rear entrance; its light quickly found the fighters and made a pale circle around them. The bystanders were intently silent, mouths twisted and eyes glowing with battle lust. Blood dripped on Ingersoll’s sweat-darkened shirt and Tom felt the throbbing cadenced beat of pain along the swelling side of his jaw.
Ingersoll leaped in close and swung. Tom met him with no inclination to move away. Big fists swung and meaty echoes mingled with grunts and torn snatches of hard breathing. Flesh and bone could not long stand this punishing exchange. Tom dropped flat onto his heels, head swimming and vision blurring. Then Ingersoll stumbled backward first, and the cowmen swore a fierce, common oath almost in unison. The freighters looked on, still and rock-faced.
They circled again and through battered lips Tom cursed Ingersoll in a bitter and steady undertone. “Fight,” he said. “That’s what you want to do, isn’t it? Then quit backing up!”
Ingersoll jumped suddenly forward and struck Tom in the chest. Tom staggered. Ingersoll struck him again, and Gerald Finnerty grabbed Tim Pollard by the shirt front and shook him. “Argh!” he groaned, “he’s going to open it up, damn him!”
Tom back-pedaled sluggishly, and Ingersoll rushed forward, sensing the kill, but he ran head-on into a massive blow that made his arms drop to his sides, made his mouth sag, and his eyes glaze over briefly. It had been a trick. He tried to get away. Barker’s fist smashed him high across the bridge of the nose and claret spewed. The same fist, red and sticky, glanced across his cheek. Tom could feel the jolt of those solid blows all the way to his shoulder. It was like an electric shock. A faint mistiness swam before his eyes but he pinched them down nearly closed the better to see the twisting, graying face ahead. Then, in wildest desperation, Ingersoll rushed him with crooked fingers clawing for flesh or cloth. But he was too badly beaten; his co-ordination was numbed and Tom smashed him twice more across the face, bringing on a fresh spray of claret each time. Ingersoll suddenly stopped, planted his big legs wide apart, and stood there moving like a tree in a high wind. Tom struck him with all the strength remaining in him. Ingersoll absorbed the blow. Another blow, this one with a loud, sobbing grunt behind it, crashed into his face and Ingersoll’s knees buckled; he bent slowly at the middle; his head dropped forward, and he fell full length into the weaving pattern of lantern light, pushing out to lie perfectly motionless. Into the deep stillness came his faint, broken breathing, a thinly bubbling sound.
Tom found someone facing him with a bucket of water. He plunged both bleeding hands into it, felt the sharp bite, and raised cupped hands to his face, dashed water into his eyes, and sucked back all the air he could get. Then he coughed and blood came, faintly pink, and he spat. Someone jostled him; he turned and gazed into the white and wide-eyed face of Tex; they attempted a grin at one another. “Guess I calculated wrong,” Tex croaked. “The other time you done it, it looked so easy.” Tex fingered his puffy face. “He caught you a couple of good ones, one there along the jaw. It’s swelling up like a goose egg.”
The freighters were helping Clint Ingersoll to his feet. They dumped water on him; he came out of it very groggily and slowly. Sheriff Pollard was talking aside to the cowmen. Someone handed Tom his belt gun and until he felt its coldness he did not know it had been knocked loose of its holster by the barn wall.
It was the night air as much as the water that revived him. His shirt was hanging in shreds and even the bandages across his chest wer
e stained with blood and dirt. There was no sense of pain, really, but he ached in every muscle and joint.
“Hey, Barker,” a gruff, angry-sullen voice called. “You got your gun . . . turn around here!”
Instantly Sheriff Pollard cried out. “Hold it! No gun play!”
The gruff voice snarled. “Who’s goin’ to stop it?”
Pollard’s voice turned thinly dangerous. “Me! You fellers take Clint back to camp and get your wagons ready. I don’t want to see a damned one of you around town come sunup.”
Tom turned. The four freighters were glaring at Pollard. Each of them was armed and it was very clear that unless something stopped them they were going to precipitate a gunfight. “Wait!” Tom called. “Ingersoll . . . is that what you want?” The big freighter’s eyes, nearly hidden in the swollen wreckage of his face, did not look straight at Tom, and Ingersoll said nothing. “Because if that’s all you fellers’ll settle for, I’ll oblige you.”
“Not alone you won’t,” Gerald Finnerty said succinctly. “Let ’em start it. I’d just as leave kill freighters tonight as not.”
Pollard was protesting again but no one heeded him. Tom moved forward several steps, looking straight at Clint Ingersoll. “Well?” he demanded.
Ingersoll drew himself up; he pushed clear of his companions and faced Tom. He held out both hands; they were swollen nearly twice their normal size. His meaning was instantly clear to everyone; he could neither draw nor fire a gun.
Tom looked at the other freighters. “You fellers trying to get him killed? He fought a good fight. Isn’t that enough for you?”
One of the freighters shouldered past Ingersoll. He was a massive and squatty man with an overhanging, low brow and a bully’s massive, thick jaw. “Not for me it ain’t,” he said. “Now I suppose you’re goin’ t’say you can’t draw a gun, either?”
Tom did not seem to move at all but there was a flash and a roar and the freighter was spun half around. He staggered and cursed and ran a hand down his side. No one spoke. Clearly visible in the lamplight his hip holster was hanging, ripped apart from the shell belt, and his pistol lay thirty feet behind him in the moving light.
“Hell,” a man breathed into the hush.
Finnerty and Tim Pollard recovered first. “Anyone else?” The rancher asked, and Pollard said: “Move! Go on now, go back to your camp and get ready to hitch up! Beatty’s closed to freighters from now. Pass that along the freight roads, too. No more freighters welcome in Beatty.”
Men shuffled off into the night. Tim Pollard waited until they were all gone, then he went up to Tom and cleared his throat, but he did not speak, and eventually he, too, walked away, leaving Tom and Tex alone.
XX
Tom did not open his eyes until noon and he never afterward recalled clearly what it was that had awakened him, but he knew that his body ached all over and his chest felt feverish.
“Tom . . . ?”
It required an effort to lift his lids. When he saw her, there was movement in the background. He ignored it to concentrate full attention upon her face. “Toni.”
“Are you all right, Tom?”
“I’ve felt somewhat better in my lifetime,” he answered, propping himself up on one elbow. “I guess you heard . . .”
“Yes.”
He saw the movement again and squinted beyond her.
It was Tex and beside him stood Tim Pollard, craning his neck. Next to the sheriff was Judge Montgomery, and grouped together behind the judge were Gerald Finnerty and six or eight men he knew only by sight, local cowmen and townsmen. Prominent in their foremost rank was Roy the bartender and Grogan the liveryman. His brows drew down. “Sorry to disappoint you boys,” he said dryly. “But there’ll be no wake today.”
Tex grinned. Roy the bartender was slower to show appreciation of Tom’s poor joke. The judge remained erectly impassive; a shadow passed across his face.
Toni sat upon the edge of the bed and took his hand in hers. He winced and looked quickly at his fingers. They were purple, scabbed over, and stiff with swelling. Toni bent a long glance upon the silent men, and Sheriff Pollard was the first to understand. He edged toward the door, gouging with a sharp elbow as he passed among the others. They were nearly all out of the room when Tom said: “Judge?”
“Yes?”
“I’d like to marry your daughter.”
Montgomery inclined his head. “I think that’s more in her jurisdiction than in mine, Mister Barker.”
“No,” said Tom, holding the older man’s eyes with his glance. “What I mean is, I want your approval.”
The judge stood alone in the room. It seemed that words would not come, but after a moment he said: “Tom, I am not a man who is governed by swiftly changing emotions. All I can say to that is that Antoinette’s judgment in this matter is better than mine, and she’s satisfied you’re a good man. Personally I’ll have to withhold an opinion until I know you better.” His gray eyes flickered. “Thus far in our acquaintanceship, Tom, quite honestly I’ve found you honest . . . but hard and vengeful. Those are not things I like in any man.” He stopped, waiting for Tom to speak. When he did not, the judge went on. “One thing I can say, though. After due consideration those of us who have stock in the bank have decided to ask you to take Elihu Gorman’s place as manager. If you haven’t convinced us of much else since your return to Beatty, you’ve shown us you have a good business head.” The judge’s tone turned dry. “In that matter of hay and loans, I, at least, am well convinced of that. Will you accept? Of course, that means you’ll have to stay on here . . .”
“I accept,” Tom replied.
The judge went out and softly closed the door. Toni bent fully forward and found his lips with her mouth. When she straightened up, he smiled; it was a boyish, full, and frank smile. “I’m home,” he told her. “I’m back for good, Toni. Will he marry us?” She nodded through a rush of hot, unshed tears, and he lay back sighing. “Finnerty wants a neighbor. I’ll take up the option next to him and give it to Tex.”
“Tom?”
“Yes?”
“I suppose every woman feels this way at least once in her lifetime . . . Tom, I love you so terribly much.”
THE END
About the Author
Lauran Paine who, under his own name and various pseudonyms has written over a thousand books, was born in Duluth, Minnesota. His family moved to California when he was at a young age and his apprenticeship as a Western writer came about through the years he spent in the livestock trade, rodeos, and even motion pictures where he served as an extra because of his expert horsemanship in several films starring movie cowboy Johnny Mack Brown. In the late 1930s, Paine trapped wild horses in northern Arizona and even, for a time, worked as a professional farrier. Paine came to know the Old West through the eyes of many who had been born in the previous century, and he learned that Western life had been very different from the way it was portrayed on the screen. “I knew men who had killed other men,” he later recalled. “But they were the exceptions. Prior to and during the Depression, people were just too busy eking out an existence to indulge in Saturday-night brawls.” He served in the U.S. Navy in the Second World War and began writing for Western pulp magazines following his discharge. It is interesting to note that all of his earliest novels (written under his own name and the pseudonym Mark Carrel) were published in the British market and he soon had as strong a following in that country as in the United States. Paine’s Western fiction is characterized by strong plots, authenticity, an apparently effortless ability to construct situation and character, and a preference for building his stories upon a solid foundation of historical fact. Adobe Empire (1956), one of his best novels, is a fictionalized account of the last twenty years in the life of trader William Bent and, in an off-trail way, has a melancholy, bittersweet texture that is not easily forgotten. In later novels like The White Bird and Cache Cañon, he showed that the special magic and power of his stories and characters had only matured alo
ng with his basic themes of changing times, changing attitudes, learning from experience, respecting Nature, and the yearning for a simpler, more moderate way of life.
