Blake smiled. “You’ll release the other calf and pay for the one you killed,” he said firmly.
“You loco?” Benjamin snapped.
Blake shook his head. “Just being fair to the boy, mister.”
“Go to hell then, and go pronto!” Benjamin rasped. “Me, I’m headin’ home. Had a hard enough day as it is.”
“It could get harder,” Blake said tonelessly.
Benjamin’s face went dark with rage. “Mister, you got a head so choked with dust you can’t understand a man when he speaks plain. I’m heading home—now!”
Pearl snickered and Briller began to sweat. Blake ignored them, concentrating only on Benjamin who had shown himself to be the leader of the trio.
“Pay the boy,” Blake said.
Pearl spoke for the first time. “Mister, you’re lightin’ a fuse.”
Blake eyed him. “If you’re the fuse, start spluttering.”
“Damn you!” Pearl spat.
Blake saw the thin man’s hand go for his gun butt. His own hand slashed down and he drew and fired. The bullet smashed Pearl’s chest and sent him reeling, disbelief twisting at his face. Pearl fell almost at Sundown’s fore hoofs.
Blake’s gaze swung from the dead man and settled on Briller whose hand had also gone towards his gun butt. Briller jerked his hand away and shook his head. Blake’s look shifted and he saw Benjamin detour his hand away from his gun butt and clamp it against his ribs.
“Sensible,” Blake told him, then he motioned Jesse forward and said, “Get your calf while these two empty their pockets.”
Benjamin cursed under his breath and glared at Jesse as the boy hurried past. “Why should we empty our pockets, mister?”
Blake watched the color die in Benjamin’s face. He pointed to the hung carcass and told him, “To pay for that.”
Benjamin gaped. “Pay for that mangy yearling? You got to be funnin’.”
“Neither of us believe it’s time for jokes, Benjamin,” Blake said. “Empty your pockets and quick.”
“Go to hell and blazes, damn you!” Benjamin snapped.
Blake drew in an impatient breath. “I’ve asked you once. That’s my only count.”
Benjamin closed his mouth. Arch Briller, dead still, face bloated with fear, gulped uneasily and waited for Benjamin to lead the way. Finally, Benjamin growled, “Arch, pay him.”
Briller scowled, felt around in his Levis pocket and brought out change. Blake saw a gold piece and said, “Jesse, take the gold eagle and get on home.”
Jesse stepped to Briller and plucked the gold piece from his grimy hand. Then Jesse slapped the freed calf on the rump, sending it running, before he mounted the mare. He looked at Blake.
“You comin’, mister? Ma’ll be—”
“Get on home, Jesse,” Blake said. “Go! Git!” He waited until the boy’s mare reached full gallop before turning to Benjamin and Briller. “Shed your guns. Throw them into the water back of you.”
Briller quickly disposed of his gun. Benjamin was a bit slower. When both guns had been swallowed by the creek water, Blake made Briller get rid of Pearl’s gun, too.
“All right,” he said, “pack your friend on his horse. Then head on, both of you.”
When Benjamin sat in the saddle again and Briller had Pearl’s horse behind him, Blake said:
“You two are quittin’ winners, even though you might not know it. Leave the boy and his mother be.”
Benjamin grunted a curse and kicked his horse into motion, Briller following. Blake went up the slope and holstered his gun. He kept his stare fixed on the two men, but he was too far from Sully Benjamin to hear the big man say:
“I’m gonna get him, no mistake. I’m gonna shoot his guts out.”
When the pair were out of sight, Blake worked his horse back down the creek and rode onto the widow’s land. He saw Jesse a long way off. The boy, turning, waved, and he waved back. Then Blake went on his way, the cool night closing in on him and Sundown eagerly striding under him. Blake Durant was once more a man alone, on the drift.
Jessica Gray sat at the kitchen table in a hunched posture that made her look older than her years. She felt wretched. For half an hour she had been remembering how life, had been six months previously, when her husband was alive. She could hear him talking even now, seriously caught up in the life out here, so apprehensive at times and yet so excited at other times about their chances. She had always known him to be a man among men, and it was this more than any other thing that had made her accept his offer of marriage. There had been some wonderful moments, some which she would never forget, particularly when for the first time in her life she had known what older women had told her about, about becoming a woman, a full woman, alive and needed and able to give so much. Since he’d died there had been moments when she could easily have given up. That had been in the beginning of the loneliness, when she had to fight to appear brave in the eyes of her boy. Her sorrow was a constant thing and there was no getting away from it, however much she struggled against it.
When the sound of the single shot reached her, Jessica spun about, her hand going to her mouth to press back a cry. Then the echo of the shot was lost in the howling wind that banged the window shutters. She bit her lip, trying not to think that Jesse might be alone; she dared not think of that. The stranger had struck her as a man who offered himself, for a reason she did not understand. Somewhere, back in the dark reaches of her mind, she knew that he had not ridden on.
Jessica rose and moved restlessly about the room. From time to time she went to the doorway and looked hopefully across the clearing, desperate for a sight of Jesse riding home. She blamed herself for letting him go off on his own—but how could she have stopped him? There was too much of his father’s stubbornness in him.
Dusk fled the clearing and night began to close in. Soon she could see no further than the hitch rail. What if Jesse did not come back? She shook her head and pushed the terrible thought away. There was nothing left but the boy; her life was for him. Going on would be impossible without him.
She lit the lantern, raked the fire, added fresh wood and set about getting dinner. That done, she walked in a half daze outside. Nothing helped. There was still the interminable waiting, the emptiness.
Then Jesse came out of the twilight, the calf running in front of him. Jessica held her hands to her bosom and fought down the emotions stirring inside her. Jesse brought the calf past her and called back:
“Everything’s fine, Ma.”
Jessica looked down the clearing and saw that Jesse had returned alone. A moment later she heard him closing the yard gate and she called, “Best wash up, dinner’s ready.”
It was ten minutes before Jesse came into the house, his face washed clean of blood, making the bruises and cuts stand out clearly. He had combed his hair, brushed down his faded Levis and put on another shirt. Jessica put his meal down. “Eat,” she said.
Jesse looked vaguely at her and plied himself to the food and all the time Jessica Gray kept away from her son, afraid of breaking down, so great was the relief of having him back. She wondered briefly about the stranger. Had he helped Jesse?”
Then Jesse said, “Ma, I got twenty dollars for the other calf.” He put the gold coin on her side of the table. Jessica picked up the gold eagle and looked curiously at him.
“They’d killed one and was eatin’ it, damn polecats,” Jesse said, as though eager to get the words out. “Mr. Durant, the stranger, he said it was fittin’. You can get that new dress now, Ma.”
Jessica stepped to her son and hugged his head against her bosom. Jesse pulled away, frowning. “Aw, Ma, hell.”
“Is there shame in wanting to hold your son and be proud of him, Jesse?” she said. “There’s little enough we have.” She sat down and turned the coin over and over in her hand.
Now words came tumbling out of Jesse. “We found Benjamin and Pearl and that sneaky no-good Briller at the creek, gorging themselves like the pigs they are. I went
and asked ’em for the calves again, like Mr. Durant said, but just as I figured they told me to go to blazes. Then Pearl went for his gun and Mr. Durant shot him down. After that there weren’t no more trouble. Benjamin just kinda folded up, and Briller, like I figured him all along, near died of fright.”
Jessica dropped the gold coin onto the table and pulled back from it, as though it had blood on it. She looked horrified at her son, shocked by his ready acceptance of the killing of a man. She had seen her husband kill a man who had come riding roughshod through their place while she was carrying Jesse. Then Chad had withdrawn into himself, saddened by the loss of a man’s life, no matter how justly he had acted. But Jesse seemed to be excited, almost triumphant.
She was reaching for words to combat Jesse’s attitude when he went on, grinning boyishly, “I don’t reckon we’ll have no more trouble with them Cowley jaspers, Ma. They’ll leave us alone, you’ll see, so you got nothin’ more to worry about.”
“Nothing to worry about?” Jessica snapped at him. “A man dead?”
“Took our calves and wouldn’t give them back, Ma,” Jesse said hotly. “Anyhow, it was Pearl who forced the play and got what he deserved.”
“Jesse!” The name exploded from Jessica. Then she shook her head, unable to cope with her son’s new-found disregard of life. “What are you saying? Do you think a man’s life is less important than a calf’s?”
“Depends on who the man is, Ma,” Jesse asserted firmly. “Bein’ Will Pearl, I reckon it’s about even.”
Jessica could not believe her ears. She stared at the coin on the table and felt a chill run through her body. She remembered what an arresting figure the stranger had appeared to be, with his wide shoulders, deep chest and range-hard body, slimming down to a sinewy waist. She saw again the lean, deeply tanned features and green eyes—eyes which had stirred half-forgotten emotions in her body. She shuddered, remembering how he had drawn his gun at the sound of her approach to him—one minute asleep, the next alert, gun lifted, finger white on the trigger, ready to kill.
“I won’t have you talking like that,” she said. “A man’s life is important. It doesn’t matter who the man is—it’s not your right to sit in judgment on him and mete out punishment for anything he may have done. We have the law for that, and as long as you live here with me, you’ll be guided by the law and not by the actions of a stranger, no matter how charitably he acted on our behalf.”
Jesse looked up sullenly as she rose, picked up the gold coin and put it in her apron pocket. Then, stepping away from her son, she said quietly:
“Finish your dinner. There’s more tonight if you want it.”
Jessica busied herself in the kitchen again while the boy ate. When Jesse brought his plate in, his face was set in thoughtful lines. Seeing his uncertainty, she placed an arm around him and kissed him lightly on the forehead.
“It will be all right,” she told him. “Get a good rest tonight.”
Jesse nodded and went to his room. When Jessica came in to check on him, he was asleep on his bed, fully dressed, right down to his scuffed boots. She smiled when she saw the innocence of his look and knew that, no matter what had happened that day, he was still a boy. She removed his boots, gave them a thorough polish and put them under the bed where he could get them easily in the morning. He needed another pair badly. As soon as she could spare the time, she thought, she would take him to town. Jessica pulled the single blanket over her son and tucked in the sides. Then she left his room and picked up her sewing basket.
Now her thoughts returned to Blake Durant. She was annoyed at herself for thinking harshly about him. He’d helped her son.
“May the Lord go with you,” she whispered.
Four – “Kill Him!”
Gus Cowley sat on his front porch, a self-indulgent smile on his craggy face. It had been a good year for him, one of the best in the twenty years since he’d come to these parts. The ranch was running smoothly and his hired hands were a reliable bunch. One or two of them gave him trouble now and again but a little pressure soon brought them back into line. No, he told himself, things couldn’t be much better, not since he had hired Jud Slater to handle his bigger troubles. Slater was a gunfighter, permanently sullen, mean as a rattler and a born killer. The right man, Gus Cowley agreed, in the right place.
Cowley stretched out, rubbing his right hand. Of late he had been feeling pain in that fist, and he’d been meaning to ride to town and see Doc Sommers about it. But, with the roundup nearing, he had put the trip off. A secondary reason for deferring his trip was the restlessness in his men, natural enough because it was Cowley’s habit to keep them confined to the ranch just before roundup so they’d be fit and in fine fettle for the hard work ahead. Later, after the cattle were sold off, he would let them hell it up any way they liked—but in town, not here.
In the coolness he retained his good mood, watching the hands move across the clearing from bunkhouse to cookhouse. Cowley felt like some hard drinking himself, but in deference to the limitations he had enforced on his men he denied himself the pleasure. He rose from the chair and walked stiffly across to the porch rail and drew in a heavy breath. I’m getting old, he told himself and stood against an overhang post, rubbing his hand up and down his shirt front.
Out of the gloom at the end of the clearing three shapes materialized. Sully Benjamin was in the lead, with Arch Briller behind him. The trailing third horse was riderless. Cowley straightened up. Pearl had ridden out with Benjamin and Briller to check the bottom country bordering on the Gray place.
The two riders came on. Cowley saw that Benjamin was hesitant, not arriving in his usual blunt manner. He had no illusions about Benjamin’s love for range work and was fully aware of Benjamin’s habit of cleaning up early, putting his supper away and getting involved in a nightly card game with the bunkhouse fraternity.
Slowly the two men closed the gap and drew rein just short of the porch. Benjamin sat upright in the saddle, an unusual pose for him, and Briller looked more uncertain of himself than usual. Gus Cowley’s gaze swung past them and came to rest on the figure draped across the saddle of the third horse. Cowley had seen enough dead men in his time to know that he was looking at one.
He straightened and ran a thick hand through thinning hair going gray at the temples. “What the hell’s this, Benjamin?” he growled.
Cowley saw the cowhand’s face tighten, saw his jaw muscles work. Whatever it was, he knew Benjamin was sour about it.
“It’s Will Pearl, Mr. Cowley. He got shot.”
Cowley’s eyes darkened and his mouth twitched. He grasped the porch rail and peered down angrily at the two men.
“How’d it happen, Benjamin, damn you?”
“We was jumped at the creek,” Benjamin said and looked bleakly at Briller, sharp warning in the glance.
“Jumped? Who the hell by? Who the hell had the nerve to jump my hands?”
Cowley’s fierce look remained fixed on Benjamin, saw the uncertainty in the cowhand’s black eyes.
“It was a damn tinhorn stranger,” Benjamin said. “We come across two of the Gray calves strayin’ on our range so we took ’em in tow.”
Cowley’s face jolted under the pressure of his increasing anger. “I told you to leave her be, damn you, Benjamin! I said to steer right clear of her, give her no reason to look for backing from anybody in these parts. By hell, if you—”
“They was strays and on our side of the fence,” Benjamin grated sourly. “So we brought them along. What the hell did you want us to do, take ’em back to the woman and maybe lick her boy’s boots?”
Cowley’s heavy-featured face closed up. He rubbed a hand tiredly behind his neck, gave Briller a searching look and then growled, “Get on with it.”
Sully Benjamin shifted in the saddle and Cowley knew he was bridling at having to explain the business. But the rancher meant to have full details and didn’t give a damn if Benjamin never got supper, never got cleaned, never sat in a card g
ame that night.
“Ain’t nothin’ much more to it,” Benjamin returned tightly. “We was ridin’ down the creek bed when the Gray kid come hollerin’ down on top of us callin’ us thieves. I give him a couple of cuffs to shut him up and then this stranger jumped up outa the ground. Will went for his gun but was beat to the shot and got kilt.”
Gus Cowley sucked in breath. He noticed Briller studying his hands thoughtfully and he had the feeling that Briller was keeping out of it on Benjamin’s orders.
“What’s your version, Briller?” Cowley asked, and the thick-set man stirred in the saddle, his sullen face clouding.
“Same as mine,” Benjamin said quickly.
A curse ripped out of Gus Cowley. “I want to hear it from him so shut down, damn you!”
Benjamin grumbled under his breath and fixed Briller with a severe look. The big cowhand licked at his lips, drew in a quick gulp of breath and said nervously, “What Sully says is right, Mr. Cowley. We were jumped, didn’t get a chance. This jasper just happened up, shot Will and then he wanted us to pay up for the other calf.”
“Other calf?” Cowley barked. “What other calf? What the hell were you hellions doin’ anyway?”
Sully Benjamin moved his horse about, scowling at Briller. Cowley, sensing Briller was the weakest link in this team, concentrated on him.
“Keep tellin’ it,” Cowley said.
Briller went on hesitantly. “The one we kilt and was gettin’ some meat off, Mr. Cowley. That was why we was beat to the draw. We didn’t hardly hear ’em comin’, then that Gray kid was yelling his head off.”
Cowley let out a muffled curse, pounded down the porch, went to Benjamin and yanked him down from the saddle. He hurled Benjamin against the porch and smashed a fist into his face. Benjamin rolled along the rail and struck his shoulder on an overhang post. As Cowley came at him, Benjamin’s hand clamped on his gun butt.
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