by Bill Crider
He was crying and shaking so hard that he couldn't pull the splinter out, and when he looked he saw the big drops of blood pumping out of the end of his finger. He screamed louder.
Then his brother was there, looking at Billy with contempt. He took Billy's wrist, and while he held it hard and tight he slapped Billy across the face, two stinging slaps, back and forth.
Billy was so surprised that he stopped screaming, and his brother jerked the splinter out of the end of his finger. Billy looked down and saw the thin red line under his nail. He wanted to scream again, but he looked at his brother and he didn't. The tears stopped and began to dry on his face.
"Don't ever let me hear you scream like that again," Kane said. Then he pushed Billy aside and walked away.
Billy wondered if he would have time to scream when they hanged him. He knew how it worked. The trap opened, and you dropped like a rock till you hit the end of the rope, and then…
Billy stopped thinking about it. He was getting sick to his stomach.
It was hard not to think, though, with the hammering that was going on outside. Maybe it wouldn't hurt. Maybe it was all so quick that you never felt a thing.
Billy wanted to believe that. He wanted to, but he wasn't sure it was true, which made it worse. If he knew, maybe he wouldn't be so afraid, but he didn't know.
He was going to find out, though.
He almost laughed at that. He was going to find out, and there was no reason why he should.
He hadn't done anything.
He hadn't killed Sally Ryan.
Pat Congrady planned to marry Sally Ryan, and he was the one who found Billy Kane in the shack with her body.
Congrady ran the hardware store. He was a big, beefy man with a red face and red hair. He laughed a lot, and everyone liked him. He'd been planning to marry Sally before her brother left and Kane grabbed their ranch, but that had set his plans back.
It had set Sally back, too. She never understood how Ryan could leave like that, and neither could Congrady. Ryan didn't seem like the man to do something like that, to leave his sister open to a man like Kane, but it had happened. Sally was getting over it, though, slowly but surely, and Congrady was sure that they would be married within the year. She had begun coming into town every afternoon and helping around the store, learning a little bit about the business and taking an interest. Congrady took that as a good sign.
Then one day she hadn't come. Congrady knew the dangers for a woman living alone—a bad fall, a snakebite, a fire. He closed the store and went to see if anything was wrong.
There was something wrong, all right. Sally, dead. The house wrecked, as if there had been a big fight. And Billy Kane right in the middle of it all.
Congrady controlled himself. He didn't kill Billy. He just beat him senseless, threw him across the back of his horse, and took him to town and turned him over to the sheriff.
"I didn't kill her," Billy said. Those were his first words when he woke up in his cell. "I didn't kill her. I just found her like that. I would have come to tell you, but I never got the chance."
"Looks mighty bad for you, Billy," Sheriff Bass told him. "You got blood on you. You were there, right there with that dead girl. And everybody knows you been seein' her on the sly."
Everybody but my brother, Billy thought.
"You ought to have known a Ryan wouldn't have nothin' to do with a Kane, Billy," the sheriff said. "Is that what happened? She tell you what she thought of the Kanes? That girl had a way of sayin' things, I'll say that. She could make a fella mad, all right."
"She didn't say anything," Billy said. "Not this time. She was dead when I got there."
"I hope that's not the best story you got, Billy boy," Sheriff Bass said. "If it is, you're in a heap of trouble."
It was not only the best story Billy had, it was the only story, and he told it over and over. He told it to his brother and to the lawyer his brother hired.
He told it to the judge.
He told it to the jury.
He told it to anybody who'd listen, but it didn't do him any good. The rumors his brother started about Sally Ryan being a whore didn't help, either. Most people in Tularosa liked Sally Ryan. Most of them hated the Kanes. So the rumors didn't help him at all.
"She had to be a whore," Kane told Billy. "How else can you explain why you went there? It couldn't be anything else. She was a Ryan, Billy, and that's as low as you can get. Why else would you want to go to her?"
Billy couldn't explain to his brother, or to anyone else. He didn't have much of a way with words. If he had, he might have talked about the way Sally Ryan's red hair would shine in the sun when she rode to town on the old mule that she had. Or the way her face would light up when she smiled. Or the way she would talk to him like he was almost human, not some kind of idiot, the way his brother talked to him. It wasn't that she liked him, not exactly, but she didn't hold it against him that her brother had run off or that Kane had her land now. It was as if she knew that Billy hadn't had anything to do with that—that his brother was the one who had the insatiable desire to own as much of the land around Tularosa as he could, and that it didn't matter how he got it. The Ryans weren't the first to lose everything to him, and they wouldn't be the last.
Billy had never told her the whole truth about that, though. He was one of the people who knew that Ryan hadn't run away, that Kane hadn't been able to drive him away. Billy had been in the bunch that had killed Ryan one night.
So Billy was as surprised as Three-finger Johnny McGee had been when the jailer told him that Ryan was back in town.
"That's what Sheriff Bass says," the jailer, Jack Higby, told Billy. Higby was a young man, not much older than Billy, and he stayed back in the cellblock with him, not so much to keep him company as to make sure there weren't any escape attempts from that direction. He'd gotten to like Billy a little bit and hated to see him in the situation he was in. "Sheriff says somebody saw Ryan ridin' through town not more'n an hour ago. And here we all thought he'd never show his face again in Tularosa. I guess he's come back to see . . ." Higby let his voice die away. He didn't know exactly how to finish his sentence.
Billy knew what Higby had been going to say, though, and he looked out the window high above his head as if he could see the gallows out there. What bothered him, however, was not so much the implication that Ryan had come to see him hang as the fact that Ryan should have been seen in town at all.
"Are you sure it was him?" Billy asked. "Three years . . . that's a long time to be gone."
"I ain't sure," Jack said, "since I didn't see him myself. All I know is, the sheriff says somebody saw him in town."
For some reason Billy felt cold all over.
Virginia Burley, when she heard, felt warm. A flush started on her breast and spread up her neck and covered her face. The news was the talk of Wilson's Cafe, which she had been the nominal owner and proprietor of for five years, ever since Wilson had had the misfortune to encounter a rattler late one summer afternoon while burning some trash. Wilson had been her brother, and she had moved to Tularosa to join him after her husband had been killed in a bank robbery in San Angelo.
Her husband had been a teller, not a robber, and he had been just a little too brave for his own good. He'd had a pistol under the counter, and when he brought it up to use, one of the robbers shot him in the face. The robbers had run then, and the bank owner had thought of Cam Burley as a hero, but he was still dead.
The rattler had bitten Wilson not two months after Virginia had moved to Tularosa, and she was beginning to think she simply had no luck with men—no luck at all. But the cafe had prospered under her ownership, not the least reason being her appearance, and she found she didn't need the men, anyway.
She was tall, with dark black hair and fair skin. Men took to her immediately, but she always put them off. She wasn't going to risk losing another one.
Then Ryan had come along. He was the most self-contained man she had ever met, filled w
ith a quiet confidence and assurance that nothing seemed to disturb. He didn't eat at the cafe, but she saw him around town, heard things about him.
One day he came in, ate the steak that was served for dinner, asked her a question or two, something inconsequential, and left.
The next day he was back, and the day after. Before long, it was obvious to the town that there was something between them, though it was something unspoken and not acted upon.
It was another month before he asked to see her one evening, to take her for a walk around the town. Then it was a ride in his wagon, and then it was other things.
Kane must have seen a certain weakness in her, she thought. He must have known that she was afraid of losing Ryan the way she had lost her husband and her brother, and he had used that fear.
"This thing between me and Ryan is bad," Kane told her one evening, having dropped by the cafe late, after the last of the customers had left. He never ate there himself; his food was prepared for him in his own kitchen by his own staff, and there must have been plenty of it, from the look of him.
"I want you to know that I like Ryan," Kane went on. "I don't want to see him get hurt. You could help me."
"How?" she said. She didn't trust Kane. No one did.
"Talk to him. Tell him that it would be best for him to accept my offer. In the long run, it would be best for all of us."
"He won't listen," she said. "That land was his father's and he says he'll keep it no matter what."
"My offer is more than fair," Kane said, and he was telling the truth. He was offering far more than the market value, and probably even he couldn't have explained exactly why. It was an obsession with him. He didn't want to own all the land around Tularosa—he just wanted to own all the land that joined his property.
"It's not the money," Virginia told him. "He wants the land himself, for him and his sister. And for any . . . family they might have one day."
"I see," Kane said. He had heard the same thing from Ryan himself when the two had still been speaking. "Yet I believe that you could persuade him."
"It's possible that I could. But I don't think I want to try."
"He could get hurt," Kane said.
"I don't think so," she said. "I think that he's a man who can take care of himself." She hoped that she was right. She wanted to believe that she was.
"That may be true," Kane said.
Not long after that, Ryan had been ambushed on the trail between his ranch and the town. Two men, both Kane's ranch hands, had been killed. Kane, of course, denied having anything to do with the affair. He regretted that two of his men so little appreciated all that he had done for them that they had been forced to resort to robbery to satisfy their base desires. But of course it was not his fault, and he was sincerely sorry it had happened. He hoped that no one would think he was involved in any way at all.
Everyone did think so, but few said so. They didn't want to be ambushed themselves, not being quite as good with a gun as Ryan, or quite as cool under fire.
Nothing happened for weeks after that. Then Kane showed up at the cafe again.
"I suppose you know that I own this place now," he said, sitting in one of the wooden chairs at an oilcloth-covered table, his ample rear lapping over the edges of the chair's seat.
"No," she said. "I didn't."
"Bought the mortgage from the bank just today," he said, smiling broadly. The fat all over his face was cracked with wrinkles.
"Why?" she said.
"An investment. You're doing very good business here, and I'm sure you'll be on time with all your payments."
In fact, though business was good, she had been late more than once. The banker had overlooked it, since he knew that she would be in the next day. Or the next.
"I would hate to have to foreclose," Kane said. "But I would do it. I would do it if you were so much as a minute late."
She looked at him silently, hating the fat face, the hooded eyes.
"Of course, there is a way that you could own this cafe, free and clear. No more payments. Ever."
She felt a strong disgust, but she said, "How?"
"It's quite easy. And you would be independent then."
He knew more about her than she had thought. Her fear of losing Ryan, her fear that men would always let her down by dying.
"How?" she said again.
He told her, and they took Ryan the next night. She had never told anyone, and she hadn't seen Ryan for three years.
Now she heard someone saying that Ryan was back.
Chapter Three
Kane hadn't asked Virginia Burley for much.
"I know you go driving with him," he said. "All you need do is have him drive you by Shatter's Grove tomorrow night. It is tomorrow night, isn't it?"
She didn't bother to answer the question. He obviously knew already that they regularly drove out in the wagon in the cool of the evening. "What happens if we do drive by there?" she said.
"Why, nothing. Except that you will receive the deed to this cafe. Free and clear."
"And all I do is have him drive by the grove.”
“That is all."
"What happens to him?"
"He and I will have a friendly chat, and I will persuade him that it is in his best interests to sell his land to me.”
“A friendly chat."
"With goodwill all around." Kane's fat white face smiled at her, and the effect was worse than if he had frowned. Much worse.
But she did it, anyway.
Ryan was thinking of that night as he sifted through the ruins of the cabin, trying to set things to rights. There seemed to be hardly anything of his sister's there, as if she had no personal possessions left to her. And probably she hadn't. Kane must have taken those along with everything else.
Ryan didn't blame Sally. There had been nothing she could have done. Without him there, she had no one to stand between her and Kane, no one except Pat Congrady; and while he was strong enough physically, he lacked the kind of courage Ryan had, the kind that kept you standing in the face of impossible odds. Congrady loved Sally, Ryan thought, but not enough to stand up to Kane for her.
He righted a rickety wooden table and chair, sitting in the chair to think. It had all started late that evening as he and Virginia drove past Shatter's Grove...
It was just after sundown and beginning to cool off a little. The sky was gray with the last of the light, no stars showing as yet, and the leaves of the oaks in the grove were stirring with a slight breeze. Ryan couldn't remember what he and Virginia had been discussing, but it was probably nothing of great importance. There was something between them, they could both feel that, but it was not something they talked about.
Ryan was not a man to put his feelings into words, and Virginia, thanks to her bad luck with men, didn't trust words any longer. So mostly they drove and looked at the country and said little. Sooner or later, Ryan thought, the time would come when he would have something to say, and he was fairly certain of how she would respond. But for now, especially considering the troubles he was having with Kane, he didn't want to say it.
He was sure that the problems with Kane would blow over. Kane had squeezed out others, but he had never dealt with someone like Ryan before. Ryan wanted his land as much as Kane did, and he was willing to fight for it, as two of Kane's men had already found out. Ryan didn't lament the killing of them. They would have done the same to him, and he knew that Kane was the kind of man who would try violence again if he thought it would gain him anything.
It wouldn't, though. Ryan was constantly on his guard, and he was sure that Kane would eventually give it up, find someone else to harass, some other land to covet. Ryan was wrong, but he didn't know it then.
He learned it quickly, however. The only time he ever let his guard down was when he was with Virginia. Their times together seemed like times of peacefulness that nothing could interrupt, and nothing ever had. But that night something did.
The riders came out fro
m behind the trees of the grove, their pistols cocked and aimed. They had handkerchiefs pulled up over their faces, but Ryan knew who they were, all right.
Billy Kane, so nervous he might shoot himself in the foot at any moment.
Johnny McGee, nervous, too, but a man with just enough gumption to be troublesome.
Mack Barson, who was big as a bear and smelled like one. It was rumored that he bathed only by accident, like the time when his horse was crossing Saragosa Creek and stepped off in a hole. That had been three or four years back. No one was sure just how long. Some of the Tularosa wits thought Barson's smell was what made him so mean. He didn't even need a pistol to kill a man. His hands were enough.
Martin Long, thin as a rattler, and with a rattler's evil eyes, but meaner than any snake that ever lived. The story was that he liked to hurt people, and no whore in Tularosa would let him come near her.
And Kane, of course. There was no disguising Kane, that mountain of flesh who sat on a horse like three hundred pounds of mud.
"Get down from the wagon, Ryan," Kane said, his voice muffled by the handkerchief, but Kane's voice nevertheless. "Get down quietly, and we let the woman ride away."
Ryan handed the reins to Virginia, climbed down, and faced them. He didn't think they'd shoot him in front of her, and he didn't think they would shoot a woman. Not even Kane would do something like that. He'd bring every man in the Southwest down on him if he did.
"Turn the wagon back to town," Kane said.
Ryan heard the creaking of the harness, the clopping of the horses' hooves. He didn't look back.
As the sound of the wagon wheels receded in the distance, the men on horseback looked at Ryan. Darkness gathered around them.
Ryan thought that the darkness was his only chance. If he could get to the trees…
He let his eyes slide to the shadows under the oaks. The grove wasn't big, but it was big enough, and it was dark in there under the trees.
As soon as he could no longer hear the wagon, Ryan broke to his right, toward the nearest tree.