Gray half sprang from his chair, then settled back again.
“You can’t prove that,” he snapped.
Old Dan grumbled derisively. “He don’t need to prove it, Coleman. He won’t even have a chance.”
He twisted his massive head around to Benton.
“What did you come here for, anyway?”
“I came to make a deal.”
Old Dan rumbled at him. “Let’s hear your proposition.”
“You got the Crazy H for a couple thousand measly dollars,” said Benton. “You got cattle that were worth twice that or more, let alone the land.”
Old Watson nodded, eyes cold and hard.
“You got cattle in your trail herd out there that don’t wear your brand,” said Benton. “Take the ones you need to pay what the ranches around here cost and hand the ranchers back their deeds.”
Gray wiped sweat from his brow with a nervous hand.
“That’s fair,” he burst out. “That’s fair. After all, we can’t take advantage of a man who went out and fought for us.”
Watson shook his head. “No, the deal was legal. When I took over those cattle weren’t worth a dime because there was no place to market them. It’s not my fault that the cattle market changed.”
“Except,” said Benton, quietly, “that you knew it was going to change. You had word of what was going on up north. So you moved fast to take over everything that you could grab.”
Feet shuffled over by the window and Benton looked toward it. Snake McAfee leered back at him, gun half raised.
“I have just one thing to say to you,” said Watson, slowly. “Get out of the country. You’re a trouble-maker and you’ve had your warning. If you stay we’ll gun you down on sight like a lobo wolf.”
His hands pounded the arms of the rocking chair, his voice rising in old-man querulousness.
“You’ve been back just a bit more than a day, Benton, and you’ve already killed two of my men. I won’t stand for anything like that.”
“I killed them,” said Benton, coldly, “because I was faster on the gun than they were. And if you stay pig-headed, a lot more of them will die.”
Watson’s eyes narrowed in his monstrous face. “You mean that, don’t you, Benton?”
Benton stared straight at him. “You know I do, Dan. And what’s more, you’ll not move a single cow….”
Watson leaned forward, bellowing. “What’s that…”
Hoofs suddenly hammered in the yard outside the house, hoofs that skidded to a stop. Feet thumped across the porch and the door slammed open.
A disheveled rider blinked in the lamplight.
“The herd!” he yelled. “They stampeded it! It’s headed for the hills! Gang of riders…”
Dan Watson heaved himself upward with a grunt of sudden, violent rage. Snake McAfee was standing with gun arm hanging, staring at the rider.
Benton whirled, took one quick step, fist swinging to explode on Snake’s jaw. Snake crashed into the window as Benton leaped for the door, hands clawing for his guns. Behind him glass tinkled, smashing on the floor.
Benton saw the rider leaping at him, chopped down viciously with his gun barrel, but too late to stop the man. The gun smacked with a leaden thud across the hunched down shoulder, then the shoulder hit him in the stomach and sent him reeling back so violently that his hat blew off.
Stars exploded in Benton’s head. Stars and a bursting pain and a roaring wind that whistled at the edges. He felt himself falling forward, like a great tree falls, falling through a darkness that was speared with jagged streaks of pain.
And through the roaring of the wind that whistled through his brain he heard the high, shrill, excited voice of Young Bill Watson:
“That’s the way to kill the dirty son…”
Awareness came back. Awareness of the seep of light that ran along the boards, awareness of the hard lump that the gun made beneath his chest, where his arm had doubled and he had fallen on it, awareness of the rumble of voices that droned above him…voices that at first were misty sounds and then became words and finally had meaning.
“…You better put a bullet through him.”
That was the banker’s voice, hard and suspicious, but with a whine within it.
The elder Watson’s voice rumbled at him. “Hell, there ain’t no use. He’s deader than a fence post, as it is. Look at that head of his…split wide open.”
Young Bill Watson snickered, nastily. “When I hit ’em, they stay hit.”
“Still, just to be safe…”
The puncher’s frantic voice broke in. “Boss! The cattle!”
Old Watson’s voice bellowed. “Yes, damn it, I almost forgot.”
Feet tramped across the floor, jarring it.
“You riding with us, Gray?” Bill Watson asked.
The banker’s voice was hesitant. “No. Think I’ll head back for town. Got some business…”
The slamming door cut off his words.
Silence stalked across the room, a deathly, terrible silence.
A dark drop dripped down on the floor no more than an inch from Benton’s left eye. A drop that hit and spattered…and was followed by another.
Blood, thought Benton. Blood! Dripping from my head. From where Bill Watson’s gun butt got me.
His hand twitched beneath him and he gritted his teeth to keep it where it was, to keep it from reaching up and feeling of his head, feeling to see just how bad the head wound was.
A wave of giddiness swept over him and beneath him the floor weaved just a little. The blood went on, dripping on the boards before his eye, forming a little puddle on the floor.
A glancing blow, he thought. A glancing blow that ripped my scalp half off. Head must be in one hell of a mess to make them think I’m dead.
Only the banker isn’t sure I’m dead. He was the one that wanted to put a bullet into me to be sure and finish it. And he’s still in the room here with me.
Pain lanced through his brain and across his neck, a livid finger of pain that etched an acid path along his jangled nerves. A groan came bubbling in his throat and he caught and held it back, held it with teeth that bit into his lip.
Feet shuffled slowly across the floor and in his mind Benton could imagine the slouching form of the banker stalking him, walking softly, warily, watching for some sign of life.
Play dead. That was it. Lie still. Be careful with your breathing, just sucking in enough air to keep your lungs alive. The way he’d done it on the night when the Yank patrol was hunting for him down in Tennessee.
The ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece hammered through the room…a fateful sound. A sound that measured time, that sat and watched and didn’t care what happened. A sound that ticked men’s lives away and never even hurried.
The boots walked past and then turned back, came close. Benton felt his body tensing, fought it back to limpness.
A toe reached out and prodded him…prodded harder. Benton let his body roll with the prodding toe.
An inner door squeaked open softly and someone gasped, a hissing gasp of indrawn breath that could only come with terror.
The boots swung around and Benton knew that in the little silence the two of them were looking at one another…Gray and the person who had come into the room.
“I’m sorry, madam,” said the banker, “that you happened in.”
A woman’s voice came from across the room…a remembered voice.
“It’s…it’s…who is it?”
Gray’s voice was at once brutal and triumphant. “It’s young Benton.”
“But it can’t be!” There was a note of rising horror in the words. “It simply can’t be. Why, only this afternoon he promised me…”
The outer door slammed open and boots tramped harshly across the floor, passed close to Benton’s head.<
br />
“So you talked to him,” said young Bill Watson’s voice. “That’s where you were today.”
“Bill!” screamed the girl. “Bill, it’s not…”
Watson’s voice shrieked at her, lashed with blinding fury. “Just as soon as my back is turned, you go crawling back to him.”
“Listen, Bill,” said Jennie Watson. “Listen to me. Yes, I did talk to him…and I’m leaving you. I’m not living with a man like you…”
Something in his face wrenched a shriek from her, something in his face, something in the way he walked toward her.
“So you’re leaving me! Why, you damned little tramp, I’ll…”
She screamed again.
Benton heaved himself upward from the floor, gun clutched in his hand.
Watson was wheeling around, wheeling at the sound behind him, hands blurring for his guns.
“Bill,” yelled Benton, “don’t do it! Don’t try…”
But Watson’s guns were already out, were swinging up.
Benton chopped his own wrist down, pressing the trigger. The gun bucked and shook the room with thunder. Through the puff of powder smoke, he saw Watson going down.
Another shot blasted in the room and Benton felt the gust of wind that went past his cheek, heard the chug of a bullet crunching through the wall beyond.
He swung on his toes and swept his gun around. The banker stood before him, smoking gun half raised.
“So it’s you,” said Benton.
He twitched his gun up and Gray stared at him in white-faced terror. The gun dropped from the banker’s hand and he backed away, backed until the wall stopped him and he stood pinned by the muzzle of Benton’s gun. The man’s mouth worked but no words came out and he looked like he was strangling.
Benton snarled at him in disgust. “Quit blubbering. I won’t kill you.”
Blood trickled from his right eyebrow and half blinded him. He raised his free hand to wipe it off and the hand came away smeared a sticky red.
“Lord,” he thought, “I must be a sight.”
At a sound behind him, he swung around.
Watson was sitting up and Jennie was on her knees beside him. Both of them were staring at him.
“I’m sorry,” Benton told the girl. “I tried to stop him. I didn’t want to shoot him. I didn’t shoot until I had to.”
The girl spoke quietly. “You used to be kind and considerate. Before you went off to war and learned to kill…”
Watson bent from his sitting position, reaching out his hand, clawing for a gun that lay on the floor.
Benton jerked his own gun up and fired. Splinters leaped shining from the floor. Watson pulled himself back, sat hump-shouldered, scowling.
“Try that again,” invited Benton.
Watson shook his head.
Benton nodded at the girl. “You have her to thank you’re alive right now. If I could have brought myself to kill Jennie Lathrop’s husband, you’d been dead a good long minute.”
He wiped his face again, scrubbed his hand against his shirt.
“After this,” he said, “be sure you hit a little harder when you want to kill a man.”
“Next time,” Watson promised, “I’ll put a bullet through your skull.”
Benton spoke to the girl. “Better get that shoulder of his fixed up and get him in shape to travel. I don’t want to find him around here when I come back.”
Feet scuffed swiftly and Benton whirled about. Gray was leaping for the window, arms folded above his head to shield his eyes against the flying glass, feet swinging outward to clear the sill and crash into the already shattered panes.
Benton snapped his gun up, but before his finger pressed the trigger, gray had hit the window in a spray of showering glass and splintered wood.
Benton’s shot hammered through the broken window, a coughing bark that drowned out the tinkle of the falling shards. Outside, on the porch, a body thumped and rolled, crashed into the railing, flailed for a moment as Gray thrashed to gain his feet.
Benton bent his head, ran two quick steps, hurled himself after Gray, went sailing through the broken window, landed on the porch floor with a jar that shook his teeth.
Out in the moon-washed yard the banker was swinging on his horse at the hitching rack. And as he swung up, his hand was clawing at the saddle, clawing for something hidden there…a metallic something that came up in his fist, gleaming in the moonlight, and exploded with a gush of flame spearing through the night.
Benton, staggering to his feet, ducked as the showers of splinters leaped from the railing of the porch and the whining bullet chugged into the window sill behind him.
Gray’s horse was rearing, wheeling from the rack, puffs of dust beneath his dancing feet.
Benton snapped up his gun and fired, knew that he had missed.
Cursing, he vaulted the porch railing, ran for his own mount while Gray hammered off into the night, heading south, heading for the hills.
V
Moonlight made the hills a nightmare land of light and shadow, a mottled land that was almost unearthly…a place of sudden depths and crazy heights, a twisting, bucking land that had been frozen into rigidity by a magic that might, it seemed, turn it loose again on any moment’s notice.
Ahead of Benton, Gray’s horse crossed a ridge, was highlighted for a single instant against the moonlit sky. Then was gone again, plunging down the slope beyond.
Gaining on him, Benton told himself, gaining all the time. He bent low above the mighty black and whispered to him and the black heard and responded, great muscles straining to hurl himself and his rider up the slope.
Faint dust, stirred by the passing of the pounding hoofs ahead, left a faintly bitter smell in the cool night air.
Another couple of miles, Benton promised himself. Another couple of miles and I’ll overhaul him.
The black topped the ridge and swung sharply to angle down the trail that led toward the blackness of the canyon mouth below.
Ahead of them, halfway down the slope, Gray’s horse was a humping shadow that left a dust trail in the moonlight. A shadow that fled before them in the tricky shadows that laired among the hills.
A shadow that suddenly staggered, that was a pinwheel of dust spinning down the hill…a pinwheel that became two spinning parts and then was still. The horse lay sprawled against the slope. Probably dead with a broken neck, thought Benton.
But the man was running…a tiny furtive rabbity shadow that scuttled across a painted landscape.
With a whoop, Benton spurred the black horse off the trail, went plunging after the running figure in a shower of rocks and talus. For a moment Gray halted, facing about. Flame blossomed from his hand and the flat crack of his gun snarled across the night.
Benton lifted his gun, then lowered it again. No sense of shooting at a ducking, dodging figure in the shadowed light. No sense in wasting time.
Gray faced about again and once more the gun barked an angry challenge. Far above his head, Benton heard the droning of the bullet.
Then the man was just ahead, dodging through the brush that covered the lower reaches of the slope. Benton drove the horse straight at him and Gray, seeing the gleam of the slashing hoofs above him, screamed and dived away, caught his foot and fell, skidded on his shoulder through the silty soil.
Benton spun the horse around, leaped from the saddle. He hit the ground and slid, ground crumbling and skidding beneath his driving boots.
Gray clawed his way to his feet, stood with his hands half raised.
“Don’t shoot,” he screamed. “Don’t shoot. I lost my gun.”
Benton walked toward him. “You always manage to lose your gun,” he said, “just when it will save you.”
The banker cringed, backing down the slope. Benton followed.
“We’re going to have a ta
lk,” he said. “You and I. You’re going to tell me a lot of things that will hang a lot of people.”
Gray babbled, wildly. “I’ll talk. I’ll tell you everything. I’ll tell you all about…”
Suddenly a rifle cracked from somewhere beyond the ridge…a high, ringing sound that woke the echoes in the hills. And cracked again, a vicious sound that cut through the night like a flaming scream of hate.
Benton stiffened, startled by the sound, startled by the knowledge that other men were close.
A pebble clicked and a boot scraped swiftly through the sliding sand. Warning feet jigged on Benton’s spine and he flicked his attention from the rifle shots to the man before him.
Gray was charging, shoulders hunched, head pulled down, long arms reaching out. Coming up the hill with the drive of powerful legs that dug twin streams of pebbles from their resting places and sent them pouring down the hill in a rattling torrent.
Benton jerked up his gun, but the shoulders hit his knees before he could press the trigger and steel arms were clawing at his waist, clawing to pull him down even as the impact of the driving shoulders hurled him off his feet.
His body slammed into the earth and his gun went wheeling through the moonlight as his elbow hit a stone and his arm jerked convulsively with pain.
Above him, Gray loomed massive in the night, hunched like a beast about to spring, face twisted into a silent snarl of rage. Benton lashed up with his boot, but as he kicked, Gray moved, was running down the hill after the gun that had been knocked from Benton’s hand.
Benton hurled himself to his feet, strode down the slope. Gray was on his knees, clawing under a bush where the gun had lodged, mumbling to himself, half slobbering in his haste. Then he was twisting around, a brightness in his hand.
Benton flattened out in a long, clean dive that smothered the gun play, that sent Gray crashing back into the bush. The man fought back, fought silently with pistoning fists and raking fingernails and pumping knees that caught Benton in the stomach and battered out his breath.
Clawing for the second gun that should have been in his belt, Benton’s fingers found the empty holster. The gun had fallen out somewhere, perhaps when Gray had first tackled him farther up the slope.
The Ghost of a Model T: And Other Stories Page 14