by Jim Thompson
“Ain’t learned a damned thing, have you?” he snarled. “Just can’t think o’ nothin’ but your own sweet little ass and havin’ a place to put it. Now you either get the hell out of my way, or—”
“I’m thinking about you—us!” She struggled in his grasp. “Just us, that’s all I care about! I don’t care if—”
Lord grunted that he and she had gone to different schools altogether. He didn’t think so much of his own hide that he’d gut himself to keep it.
He tried to fling her out of the way. She jerked wildly; her shirt ripped away, and she fell stumbling to the floor, her bare breasts blooming out of the tattered garment.
Lord threw a leg over the window sill. He started to bring the other one over as she came slowly to her feet, and he jeered at her out of his pent-up fury.
“You may as well put ’em away, Toots. Maybe they’ll buy you a meal ticket with some guys, but they don’t mean no more to me than grapefruit.”
That was all he said. It was all he had time to say. For one of her small hard fists landed on his nose and the other smashed into his mouth—as effective a one-two as he himself could have delivered. He went back through the window and fell heavily to the ground.
He pushed himself up, got back on his feet. She looked out at him, concerned but completely unapologetic, as unswervingly set on her own course as he was on his.
She said she hoped he’d come to his senses. She said she thought—didn’t he?—that they’d better leave now.
Lord choked. He laughed, a little wildly, and climbed into the convertible.
Leave? Leave? After all this waste of precious time? After the killers had been allowed to come on, unhindered, until they were probably within spitting distance of the house?
I hope she does get killed, he thought savagely. Because if she don’t, and I get my hands on her.…
He put the car in gear, raced the motor. “Tom,” she called. “Tom!” As he went roaring around the corner of the shack, her frantic cry followed him, “Tom…Tom, darling!”
Night comes abruptly in far-west Texas. The pale twilight is suddenly withdrawn, and night is dropped down on the world in its place. It was night now; completely dark except for the dim beams of a weakling quarter-moon. As the convertible’s headlights lunged through the blackness, the killers seemed to lunge out of it: two shaggy-bearded monsters who had waited in darkness through eternity for this one murderous moment.
They were only a few hundred yards away, coming on at a run. Lord headed straight for them, plowing over the sagebrush and rocks, jouncing high in the air as the car gathered speed.
They fired wildly, blinded by the headlights. They tried to take cover, then stumbled out of it as the lights caught them again. They threw themselves prone, beneath the full glare of the beams, and above the angry chattering of their rifles came the sound of shattering glass as the car’s windshield exploded.
Lord screamed, reared up in the seat clutching himself. He fell down to the floor amidst the shards of glass, and the car careened wildly and came to a stop, its motor still running.
The killers rose up cautiously. They stood silent, listening and watching. And then one of them nodded to the other.
“Have a look. I’ll cover you.”
“Well…How about givin’ him another round to play it safe?”
“Ain’t got the shells to waste. Wouldn’t be no surer, anyway, if we gave him a dozen rounds.”
“Yeah, I guess…”
Lord listened tautly, mentally plotting the killer’s course. He reached up cautiously, pushed the low-gear button. He took a firm grip on the bottom of the steering wheel and poised his fist above the gas pedal. And then…
The car leaped forward. There was a thud, an agonized scream, a furious fusillade of rifle fire.
Bullets punched through the car door. Lord flung himself against the opposite door, tumbled out into the sagebrush.
The killer was still shooting, his bullets rattling against the car as it veered crazily and stalled. Lord crawled away from the sounds, scampered back to where the dead man lay. He found the man’s rifle and turned away, without giving its owner a second look. He already knew who he was. He had recognized both men from their voices, and he had been heartsick, bewildered. But there was no time for such emotions now. No time to puzzle out a riddle which could have no sensible answer.
Minutes before, in one of those hours-long moments of silence, he had heard the distant hum of a car. And in his mind, he had watched it approach, seen it stop where the trail to the shack began.
So the driver, whoever he was, was coming on foot. And there was no reason to believe that he was anything but an enemy.
Trailing the rifle, Lord crawled back toward the car—watching as the shadows ahead of him stirred, and the dead man’s companion rose up from them.
His rifle was raised to his shoulder, aimed straight at the car. He moved up on it carefully, keeping to the side and slightly to the rear of it.
And Lord moved up behind him, stopping when he was barely twenty feet away.
Then, rifle leveled at the bearded man, he stood up.
“All right,” he said. “Drop it!”
Red Norton whirled around, still clinging to the gun. Lord triggered his own rifle. Frantically, he kept triggering it—and the hammer slapped harmlessly against the firing chamber.
Every bullet had been fired. He stood helpless before Norton.
Red lowered his rifle a little, and he laughed an angrily crazy laugh.
“Well, how you like it, Tom?” he jeered. “How you like bein’ up the creek without no paddle?”
“I don’t get it,” Lord said slowly. “I thought you and Curly were my friends. You were my friends, dammit! Why—”
“Yeah, sure, sure. And what kind of friend were you to us? Killin’ our boss! Leavin’ us without no jobs and winter comin’ on! Fixin’ it so we’d be the patsies for a murder charge any time you took the notion. Puttin’ us in the worst spot we’d ever been in in our lives, an’ then just ridin’ off!”
“For God’s sake, Red!” Lord frowned. “What—?”
“Shut up! What’d you expect us to do, anyway? How far did you think we’d get in that old jalopy of ours, with practically no money? Well, I’ll tell you, Mr. Tom Lord, seein’ as you’re such a good friend…”
They’d hardly made it into the next county, when they were forced to turn back, broke. Hadn’t even got themselves a good meal or a decent drunk out of their last paycheck. And when they were still thirty miles from the wildcat, they’d had to ditch their hopelessly broken down car and walk the rest of the way.
“Had to come back,” Red Norton said bitterly. “Just for a place to get in out of the weather at night. Durin’ the day, when we might be spotted, we was goin’ to hang out down in the underbrush. Catch rabbits an’ squirrels, an’ the like, an’—an’—some future, huh, Tom? A lot to look forward to after breakin’ your back all your life!”
“Red,” said Lord, “you should have told me you needed money the day of the accident. O’ course, I knew you weren’t rolling in it, but—”
“An’ how would that have looked, huh? We’re keepin’ quiet about the killin’, an’ we hit you up for dough!” Norton sighed, and his voice became dull. “We couldn’t do it. Anyway, we didn’t figure we was so bad off at the time. Later…”
Norton had left Shorty at the lease, tramped cross-country to the highway, and headed into Big Sands. He couldn’t flag a ride. No one would have stopped at night for anyone that looked like he did, so he’d had to tail-end it on a truck.
“I felt lower than snail shit, Tom. About as mean and low-down as a man can get. Worn-out, dirty, so hungry my belly was gnawin’ at my backbone. An’ now I had to pull a job of blackmail—an’, yeah, that’s what it was. Couldn’t make it come out no other way, so I swallowed it an’ it didn’t set too well. It did somethin’ bad to me. Me and Curly had a cinch on you, and you’d have to pay off. And…and the
n I got to thinkin’. We didn’t have no more on you than you had on us. We’d left the well after you did. You could claim you’d never been there, and with Joyce to back you, you could probably make it stick…”
He didn’t think that Tom would be that dirty to ’em. Tom was their friend, a guy who had always treated them tops. On the other hand, look what they were doing to Tom, and they’d always been his friends.
Killing changed people. Pressure changed them. And if Tom was squeezed too hard, or thought he might be…
Red was almost relieved when he found Lord’s car missing from the driveway, and knew he was not at home. But he had to have money, a few bucks at least. So he’d gone on over to Joyce’s house, thinking the deputy might be there.
Lord’s car wasn’t in front of the house. Nervously, not wanting to bother Joyce unnecessarily, he’d crept around to the rear to check the garage. And Joyce came up behind him and shoved a gun in his back.
“She was plenty burned up, Tom. Reckon she had a right to be, too. You’d threatened to kill her if she caused any trouble, and she’d caused plenty. And she was all set to give you some more.”
“Now, wait a minute!” Lord protested. “She—”
“I’m tellin’ you,” Red said stubbornly. “I’m tellin’ you what she told me, and I could see how she felt.”
Joyce wouldn’t believe that Red had come there to find Lord. She was convinced that Lord had sent him to kill her. And she jeered Red for his supposed stupidity.
“You and your good friend, Tom. Hah! You know what would have happened after you bumped me? Well, you were scheduled to be next, you and your pal, Shorty!”
She marched Red into the house. She intended to turn him over to the sheriff, but in reaching for the telephone, she turned away for a moment. And Red slugged her. He kept slugging her.
It was her or him—wasn’t it?—and that was no choice at all. She had to be silenced. By killing her, he was also getting rid of Lord, for Lord would certainly be blamed for the murder.
“I had to do it, Tom. You see that, don’t you?”
Lord said he guessed he couldn’t. But he hadn’t been in Red’s place. Red said angrily that Lord was damned right about that!
“I took her gun with me, threw it away while I was tail-endin’ out of town. Took me until the next afternoon to get back to the well, an’ the way I was feelin’, I just couldn’t take no more. Just one speck more o’ trouble, and I’d be blowin’ my stack. An’—and then…”
There’d been more trouble. Plenty more.
Shorty hadn’t meant any harm. He’d started off by kind of teasing the “fat fella” (Pellino), trying to throw a scare into him like you could with a greenhorn. Then, he got another idea: to take the guy for his money and his car. They could drive the car back to their own, switch license plates, and be a couple of states away before the alarm was out. Lord would probably guess that they were involved in the robbery, but no one else knew they were back here. And Lord was in no position to talk.
But…but then Pellino had got himself killed in the snake nest and Shorty, panic-stricken, and trying to dispose of any evidence, had run the car into the slush pit.
“Too scared even to tell me,” Red said tiredly. “Prob’ly wouldn’t have known about it, if he hadn’t broke down an’ started bawlin’. An’ me, I kinda broke down, too. Because now we were really in the soup.…”
Pellino was obviously a man of importance. There’d be a search for him, and to attempt flight would only draw attention to themselves.
They’d felt no better about their situation when they discovered that Lord was staying at his shack. To them, it was proof that his influence was still strong, that he’d been able to squeeze out of the frame into which Joyce’s murder had put him. Everything was Tom’s fault—all their terrible peril and misery. Yet Tom was living high off the hawg with a girl friend, and they had to skulk around like coyotes. Jumping at shadows. So damned sick and scared that they could hardly eat the little grub they were able to get.
“Couldn’t see but one way out,” Red went on. “Didn’t look like nothin’ was going to be done about Joyce’s death; not as things stood, anyways. So all we had to do was nail you for killin’ the fat guy, and we had it made. We could go on hidin’ at the lease for a while, until everything had cooled off. Then, we’d show up in town, like we’d just blew in…”
He paused wearily, rubbing a hand over his face. Then, as Lord tensed himself to spring, the rifle snapped up again.
“Don’t do it, Tom. Gonna happen soon enough, anyway. O’ course, if you’re in a hurry—”
“No hurry at all,” Lord said hastily. “Suit me fine if you talked forever.” And he listened intently, tried to penetrate the darkness around him, as Norton continued.
Red had made no mention of a third man, an accomplice. So the man who had stopped down there in the road could be a friend. Someone, at least, who could help in this otherwise hopeless situation. For Red certainly intended to kill him. As soon as he had vented his hatred orally, rationalized the crimes he had committed and was about to commit.…
“…about all, Tom,” Red concluded, telling how he and Curly had disposed of the hunters. “Guess we wasn’t real smart, kinda screwed everything up, but then we never claimed to be bright. Ain’t like some people that make trouble for their friends, an’—”
Lord cut in on him sarcastically. Obviously, there was nothing to be gained by sympathy, but he might buy some time with an argument.
“You pore, pore fella you! You’ve known for years that cable tools was on the downgrade. Jobs were disappearin’ like snowflakes on a hot stove, and you don’t do nothin’ about it. Won’t have nothing to do with rotary rigs.”
“You’re damned right!” Norton snarled. “I’m no mudhog! Me, I’m—”
“Yeah, sure. You’re a cable-tool man, a rope-choker. So that’s what you’re gonna be, even if you wind up with a rope chokin’ you! A man with a boy’s head, that’s you. Can’t do nothin’ but bungle and blubber. If you could, you wouldn’t be in this spot!”
“Uh-huh. An’ what about the spot you’re in?”
“I’m stupid, too. If I wasn’t I’d ’ve known you were.”
Red whimpered angrily; he urged Lord to keep it up and see what happened. “Gonna get me somethin’ out of this deal, Tom. Me an’ your girl friend’s gonna have a lot of fun together.”
“You mean you are, don’t you?” Lord drawled. “Can’t see a puny little fella like you tacklin’ a ninety-eight-pound woman while she’s still alive.”
Norton didn’t get the ugly joke for a moment. When he did…
The rifle leveled and steadied; he looked down the barrel of it, his finger tightening on the trigger. “Turn around if you want to.”
“Not me,” Lord said. “My papa told me never to turn my back when I was close to a horse’s ass.”
And he flung himself forward as one last rifle shot rang through the night.
23
Red Norton shifted his bandaged arm in its sling and signed the confession which Donna had taken down. Buck Harris folded it and put it in his pocket. He and Lord helped the injured man into Buck’s car. And Lord asked if Buck was sure he could manage by himself.
“With two of ’em dead?” Buck shrugged; and then he lowered his voice a little. “What about this fella, Tom? What do you reckon they’ll do to him?”
Lord said he wished he knew; he kind of had Red on his conscience. “Prob’ly what should have been done long ago. Put him someplace where he might be helped, and he can’t do harm.”
“Well…” Buck scuffled his feet. “You positive your car’ll run, Tom? Looked pretty shot up to me.”
“It’ll get me into town, anyways. Go in with you right now, if you like.”
“No hurry. Prob’ly better if I go on ahead and clear things up with Bradley.”
Lord nodded. He held out his hand awkwardly. “I hardly know what to say, Buck. I—”
“Ai
n’t no need to say anything. After all, we’re friends, ain’t we?”
“You know it,” Lord said fervently. “If you hadn’t winged Red when you did—”
“Me?” said Buck. “That wasn’t my shot, Tom. Couldn’t get one in from where I was.”
“Yeah?” Lord frowned. “Then…Oh, yeah,” he said.
“Uh, it ain’t none of my business, Tom, but would you mind telling me somethin’?”
“Practically anything but my own name. I ain’t sure I remember it right off.”
“I mean, uh, about her. How come she seems right t’home here, when she was dead set on killin’ you?”
“I don’t know,” Lord sighed. “I guess I’m just unlucky.”
Buck drove away.
Lord stayed where he was, absently massaging his jaw—looking up into the night, as the slender moon fattened and grew full, and the stars pressed eagerly against the azure window of heaven.
Well, he thought. Well, what if she had saved his life? It was her fault, was it not, that his life had had to be saved. Except for her selfish attitude, her insistence that he ignore everything he lived by—
The door behind him opened suddenly. With very awkward suddenness, since he was leaning against it. As he pitched backward into the room, Donna caught him by the elbow and jerked him erect.
“Now, what are you doing?” she said severely. “Haven’t you had enough nonsense for one day?”
Lord pulled away from her. He said she was to get changed into her woman’s duds, and be quick about it.
“You’re gettin’ out of here,” he added. “I’m takin’ you into town tonight, and you ain’t comin’ back.”
“I see,” she said. “You have it all settled, do you?”
“Reckon I do, yes, ma’am. I just found out it was you that took care of Red out there, and maybe I ought to be grateful to you. But—”
He broke off as she turned and went over to the stove, began ladling stew into two plates. Placing them on the table, along with bread and butter, she sat down and began to eat.
Lord hesitated, fidgeted, and sat down across from her. “Now, looky,” he said. “I told you we was goin’ into town. We’re leavin’ right now.”