by Bill Dugan
When he saw nothing, he listened for some disturbance of the grass. Under the constant ebb and flow of the wind, the blades scraped against one another, the rattle of millions of tiny swords. He heard nothing for a long time, but refused to believe there was no one there. Whoever had tried so hard to kill him would not have abruptly abandoned the attack without even a single shot fired in reply. The gunman had to be out there.
He heard the bay nicker, once, then again. He swiveled his head, but couldn’t see his mount. Backing on his hands and knees, he moved into the trees again and got warily to his feet.
The horse nickered again, but he still couldn’t see it. Sprinting through the trees, he heard footsteps for a second, stopped, and heard them vanish. They were not his own. He was convinced of that. Racing again toward his mount, he broke into a small clearing. Morgan caught a glimpse of the bay and, when he angled to the right, beyond the horse, the head and shoulders of a retreating figure.
The hat was a nondescript gray Stetson, and he tried to remember what Kinkaid had been wearing. He remembered the marshal’s hat was light, but wasn’t sure it was the same color. He heard a horse whinny, then hoofbeats as he charged on toward the bay. When he reached the horse, he shouted in rage. His saddle lay on the ground, the cinch neatly sliced through.
Sprinting toward the sound of the hoofbeats, he reached the far edge of the grove in time to see a horse and rider reach the crest of the hill. He still didn’t get a good enough look when the man broke over the hill and down out of sight. The horseman, presumably the same man who had fired on him, was wearing a shirt but no jacket. He’d never seen Kinkaid without one. That morning, he had been wearing a shiny black coat over a blue shirt. The fleeing man’s shirt was also blue, but blue shirts were a dime a dozen.
He hadn’t seen enough to be sure of anything. In his heart he wanted to believe it was Kinkaid, but he knew that was only because he didn’t want to live with yet another uncertainty dogging his footsteps. Kinkaid’s machinations he could live with, if he had to, and guard against because he knew the source.
But if there was another man who wanted him dead, a man he didn’t know, perhaps had never seen, then he wasn’t safe from anyone but Kinkaid. You can’t guard against assault from a shadow, you can’t protect yourself from being shot in the back by any man who might just happen to be behind you.
Cursing aloud, his voice getting bolder and more furious as he stomped toward the bay, he raged until he felt his voice crack, his throat grow raw. Panting, he sat down with his back against a cottonwood, kicked out at the useless saddle, and shook his head in complete frustration.
He cradled the Winchester across his knees, then remembering he’d tossed his hat aside, he got up to find it. Making his way back toward the edge of the grove, he heard rapid hoofbeats approaching. Morgan hunkered down behind a clump of laurel. The hoofbeats slowed, then stopped.
He could hear a voice shouting, but he couldn’t make out the words. He levered a shell into the chamber of the Winchester and held his breath. The hoofbeats had come from the opposite direction, so it couldn’t have been the man he’d seen riding away. Maybe he’d been right after all. Maybe there had been two men.
The voice was drifting away now, and he heard the uncertainty in it. The newcomer was drifting along the front of the grove, moving away from him. Cutting back through the brush, he tried to close the gap. If the man was moving cautiously enough, he might be able to slip up behind him. With the element of surprise, he might not have to shoot.
Again, the voice shouted, but he still couldn’t make out the words. Morgan moved out past the trees and sprinted through the grass. He could see the top of a hat now, and he crossed his fingers. He was a hundred and fifty yards away, maybe a little more, but the gap was narrowing. The man on horseback was paying more attention to his search than to the possibility that someone might be hunting him. Either dumb or careless. Maybe both.
But you never threw away a break like that. Not when your life depended on it. And there was no doubt in Morgan’s mind that was the case.
He could see the man’s shoulders now, and something about the shirt looked familiar. Not Kinkaid, he was sure of that. But who, then?
The man shouted again, then stood in the stirrups, his hands cupped around his mouth as he shouted once more.
Morgan charged ahead. The man must have heard something because he started to turn. Morgan had closed to under a hundred yards as the man’s horse kicked sidewise, cantering downhill a few yards, and the horseman sat down after almost falling from his mount.
At fifty yards, Morgan stopped. It was something about the man, the set of his shoulders from behind. And that shirt. Then the man yelled again. And this time Morgan could understand it. “Dad . . . ? Dad . . . ?”
It was Tom.
What the hell was he doing out here?
“Tom,” Morgan shouted.
Startled out of his wits, Tom turned, his mouth a huge, vacant “O” of surprise.
“What the hell are you doing?”
Tom climbed out of the saddle. “Are you alright?” he asked. “I was out hunting, and I heard gunshots. I thought maybe that man . . . Mother told me about him, the marshal, and I thought . . .”
“I’m alright.”
“Somebody just tried to kill you, didn’t he?”
Morgan nodded. “Looks like. Did a job on my saddle, too, to make sure I couldn’t catch up with him, once he realized he wasn’t going to get me.”
“Who was it?”
“I don’t know, Tom.”
“Is this what it’s like?”
“ ’Fraid so.”
“And that’s why you left.”
Morgan didn’t answer. He didn’t have to, because it wasn’t really a question.
Chapter 16
MONDAYS WERE ALWAYS busy at Lyle Henessey’s store. People took Sundays off. Part of the time they spent in church. The rest of it, they spent realizing what they were short on or just plain out of. Everybody had the same idea. Get there early to get the best pick. And when the Monday in question was the first Monday of the month, the rush paled only in comparison to ’forty-nine.
Moving freight across half a continent tended to brutalize it just a little. Nails got a little rusty. Soap turned a bit rancid. The knives got dull and the bullets tended to run a yard or two short or high and to the left. Nothing, it seemed, was as hardy as the people themselves. And when you had one store to shop in, you damn sure wanted to get the pick of a decidedly uncertain litter.
By ten o’clock, Henessey was breathing heavily, as much draped across his counter as leaning on it. Morgan was younger, but he was less experienced. It was doubly hard on him, and left him little more than a limp copy of his employer. The pace started to slacken around eleven, and at eleven-thirty, Henessey felt reasonably sure of a lull to wander off for a beer and fresh rainbow trout at The Hangin’ Tree Hotel’s restaurant.
As he walked out the door, he told Morgan he’d be back by twelve-thirty, when it would be his turn for lunch. It sounded more like wishful thinking than a promise he had any chance of keeping. As the customer traffic diminished still further, Morgan was starting to pace himself, saving what little energy he had left to chew his noon meal.
It was ten after twelve before the store was devoid of customers for the first time since Henessey had turned the key in the lock at seven o’clock.
Morgan dropped into a rough chair crudely fashioned from a nail keg and four two-by-fours. It wasn’t comfortable, but it held him up and for that he was as grateful as he had the energy to be.
His eyes were starting to droop. He felt like he hadn’t slept in a week. Most people bought in bulk, and that meant hefting most things by the sack or the barrel. He was only dimly aware that the tinkling bell was someone opening the door. He felt a little puff of hot air blowing in from the street. He knew he should open his eyes, but he was too damned tired to care.
He thought it might be Lyle, and started t
o open his eyes, or at least struggle to keep them from slamming shut like a pair of matching mausoleums. He felt a hand on his shoulder then, and turned his head in slow motion.
It wasn’t Lyle. It was Tom.
“Dad,” he said. The word sounded strange on his lips, and it was plain that he was just as aware of the novelty as Morgan was.
Bolting upright, Morgan rubbed his tired eyes. “Tom, what are you doing here?”
Tom popped a folded piece of paper from his shirt pocket. Morgan looked at him more closely, forcing his eyes artificially wide, trying to look alert and in command. He noticed the sweat stains down the center of Tom’s shirt, the dark semicircles under each arm. “Hot out there,” he said.
Tom nodded, then flicked the paper with a thumbnail. “Supply day,” he said.
“How come so late? Most of the people around here seem to get up in time to watch creation.”
“Yeah, well, it’s a small place, but the workload isn’t. I had a few things to do. Mom wanted to come herself, but I thought I ought to.”
“You didn’t tell her about what happened yesterday, did you?”
“No. I had to tell her why you needed the spare saddle, so I made something up. I think she bought it, but I’m not sure.”
“What’d you tell her? I don’t want to give it away, in case the subject comes up.”
“Told her a stirrup broke.”
“She didn’t ask how come I couldn’t ride with just one?”
“Didn’t give her a chance to.”
“Well, listen, don’t go getting any fool notions, now. We don’t know what happened, not really. Not either one of us.”
“You don’t, maybe, but I got a pretty good idea.”
“Yeah, how’s that?”
“I went to school with Deak Slayton’s brother Tyler. Seems like if you put two and two together, you come up with Kinkaid. I do, anyhow.”
Morgan nodded. “Me too, but I don’t think I can do anything with it. Or about it.”
“I know.” Tom fell silent. He stared at the shopping list, looked around the store for a couple of small items, and, when he spotted them, brought them back to the counter. There was something on his mind, but Morgan was going to stand back and let him get to it in his own way. When he was ready. There was no percentage in pressing too hard. It seemed like the less pressure Morgan brought to bear, the better his results were likely to be.
When it was no longer possible to delay, Tom sat down on the counter, kicking his boots against the front panel like an anxious four-year-old. The drumming sound of his heels on the hollow front was the only sound in the store for a long moment. “See,” Tom finally said.
Morgan waited.
When Tom didn’t go any further, he asked, “See what?”
“I been thinking.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. I wasn’t exactly fair to you when you first got here. I . . .”
“Don’t worry about it, Tom. It’s not . . .”
“No, let me finish. I messed it up and I got to set it right. The best way I know how.” He looked at his father through hooded eyes. “We got a lot of catching up to do, just like you said. I almost didn’t give you the chance, but that’s all finished with. I don’t want to see anything get in the way, now. Or anybody.”
“Son, there’s nothing you can do about it.”
“There should be.”
“You’re right. There should be, but there isn’t. See, ordinarily, when something like this happens, you can go one of two ways. You can go to your gun and handle it yourself, or you can go to the law, which anyway is almost the same thing, because the law isn’t really much more than a better gun than you can shoot yourself. But where do you go when the law is the problem, rather than the solution?”
“It isn’t fair, though.”
“Life isn’t fair. Wait a minute, I take that back. That’s too damn easy. Sometimes we make it impossible for life to be fair. The things we do, they ripple, and you can’t control that. You throw a rock in the water, there’s gonna be some ripples. You throw two or three or four in, all those ripples interfere with one another, they connect up in funny ways, they change each other, and those changes change things somewhere when they collide. What I did, Tom, and there’s no two ways about it, I threw a whole damn pocketful of rocks into the pond. All I can do now is wait until the water settles down again.”
“But that was so long ago.”
“Sure, it was a long time ago. But that doesn’t make any difference. All those ripples are still out there spreading further and further. I can’t even see ’em anymore. But I know they’re there. And I know that Brett Kinkaid is just one of ’em. And maybe not the worst. The thing that sticks in my craw is that that’s all he is, a goddamned ripple. And I made it myself. I made Brett Kinkaid. It’s my fault, no two ways about it.”
“Still . . .”
The bell tinkled again before Tom could finish his objection. Morgan looked up, but he didn’t really have to. He knew who it would be.
He wasn’t wrong.
“How’s the storekeeper today,” Kinkaid asked. He laughed, a phlegmy sound more like something was caught in his throat than an expression of amusement. “You gonna lose your hand and your eye, you keep pushing pins and flour, Morgan. That’s no way for a man like you to earn a living.”
“It’ll do,” Atwater said.
“Oh, Morgan, Morgan, you’re selling yourself short, that’s what you’re selling. What’s the matter with you, lost your nerve?”
Morgan took a deep breath. “You need something, Marshal?”
“Surely do, Morgan. I surely do. Need me some more of them Remington Arms .45s. Hope you got some in stock. See, I been practicing a whole lot. My hand’s got blisters on it, I been practicing so much.”
“Maybe you ought to find some other way to enforce the law, Mr. Kinkaid.”
“Now, see, that’s where you’re wrong, Morgan. There is no other way to enforce the law. Cowpokes and hard cases, they don’t understand no other way. You ought to know that. Or has it been so long that you can’t even remember what it was like?”
“I remember.”
“Do you, now? Do you remember that last few seconds, just before you draw your gun? Remember that funny feeling on the back of your neck? Hell, I can feel the hair on my arms rise up. Almost like I could count ’em. I hear my heart beating in my ears. Ba-boom. Ba-boom. And you notice things about the other guy, too. You see his eyes get real wide. Sometimes, an eye jumps a little, a little throbbing thing is there in one cheek, like a chick peckin’ at a shell, maybe. But I see it all real plain.”
“You’re welcome to see whatever the hell you want.” Morgan slapped a box of shells on the counter. “Dollar fifteen,” he said.
“Can I run a tab, Morgan? Seems like I use so many of these things, I just might be keepin’ Henessey afloat.” He picked up the box of bullets and hefted it, like a man appraising a large jewel he suspects might be flawed in some way, but which is so large he can’t refuse to admire it.
“You’ll have to talk to Mr. Henessey about that.”
“What if I just stick this here box in my pocket and walk out? What would you do then, Morgan? Call the marshal?” He laughed that same strangled laugh.
“I guess Mr. Henessey would have your pay attached.”
“Would he do that to me?”
It was Morgan’s turn to laugh. “I can’t think of any reason why not, Mr. Kinkaid. Deadbeats generally get what’s coming to them. Even in Cross Creek.”
“Oh, yes, Morgan. All sorts of folks get what’s, coming to them. Especially in Cross Creek. You can bank on that.” He fished the money out of his pocket and slapped it on the counter. “You surely can.”
He finally turned to Tom. “This must be your boy,” he said. “He kinda favors you.”
Morgan didn’t respond, and Tom stared blankly at the marshal, his face flat as a shovel, and just as steely.
“Nice family you got,
Morgan. Pretty little lady, the missus is. You tell her I said hello again, would you?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Just being friendly, is all. A man’s got to be friendly with his neighbors. Especially when he knows he gonna be seein’ a lot of them.”
“You finished, or can I get you something else, Kinkaid?”
“Finished? Why, no, Morgan, I’m not. Hardly begun, to tell the truth.” He tucked the box of ammunition in his pocket, then tapped it through the cloth. “Don’t run out of these, now.” He nodded at Tom, flipped Morgan that same snotty salute, and walked out.
Tom stared at his father, but he didn’t know what to say.
“Forget it, Tom,” Morgan said. “He’s all smoke.”
“Gunsmoke, maybe.”
Chapter 17
“I’LL BE BACK in a while, Dad.” He walked across the street and Morgan watched him go. Each time he lost sight of Tom, it was like losing him all over again. He was sensitive, maybe too sensitive, to how much of his life had been spent without the boy and, worse, how much of the boy’s life had been spent without him.
To himself, he whispered, “I’ve got to stop thinking of him as a boy. Katie was right. He’s all grown up. He can’t ever really be my son, but I hope he can become my friend.”
When Tom stepped through the door of the dry goods shop across the street, it was as if he had turned a page in a book. One chapter had ended and the next had not yet begun. He stared after the dim, open space where Tom had been a few seconds before. He couldn’t decide whether he was looking at a new void in his life or the return of that emptiness that had been there for so long. He rubbed his lips with one hand, then turned back to his work.
Packing Tom’s order, he kept thinking about Brett Kinkaid. He had to find some way to close that particular book altogether. He didn’t want to run, had done enough running, really. He knew that what he had been running from was not so much his past as it was himself. No way in hell he could outrun that particular fury. What he had to do was to become someone else entirely, change himself so completely that he would seem to be someone else not only to others but to the man who stared into his shaving mirror every morning.