by Lauran Paine
“He had a brother a gunfighter, from what I been told. His brother’s out there somewhere,” Jacob indicated out there with a vague arm wave. “He’s got his neck all bowed and there’s blood in his eye.”
“Hasn’t anyone tried to stop him?”
Jacob blinked. “How?” he asked simply.
“Well,” the girl said matter-of-factly, “get up a posse, go out and get him.”
Jacob pursed his lips and nodded his head as he reached for the basket Kathy had brought him, peered under the checkered napkin, took out a crockery bowl and a spoon, and put them carefully down.
Then he said: “Honey, it isn’t likely for a woman to think like a man. Particularly a real pretty woman.” He smiled indulgently at his granddaughter and returned to rummaging the basket.
“What has that to do with it?” Kathy demanded.
Still indulgently, old Jacob said: “A posse rides out, like you suggest, and this lobo wolf up in the foothills watches it ride out. Then he rides down here.”
“Leave men to guard the town.”
Jacob’s patience was getting a little thin. “That wouldn’t do any good, honey. This man’s a loner. You can run yourself ragged hunting his kind but you never find ’em unless they want you to.”
“So you’re just going to sit here and let him—”
“Kathy!”
A dark shape loomed in the doorway. Jacob’s eyes were upon the stranger. Kathy turned, too, also looking. Neither of them knew this man, who was obviously a range rider. He moved with the easy grace of a fully poised person. He nodded to them both but said nothing until he was close to the work bench, then, in deference to Kathy, he removed his hat. When he struck it against his leg, dust flew outward, gray and fine, like powder.
“I’d like a little information,” the tall stranger said, his voice softly deep and compelling. Then he paused, for old Jacob’s seamed face had gone shades paler than usual.
“What kind of information, stranger?”
The tall man smiled disarmingly. At his hip rode a six-gun that was lashed down and whose original bluing had long since been worn away. The gun, however, had a handsomely carved walnut handle, and it showed care.
“I’d like to know where I might find a man named Arthur Hobart.”
“Hobart?” Jacob said dumbly, staring at this big man’s rugged countenance.
“Yes, Hobart.”
A faint frown mantled the stranger’s features. He returned Jacob’s scrutiny with something close to puzzlement in his eyes.
“Well I just don’t rightly know,” Jacob said hesitantly, his voice fading. “Maybe out at his ranch ”
“He’s here in Gunsight,” the tall man corrected the old saddle maker. “What I want to know is where he usually hangs out when he comes to town.”
“You’re sure he’s here in town?”
“Plumb sure,” replied the stranger. Then, fully frowning now, he said, in an altered, roughened tone: “What’s bothering you, old-timer did I say something I shouldn’t have?”
“No,” answered up Jacob swiftly. “No, you didn’t say anything wrong.”
Now Kathy spoke, diverting the stranger’s attention from her grandfather.
“Mister Hobart and his riders usually spend their time here in town at the Cross Timbers Saloon. It’s the last building at the north end of town.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” the tall man said, his gaze softening toward her. He hesitated the smallest part of a minute before beginning to turn away.
Kathy took advantage of his visible admiration to ask a question.
“What is your name?”
Old Jacob stiffened, not so much because he thought he already knew the answer and it frightened him, but because Kathy knew better than to ask strangers personal questions.
“Ben Knight,” said the stranger, his eyes turning soft again as they lingered on her. Then he smiled, which made his otherwise impassive face quite handsome. “What’s yours, ma’am?”
Kathy flushed, and yet, because she had challenged him, and he therefore had the right to do the same to her, she said: “Katherine Howell.” Then, to divert his gaze, she added: “This is my grandfather, Jacob Howell.”
Knight nodded at Jacob, who nodded back. He returned his smoky gaze to the girl, saying: “Thank you again.” He began, for the second time, to head for the door, and again Kathy stopped him with words.
“Mister Knight, aren’t you aware the people of Gunsight know who you are and why you’re here?”
The gray gaze hardened just the slightest bit toward Jacob’s lovely granddaughter as Ben Knight turned fully around to face her. “I reckon by now they do,” he said. “Is there anything wrong in that, Miss Howell?”
Kathy hung fire just a second over her reply. When next she spoke, the conviction in her voice was less than before. “Well, but those men should be brought to trial not just shot down for revenge.”
Knight looked thoughtfully downward into Kathy’s violet eyes. He appeared to be very solemn now. “Who is going to bring them in, ma’am? They tell me you’ve got no law here now that the same men who lynched my brother murdered your sheriff.”
“But, Mister Knight, that doesn’t mean we can’t get law here. And it doesn’t mean you can just go find these men and shoot them down.”
Again, Knight’s answer was moments coming. He made a small smile at her, before saying: “So far, I’m not having too much luck even finding them. I figured maybe this Arthur Hobart might help me there.”
For the first time Jacob Howell spoke up. “Not Hobart,” he told Knight. “He hates this town. He said he’d burn it to the ground. It was because of his saying he was going to send for a gunfighter to come here and take Gunsight over, that folks hung your brother, Mister Knight. The lad was the only stranger to ride in after Hobart said that.” Jacob leaned upon the work bench. “If you go to Hobart, folks will naturally think you’re on his side against the town, and it’ll likely start the feuding all over again. Besides that, Hobart will tell you any names he wants to. But I don’t think he knows any more about the murderers of your brother than anyone else does.”
Jacob stopped talking and drew in a big breath. He fixed Knight with a supplicating stare and concluded with: “Right now you aren’t going to get much sense out of anyone hereabouts, especially not after sending that message to the town council. Folks are too upset.”
Ben Knight looked away from Kathy. He stared into Jacob’s face.
“What message?” Knight asked.
Jacob’s shoulders slumped. He returned the tall man’s look over an interval of thoughtful silence, then he softly said: “I’ll be damned. Doc Parmenter was right.”
“Grandfather ?” Kathy said, confused by the odd look on her grandfather’s face.
“Quiet, Kathy,” Jacob said in an uncommonly dismissive way. He remained thoughtful for a number of minutes, and then he said to Ben Knight: “Hobart come to town this morning, saying you’d sent word for Gunsight to find your brother’s murderers and drive ’em out of town by sunset or else.”
Knight’s dark brows drew inward and downward. “Go on,” he quietly said. “What’s the rest of it?”
Jacob made a gesture with his hands. “The town’s waiting. It’s just doing nothing but nervously watching the sun go down.” Jacob’s hands fell back to the work bench and remained there. “About two hours ago, Hobart and some of his Diamond H riders come to town. They’re down at the Cross Timbers Saloon. They’re just waiting like everybody else.”
Ben Knight moved over to the work bench and leaned there, saying nothing, just staring at old Jacob. After a while he took his tobacco sack from a shirt pocket and deliberately twisted up a cigarette. Both Jacob and Kathy watched him light up, inhale, exhale, then twist to throw a reflective look outward through the front window to the empty roadway beyond.
When Kathy could scarcely tolerate the stillness any longer, Ben Knight faced back around looking straight into Jacob’s eyes.
“I met some Diamond H riders this morning near the foothills. I asked a few questions, figuring they might know something about my brother’s murderers. I sent no message to Gunsight by them or anyone else.”
Jacob related what Doc Parmenter had told him earlier. To this Ben Knight replied musingly that he thought Parmenter must be right, that Hobart planned something for which he would need a victim. Then Knight drew up off the work bench and smiled at Jacob. It was not a pleasant smile at all.
“I guess I have to go and see this Hobart after all,” he said. “Only now for a different reason.” He swung around, looked squarely into Kathy’s face, but, still speaking to Jacob, asked: “Who bought the last lariat you sold in here?”
Jacob, behind the tall man’s back, gave a start. “Colt Balfrey,” he answered, scarcely speaking loud enough to be heard.
“Thanks,” said Knight, and then he left the saddle shop.
“Grandfather ?”
“Not right now, honey,” Jacob said distractedly.
“You’d better drink some of the coffee I brought,” Kathy advised.
Then she busied herself at the work bench. When she had the cup of coffee prepared, she lifted it and tried to hand it to him.
Old Jacob was looking through the window and out into the shadowed roadway. “You know what I just done, Kathy?” he asked.
“No. Here drink this while it’s hot.”
“I just killed a man.”
Kathy’s eyes sprang wide. She gently lowered the cup, set it aside, saying as she did so: “What do you mean?”
“I just killed a man, honey.” Jacob turned slowly to meet her gaze. “He asked who bought the last lariat in here. Don’t you see?”
“No, I don’t see.”
“His brother was hung with a lariat. The man who owned it bought a replacement.”
“Oh,” Kathy said a little above a whisper, her lips making an oval, the sound of this expression itself a sort of soft sigh. She understood.
“Why didn’t I figure that out, too?” asked old Jacob.
He got no answer.
Kathy crossed to the doorway and stood there looking northward into the late afternoon.
Chapter Seven
Across the road and striding north toward the Cross Timbers Saloon was Ben Knight. He was the only visible person the length of Gunsight’s main street. He walked with that unique confidence that set him apart from other men. Even knowing, as he did, that a dozen or more eyes were discreetly observing his passing, he strode along easily, glancing neither right nor left.
At Blakely’s Emporium he sighted a white and startled face standing back from the entrance. Then he was past, the face was gone, and ahead loomed a listing old picket fence that had once been whitewashed, but which now was the color of bleached bones. Here, he also thought a pair of grave eyes might be watching, and he was correct. Doc Parmenter, hidden by the curtains of his parlor—his pipe cold between his lips and his hands clasped behind him—was staring out. He too saw Ben Knight go past.
The Cross Timbers Saloon was an older log building. Not as old as Jacob’s saddle shop, but still older than most of Gunsight’s buildings. Morgan Hyatt, who had founded the Cross Timbers, was a Texan. He had come north with a trail herd some sixteen years earlier, and he had stayed. In those former times he had been a lean-hipped, heavy-armed, and burly-shouldered man. But sixteen years without appreciable exercise had given his once powerful body a noticeable sag and bulge. Still, Morgan Hyatt was a man to reckon with. It was said in the Gunsight country there was no man who could pin his shoulders to the floor in a free-for-all.
Another thing about Morgan—he had been born, weaned, and matured in the cowman’s world. Although he was himself a confirmed townsman, he did not consider himself one. In the feud between Diamond H and the town, he had sympathized with Diamond H. And it was for this reason that Arthur Hobart patronized the Cross Timbers, and of course, since Hobart did this, so also did his riders.
It was Morgan, leaning upon the bar now, his paunch pressing strongly forward as he spoke with Arthur Hobart, who, glancing over the cowman’s shoulder, saw the tall stranger push in out of the slanting afternoon sunlight and pace evenly forward toward the bar. Like Jacob Howell, Morgan Hyatt had an icy premonition. He drew gradually up off the bar, his countenance going cautious.
“Help you?” he inquired of the stranger.
Ben Knight made no reply. He looked from Arthur Hobart to the riders ranged along the bar beside him. One of these men he recognized as being a member of the cow-camp crew he’d spoken with earlier in the day. He addressed himself to this man, but there was no doubt as to whom he was actually speaking.
“When we met this morning,” Knight said to the cowboy without preliminaries, “I asked you a few questions about a lynching. Is that right?”
“That’s right,” agreed the rider, puzzled.
“Did I say anything about Gunsight?”
“No.”
“Or did I make any threats?”
“Threats? No, I don’t recollect no threats.”
Knight moved his eyes for a fraction of a second. They settled upon Arthur Hobart’s hawklike, dark, and bleak features.
“I don’t like men putting words into my mouth, mister,” he said, in a very quiet way. “You’re Hobart, aren’t you?”
“I’m Arthur Hobart. Who the hell are you and what are you talking about?”
“About a message you said I sent to the folks in this town, Hobart. My name is Ben Knight.”
The room became tomb-like. No one moved anything but their eyes. Not a word was spoken for a long time.
Then Arthur Hobart twisted to face Knight, saying: “Mister, you got a lot of guts coming in here like this.”
“Enough,” Knight said, watching dark color stain Hobart’s face. “If you want to call me out go ahead.”
Morgan Hyatt, watching Knight’s unblinking gaze, read death there. He inched back as far as he could behind the bar, then he said: “Listen, Mister Knight, you’re biting off a pretty big bite. These other fellows work for Mister Hobart.”
“Thanks,” said Ben Knight shortly. “I’d already figured that.”
“Then,” said Arthur Hobart, “maybe you’d better just turn around, tuck your tail, and get the hell out of here.”
“You’re kind of stupid,” Knight said in reply. “I counted the horses hitched to the rack outside. Five of ’em. They all have your Diamond H mark on ’em. I knew how many men you had with you, Hobart, when I came in here.”
This left the motionless men in the saloon to draw an obvious conclusion—knowing the odds he faced, Ben Knight had still come in. This meant he was either the biggest fool in the world—or confident he could down four men in a shootout. Either way, Morgan Hyatt and the few other disinterested spectators thought Knight was dangerous.
For a moment there was no sound in the Cross Timbers. Outside, in the southward distance, a dog barked and a horse whinnied. Reddening sunlight struck the saloon’s front wall, puddling upon the scuffed floor where it passed across a window sill.
“You better leave,” Hobart said, eyes drawn out narrow, uncompromising mouth flattened. “You don’t stand the chance of a snowball in hell.”
Knight shifted his weight and he spread both legs slightly, standing clear of the bar. “I think I do,” he answered. “It’s you who’s in my line of fire, Hobart. You’ll be the first to go down. If your boys get me afterward”—Knight shrugged—“you won’t know about it.”
This was obvious to everyone. Arthur Hobart stood less than fifteen feet from Ben Knight. Behind him were his Diamond H riders.
Hobart also understood this, and he knew, as fast as he was with a
handgun, this tall, self-assured man before him was faster. Hobart knew this instinctively, but he also knew it factually. He was balancing upon the brink of his grave.
“All right,” he said. “What is it you want?”
“I want you to tell the men in this room that message you said I sent to Gunsight was a lie.”
“What message?”
“Don’t stall with me,” said Knight. “I’ll kill you, Hobart, as sure as you’re standing there.”
“I won’t draw against you,” the owner of the Diamond H Ranch said.
Knight’s hard stare turned slightly ironic. To the men behind Hobart, he said: “How do you fellows like working for a coward? You saw it with your own eyes and you heard him, too. Let me tell you something a man who won’t defend himself, sure won’t defend you, either, if you get into trouble. Remember that, boys.”
Behind the bar Morgan Hyatt was staring incredulously at Arthur Hobart. So were other men in the saloon, and Hobart also knew this. Humiliation made his face flame, but otherwise he continued to stand motionless, staring.
Knight said again: “Tell the men in this room there was no message, Hobart. Tell them you made it up.”
“I think,” the cowman said, speaking very slowly now, as though he was thinking ahead to something else, “you’d better convince my riders of that, Knight. They believe you sent the message. So do the rest of the folks hereabouts.”
Knight considered Hobart’s face for a long time before he spoke again. Then, speaking to Hobart’s Diamond H riders once more, he said: “You hear him? You can guess the truth now. He’s got something else cooked up and you boys that he brought to town are to be part of it. Well, remember that this man will not help you if—”
“Knight!”
It was Morgan Hyatt who had yelled the warning.
Arthur Hobart’s ruse had worked. He needed an edge, he felt, to draw against the taller man. He had diverted Knight long enough to get it. Hobart was going for his gun, his talon-like fingers a blur downward.
There came a deafening explosion.