by Lauran Paine
Forsythe scarcely looked at Beal. He turned young Connelly’s gun over in his hand. He opened the gate, spun the cylinder, smelled the barrel end. He started to say something, but then paused. Very carefully he took the pistol to a lamp and held it up to his face as though to smell the barrel again. He did not move for a full sixty seconds. Then he walked over to an empty chair near the desk and dropped down into it, lifting his wide-open eyes to Case Hyle’s face.
“Good Lord. It can’t be what I’m thinking, can it?” he asked huskily.
Case reached up to push back his hat. “I don’t see how it can be anything else,” he replied.
Marshal Beal, alternating his glance from one of them to the other, did not say a word, although it was strongly in his face that he wished to.
Lieutenant Forsythe got up, went back to the table lamp, and made an even closer, more minute examination of young Connelly’s fired six-gun.
Beal’s office was deathly still. Beyond, in the balmy night, came a murmur of soldier voices. Upon a shelf behind Case a clock ticked rhythmically, and somewhere a long way off a dog bayed at the moon.
Lieutenant Forsythe looked up and across the lamp to Case Hyle. His expression was firmly settled now, knowing and troubled and solemn. He gently put down young Connelly’s handgun, drew forth a cigar from an inner pocket, and lighted it by bending to expose the tip over the lamp mantle. Pushing out a gust of smoke, he said to Case: “Who else knows?”
“No one.”
“Not the marshal here?”
“Not to my knowledge, he doesn’t.”
Beal said quickly: “Know what? What’s happening here, Lieutenant?”
Forsythe ignored this interruption to ask Case: “Didn’t you say anything about this to Albright?”
“No, I wasn’t sure. That’s why I let you figure it out for yourself. I wanted someone else to come to that same conclusion.”
“What?” Marshal Beal snapped loudly, demandingly. “What are you two talking about?”
“Murder,” answered Lieutenant Forsythe. “Marshal, we’re talking about the absolutely groundless murder of Albright’s cowboy, Will Johns.”
“How...groundless, Lieutenant?”
Forsythe removed his cigar to knock off ash. While doing this, and without looking at Beal, he said: “Are you satisfied this Charles Connelly killed Albright’s man? This Will Johns?”
“Yes,” answered Beal. “I’m satisfied he did.”
Forsythe looked over at Case, held his gaze steadily forward for a long time, then said: “You tell the marshal. You’re the one who saw through it first.”
Case faced Marshal Beal. “Connelly killed our rider for no reason at all, Marshal Beal. None of us shot his son.”
“All right, I believe that. But someone shot him, Mister Hyle.”
“That’s true, Marshal. But he shot himself!”
Conrad Beal froze. He blinked his eyes, looking stunned. Finally, he looked over at Lieutenant Forsythe, as though for confirmation of this statement. Forsythe, smoking his cigar, only nodded in agreement.
Marshal,” went on Case Hyle, “young Connelly was riding his horse hell-for-leather out in those swales...up one, down the other. His horse fell. He fell across young Connelly crushing his lower body. You know that. The horse has a broken leg. You can ascertain that yourself by going back out there and having a closer look. Charles Connelly could also have discovered that if he hadn’t been out of his head with grief. The horse threshed around. He had young Connelly pinned down. His wild threshing was agony for the boy. Young Connelly drew his six-gun and shot the horse in the back of the head. There are powder burns to prove that.”
“I saw the powder burns,” breathed Marshal Beal.
“Then young Connelly tried to get out from under his dead horse. He couldn’t do it. He discovered that his hips were broken. He may, or may not, have understood that he would never walk again...or ride, either.
“Anyway, the agony was more than he could bear. He put the six-gun to his own head and killed himself. He must have known he would more than likely lie out there hidden from sight in that swale indefinitely, in agonizing pain, only to die from his injuries.”
Case crossed to the table, took up young Connelly’s six-gun, went back, and handed it to Marshal Beal. “Look very closely at the front sight and you’ll see, amid the dirt, some horsehair and some tiny flecks of blood.”
But Beal did not take the weapon. Instead, he put out a steadying hand to his chair, dropped down, and said exactly the same thing Lieutenant Forsythe had said, and in the same shaken way.
“Good Lord!”
Chapter Sixteen
A hawk-faced cavalryman entered Marshal Beal’s office and threw Lieutenant Forsythe a rough salute. “We’ve got them cornered, sir,” this man reported. “One of them was trying to slip around us in the dark and go north out of the country. We had a cordon out...he rode right into it. This one’s unhurt. He told us where the other two were...at this fellow Connelly’s homestead getting fresh horses and some food. We rode there, sir, and threw out a surround. They’re still in the barn out there.”
“No mistake?” asked Forsythe, putting down his cigar.
The trooper grinned faintly, held up a perforated sleeve, and said: “No mistake, sir.”
Forsythe looked at Case and Marshal Beal. “Do you gentlemen wish to come along?” he said in a voice that was quiet and casual.
Case left Beal’s office with the officer. As they were getting astride beyond the hitch rail, and Forsythe was giving orders to the soldiers around him, Marshal Beal came out of his office.
He stood there in darkness with lamplight from his opened door silhouetting him from behind. Finally, Beal said: “Lieutenant, I had some men out there watching for Connelly.”
The same lanky trooper who had brought news of the surround, said: “With the lieutenant’s pardon, I can say to this man that we’ve got those fellows, too, sir.”
“Got them?” queried the officer.
“Yes, sir. We didn’t know who they were or whether or not they were friendly, so we put them all in a shed on the grounds there and stationed a guard.”
Forsythe smiled. “Come on, Marshal Beal, get your horse. You can tell us if those men are yours or not, and if they are, we’ll release them and you can send them home.”
Beal went after his horse.
Casually raising his arm, Forsythe spun away and went loping to the north out of town. At his side rode Case Hyle and farther back in squads of four rode the remainder of his cavalry troop. All along the side of the unlit roadway of Lansing’s Ferry, men stood like statues, watching this swift exodus. The last rider out of the village was Marshal Conrad Beal, spurring furiously along, trying to catch up.
* * * * *
Case led the way to Connelly’s homestead. A mile out he heard gunshots.
At that sound, Forsythe came up to Case, saying: “We’d better go the rest of the way on foot and in skirmish style.”
The command halted, orders were given, and at once several blue-uniformed men appeared to act as horse holders. They took the mounts beyond gun range.
Lieutenant Forsythe drew his revolver, stood close to Case, and said: “I’ll advance my men until we contact the other troopers. Then I’ll give Connelly a chance to surrender. I hope he doesn’t do it.”
Case turned to stare. He wanted to say something, but bit his tongue.
Forsythe shrugged. “Think it over,” he murmured. “Would you want it on your conscience that you’d killed an innocent man and that your only son was dead by his own hand. Or that you’d nearly killed another man, and that you attempted to stampede a herd of cattle through a camp with the intention of killing other innocent people. And you did all this because you were too hasty in your judgment? I wouldn’t, Mister Hyle. I wouldn’t want to spend the rest of my lif
e living with a thing like that.”
Case watched the officer stride forward, calling out orders that fanned out to the men in his command. An occasional shot came from the dark ahead, and then those dimly seen blue uniforms stepped cautiously and carefully onward.
Case moved with the soldiers, carbine in hand. He had progressed close enough to make out the buildings of Charles Connelly’s homestead, when a moving shape materialized at his side. It was Marshal Beal.
“Where’s the lieutenant?” he asked breathlessly.
Case pointed in the direction he’d last seen Forsythe. Beal did not move off at once, though. He continued on a little way with Case, commenting to him: “It’s unbelievable.”
Case settled his eyes on Beal. “Tell that to a young lad named Will Johns, Marshal. I think he’d have trouble agreeing with you.”
Where Beal split off to search for Lieutenant Forsythe, Case saw his first winking muzzle blast from the log barn. He kept watching this particular area, wondering which of the renegade settlers was behind that gun, whether he was inside the barn or outside it.
An increasing, flat smashing volley of Springfield carbine gunfire swelled up in the night where Forsythe’s men came together, joining with their companions who had maintained the surround. Then they pressed the attack forward and saturated the barn with lead until this deafening clamor reached such a crescendo that Charles Connelly, inside his barn, could not raise up long enough to fire back.
Then the firing stopped abruptly and Forsythe called out to offer Connelly and his companion the privilege of surrender. One solitary shot was Connelly’s reply to Forsythe.
Knowing instinctively Connelly himself had fired that bullet, Case halted to kneel upon the ground. He was certain now that Forsythe had gotten his wish. Charles Connelly was going to fight it out to the flaming end.
Case had no heart for this. It was in his mind that even in wartime he had never encountered a situation where guns and the men who used them were involved in a more pointless, more agonizingly futile fight. Death was in that yonder yard — not heroic or honorable death — only dirty, sordid, mean, and ignorant death.
He stayed on the ground, watching the fight’s progress. Maybe five minutes had passed when he saw a blurred shape emerge from the rear of the barn, throw down its carbine, and stand, tense and erect, with both arms high overhead. There was enough moonlight at that moment to make out this man’s grimy, thin, and beardless face. It was not Charles Connelly.
Once again orders were passed for the troopers to hold their fire. This time Forsythe’s youthful but hard voice directed the surrendering settler to walk away from the barn. This the settler did. When he passed close to the main house, several soldiers stepped out, grabbed him roughly, and faded from sight with their prisoner.
Now there remained only one man in that barn.
Case waited for the volley firing to resume, but it did not.
Instead, Forsythe called into the lull, saying: “Connelly, are you going to come out or not?”
“No!” came back the thundered answer.
“Connelly?”
“Yes.”
Forsythe did not answer at once. “Nothing!” he finally called out, biting this one word off. Then he shouted to his men: “Resume firing!”
Case, hearing this exchange and knowing how Forsythe felt, thought he understood why Forsythe had not completed that sentence. Forsythe knew now that Connelly would die in his own yard. He had almost told Connelly how thoroughly, tragically mistaken he had been in all that he’d done, but in the final moment Forsythe had desisted from telling Connelly this. Case could understand Forsythe’s gallant reason for this, and agree with it.
It occurred to Case, as the fight was resumed, that Charles Connelly could not hope to cover all the parts of his barn alone. He was wondering when Forsythe would send men to creep in close, when suddenly out in the night the sound of riders behind him, coming up in a stiff trot, made him swing hard around. Just as he did so, those riders stopped somewhere back in the darkness. Case, with a dim suspicion, got up and started walking toward the sound he had heard. Almost immediately he encountered Owen Wallace. They stopped to regard one another, then the swarthy rider came on.
“Slipped off when the guards were bedded down,” he said, and made a head wag. “If they’d been Rebs, instead of Yanks, we’d never have got clear.”
“Who’s with you?”
Owen twisted to look back. “Ben,” he said. “There he is.”
Ben Albright came up out of the night, stopped to throw a look at Case, before continuing on. The three of them stood quietly for a while, watching that one-sided fight ahead.
Then Ben said: “How did they catch him?”
Case, recognizing that this was said with none of the rancor he’d expected from Albright, recapped the events since leaving Lansing’s Ferry, detailing how Connelly had been run to earth.
Ben listened and nodded. “The other one’s dead?” he asked.
“One just surrendered. He’s with the soldiers. The other one gave himself up, too.”
“Only Connelly in that barn?”
“Yes.”
Ben stood for a moment without moving, then he said: “Hell, one settler against a whole company of soldiers.” He turned and started away, back toward his horse. Case heard him call out: “Ruben, bring those horses back up here!”
Owen Wallace started ahead, lifting and cocking his carbine.
Case said: “Stay out of it, Owen.”
Wallace turned. His face was sharp, his eyes bright and shiny. “Hyle, you’ve given me trouble a couple of times on this drive.” He swung the rifle butt savagely upward without another word. Case rolled with this strike, let it graze him, then stepped in, knocking the carbine aside and dropping Wallace with a straight arm punch. He was staring down when Ruben appeared, leading his own horse and one other animal. Ruben sighted Wallace at Case’s feet and emitted a quick bleat.
“Is he shot?” Ruben cried. “Is he hurt bad? Case, we got to get him....”
“I knocked him out,” Case growled, and strolled away, leaving Ruben looking after him, bewildered.
“Gosh darn,” snapped Ruben. “A man don’t know who is or who isn’t his enemy any more. Damn.” He knelt to pat Owen Wallace’s face to bring him around.
Far ahead, Case encountered Marshal Beal and a bedraggled little crowd of trudging settlers. Beal paused at the sight of Case. They exchanged a long, somber and understanding look, then Case left Beal, walking still closer to the barn.
At that moment, Charles Connelly made a wild rush out of the barn upon a horse. This was a sudden and unexpected attempt for freedom. One moment he was firing from within the barn, and the next moment he was flashing over that ghostly yard, spurring his straining animal madly and firing his handgun as swiftly as he could raise the hammer and tug the trigger.
For several seconds that seemed to Case more like an hour, only Connelly’s gun flashed and crashed. In those same seconds Case saw the big, bearded man’s twisted face, his moonlighted wild eyes, and his fully open mouth. Then, halfway across the yard, a ragged burst of gunfire dumped Connelly’s horse, leaving its rider afoot in a swelling bedlam of flashing weapons.
Connelly stood trading shots as long as his gun would fire. When he was out of bullets, he tried to throw the weapon, but it just fell from his hand as he went down with dust spouting in little bursts from his clothing.
Forsythe was yelling for his men to cease their firing when Case started forward. Silence came, and with it an uncertain, uneasy stillness around the yard. Case got all the way up to the fallen man where he knelt beside him before he detected the solid slap of other booted feet approaching.
Connelly was looking out of fierce but dimming eyes. Case reached for his right arm, which was splayed unnaturally, and placed it upon his chest. He surveyed Conn
elly’s body and saw where a dozen little dark, shiny spots were beginning to appear.
“You put up a good fight,” he told the dying man. “Now just lie easy, Connelly. It’s all over.”
Those fierce eyes, that upturned shaggy face with soft moonglow upon it, began to blur out, to soften away from its fierceness, to assume a peaceful expression. Case took Connelly’s left arm and crossed it over the right on his chest. A quiet, long sigh passed Connelly’s lips. Then he went still.
Someone standing behind Case struck a match, held it out, perhaps so the group could see the man with whom they had been in battle. But when Case looked up, he realized it was Lieutenant Forsythe, holding an unlit cigar tightly locked between his teeth, hesitating to light it.
As the match flamed out, Forsythe said: “End of the trail, Mister Hyle.” Then the lieutenant drew back to call out: “Sergeant Burke, have the horses brought up! Bring along my writing case, too.” He paused, then added: “Form up the company!”
Case got up, stepped over Connelly’s gun, and moved out into the benign night. He found his horse and was preparing to mount when Ben Albright appeared beside him, already mounted.
Albright waited until Case was astride, then he said: “I sent Owen and Ruben on ahead. You and I will ride back together.”
Case said nothing. He turned his horse toward the Trinchera, rode without looking around until he was at the side of the creek, where he waited for Ben to come up. He made a wan little grin before easing into the water, saying: “If I have to cross this creek one more time, I’ll have webbed feet.”
A mile farther on Ben came up to ride stirrup-to-stirrup. He looked troubled and uncomfortable. “Atlanta told me something you said to her, Case, and I believe it’s plumb right...about respecting an enemy who fights out of principle. Or something like that. Anyway, that was the idea behind it.”
“Ben, that war was over a long time ago,” Case stated.
“Yes, it was.”