by Lauran Paine
Bannion worked clear of the bois d’arc thicket and saw Al King off in the hazy distance. Slowly he eased out in the identical direction, not really caring now whether he was seen or not. He did not ride fast.
He arrived back at Perdition Wells with the dying day’s sun turning its increasing red light over the town near to suppertime, giving those bleached and warped buildings a benign and hospitable appearance that they did not really possess at all.
He put up his animal and crossed to the Shafter Café for supper—in the cow country supper was the last meal of the day while dinner was the noon meal. Being a bachelor, Doyle Bannion was a steady customer at this café—the cleanest in town, which actually wasn’t saying a whole lot—but also like a bachelor, he ate to keep body and soul united. There was no other reason to eat. Restaurant food being palatable to the starving, the needy, and the unattached, it was never more than an expedient to the discerning. Bannion, the single man, could lay no claim to discernment in this matter, nor did he.
He walked inside, nodded to several men at a table on his left, went to the counter, and sat down, at the same time pushing back his hat and looking around. His gaze crossed the steady regard of the King brothers at a table. He nodded, they nodded, and Bannion settled around calling for fried steak, a side order of Sonora onions, black coffee, and apple pie. He did not feel particularly elated, but he did feel that he was beginning to get his teeth into the dilemma of Colonel King’s sons, and John Rockland’s Texas Star outfit. Of one thing he was now certain. Al King had been sent to locate Dale McAfee for simply one reason. He had located him and now the four men from west Texas would saddle up and ride out to do what they felt they had to do.
Bannion had observed how those four men operated and he also understood their complete fearlessness. Finally, he knew they wasted no time, were minimal and sparing in movement and speech. These were the facets that enabled him now to enjoy the first meal he’d sat down to since they’d ridden into Perdition Wells the night before, because he could assess the actions and reactions of these big men, and he could accordingly plan his own actions.
Both in the café and later, out upon the walkways when he was making his routine rounds, it was clear to Bannion that the townspeople of Perdition Wells had viewed the rebuff of John Rockland as some kind of a crisis, some kind of a challenge to the established order of existence. While he knew perfectly well that Rockland had many enemies in town because of his personal aloofness and the swaggering boldness of the Texas Star men, they still preferred these known things to the unknown things represented by the four King brothers.
Bannion was accosted for his views, for his reasons for not running the Kings out of Perdition Wells, and, by those who secretly hoped Rockland’s fall was imminent, for his proposed course of action in the face of this fresh support for Rockland’s enemies.
Bannion’s answers were usually the same. He could not, according to law, do anything until an infraction of the law had actually been committed, but he did not mean to stand by and see a war start here, either. About how he thought he might prevent this, Bannion said nothing because he did not know himself how he could prevent it. All he knew—and he kept this strictly to himself—was that he knew John Rockland, and he was beginning to know the King brothers. These things were in his favor if nothing else seemed to be. But Doyle Bannion was no coward. He would move and move hard, when he thought it was time to do so.
Chapter Five
Only fools duplicate their mistakes. Bannion loafed in town until sunset came and went. He visited the Union Eagle, saw the King brothers there having a casual drink, and went at once to the livery barn, saddled up, and rode out of town through back alleyways. A mile on, Bannion dismounted, pressed his ear to the ground—to make certain he was not being followed—and rode the balance of the way to John Rockland’s house in a loose lope.
Across from Rockland’s handsome wood house, faint orange light showed at the Texas Star bunkhouse. Bannion saw a shadow pass behind a window there and was turning to tie his mount at the stud post, when out of the porch shadows a white blur of movement came toward him. Bannion drew upright, wondering whether this was Rockland’s wife or daughter. He knew them both. They were very handsome women of the long-legged, high-breasted Southern breed.
It was Judith, the daughter. She stopped near Bannion with star shine lying like dull gold upon her blonde hair, with her gun-metal gray eyes steady, and her beautiful face very solemn.
“Good evening, Sheriff,” she said. “My father hasn’t returned from the range yet. He rode out to the holding ground this afternoon. There’s going to be a drive soon, to rail’s end.”
“Hello, Miss Judy,” Bannion responded, and smiled, gaining a little time to adjust his thoughts to what suddenly had become a crisis. He had come here to induce Rockland to bring McAfee in from the holding grounds and keep him at the ranch for a couple of days.
“Sorry your paw isn’t here. I wanted to talk to him.”
“Talk to me, Sheriff,” said the lovely girl, keeping that disconcertingly level gaze upon Bannion. “I heard what happened in town this morning. Old Rufus got it from the men and told me.”
“Rufus,” Bannion said, still half smiling, “is an inveterate old gossip.”
“But an accurate one, Sheriff.”
Rufus Paige was Texas Star’s ranch cook. He’d broken both legs under a falling horse years before, and with the advent of age the stiffness resulting from this injury had reduced him from a range rider to chore man, and finally to ranch cook. Rufus had one periodic weakness—twice-annual drunks of prodigious proportions—and he was, at times, a garrulous gossip. Generally, though, he was well liked. John Rockland kept Rufus on a kind of pension. He had to work only when he wished to, and his aberrations were religiously overlooked. Rufus had been almost a father to Judith Rockland during her early years when John Rockland was away with cattle drives laying the foundation of his fortune. Bannion, as well as almost everyone else, knew how close the old man and this beautiful girl were.
Bannion said now: “Miss Judy, if old Rufus told you about what happened in town, he probably also heard why it happened and told you that, too.”
“Yes, he did.” Judy put her head a little to one side. “That’s why you’re out here tonight, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Will you tell me, Sheriff?”
“If you’ll promise me two things, Miss Judy. One, that you won’t tell Rufus, because, if you do, he’ll tell your paw’s riders and that would upset everything. And two, that you’ll send someone to fetch your paw home so I can talk to him.”
Judith nodded. “I won’t tell Rufus. But I have a better idea about the other thing. I’ll take your message to my father. That way you won’t have to wait around here until he gets back.”
Bannion considered this, found it acceptable, and said: “I want him to bring Dale McAfee back from the holding ground and keep him here at the ranch for a few days.”
“Yes, I see,” John Rockland’s beautiful daughter responded in a speculative tone. “You think those men in town will find McAfee at the camp and kill him there.”
“I don’t think that, Miss Judy...I know it. One of them slipped out there today and located McAfee. Then he rode back and told the others.”
“Are you sure, Sheriff?”
“I’m sure, Miss Judy. I trailed him there and back.”
“Sheriff, what kind of men are these King brothers?”
Bannion lifted his shoulders and let them fall. “Men,” he said succinctly. “Just men.”
“Gunmen?”
Bannion pursed his lips over this. He scowled faintly. “Well, no, Miss Judy. Clell Durham tried to hire them to fight your paw today and they wouldn’t do it. No, I wouldn’t call them gunfighters exactly, but I wouldn’t call ’em just plain cowboys, either. They look plenty capable...plenty able to hold their ow
n in any kind of company. I’d say they’re determined men.” Bannion’s face brightened. “You heard why they’re here? Who their paw was?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I’d say they’re fit sons for Colonel King of King’s Confederate Raiders. There’s no fear in ’em anywhere, Miss Judy, and they’re men who don’t talk a lot. They keep to themselves.”
“Can’t you arrest them?”
Bannion removed his hat and minutely examined it before he answered this. “They haven’t done anything.”
“They called my father this morning, didn’t they?”
“Well, not exactly. He called them, Miss Judy. He rode up and told them it’d be best if they got out of town.”
Rockland’s daughter looked away, ran her gaze out over the yard toward the gloomy west. Her delicate dark brows curved inward and downward. She said: “Sheriff....”
“Yes, Miss Judy?”
“Could I talk to them...reason with them?”
Bannion looked surprised. He gently shook his head. “What could you say? I’ve reasoned with them. Your paw made it plenty plain what would happen if they didn’t give it up. They’re doing what they believe is right. A bullet might stop them...but words won’t.” Bannion shifted his weight; he felt an urge to say something gallant. He saw her beauty and her ripeness there in that soft-lighted night, and Bannion was still young enough to admire both deeply. He said: “There’s not a living man who wouldn’t listen to you...not if he had two good eyes and red blood in his veins. But I’m afraid beauty isn’t enough this time.”
Judy turned her gaze back to Bannion. She sent him a little twinkling smile, but there was an iron-like hardness in the depths of that look.
“The worst that could happen is that I’ll fail,” she said, “and, if that’s the case, nothing will be changed anyway, will it?”
“No, Miss Judy, I reckon not.”
Bannion’s attention was diverted by the sound of a horse slowly pacing its way southward from Texas Star’s immense log barn. He listened, thinking this might be John Rockland returning, then it dawned on him that whoever this horseman was, he was traveling away from the ranch, not toward it. He recalled seeing a shadow of a man pass behind the bunkhouse window and figured the rider must be this cowboy. Then he saw the flare of a match upon the bunkhouse porch, the afterward glow of a cigarette tip, and what seemed initially to be an insignificant thing came to be a little mystery to him. The rider on the porch, the beautiful girl in front of him, seemed to be the only people at Texas Star this night. Who, then, was the night rider?
With her eyes watching Bannion’s face, Judy said: “It’s probably Rufus. Don’t look so suspicious, Sheriff.” She made a low little chuckle. “Does law work make men so quick to notice things?”
Bannion looked down. He was thinking of the many times he’d hauled Rufus Paige off to jail to sober up, and of how Rufus had violently protested being sent back to Texas Star on horseback, because he said riding pained him. He brought up a smile to match Judith’s smile. “That’s something law work sure enough does,” he murmured, and turned to untie his horse. “Will you ride out and tell your paw what I said?”
“Right away, Sheriff. It’s such a beautiful night I was thinking of going out to meet him, anyway.”
Bannion stepped up, put his hat back on, and flashed the girl one last wide smile. “Perdition Wells isn’t a wild place, but all the same I’d better get back.”
Bannion left the Texas Star riding slowly. He did not ride southeasterly as was customary, to strike the stage road and plod along it into town. Instead, he angled around until he was heading due south in the wake of that Texas Star horseman, and as he’d done once before this day, he kept his goodly distance to avoid detection, and from time to time he dismounted to hug the earth listening for, and hearing, the steady, slow, and onward pace of that other man in the night.
Bannion was piqued. If this was indeed old Rufus, it would certainly have to be something quite vital to make him ride as he was now riding, but if it wasn’t Rufus—who was it? John Rockland and his working crew were at the holding ground. Judith and that solitary rider were back at the ranch. The only person unaccounted for was Judith’s mother. Bannion put that thought out of his mind at once.
It had to be Rufus.
Bannion saw, faint and hull-down upon the black horizon, Perdition Wells’ lights. He was perplexed and almighty curious. He dismounted and walked with his saddle animal, stopping more frequently now to listen for that onward horseman. Old Rufus was curving a little westerly now, but he was not heading for the heart of town, at all.
Bannion was a half mile closer to town when it began to occur to him that Rufus was not making for Perdition Wells at all. He was heading for a small hill east of town a mile or so. This made no sense at all. From that little hill a person got a good sighting of the village, but other than that....
The graveyard!
Atop that hill, enclosed within a wrought-iron fence, was the cemetery of Perdition Wells. Bannion stopped cold. He stood like stone for a full minute, then got down flat, and lay there a long time, listening to those diminishing onward reverberations. He eventually stood up solemnly to brush himself off, his expression blank and instinctively knowing.
He went on as far as a chaparral stand, tied his animal there, and then went the balance of that little distance on foot. Near the rise of cemetery hill Bannion got down upon his knees, cocked his head, and watched that horseman breast the skyline, his shape darker than the roundabout night. He watched the man dismount with recognizable ungainliness, stand a moment flexing his legs, then tie the horse to the iron fence and hobble along to the graveyard’s gate and pass inside.
It was without any doubt, Rufus Paige.
Bannion started uphill with extreme care, feeling his way so as not to make a sound. He was near enough to Rufus’s tied horse to reach forth and touch the animal, when he heard a shod hoof somewhere on the little hill’s southerly slope strike stone. Bannion dropped flat, waiting to skyline this second horseman. He saw the dark-cut head and shoulders first, then the man’s broad chest and narrow waist. Then both horse and rider were upon the top out, halted. Bannion let his breath out in a silent, long sigh. He let that second man also dismount and secure his animal before dropping back downhill a ways and gliding forward toward the gate. He was belly down and blending into the night no more than fifty feet away when that second man passed into the cemetery with a long stride and identifiable grace that almost at once faded out in the darkness.
Bannion darted to the gate, passed through, and made for a large, ornate, and very old monument. He got behind this, scarcely breathing. Somewhere on eastward, came the murmur of men’s lowered tones.
Bannion knew this graveyard well. He moved carefully from headstone to headstone, passing always closer to where those voices emanated. He stopped and doubled far over, when those voices abruptly ceased. He waited, pain beginning to grow in his back, unmindful of this, until the voices began again. Then Bannion got behind another of the man-high stones, and straightened up. A hundred feet ahead were the two men. One was recognizable by his height, his easy posture, and his way of thoughtfully standing with his head lowered. The second silhouette was supporting himself with an outflung arm, his hips against the iron fence, and his head tilted up now with faint night light touching it. The man was easily identifiable at once as Rufus Paige.
Bannion strained to hear. Now, though, the men were only sporadically speaking, their voices turned low, turned solemn and muted. Bannion could not distinguish what was being said.
He tried for a time to catch some inkling of this dwindling conversation, then, resigned to failure at this, he sat down upon the ground and undertook to organize his own thoughts. He was deterred here, though, when the two conspirators suddenly left their position near the easterly iron fence and began to pace along, side-by-side, back t
oward the gate.
Bannion considered rising up to confront them. In the end he did not do this, but he did get up to his feet after they had faded out westward. He cut across the ground to the northward fence where Rufus had left his horse, climbed over it, and dropped back down again to wait.
It was a long wait. Rufus did not appear for a full fifteen minutes. Bannion watched his approach, noted how the crippled man seemed to make slow and painful progress, then he rose up on the near side of the horse and stood there with pale moonlight showing his expression of hard suspicion, waiting for the ranch cook to see him.
Rufus bent to untie his horse. He turned, flung up one of his split reins, minced along the animal’s left side with his head down, reached for the stirrup, and brought his head up. He was staring straight into Doyle Bannion’s eyes.
For the space of a long withheld breath neither man moved nor blinked. Then Sheriff Bannion hooked his thumbs into his shell belt and nodded.
“Hello, Rufus. You’re quite a piece from home, aren’t you?”
The older man let go his stirrup. He rocked back a little with purest astonishment upon his face. He opened his lips and closed them.
“That grave you were standing by...over there along the east fence...belongs to an old feller about your age named King. I didn’t know you knew Alpheus King, Rufus.”
John Rockland’s cook stood like stone. He was holding that one split rein and staring. It took a full minute for his surprise to pass, then his shoulders settled lower and his eyes lost their wideness.
“You got a lot o’ nerve,” he said, his tone breathless and unsteady, “spyin’ on folks in the night, Doyle Bannion.”
Bannion let this pass. “Why did you do it, Rufus? Why did you write those boys about their paw’s killing?”
“Who says I did?”
“I do. Dog-gone you, Rufus, don’t you lie to me. Why didn’t you let the thing end here?”