by Lauran Paine
“That would be Austin.”
“I want them arrested, tried, and convicted. That was premeditated from start to finish.”
“No one would rightly argue about that,” said Bannion. “But do any of your men who saw that killing say it was murder?”
John Rockland began to answer, then abruptly checked himself even though he kept staring at Doyle Bannion. He pushed himself out of the chair, saying: “Bannion, are you, or are you not, going to jail those King brothers?”
“If there’s a charge, yes. If there is no charge, I can’t jail them. That’s the law, Mister Rockland.”
“Then I’ll make the charge. Murder!”
Bannion sat still for a moment. Then he said: “Any witnesses?”
“I’ll produce those, too.”
Bannion said no more. He tapped his desk. He considered the unreasoning ferocity, the willful hatred in John Rockland’s face. He remained silent for several minutes, then finally said: “If anyone’s guilty of murder, it’s Rufus Paige.”
Rockland blinked. He began to scowl. “What are you talking about? Old Rufe wasn’t even at the holding ground. He went back to the ranch before sunset for additional supplies.”
“Sure,” said Bannion. “But that’s not the only reason he went back to Texas Star.” Bannion got up. “Mister Rockland, I tried hard to prevent this. I think I know where I failed. But that’s past and Dale’s dead. Now I’m going to make another hard try by telling you not to hire any gunfighters.”
Rockland glared. “Don’t you tell me what to do, Bannion. Damn you, I’ll take that badge off you and melt it down into bullets. You remember that. Now, are you going after those Kings or not?”
“I’m going after them,” Bannion answered, hardening his gaze against Rockland. “And I’ll get them. You have my promise on that. But, Mister Rockland, so help me, if it costs me this badge and a lot more to boot, the day you import gunfighters to Perdition Wells, I’ll come after you, too.”
Rockland’s face darkened. That big vein in the side of his neck swelled. He swung about and rushed from Bannion’s office, slamming the door after himself. He called out to his riders: “Head back...head for Texas Star! The law’s not going to do anything about McAfee, so dammit I am!”
Bannion got to the door in time to see people scatter out of the path of the speeding horsemen as big John Rockland, blindingly mad, led his riders in a rush out of Perdition Wells.
People stared up the roadway after Rockland. When he and his men were out of view, they turned and gazed over where Doyle Bannion was standing with a smoky shading to his eyes, his usually easy-going jaw set like granite. They spoke among themselves and went uneasily about their business. A few, the bolder ones, started for Sheriff Bannion. He saw them coming, brushed right on past, and headed for the livery barn.
“Sam!” he bawled in the stable doorway. “Sam, where are you, consarn it!”
A man appeared through a door at the back of the barn. He stopped and craned a look out at Sheriff Bannion, squinting. “What’s wrong, Doyle?” he asked, beginning to hurry toward the lawman. “What is it?”
“Those four big fellers...have they ridden in yet?”
“The King boys? No, I haven’t seen them since last night. They rode out of town about a half hour after you did.” The liveryman’s squint increased until his entire face was pinched up from it. “What’s wrong, Doyle? What’s goin’ on anyway? I just seen Rockland and his crew go bustin’ out of town like the devil was after ’em.”
“The devil was leading ’em,” growled Bannion, and he pushed past Sam and hurried to the stall of his own personal horse. There, he flung on his saddle, bridled and turned the animal. As he mounted, he said: “If anyone but the Kings come looking for me, tell them...tell them I’ll be back when I get back.” He started forward toward the roadway. “And if those damned King brothers are looking for me, Sam, you tell them I’m looking for them, too.”
Bannion swung his mount northward, eased him over into a slow lope, and kept him at this gait for a full hour. Then, where he cut the tracks of men going toward and returning from Texas Star’s holding ground, he turned sharply and began following the tracks leading away from that distant spot. He rode without an awareness of time, or the peculiar coppery glint that came gradually to color this day. It was hot, and this registered in his mind from the steady burning across his shoulders, but the other thing—that peculiar coppery shading to the sun—went unnoticed entirely.
The tracks of four horsemen riding slowly led Bannion out and around Perdition Wells and to a wild plum thicket along a sluggish creek. Here, he saw where the riders had halted a while to smoke a cigarette within sight of town but screened from it. He grunted, thinking: These Kings sure are careful men. They had waited to see what would happen in Perdition Wells after McAfee’s killing was known there, before riding on in for their personal effects at the hotel. Bannion wondered how far ahead of him they now were? Whether they were still in town, or whether, during his absence tracking them, they had already quietly picked up their bedrolls and ridden on?
He went ahead into town from the south, tied his horse at the jailhouse hitch rack, and crossed through a brassy afternoon to the hotel. As he stepped onto the plank walk, the significance of that strange, metallic lighting struck him and he halted, turned, and put a knowing look at the sun.
There was a sulphur look to the sky, a peculiarly ominous tint of mustard. Not a breath of air stirred anywhere. Bannion was turning, having completed his survey of this phenomenon, when a strolling man passed him with a nod, saying: “Another damned Santa Ana, Sheriff. I guess we’d all best fasten our shutters and wait it out.”
Bannion nodded absently and went to the hotel. At the desk, he said to the clerk: “Are the King boys here?” He got an answer that totally surprised him.
“Came in about ten minutes ago, Sheriff. All four of ’em are upstairs in their room.”
“Checkin’ out, huh?” asked Bannion.
The clerk shook his head, saying: “Not that I know of. Say, Sheriff, about that McAfee killing....”
But Bannion was already halfway to the staircase leading up to the guest rooms. He pretended he hadn’t heard the clerk’s comment and hurried up the steps, without a glance back. He halted on the landing as an angry voice came distinctly to him through a nearby door. Bannion listened, moved closer, and stood to listen some more.
“...nothing but cold-blooded murderers. I didn’t believe there were men like you still left in Texas. Sheriff Bannion told me you weren’t gunfighters...weren’t murderers...but now I know better. If I were a man, I’d....”
“Lady,” came the unmistakable, quiet voice of Ray King, “if you were a man, you wouldn’t say one more word.”
“No,” Judith Rockland shouted at him, her voice knife-edged with wrath, with deep scorn. “You’d gang up and shoot me, too, wouldn’t you? Like animals and cowards kill...in a pack!”
“Lady, only one of us faced McAfee. It was a fair fight. We never had any intention it should be anything else.”
There was a quick sound of scuffling.
Bannion reached for the knob at exactly the same moment Judith Rockland cried: “Take your hand off me!”
“Lady, you’d best leave now,” Bannion heard Ray say. “I was only showing you to the door. You’ve had your say and you’d better go on home now.”
“Yes! So the four of you can ride out of Perdition Wells before my father catches you.”
As a different voice responded to Judith, Bannion recognized its cold quality as belonging to Al King. “Miss, if it’ll make you feel better, we can wait around for your pappy to come into town. In a way I’d sort of like that, personally. He strikes me as needing a little....”
“Never mind, Al,” Ray broke in. He sounded tired to Bannion. “Miss Rockland, you go along now...please.”
The door opened.
Over the head of Judith Rockland, Doyle Bannion and the four King brothers ran their glances together in a moment of stillness.
Then Ray ushered Judith out of the room with a gentle but firm grasp at her elbow, blocking the opening against Doyle with his bigness.
“You want something, Sheriff?” he asked.
“I want to talk to the four of you,” Bannion answered.
“Talk,” Hank said harshly from behind Ray. “Go ahead and talk. Only make it short because we’re leaving your town for good and all, Sheriff.”
“I don’t think you’re leaving quite yet,” Bannion informed the brothers.
At once fiery Austin tried to push around his older brother. Ray stood firm against this pressure, but Austin voice traveled past his brother. “You want to try and stop us, Sheriff? You’d better have a warrant to do it...or you’re going to get whittled down to size.”
Bannion put out a hand, pushed it against Ray’s middle, and stepped forward, saying: “Let me show you boys something.”
Ray turned sideways to let Bannion pass, then he faced forward again, exchanging a long, long look with Judith Rockland who remained standing in the empty hallway.
Bannion went to the window and drew back a curtain. He motioned for the brothers to step over and take a look.
Hank and Al came over to stand just behind him.
“Look at that sky,” Bannion said, and stepped aside. “Does that mean anything to you west Texas boys?”
Al looked out, then at Bannion without changing expression. Hank, though, looked, then bent to look closer, motioning his youngest brother over to join them.
“A Santa Ana,” Hank said. “Hey, Ray, come take a look at this sky.”
Ray came, leaving the door ajar. He stood at the window peering out. “Well,” he said with solid resignation to his brothers, “I reckon that fixes that. A Santa Ana’s sure enough coming.”
Al pushed his brother out of the way so he could look out again, saying: “What’s a Santa Ana?”
“It’s a big wind, Al, like that one we got caught in the night we hit Perdition Wells. You recollect?”
“Recollect!” Al exclaimed. “I’ll never forget that wind as long as I live. It liked to peeled the hide off me and my horse both.”
“Well, there’s another one coming right now.”
Austin swore. “Well, hell, then we can’t leave,” he said, and tossed his hat down as he looked out into the empty hallway. He saw that Judith Rockland was gone. Austin’s fists clenched as he announced: “Now we’ll get into it for sure! That girl’s gone, and, sure as hell is afire, she’ll tell her paw we’re stuck here until the Santa Ana passes.”
Chapter Eight
There was no warning when the Santa Ana struck, which was unusual. Ordinarily that furnace-hot stinging wind up out of Mexico came gradually, turning the sky dark, whipping sand in off the desert with a force that made each grain seem as sharp-honed as a knife blade. It turned the sky dun-saffron and made the sun seem glazed with a deathly mustard-like hue, but ordinarily none of these things happened until that warning stillness, that peculiar coppery shade, filled the day.
But this time the wind came with tornado-like force out of the distant south with a shrieking howl and a gale-like mad whirling. It struck Perdition Wells, making buildings quiver on their foundations, slamming doors and shutters until those sounds rose over the wind’s keening howl like cannon fire.
Another distinctive thing about a Santa Ana wind was the metallic scent that filled the air. It was a smell like the dust from opened, dry graves—musty, bitter, and encompassing. It did no good to close windows against this odor because it permeated everything. It filled that room at the Perdition Wells Hotel where five men stood looking at one another while around them the world turned prematurely dark and sulphur-glazed, while the building shuddered where it stood, and while the rising scream rose fiercely around them.
“A bad one!” Bannion shouted, and Ray King nodded.
“Never saw one come so quickly before!”
Bannion went to the door, paused there to look back, saw how those four big men were standing, still gazing from that bizarre mustard-light beyond the window to one another. He knew the Kings would not leave town now.
Bannion went down to the lobby. People in off the sidewalk were huddling there, talking excitedly, and beating dust from their clothing.
A gaunt man walked up to Bannion, bent forward, and shouted to him over the howl of wind: “‘Don’t like this, Doyle! Town never had a chance! It blew us right in off the walkway! Never saw one hit like this before! Think there’ll be casualties...men caught in their fields...!”
Bannion nodded without making any attempt to shout back. He went as far as the doorway and braced into the power of the storm, making a quick survey of the roadway. There was nothing in sight, no people, no horses at the tie racks. He could hardly make out the opposite buildings. Tan dust was everywhere. It seeped in around windows to make small piles. It clogged a man’s nostrils in a matter of seconds.
Bannion returned to the center of the room, everything but this very real peril pushed aside in his thoughts. He had been through his share of Santa Anas. There was an invariable sequence to be followed. He did not relish this duty, but then he had never relished it. Still, he had to go out there, go up and down the sidewalks making sure there was nothing left outside by merchants that could become a projectile. He also had to make sure there was no one caught out in the wind who might need help—women or children or old people. This sometimes happened, but not often. At least not among long-time residents of Milam County, anyway, because after one or two such experiences, even children understood the ominous warning when the sky turned that coppery color.
However, he had had no warning this time, and therefore his windbreaker was hanging over at the jailhouse. A person did not wear a windbreaker for warmth—the Santa Ana winds were never cold—he wore it for protection. A man, lightly clothed, going out into that raging hell could actually have his skin pitted until it bled profusely in five minutes of excruciating torture, when he was subject to that howling, sand-blasting force.
There was another danger, too. If caught away from anything to grab hold of, many a person had been lifted up, flung down, and swept along with broken arms, legs, or ribs. People were not commonly killed by a Santa Ana, unless struck by some flying object, but it had happened.
Bannion went to the clerk and asked for a coat. The milling men and women over at the counter, ganged together like bewildered sheep, watched Bannion shrug into an over-size garment that the clerk produced. They stood dumb, knowing Bannion must go out, yet wishing to say something, even if only to warn him, to suggest that he wait a bit, to give some kind of an opinion. None of them, though, said anything.
Bannion knotted a handkerchief over his face, drew it up under his eyes, yanked his hat down until only a meager line showed up across his eyes, then he started to the door. He was reaching for the knob with both hands, ready to fight the force that would tear into the room the second he drew that panel inward, when a big hand closed down over his forearm. Bannion turned with annoyance, anticipating some remonstrance from a well-wisher. What he saw was the four big men from west Texas. Each of them had on a windbreaker and a mask such as the one Bannion wore.
It was the eldest man’s hand upon Bannion’s arm. Ray King let go, pulled down his handkerchief, put his head close to Bannion’s ear, and said: “Two of us will take this side of the road. The other two will take the yonder side. We know what to do. You do whatever else has got to be done, and we’ll meet you at the jailhouse.”
Bannion squinted into that rugged face with its smooth layers of suntan, and nodded. Several things he might have said came to mind, but he said none of them. He waited until Ray King had his mask up again, then reached for the door. As soon as the latch was rel
eased a terrific force struck the door, nearly wrenching it away from Bannion’s grasp. He gestured the four big men out, then turned, holding stubbornly to the door, and fought it closed.
The wind whooped down upon these five crouching figures. It pummeled them, pried in under their masks and hat brims, and stung with the force of a thousand tiny fists. It beat steadily against the full length of their bodies and within seconds it made breathing difficult.
Ray put a hand upon Al’s arm to detain him. He then made an onward motion to young Austin and Hank. These two went forward at once, fought their way halfway out across the road, then had to join arms in a locked manner and literally fight for each forward step. Here, where no obstruction minimized the wind’s full fury, only the strongest men could remain upright, and, in fact, except that Austin and Hank were holding mightily to one another, even those two, young and strong as they were, would never have made it.
When they did though, and paused to encircle an upright upon the far plank walk, fighting for breath, to Bannion, Ray, and Al, they could be seen only dimly.
Ray tapped Bannion, made a gesture indicating he and Al would start patrolling, then took his brother and started off. Bannion watched them fade out, then he turned north and, by hugging storefronts, got to the general store. This had been his initial destination because the proprietor always had a large display of goods outside his big front window, and in times past people had been badly bruised by flying pitchforks, rakes, even corrugated washboards.
What he found though, after getting inside and kicking past the hastily flung-down objects that had been frantically hurled inside from the plank walk, was that a length of trace chain had whipped upward and broken the front window.
The storekeeper and his one clerk were desperately struggling to fit a large board over the opening. Both men were bleeding from slivers of hurled window glass. Neither of them had a coat on, and they were fast weakening under the massive onslaughts of that outside fury.