The Outlaws 2
Page 13
He said, ‘I guess the day was too short for me. Well, it didn’t work out. Not here, anyway. So I’ll have to run again. I’ve been on the run before. It won’t be anything new to me. Maybe I’ll go across the border—there’s plenty of money to be made in Mexico.’ He was packing the bag as he talked. ‘It’s too bad,’ he muttered. ‘It’s a crying shame that I have to leave all this behind to fall into the hands of cowards and fools like Knox Bannerman.’
‘Bannerman’s a better man than you think he is.’
‘No,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘The only two good men in this country are McCracken and Mossgrove—and neither one of them has got the ambition it takes to become a success. Mossgrove’s too self-satisfied, and McCracken’s too big-hearted. If he defended his own interests the way he defends other people’s, he’d be running the whole Territory.’
‘To some people,’ she said, ‘there are other things than money and power, Scott. I thought you might have found that out by now. You get rich and you get powerful—and what have you got?’
He turned. Something she had said made him savage; his lip curled back and he raised a fist toward her and said in an intense quiet voice, ‘Listen to me, girl. You don’t know what the world is like. You peel the front off the world and what have you got? Pig slop. Some of us are better than that, Elena. But you’ve got to take what you can get—take it yourself. Sometimes you fail. Somebody trips you up. All right—I’ve learned to accept failure. I’ll go somewhere else and start again.’
‘You’ll fail wherever you go,’ she said in a low voice, watching him bitterly. ‘What do you plan to do with me?’
Take you with me,’ he said calmly. ‘Until I get clear of this part of the country. They wont try to stop me if I have you as a hostage.’
‘God,’ she said. ‘I didn’t believe a man on two legs could be such a skunk.’
He shook his head, gathering up the two bags and coming forward. ‘You have to make yourself a part of the present. If good standards won’t turn the trick, then you use any standards that will—or you use anything at all, as long as it will work.’
‘I pity you,’ she said softly.
‘Get up.’
She stood up, not resisting. That was when she heard a single step on the porch.
The door was flung back and Ben McCracken stood there, a gun balanced in his fist.
‘That’s far enough, Scott.’
Kramer moved with the agility of a cat, dropping the two bags and stepping behind Elena, at the same time drawing her gun from his belt. He extended his arm forward, touching her back with the pistol. He was smart enough to stay far enough back so that she couldn’t grab for him.
He said, ‘I’m getting out of here, McCracken, and I don’t propose to let you stop me. Drop the gun.’
She felt him move, and she knew with an awful certainty that if McCracken dropped his gun, Kramer would kill him. She said, ‘No!’ And saw a shadow move in the far window. It was Knox Bannerman, gun in hand.
Bannerman said, ‘Drop it, Kramer.’
But Kramer, at the end of his rope, did not give up. He wheeled back, flat against the wall and thus out of McCracken’s line of fire, and fired from the hip toward Bannerman. The slug tore a chip out of the window frame, and Bannerman winced. She was afraid he would duck away, but instead, his gun lifted and he sighted with deliberate care, and shot.
Bannerman was no sharpshooter. The bullet, intended for Kramer’s body, took him in the right shoulder, spinning him around. McCracken came bounding into the room, training his gun on the man, but the gun had dropped from Kramer’s limp fingers and he now stood glaring hotly, holding his wounded shoulder with his free hand.
McCracken put his hand on Elena’s arm. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes.’
‘That was a crazy thing to do. He might have killed you. Did you think you could talk him out of anything?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I never wanted him. He knows that now. It was what he did to my father—I wanted to get to him first.’
‘You poor kid,’ McCracken said.
It made her angry. She was in no mood to be treated like a child. She turned away, eyes brimming, and stumbled outside. She found her horse, mounted up and turned one last bitter glance on the house. Then she rode away.
It was long after sunup when a bone-weary McCracken locked the wounded Kramer in a cell in Mossgrove’s jail. He tossed the key on the sheriff’s desk and went squinting out into the sunlight. A three-day beard stubble, clay-red, covered his cheeks; he felt the need of a bath and a shave, a good meal, a drink, and a round-the-clock sleep. A group of riders came down the street, stirring up dust—Mossgrove and Elena and Bannerman. Mossgrove dismounted stiffly and said, ‘I’ll want you all to sign the complaint against Kramer.’
That wrapped it up, and afterward on the sidewalk McCracken waited until Bannerman came out, smiling uncertainly.
Bannerman said, ‘I never thought I’d have the nerve to shoot a man.’
‘It’ll surprise you every time, what you can do when you have to.’
‘Yeah,’ Bannerman said. ‘I guess that’s right.’ He turned to his horse and mounted. The smile on his face was the first untroubled expression McCracken had seen on him in a long time. Bannerman had fought it all out with himself, and had won the fight. Now, lifting his hand, Bannerman swept away from the rail and cantered from town.
Elena was standing back by the sheriff’s door. Her eyes were dark and brooding. A slim, tawny-haired young woman issued from the mercantile doorway across the street and advanced—Ada, holding her skirts up primly from the dust. As she reached the walk and stepped up on it, her glance moved from Elena to McCracken. Elena, with a down turn of her lip-corners, turned away and began to walk slowly up the street, hands rammed in her Levi pockets, shoulders up and head down, scuffing the walk with her feet.
Ada said, ‘I’m glad you came through it, Ben.’ Her voice sounded lame.
McCracken had no answer to give. He only knew, looking at her, that he did not want her; perhaps he never had. She said, ‘I’ve tickets on the noon stage. I’m leaving for St. Louis.’
‘I wish you well, Ada.’
She nodded. ‘Good luck to you, Ben,’ she said softly. A wistful, bittersweet expression crossed her face and was gone. She turned around, for everything had been said, and went back across the dusty thoroughfare.
Elena had stopped within earshot. Now she turned, and he saw her eyes follow Ada in surprise. She came back toward him, frowning. ‘She’s leaving?’
‘Yes.’
‘What for?’
‘We decided it was the best thing to do.’
‘Too bad,’ she said. ‘A man ought to have a girl.’
‘I discovered that,’ he answered, ‘last night. I think I’ve got one.’
Her smile was sudden and bright; it took all the rough edges of fatigue and anger and sorrow from her face. She hooked her arm in his elbow and smiled up into his face.
‘I think you do, too,’ she said.
About the Author
The author of more than seventy books, Brian Garfield is one of USA’s most prolific writes of thrillers, westerns and other genre fiction. Raised in Arizona, Garfield found success at an early age, publishing his first novel when he was only eighteen – which, at the time, made him one of the youngest writers of Western novels in print.
A former ranch-hand, he is a student of Western and Southwestern history, an expert on guns, and a sports car enthusiast. After time in the Army, a few years touring with a jazz band, and a Master's Degree from the University of Arizona, he settled into writing full time.
Garfield is a past president of the Mystery Writers of America and the Western Writers of America, and the only author to have held both offices. Nineteen of his novels have been made into films, including Death Wish (1972), The Last Hard Men (1976) and Hopscotch (1975), for which he wrote the screenplay.
To date, his novels have sold over t
wenty million copies worldwide. Brian Garfield died on December 29 2018. He and his wife lived in California.
More on Brian Garfield
By BRIAN GARFIELD
Available from Piccadilly Publishing
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