Rafe

'Boy,' Pike said, 'I've heard enough of that nonsense. The facts speak for themselves. That pair you've just looked at are a couple of Spangler hardcases, and they're obviously out there to make sure you stay put.'

Not even Rafe's hardshell prejudice could stand up against that. But he wasn't about to step down without a struggle. 'Then why don't this wonderful Dry Bottom badge-toter make 'em clear out or shove 'em in the clink?'

Bunny, looking flustered, clouded up to say resentfully, 'Nobody with a lick of sense would go out of his way to tangle with Spangler.'

'Well, isn't that just fine!' Rafe scowled. 'What's a feller have to do to get protection around here?'

'Mostly, around here,' Pike said, staring back at him, 'a crock is expected to stand on its own bottom.'

VIII

Say what you will, that following week was the longest Rafe Bender had ever put in at anything. Whenever he looked Spangler's gunnies was out there. Maybe not the same pair all this miserable while, but there wasn't an hour there wasn't somebody at it, watching and waiting like a couple of damned toads. More than once he was almost tempted to step out, so fierce was the pressure, so frustrating the fury being piled up inside him.

He became hard to live with as Bunny had frankly said one day. But he was not too filled with his persecutions to forget the exercises Pike had prescribed. Hour after hour he worked his fingers, kneeding them, stretching them, flexing and bending them while the hate coursed through him like a heavy tide. He could feed himself now, could dress and shave himself too, do pretty near anything else but get out of there.

One thing he had made up his mind about: hereafter he was going to look out for himself, and the devil take the rest of them. There was no good trying to be a turn-your-cheek Christian in a land overrun by throat-slitting Philistines. From here on out he would be playing for Rafe Bender!

He could put together a smoke with his hands now, but the left, as Pike feared, healed up considerable short of maximum efficiency. Oh, it would pick up things and, after a fashion, manage to keep hold of them, but those first and third fingers didn't close the way they ought to. They tracked; that was about all you could say for them. He'd had to learn all over again to work at old skills that right hand had forgotten. Lifting and squeezing he kept both of them busy while he built back his strength and nursed his black fury.

Saturday the sheriff came, a washed-out, handle-barred, frame-shrunk old has-been whose rheumy eyes appeared frequently to seek, but never quite meet the pair staring back at him. Dropping his hat on the floor he took the proffered chair, heeled it back against the wall and said, 'You've had a time, I guess.'

Rafe considered that self-evident. Pike wasn't home and Bunny, after introducing the badge-toter as Ed Sparks, had gone back to the kitchen, leaving them alone.

'Mebbe,' Sparks said now, 'you better tell me about it.'

'What's there to tell? Somebody beat the livin' daylights out of me, packed me off and left me out in them dunes to get blowed over with sand an' buried.'

'You don't know that, do you? I understood, when the coroner found you, you was ravin' like a loony, plumb out of your head.'

'What's that got to do with the price of apples?'

'How would you know, then, how you got out there?'

'If I'd set out by shank's mare I would know it!'

The sheriff stared at Rafe's run-over boots and shifted his chaw to the other side of his face. 'You say somebody beat you. Care to put a name to him?'

'I don't know who it was.'

'Ain't that a mite strange? I think if somebody'd handled me the way you been—'

'I was talkin',' Rafe growled, 'when somebody bent a gun over my noggin. I didn't see him—Hell, you don't think I'm nump enough to take that deliberate!'

'Well ... where was this? Who was you talkin' to?'

'I ain't askin' your help.'

'I'll thank you to recollect I'm sheriff of these parts. I've got a right to expect you to answer my questions, boy.'

'Go right ahead an' expect if you want to.'

Sparks' cheeks flushed a little, but his eyes juned away. 'Understand you fought for the Rebs durin' the war.' He stopped to let Rafe consider the fact. 'A man gets farther an' a whole heap faster—'

'If you got a point, make it.'

'I want to know where that gun was bent over your head. I want to know who done it an' who you was talkin' to.' He said, suddenly scowling, 'I want to know all about it.'

Rafe grinned.

'All right,' Sparks spat, 'be a pig-headed fool, but don't come cryin' to me if you're killed!' He scooped up his hat and got onto his feet. 'I don't want no trouble breakin' out account of you.'

'A man's got a right to defend—'

'A Rebel's got no rights at all around here. If your health's become a problem I suggest you take it to where the climate's more salubrious. You understand that?'

Rafe bristled up, eyes bright as bottle glass. 'Don't bang your threats against me, you dang boot licker!' Looking about to throw a fit he started for the man. Sparks scrinched away. Squirming along the wall the sheriff made it to the door and scuttled off down the hall like he had ants in his pants.