Standing in his long grayish-hued underwear, he drew himself erect as she entered the door; arms folded across his chest, his expression ominously severe.
'So, Greta!' he boomed. 'You vill now tell me vy – vy – '
The lamp wick was economically dampered, so that there was little light outside its immediate vicinity. His view of her, then, was dim and limited: a head and face, a partial torso, painted upon the darkness. But her nudeness was obvious – the fact that she had been out in public, doubtless before other men, without clothes. And that was more than enough to infuriate him.
'Badt girl!' he shouted. 'Fallen voman! Vy? Vot iss, answer me!'
Ethel bowed her head humbly. Her hands remained behind her, as they had in the beginning.
In her child's voice, she said, 'I lost my thing, Papa. You can't do it to me any more.'
'Vot!
'I'm my Papa's good little girl,' Ethel said desperately, 'an' my Papa likes my thing better'n anyone's. An' now it's gone. An' – an' – ' She raised stubborn eyes to his. 'It's not my fault, an' you're not gonna whip me.'
_Tell me I'm not, yuh little bitch! Went an' sewed it up, did you? Well, time I tear them threads outta yuh_…!
'Mein Gott!' Gutzman stammered. 'Ach, my poor leetle Greta! Blease, you tell Gutzy vy – vot – '
'I'm going to kill you, Papa. I'm going to rip your thing off.'
She brought her hands around in front of her, jabbed with the item they were holding. It was a pitchfork, the needle-sharp tines gleaming dully through their encrustations of manure.
Gutzman stood frozen with surprise. Stunned, unable to move, he stammered incoherent inquiries as to the reason for this horror which confronted him. Ethel crept in closer, ignoring his questions; at last beginning to sing:
_Jesus wants me for a sunbeam,_
A sunbeam, a sunbeam!
Jesus wants me for a sunbeam,
I'll be a sunbeam for him!
She lunged forward suddenly. Gutzman let out a yell, flung himself aside. The tines of the fork sank in the wall behind him, and before he could recover sufficiently to wrest the tool from her, she had jerked it free. Was again jabbing and stabbing at him.
Slowly, he began to back away from her, keeping his eyes on her face. Blindly feeling with his hands for something with which to defend himself. He stumbled against a chair, almost went over backwards as she lunged at him again. He bumped into the stove, cold now after hours of disuse, and began circling it. Too late he remembered the large pile of firewood he had stacked behind it that night. A pile too large for him to move around, or to step over backward. And, of course, he would have to do it backward. Death awaited him the moment he turned away from her.
Now, she laughed with childish pleasure, merrily aware of his predicament: then broke into sobs, declaring her willingness to be a sunbeam for Jesus.
All the time moving nearer. And slowly drawing the pitchfork back for its final thrust.
Gutzman fumbled behind him with sweat-wet hands. Feeling the rough bark of the firewood. Trying to find a stick that would serve as a weapon.
He found none. All were sections of split logs; half-logs, in other words. Too big to be gripped firmly, or swung quickly. Large chunks of wood burned longer than small, though they were often difficult to ignite. Usually, it was necessary to splinter one up for kindling, and –
Gutzman at last found his weapon. He swung with it, an infinitesimal fraction of a second before Ethel could lunge with the pitchfork.
She released the fork, and said a single word; a long drawn-out, 'Ohhh,' that was like a sigh of relief. Then, she crumpled to the floor, and there was no further sound from her except for the bubbling of her wound.
Gutzman let out an anguished cry of 'Greta!' He tottered out from behind the stove, and sank down on his knees before her. At first he kept his eyes firmly shut; and when he at last opened them, he kept them turned away from her face and head, from the fatal injury he had wrought, and looked only at her body.
She had fallen on her side in death, one knee drawn slightly up: a semi-foetal position. Gutzman studied the flaring buttock thus exposed, then tenderly shifted her body enough to look at the other one.
He leaned back, frowning. Scratched his frowsy head puzzledly. After a long moment, he turned her on her back, and spread her legs with awkward delicacy. Reaching behind him, he palmed water from the stove's reservoir, splashed it upon her crotch and gingerly scrubbed it with the sleeve of his underwear.
Again he leaned back, baffled by a seemingly idiotic paradox.
His leetle Greta… all bloody she was there in the place he had so happily visited so often. Yet how could this be? Where had the blood come from? There was not even the smallest cut, the slightest break in the skin, either there or anywhere else on her body.
He scowled, looking down at her; then suddenly squinted and bent close.
Circling the pubic area was a deep reddish indentation; much the same kind of marking he had noted on her buttock. He had supposed this last to be a memento of the saddle or of too-tight underpants. Yet that could hardly be, could it, if a virtually identical imprint existed around her crotch.
Gutzman could think of only one thing which might have made such an indentation. One which could not possibly have made it, since, to his way of thinking, it would have been preposterously pointless to do so:
Pressing a knife down hard on the blade's dull edge…
Gutzman gave his head a sad shake, firmly and finally denying the ridiculous theory. No one but he was responsible for leetle Greta's death. Only he had contributed to it. He had babbled to her unceasingly, talked until the sound of his voice must have been like the buzzing of bees. And all night long he had pressed himself upon her, taking advantage of her dependency; giggling stupidly at her profane pleas to leave her alone before he wore it out.
How many times had she cursed him, declared that he was driving her crazy. _Oh, Gott, Gott! So sorry I am, Greta!_ She had warned him, and he had ignored her. And, now, here was the awful result of his selfishness.
Those curious indentations had nothing to do with the tragedy. Already, even, they were beginning to fade and disappear. They would be gone before the marshal could send someone to investigate, nor was there any point in mentioning them. For he, alone, was guilty. He, Gutzman, that selfish, thoughtless, demanding man, who had made Greta murderously insane, and then split her lovely head with a hatchet. *b*
Critch limped out to the well, and drew up a pail of water. He dipped cupped hands into the pail, blew a couple of tiny silverfish from the water and drank thirstily. He repeated the process several times, pausing intermittently to chew down a string of jerked beef. His inner self at last refreshed, he stripped to the waist and gave himself a half bath.
The rays of the dying sun warmed and dried him. He returned to the house, feeling considerably less stiff and achy.
He lay down in the bunk, and lighted a cheroot. By the time it was finished, he was all but drained of his rage against Arlie and was able to think reasonably. To see the dangerous futility of killing his brother.
Marshal Thompson had warned them both about taking the law into their own hands. And the marshal was obviously not a man to be trifled with. He would not accept a murder attempt by Arlie, as an excuse for killing Arlie. He would simply point out that only the law was authorized to deal with criminals, and that individuals who did so were criminals themselves. And that would be that – the next to the last chapter in the life of Critchfield King.
The best argument against killing Arlie, however, was the pointlessness of it. It would not get him his money back. It would leave him stuck here on this debt-burdened ranch, a place he was as incapable of running without Arlie as he was of flying.
There were two good reasons then for not killing Arlie. And added to them, Critch admitted, perhaps a third. The fact that he was doubtless incapable of killing. In the blazing heat of his rage, he had believed himself capable – had sworn that he would take Arlie's life. But now that he had cooled off, had had time to think clearly…
Arlie's demise was desirable, of course. If nothing more, killing him was the best insurance against getting killed. For the present, however, it must remain only an ideal. Something only to be achieved if and when the right time came.
