Then Smith blinked. Another slow blink and Smith’s face turned dark with strain. His hand crept over in a slow, considered way, found Benny’s face, and the nails gouged down slowly with a trembling intensity that pulled the skin down and apart. Benny moved away, rolled over, made it. The terrible effort left him shaky, and then he fell forward, his hands coiling around the thin man’s throat. Benny didn’t even watch; he just pressed. He pressed with the slow, deliberate force of a giant machine that knows nothing, needs to know nothing. He just squeezed till the end of strength. After a while the neck didn’t give any more, and Benny looked down. He saw that he was strangling a corpse.
When it was dark outside, Benny got out of the rocker and walked to the bathroom. He drank from the faucet, splashed a little water on his face. Before he left the tiled cubicle he drew the shower curtain in place, kicking his foot at the thing behind it and making sure nothing showed. Then he sat in the rocker again. He lit another cigarette, turned the chair so it faced the door, and picked up the gun. Then he sat.
When he heard the gravel outside he did not jump. He moved slowly. With one hand he flipped the safety off the slide. Four long steps took him across the cabin and he slid out of the back window. He left it open.
Brown wasn’t very bright. He pushed the door open and stood framed against the thin light of the night sky. “Hey,” he said. “Hey, I’m back.” When he didn’t get any answer, he stepped into the room and fumbled for the light switch. His other hand came up with a gun.
Benny could have potted him right there. He could have drilled him through the belly, or the head, or the chest, or any other place he felt like, while Brown stood in the empty cottage blinking his pig eyes to get used to the light. Benny waited. There was time.
“Hey!” Brown said again. “What the hell!” He sounded belligerent. Then he looked under the bed, in the closet, then in the bathroom. Benny couldn’t see him any more, but he heard the shower curtain being pushed back. After about a second Brown’s voice said, Ohmigosh!” He came stumbling through the door and said, “Ohmigosh!” again. Now Benny rested the barrel of the gun on the window sill.
“Freeze!”
Brown froze.
“Drop it!”
Brown let it drop.
“Fold ‘em on your head and don’t turn.”
Brown obeyed like a puppet and Benny climbed back through the window. He spiked the gun barrel into the short man’s spine and frisked him. There was a sap, a switch knife, a wad of bills, and a half-empty roll of Lifesavers.
“Lean against that wall, Doc Brown. No, face the wall. Step back a pace. Now lean. On your index finger. You can use both of them, bonehead.”
Brown did. With pointed index fingers pressing against the wall, his weight turned the end joints up, making a crease where the fingers bent.
“Comfortable, Brown?”
The man grunted. “No, sir,” he said.
“Fine. Stay that way.”
After a little while beads of sweat grew on the man’s bald head and the ends of his fingers turned purple. A slow drip of saliva started to hit the floor below Brown’s face, but he never made a sound.
“Comfortable, Brown?”
“No, sir.”
“Where’s Pat?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
Benny kicked him in the ribs, making the man double over. Brown let go of the wall and banged his head against the thin partition. While Benny watched, Brown picked himself up slowly, put his fingers against the wall again, and leaned.
“You’re a game one, aren’t you, Brown? Where’s Pat?”
Brown turned and said, “I don’t know.”
But Benny didn’t hit him again. He frowned, tapping his foot on the floor. “I guess maybe you don’t, Brown.” He hesitated a moment, then said, “You can get off the wall. Sit on the bed there.”
“Thanks.” Brown eased off the wall carefully and went to the bed. Benny watched him sit there, rubbing his fingers.
“Cigarette?”
“No, sir. Can I have a Lifesaver?”
Benny tossed him the roll. Brown peeled one out and sucked on it.
“Now from the beginning. Pendleton hired you?” Brown nodded. “He hired you for the job?”
“He hired Smith. I’m with Smith.”
“Yeah. To pick me up?”
“That’s right.”
“Why?”
“You got Pendleton’s daughter. He’s sore and wants her back. He don’t want you messing around with his daughter.”
“That all?”
“Sure.”
“How were you going to take her back?”
“Put her on a train.”
“Alone?”
“No. With another guy.”
“Did you?”
“No, sir. She skipped.”
“What?”
“Halfway back to town she wakes up and feels sick. She says, ‘Where am I?’ I say, ‘You’re going home to your dad,’ and I give her the letter from Pendleton. It explains there about us taking her home.” Brown stopped.
“Go on, what next?”
“We get to town and she says, ‘Stop at the drugstore, I gotta go in there.’ I stop and wait. After a while she don’t come out and I go in. Miss Pendleton is gone.”
“So?”
“I come back to ask Smith what next, and Smith is dead behind the shower curtain.”
“Yeah. I know that part.” Benny paced back and forth, not knowing what to ask next. There was nothing else to ask.
“O.K., Brown, on your feet.” Brown got up. “Pick up your friend there and put him on the bed.”
Brown struggled with the body in the narrow bathroom. The corpse was stiff already. When he got him out he put Smith on the bed, trying to straighten him, but it didn’t work. Smith was an ugly sight.
“Never mind that. Just leave him.”
Brown stood by the bed, looking down at Smith without moving.
“Brown, can I buy you?” Benny stepped behind the man.
“No, sir.”
“I pay better.”
“I’m with Smith.”
“O.K., Brown,” and Benny whipped the gun butt down on the bald man’s head. He swung hard, figuring that Brown had a head like a rock. He was right. The butt glanced off and Brown toppled forward.
“Ohmigosh,” Brown started to say. Benny swung again and connected.
He stepped over the limp man on the floor and with his handkerchief he wiped the discolored neck of the corpse. Then he wiped the shoe that stuck out at the wrong angle. After wiping the. 45, he pressed it into the dead man’s hand, but it wouldn’t stay there. He let it drop to the floor. After he turned off the light in the cabin, he left. He could hear the air conditioner humming in the dark, and then his motor kicked over. He hit the highway in a sharp skid and took off toward Haute Platte.
