The Gun Fight

Jimmy looked over, his face twisted again with frightened apprehension. Robby looked up from his plate, his jaw whitening in repressed anger.

“Well, answer me,” Matthew Coles said in a level voice, his fury mollified by the silence of his family. “Would you let some man insult your mother?”

Jane Coles turned her head away abruptly so her sons would not see the mask of sickened anguish it had become.

“N-no, sir,” Jimmy said, his stomach turning, tightening.

“What would you do?” Matthew Coles didn’t look at his son. He ate his beef and potatoes and drank his coffee, all the time staring into space as if the discussion were of no importance to him. But they could all sense the threat of violence beneath the level of his spoken words.

“I . . . I don’t know.”

“Don’t know, sir?” asked his father, voice rising a little.

“I’d, I’d, I’d—”

“Stop-that-stuttering.”

“I’d fight him,” Jimmy blurted out, trying desperately to find the answer that would placate his father.

“Fight him, sir, with your fists?” Matthew Coles stopped chewing a moment and looked pointedly toward his nerve-taut son.

“I, I—”

“With your fists?” said his father, loudly.

“I’d get a gun and—”

The hissing catch of breath in his mother’s throat made Jimmy stop suddenly and glance toward her with frightened eyes.

Matthew Coles looked intently at Robby, still addressing his younger son.

“You’d get a gun?” he questioned. “Is that what you said, sir?”

“Matthew, what are you trying to—”

“You’d get a gun, you say?” Matthew Coles’ rising voice cut off the tortured question of his wife. “A gun?”

“Oh, leave him alone!” Robby burst out with sudden nerve-snapped vehemence. “It’s me you’re after, talk to me!”

Matthew Coles’ nostrils flared out and it appeared, for a moment, that he would explode in Robby’s face.

Then a twitching shudder ran down his straight back and he looked down to his food, face graven into a hard, expressionless mold.

“I don’t talk to cowards,” said Matthew Coles.

Chapter Eight

The Reverend Omar Bond was working on the notes for his Sunday sermon when he heard the front doorbell tinkling. He looked up from his desk, a touch of sorrowing martyrdom in his expression. He had hoped no one would call tonight; there was so much necessary work to be done on the sermon.

“Oh my,” he muttered to himself as he sat listening to his wife, Clara, come bustling from the kitchen. He heard her nimble footsteps moving down the hall, then the sound of the front door being opened.

“Why, good evening, Miss Winston,” he heard Clara say and his face drew into melancholy lines. Of all his parishioners, Miss Winston was the one who most tried his Christian fortitude. There were times when he would definitely have enjoyed telling her to—

“Ah, Miss Winston,” he said, smiling beneficently as he rose from his chair. “How good of you to drop by.” He ignored the tight sinking in his stomach as being of uncharitable genre. Extending his hand, he approached the grim-faced woman and felt his fingers in her cool, almost manlike grip.

“Reverend,” she said, dipping her head but once.

“Do sit down, Miss Winston,” the Reverend Bond invited, the smile still frozen on his face.

“May I take your shawl?” Clara Bond asked politely and Agatha Winston shook her head.

“I’ll only be a moment,” she said.

The Reverend Omar Bond could not check the heartfelt hallelujah in his mind although he masked it well behind his beaming countenance.

He settled down on the chair across from where Miss Winston sat poised on the couch edge as though ready to spring up at a moment’s provocation. Clara Bond left the room quietly.

“Is this a social visit?” the Reverend Bond inquired pleasantly, knowing it wasn’t.

“No, it is not, Reverend,” said Agatha Winston firmly. “It concerns one of your parishioners.”

Oh, my God, she’s at it again, the Reverend Bond thought with a twinge. Agatha Winston was forever coming to him with stories about his parishioners, nine tenths of which were usually either distorted or completely untrue.

“Oh?” he asked blandly. “Who is that, Miss Winston?”

“John Benton.” Agatha Winston rid herself of the given and family names as though they were spiders in her mouth.

“But, I . . .” the Reverend Bond stopped talking, his face mildly shocked. “John Benton?” he said. “Surely not.”

“He has asked my niece, Louisa Harper, to . . .” Miss Winston hesitated, searching for the proper phrase, “. . . to meet him.”

Omar Bond raised graying eyebrows, his hands clasped tightly in his lap.

“How do you know this thing?” he asked, a little less amiably now.

“I know it because my niece told me so,” she answered firmly.

The Reverend Bond sat silently a moment, his eyes looking at Miss Winston with emotionless detachment.

“And it’s worse than just that,” Miss Winston went on, quickly. “It would be one thing if the incident were known only to those immediately concerned. But almost the entire town knows of it!”

“I’ve heard nothing of it,” said the Reverend, blandly.

“Well . . .” Agatha Winston was not refuted. “Begging your pardon, Reverend, but . . . well, I don’t think anyone would pass along gossip to you.”

Someone would, thought Omar Bond, looking at Miss Winston with an imperceptible sigh.

“But this makes no earthly sense,” he said then. “John Benton is a fine man, a regular churchgoer and, moreover, an extremely respected man in Kellville.”

“Be that as it may.” Miss Winston’s mouth was a lipless gash as she spoke. “My niece’s honor has been insulted by him.”

The Reverend Bond rubbed worried fingers across his smooth chin and, behind his spectacles, his blue eyes were harried.

“It’s . . . such a difficult thing to believe,” he said quietly, groping for some argument. Agatha Winston always made him feel so defenseless.

“The truth is the truth,” stated Miss Winston slowly and clearly. “Believe me, Reverend, when I tell you that if I were a man, I wouldn’t be here talking about this shocking thing. I’d get myself a horse whip and—”

She broke off as the Reverend raised a pacifying hand.