The Gun Fight

going to die? A shudder ran down Robby’s back. Then he stiffened himself.

“When the time comes,” he said, his voice unnaturally loud.

The dark riders still moved around him. “Well, that’s your own business, Robby,” O’Hara said, “but I want ya to know we’re all behind ya. Everybody knows Benton’s a dirty coward who’s too yella to tote a gun. And after what he done to your girl . . . well, there ain’t nothin’ more to say.”

“That’s right,” Robby said, feeling as if he were trapped there with the three of them. “There’s nothing more.”

“Well how about headin’ for the Zorilla with us and let me buy ya a drink?”

“No, I . . . have to get home.” Loudly, forcedly. “I was just on an errand for my father.”

“Oh . . .” O’Hara punched him lightly on the arm. “We’re all behind ya, Robby,” he said, almost happily. “Ain’t a man in town that ain’t behind ya. When the time comes . . .” Another punch. “We’ll back ya.”

They were gone in a clouding of night dust. Robby waited a moment, then twisted around in his saddle and saw the three of them spurring for the square.

How did the story get around so fast? Robby couldn’t understand it. Only three men had seen the fight outside of Pat and Pat wasn’t the kind to spread tales.

It was horrible how fast the story was traveling. And now he’d be trapped further, now O’Hara and his two friends would tell everybody that he was going to get John Benton.

“No.” Robby couldn’t keep the shaking word from escaping his lips. No, he didn’t want to fight Benton, he didn’t want to! A shudder ran down his back and he couldn’t seem to get enough air in his lungs to breathe.

Ten minutes to nine, Kellville, Texas, September 12, 1879. The end of the first day.

The Second Day

Chapter Ten

Benton was riding fence. There were only three men working for him and he couldn’t afford to spare any of them for this simple but hour-consuming chore. Mounted on his blood bay, Socks, so named for the whiteness of its feet extending to the fetlocks, Benton was riding leisurely along the rutted trail that preceding fence rides had worn.

Five times during the morning, he’d stopped to fix loose or broken wires, missing staples, once a sagging post. Each time, he’d gotten the supplies he needed from the saddle-fastened pouch in which were staples, a hatchet, a pair of wire cutters, and a coil of stay wire.

Finding a fence section that needed repairs, Benton would ease himself off the bay and ground the open reins. Socks would then remain in place without being tied while his master worked. The work completed, Benton would take hold of the reins and raise the stiffness of his batwing chaps over the saddle.

“Come on, churnhead,” he would say softly and the bay would start along the line again.

Benton’s horse was one of the two cutting horses in the ranch’s small remuda, a bridle-wise gelding that Benton had spent over a year in training. Cutting was a ticklish and difficult job, the most exacting duty any horse could be called upon to perform. It demanded of the mount an apex of physical and mental control plus a calm dispatch that would not panic the animal being cut from the herd. A cutting horse had to spin and turn as quickly as the cow, always edging the reluctant animal away from the herd without frightening it. This twisting and turning entailed much good riding too and, although Benton had ridden since he was eight, the process of sitting a cutting horse had taken all the ability he had.

Benton knew he rode Socks on jobs that any ordinary cow horse could manage. But he was extremely fond of the bay and never demanded a great deal of it outside of its cutting duties. Riding fence was no effort for the bay. It enjoyed the ambling walk with its master in the warm, sunlight-brimming air. Benton would pat the bay’s neck as they rode.

“Hammerhead,” he’d tell the horse, “someday we’ll all be rich and ride to town in low-necked clothes and have thirty hands workin’ for us.”

The bay would snort its reply and Benton would pat it again and say, “You’re all right, fuzz tail.”

When Benton rode the range, he wore a converted Colt-Walker .44 at his left side, butt forward. Sometimes it seemed as if it even worried Julia for him to wear a gun around the ranch.

“Honey, you want a snake to kill me?” he’d say with a grin.

“I don’t want any thing to kill you,” she’d answer grimly. “Or any body.”

That day, while riding fence, Benton reached across his waist and drew out the pistol with an easy movement. He held it loosely in his hand and looked at its smooth metal finish, the notches of the cylinder, the curved trigger in its heavy guard.

He often found himself looking at the Colt; it was the only thing he had that really reminded him of the old days. He’d killed nine men with this pistol in the line of Ranger duty. There was Jack Kramer in Trinity City, Max Foster outside of Comanche, Rebel Dean, Johnny Ostrock, Bob Melton, Sam and Barney Dobie, Aaran Graham’s two sons; nine men lying in their graves because of the mechanism in this four-pound piece of apparatus.

Benton hefted the pistol in his palm, wondering if he missed the old days, wondering if violence had become a part of him. He slipped his finger into the guard and spun the pistol around backward and forward in the old way, then shoved it back into its holster with a quick, blurred movement of his hand. Miss it, hell. He was alive, he had a good little layout, a wonderful wife; one day there would be children—that was enough for any man.

He was grateful the percentages had passed over him. By Ranger standards he had outlived himself at least five times. Another month in the service, another year maybe and he would have died like the others, like the many others. As horrible as it had been, the incident with Graham and his sons had spared him that.

Benton threw back his shoulders and took a deep breath of the clean air. Life, he thought, that’s what counts; killing is for animals.

He found the trapped calf near the spring. It was stuck under the fence where it had tried to wriggle through a gap caused by water erosion. Benton could hear the loud quaver of its bawling a half mile away. He nudged his flower rowels across the bay’s flanks and the horse broke into an easy trot down the trail.

The calf looked up at Benton’s approach, its big, dark eyes wild with fright. Its back hooves kicked futilely at the earth, spraying dirt over the long grass.

Benton jumped down from the bay, grounded the reins, and started for the calf, a grin on his face.

“Hello, you old acorn,” he said. “Runnin’ off to the city again?”

The calf bawled loudly and kicked again at the scoured ground.

“All right, little girl,” Benton said, drawing on the gloves he’d pulled from his back Levi’s pocket, “take it easy now. Poppa will get you out.”

He hunkered down beside the fence and the calf complained loudly as Benton grabbed the wire that held it pinned down, the sharp barbs embedded deeply in its skin and flesh.

“Easy now, deacon,” Benton spoke soothingly as he tried to draw out the barbs so he could raise the taut wire. He grimaced slightly as the calf squalled loudly, blood oozing across its spotted back. “Ea-sy now, little girl, we’ll get you out in no time.”

Fifteen minutes later, the bay was moving across the range, leading the roped yearling. Benton glanced back and grinned at the tugging calf.