The Gun Fight

finished. “You know the rest.”

Lew shook his heavy head. “Darndest thing,” he said, “makin’ such a fuss over nothin’.”

“It’s something to them,” Benton said. “They’re usin’ both barrels on me.”

“Well . . .” Julia looked worried again. “Well, shouldn’t we go in and try to settle it then? We could have the Reverend get everyone together in his house and . . .” She hesitated. “. . . well, clear it up,” she finished.

“Honey, I told ya the way they all acted,” John told her. “They just about threw me outta town. Even the barber’s spreadin’ lies about me.” He exhaled disgustedly. “Then when that kid, that—what’s his name?—O’Hara tried to fill his hand on me . . .” He shook his head grimly. “I’ve had enough, Julia. I’ll just stay out here on the ranch and let ’em all stew in their own juice till they cook themselves.”

“But, what if Robby comes after you?”

“Ma.” John looked patiently at his wife. “Can you feature that? Can you feature that little feller puttin’ on a gun and comin’ after me?”

Julia looked down at her plate. “You know what his father is like,” she said, quietly. “You know what Mr. Coles said.”

“He was riled,” Benton said, grinning. “I called him an old man and that bristled him.” The two other men chuckled. “No, Coles isn’t goin’ to push his own boy into the grave,” Benton finished.

“I . . . suppose.”

Julia still played with her supper, finally putting down the fork altogether and drinking some coffee. Then she got up and brought an apple pie to the table and cut thick slices of it for the three men.

While she cleaned the supper scraps onto the hound dog’s plate, she heard the three men talking about bits. None of them sounded concerned, least of all her husband. And Benton wasn’t the type of man who hid his worries very effectively.

Julia thought to herself. John was probably right. There was a lot of fuss, yes, but Robby Coles knew John’s reputation and couldn’t possibly consider trying to fight him with a . . .

But what if he did, what if he was forced to? Julia stood by the pump, staring across the kitchen at her husband. What if Robby did come after him?

Julia Benton closed her eyes suddenly and did the only thing she could think of at the moment. She prayed; but it wasn’t out of fear for her husband’s life, it was something else.

Chapter Eighteen

It was dark in the room, silent. Out in the breezeless night, crickets rasped like a thousand files grating on metal. A block away, she heard the muffled trotting of a horse as someone rode home late from town. The hoofbeats faded, disappeared, and the curtain of dark silence settled once again over the street, the house, the room in which she lay, sleep-less, on her bed.

In the back bedroom, in the bed so painfully large for her, her mother dozed fitfully, mumbling and whimpering in her sleep. Her husband had been dead eight years now but Elizabeth Harper still slept in the outsize four-poster, cold, restless, and lonely. She had never been quite the same since the funeral. They had, almost literally, buried her in the cemetery with her husband.

At least her spirit was there in the ground with his resting bones. Since his death, she had never been quite up to coping with life; and this affair about Louisa and Benton and Robby Coles and everybody else had completely unhinged her. Weeping, she regarded it, attempted to deal with it, able to think of how simple it would be if her dear husband were alive.

Louisa rolled on her stomach and gazed out moodily at the great tree in the front yard which stood etched against the moonlit sky like a black paper cutout. She rested her chin on her small hands and sighed unhappily.

Now she had to stay in the house until it was all settled. She didn’t mind not going to the shop, she liked that part of it. But not being able to do anything else at all, that she didn’t like; being cooped up with her doting, moist- eyed mother. And all because of that stupid story.

Louisa rolled on her back abruptly and squirmed irritably on the sheet. She raised up her feet and kicked off the blankets, her flannel gown sliding up her legs with a sighing of cloth as she kicked.

She didn’t pull it back down again but lay there in the darkness, feeling the cool air on her flesh. She closed her eyes and tried to summon up the vision of that ride again.

She couldn’t. Her aunt had ruined it, ruined everything. Whenever Louisa thought about it now, her aunt’s gaunt, accusing face would materialize in her mind, blotting out the dream. She couldn’t envision John Benton anymore without summoning up attendant visions of Robby, of Benton’s wife, of her mother, her aunt, of the glittering-eyed Mrs. DeWitt, Mrs. Cartwright and all the women who had come to her aunt’s shop to see her and gloat and imagine things.

Louisa felt her cheeks getting warm and she turned quickly and pressed her face into the cool pillowcase. Terrible women! She wasn’t going to be like them when she grew up.

She felt the air settle like cool silk over her bare calves and thighs as she lay there. It was such an awful thing, gossip. All she’d wanted to do was make Robby a little jealous, get him to do something besides talk in monotones and be boring. Granted, she hadn’t chosen her words too wisely but she hadn’t meant any harm. And now . . . Louisa blew out a weary breath and felt the heat of it mask her face.

What was going to happen now? she wondered. Aunt Agatha had spoken about someone paying but, after all, what could Aunt Agatha do? Of course, Robby had gotten very angry and maybe he’d do something. Nothing really dangerous, though. No one would dare try to fight John Benton, that was certain.

Relieved at the acceptance of that, Louisa rolled onto her back again and stared up at the ceiling. Oh, well, so she stayed home a few days. What difference did that make? At least she wouldn’t have to work in Aunt Agatha’s shop and be stared at by those awful women.

With child. The thought came suddenly and Louisa’s throat moved and, for a moment, she could hardly breathe. She knew whose child they meant and she knew how children were begotten.

“John.” She whispered it within the shell of dreams she suddenly withdrew to.

Chapter Nineteen

It was nearly midnight. The brass hands of the hall clock hovered a breath apart as Jane Coles closed the door behind herself and moved silently along the hall rug.

At the door to Robby’s room, she hesitated a moment, holding the robe closed at her throat. She stared down at her frail fingers curled around the cool metal of the doorknob and there was a slight clicking in her throat as she swallowed.

Then, after a moment, her hand slipped from the knob and fell against her leg and there was a loosening of muscles around her mouth. She turned away.

After a step, she hesitated again, her face tight with nervous indecision. She stood there silently in the cool hall, looking with hopeless eyes at the door to her and Matthew’s bedroom, visualizing the immobile bulk of her husband stretched out on the bed, his mouth lax, the firm authority of it gone with the teeth that lay submerged in water on the bedside table, his snores pulsing rhythmically in his throat.

Her lips pressed together suddenly and she turned back. Her fingers closed over the doorknob and, with silent quickness, she entered Robby’s bedroom.

The pale moonlight fell across the empty bed.