The Gun Fight

The door slammed deafeningly, shaking the house. Robby slumped down on the couch and covered his face with shaking hands. Trying to fight off the deep sobs only made them worse. He couldn’t control anything. He sat there trembling helplessly, hearing his father gallop away outside, the sound of the gelding’s hooves drowning out the noise of the turning wheels.

Suddenly, Robby looked up and caught his breath. Jimmy was standing on the bottom step, looking at him. Robby felt himself grow rigid as he looked at his younger brother. He couldn’t take his eyes off Jimmy’s face and couldn’t help recognizing the look of withdrawal and disappointed shame there. He opened his mouth as if to speak but couldn’t. He didn’t even hear the back door shut.

He stood up nervously and walked on shaky legs to where the gunbelt was. Bending over, he picked it up and held it in his hand, seeing, from the corners of his eyes, that Jimmy was still there. It’s true—the words lanced at him—it’s true, I am a coward, I am!

That was when his mother came in.

She stopped for an instant in the hallway, her eyes on Jimmy. Then she looked into the sitting room. When she saw the dazed, hurt look on Robby’s face, she started toward him.

“Darling, what is it?” she asked, hurrying across the rug, her arms outstretched to him.

Robby stepped back. His mother rushing to embrace him, in his mind the lashing words of his father— You should have been a girl, a little girl cooking in the kitchen, hanging on your mother’s—

“Oh, my darling, what happened?”

It was the sound in her voice that did it; that sound of a mother speaking to her little boy who she never wants to grow up and be a man.

“No!” he said in a strangled voice, suddenly twisting away from her arms and running toward the hall, the gunbelt clutched in his cold hand.

“Robby!”

He didn’t answer. He saw the face of his younger brother rush by in a blur and then he was flying down the hall and into the kitchen, the frightened cries of his mother following him. He was on the porch, jumping down the steps and running into the stable where his horse was already saddled.

As he galloped out of the stable, his mother rushed out onto the porch, one thin arm raised, her eyes dumb with terror.

“No, Robby!” she screamed, all the agony of her life trembling in the words.

As he started down Armitas Street for the square, Robby began buckling on the gun.

Chapter Twenty-nine

Two fifteen. She stood in the leaden heat of the sun, shivering fitfully while she watched the shape of her husband dwindle away. She stayed there until he was gone from her sight. Then, slowly, with the tread of a very old and very tired woman, she walked back to the house.

She shuddered as she stepped into the relative coolness of the kitchen and her eyes moved slowly around the room as if she were searching for something.

In the middle of clearing the table, she suddenly pushed aside the stack of dishes and sank down heavily on a chair. She sat there, shivering still, feeling the waves of coldness run through her body. We’ll have to move now— the thought assailed her—we can’t possibly stay here with a murder on our conscience; we just can’t.

Her right forefinger traced a straggly and invisible pattern on the rough table top and her unblinking eyes watched the finger moving.

Suddenly, her head jerked up and she felt her heartbeat catch. A horse coming in.

Julia pushed up with a muttering sound of excitement in her throat. He was coming back; he wasn’t going into town! Her footsteps clicked rapidly across the kitchen floor and she jerked open the top half of the Dutch door.

It was like being drained of all her energy in an instant. Dumbly, she stood there, watching Merv Linken as he rode over to the bunk house, reined up, and dismounted. When he’d gone in, she turned away from the door slowly, unable to control the awful sinking in her stomach.

A moment later, she was running across the hard earth toward the bunk house, her blond hair fluttering across her temples.

Merv looked up in surprise as he bandaged his right wrist.

“Ma’m?” he asked.

She stood panting in the open doorway. “Will you hitch up the buckboard for me, Merv?” she asked breathlessly.

“Why . . . sure, Miz Benton,” he said.

“What, what happened to your wrist?” she asked vaguely.

“Snagged it on some barbed wire,” he said. “It’s nothin’.”

“Oh.” She nodded. “Will . . . you do it for me right away, Merv?” she asked. “I have to get into—”

From the way the skin tightened over his leathery face, Julia realized suddenly that he knew.

“I just passed him,” Merv said grimly. “He didn’t say nothin’ to me. Nothin’ at all. Didn’t even look at me.”

Abruptly, he tore off the end of the clean rag he was bandaging his wrist with and started for the door without another question.

“I’ll have her ready for you in a jiffy,” he told her.

Ten minutes later, she was driving out of the ranch on the lurching, rattling buckboard, headed for Kellville.

For her husband.

Chapter Thirty

It was like some endless nightmare. She’d keep moving into the hall, past the clock and over to the head of the stairs; but, every time she did, her aunt would be down in the sitting room, talking to her mother. Louisa would come back along the hall rug, past the clock, and into her room once again. It happened that way again and again, always the same except for one thing. Every time she passed the clock, it was a different time. Two ten—two fifteen—two twenty-one—two twenty-seven—

Oh, dear God! She stood shaking at the head of the steps, wanting to scream, her cold hands clutching at the bannister. She had to get out, she had to! Only a little more than thirty minutes were left now. She bit her lower lip until it hurt and her breast shook with unresolved sobs.

I’ll tell Aunt Agatha, I’ll tell her I lied, I’ll tell her to stop the fight. I have to, I just have to! And she’d go down one step, meaning to rush downstairs and tell everything and save Robby.

But, after one downward step, she’d freeze and be unable to go any farther. She’d never been able to talk to her aunt in her life. Her aunt was remote from her, a bony-faced, dark-garbed stranger. Tell her that she’d lied? Tell her that she was in love with John Benton and had made believe that . . .

She backed up the step again, lips shaking, tears forcing their way from her eyes and dribbling down her pale cheeks. She hurried back to her room, looking at the clock as she passed. Before she reached the door, she heard the tinny resonance of the clock chiming the half hour. In thirty minutes.