The Gun Fight (15 page)

“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.

I
t 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.

I
t 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.

Jane Coles caught her breath and felt a sudden harsh
sensation in her stomach as if her insides were falling. Then she turned and hurried out of the dark room and down the hall and stairs, a cold hand clamped over her heart.

In the downstairs hall she stopped, then, abruptly, leaned against the wall and listened with a drained weakness to the sound of Robby clearing his throat in the kitchen, the attendant sound of a cup being placed onto its saucer.

After a moment, she drew in a long breath and pushed away from the wall.

As she came through the swinging door, Robby looked up with a nervous jerk of his head, the dark pupils of his eyes expanding suddenly. She saw his Adam’s apple move and a nervous smile twitch on his lips.

“Oh . . . it’s you, mother,” he said.

Jane Coles smiled at the only person in the world she really loved, for some reason, never having been able to feel the devotion toward Jimmy that she did for her older son.

“Can’t you sleep, darling?” she asked, walking up to the table where he sat, seeing a thin drift of steam rising from the coffee cup in front of him.

Robby swallowed. “No, I . . .” He didn’t finish or pretend he had a finish for the sentence. He lowered his eyes and stared into the cup.

Jane Coles shuddered. She loved Robby so much and yet she could never speak to him nor get him to speak to her. There was always a barrier between them. Maybe, Jane Coles had sometimes thought, it was because Robby needed someone strong to love and encourage him and she was weak, vacillating, without resources. No wonder then he couldn’t confide in her and seek out her judgment. No wonder then he could do no more than love her as his mother and avoid looking for anything else in her.

“Are you hungry, son?” she asked.

“No . . . mother, I’m all right.”

She stood there, wordless, the smile fixed to her tired face, wanting desperately to speak to him, to have him need her sympathy and love.

Impulsively, she drew out a chair and Robby looked up in poorly veiled surprise as the chair leg grated on the floor. His mother smiled quickly at him and sat down, feeling the pulsebeat throbbing in her wrists. The sickness of despair was coming over her again. Robby was her own son, the only one she really cared for and yet she could not speak of a situation which might lead him to his death.

She swallowed and clasped her hands in her lap until the blood was squeezed from them. She
had
to speak of it.

“Son,” she said, her voice a strengthless sound.

Robby looked up at her. “What, mother?”

“You . . .” She looked down quickly at her white hands, then up again. “You’ve . . . made up your mind?”

“About what, mother?” he asked quietly.

She didn’t say anything because she knew he was aware of what she spoke about. She looked at him intently, feeling as if the room and the house had disappeared and there were only the two of them sitting in some immeasurable void together—waiting.

“Yes,” he said then and she saw how his fingers twitched restively at the porcelain cup handle. He opened his mouth a little as if he were going to go on, clarifying, explaining. “Yes,” he said again.

Mrs. Coles felt as if someone had submerged her in icy, numbing water. She sat there staring at her son, feeling a complete inability in herself, feeling absolutely helpless.

She blinked then, forcing through herself the demand to think, to act.

“Because of Miss Winston’s . . .
visit
?”

Robby turned his head away a moment as if he wanted to escape but, after a few seconds, he looked back at her briefly, then at his cup.

“Because of everything,” he said.

She stopped the trembling of her lips before she spoke again. “Everything?” she asked.

Robby took a long drink of the coffee and she watched the convulsive movements of his throat muscles. She was about to tell him not to drink coffee or he wouldn’t sleep but then she got the sudden idea that if he didn’t sleep and was exhausted the next day, his father might not demand anything of him. She remained silent.

Robby clinked down the cup heavily.

“Mother, it’s got to be done,” he said, his voice tightly controlled. “There’s no other way.”

The dread again, complete and overwhelming, like a crawling of snakes over her and in her. “But . . . why?” she heard herself asking faintly. “Surely, there’s . . .”

Robby twisted his shoulders and she stopped talking, feeling a bolt of anguish at the realization that she was only making it worse for him.

“Mother, there’s no other way,” he told her in an agitated voice. “If I don’t do it, Louisa will never be able to lift her head again in Kellville.”

That’s his father talking, the thought was like an electric shock in her brain. She stared at him helplessly a moment but then knew suddenly she had to go on because, if she didn’t, his decision would remain the same.

“But . . . John Benton didn’t admit to doing what . . .” her shoulders twitched nervously, “. . . what they said he did.”

“It’s not enough, mother,” Robby said, almost angrily now. “Can’t you see that? The whole town believes he did it and . . .” he punched a fist on his leg, “. . . and Louisa is suffering for it. I have to speak for her, mother, can’t you see that I have to?”

She sat in the chair shivering, staring at his tense young face, knowing that he was trying desperately to
hang on to his resolve, feeling, in her body, a twisting and knotting of sick terror for him.

“No . . .” she murmured, hardly realizing it herself. In her mind a dozen different questions flung about in a weave of stricken panic. But you didn’t ask Louisa if it were true, did you? Why should John Benton do such a thing? Why do you believe everything they tell you? Why do you let them all make your decision for you? Robby, it’s your
life
! There’s only one! A rushing torrent of words she could never speak to him in a hundred years.

“What are . . . what are you going to do?” she asked, without meaning to.

They were both silent, looking at each other and Jane Coles could hear the clock in the hall ticking away the moments.

Then her son said, “There’s only one thing.”

Her hand reached out instinctively and closed over his as a rush of horror enveloped her.

“No, darling!” she begged him. “Please don’t!
Please!
”

Robby bit his lip and there was a strained sound in his throat as if he had felt himself about to cry and fought it away. He drew his hand from her quickly, his face hardening and, for a hideous moment, Jane Coles saw the face of her husband reflected on Robby’s pale features.

“
There’s nothing else, I said,
” he told her tensely.

“But not with—!” She broke off suddenly, afraid even of the word.

“Yes,” he said and she could see clearly how hard he was trying to believe it himself. “There’s no other way a man like him would understand. It’s all he deserves. He won’t apologize or . . .” He saw the straining fear on her face and his voice snapped angrily. “I believe Louisa! She wouldn’t lie to me! Not about something like this. It’s my duty to . . . to defend her honor.”