The Gun Fight

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.

“My dear Miss Winston,” he said, concernedly, “reason, not violence; is that not what our Lord has taught us?”

The colorless skin rippled slightly over Agatha Winston’s taut cheeks. There were definitely times when Christianity did more to thwart than aid, she felt. This was one of the times when she would have preferred a more hardened ethic; this loving humility had its limitations.

But she nodded once, tight-lipped, not wishing to alienate the head of local church activities.

“I came here because I am a woman,” she said. “Because I am helpless to do anything by myself.”

Christianity does not become you—the Reverend Bond was unable to prevent the thought from shaking loose its repressive bonds. Once again, he hid the thought behind the mild and wrinkled facade he almost always presented to the world.

“Isn’t it possible this gossip is exaggerated?” he suggested then. “You know how some people talk. A chance meeting between Benton and your niece might be construed in an entirely false manner.”

“I would agree with you,” said Agatha Winston, lying, “if it were not for the fact that Louisa, herself, verified the story.”

“Oh,” he said, cornered again, “Louisa . . . herself.”

“Believe me, Reverend, when I say I no more wanted to believe this ugly thing when I first heard of it than you want to believe it now. I’m not the sort of woman who accepts every scrap of gossip as the truth, you know that.”

I do not know that, Omar Bond reflected silently, his sad eyes on the face of Agatha Winston.

“Before I accepted one word of this terrible story, I went directly to my niece and questioned her most carefully.”

She stiffened her back, fingers tightening in the lap of her black skirt. “The story is true,” she declared.

The Reverend Bond licked his upper lip slowly. He started to say something, then exhaled slowly instead while Miss Winston sat waiting for him to call down the wrath of church and Lord upon the head of John Benton.

“What exactly,” asked the Reverend Bond, “did Louisa say?”

The thin eyebrows of Agatha Winston pressed down over unpleasantly curious eyes.

“Say?” she asked, not certain of what the Reverend was getting at.

“Yes. Surely, you verified her story?”

“I told you,” she said tensely, “I asked her if the incident were true and she said it was.”

“Was she upset?”

Agatha Winston looked more unpleasantly confused. “Of course, she was upset,” she said. “Her honor was insulted; naturally, she was upset. Especially when I told her how her intended husband, Robby Coles, fought John Benton in defense of her.”

The Reverend Bond strained forward, his face suddenly concerned. “Fought?” he asked. “Not . . . not with . . . guns?” His voice tapered off in a shocked whisper.

“No, not with guns,” Miss Winston said. “Although—”

The look on the Reverend Bond’s face kept her from continuing but she knew that he was fully conscious of what she had been about to say.

“What I am getting at,” Omar Bond continued, preferring to overlook her probable remark, “is that . . . well, Louisa is very young, very impressionable.”

“I don’t see how—”

“Let me explain, Miss Winston. Please.”

Agatha Winston leaned back, eyes distrusting on the Reverend’s face.

“John Benton is what you might call . . . oh, an idol in this town, is he not?” asked Bond.

“Men shall not bow down before idols,” declared Miss Winston.

The Reverend Bond controlled himself.

“I mean to say, he is extremely admired. I do not, for a moment, say that I condone admiration for a man which is based primarily on an awe of his skill with instruments of death. However . . . this does not alter the fact that, among the younger people particularly, John Benton has achieved almost a . . . a legendary status.”

She did not nod or speak or, in any way, indicate agreement.

“I have seen myself,” the Reverend Bond went on, “in the church—young boys and girls staring at him with . . . shall we say, unduly fascinated eyes?”

“I do not—”

“Please, Miss Winston, I shall be finished in a moment. To continue: From the vantage point of my pulpit, I have seen your own niece looking so at John Benton.”

Miss Winston closed her eyes as if to shut away the thought. “I can hardly believe this,” she said, stiffly.

“I say it in no condemning way,” the Reverend Bond hastened to explain. “It is a thoroughly natural reaction in the young. I would not even have mentioned it were it not for what you have just told me.”

“I don’t understand,” said Agatha Winston. “Are you telling me that Louisa lied? That her story is a deliberate falsehood?”

“No, no,” the Reverend said gently, a smile softening his features, “not a lie. Call it rather a . . . a daydream spoken aloud.”

Miss Winston rose irately.

“Reverend, I’m shocked that you should stand up for John Benton, a man who lives by violence. And I’m hurt—deeply hurt that you should accuse my niece of deliberately lying.”

The Reverend Bond rose quickly and moved toward her.

“My dear Miss Winston,” he said, “I assure you . . .”

Agatha Winston brushed away a tear which had, somehow, managed to force its way out of her eye duct. A sob rasped dryly in her lean throat.

“I came to you because there is nothing my sister and her daughter can do to defend their good name. But instead of—”

Another sob, dry and harsh.

Against his better judgment, the Reverend Omar Bond found himself standing before Agatha Winston, explaining, apologizing.

“I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” he finally said, growing desperate with her. “I’ll ride out personally to John Benton’s ranch and speak to him.”

“He’ll deny it,” Agatha Winston said, agitatedly. “Do you think he’ll—”

“Miss Winston, if the incident occurred as you said, John Benton will admit it,” the Reverend Bond said firmly. “That’s all I can say for now. I sympathize with your situation, I most certainly will speak out Sunday against the insidious cruelty of this gossiping.” He gestured weakly. “And . . . and I’ll go out to see John Benton in the morning.”

He was leading her to the door finally.

“Please don’t upset yourself, Miss Winston,” he told her, “I am confident we can work it out to the satisfaction of all.”

“Oh, if only there were a man in our family to speak for us,” Agatha Winston said, vengefully.

“I will speak for you,” said Bond. “Remember, my child, we are all one family under God.”

Frankly, Miss Winston did not accept that tenet of Christianity. Her mind pushed the concept aside angrily as she strode off into the night, unsatisfied.

The Reverend Omar Bond shut the door and turned back as Clara came out of the kitchen, drying her hands.

“What’s wrong, dear?” she asked, concernedly.

“Offhand, I should say the qualifications for membership in the church,” said the Reverend Bond with a weary shake of his head.