The Gun Fight

Chapter Twenty-one

“Well, them damn churnheads is in the bog again,” was the first thing Joe Bailey said as Benton and Lew Goodwill rode up to him.

“Oh, for—!” Benton hissed angrily. Then he shrugged. “Well . . . stay here with the rest of the herd and Lew and I’ll fetch ’em out.”

“Okay, boss,” Joe Bailey said and Benton and Goodwill rode off toward the mud hole, stopping off at the small range shack for short-handled shovels.

“It’s this damn heat,” Lew said as the two of them dismounted by the bog. “They try to get cool and all they get is stuck.”

Benton grunted and they walked across the rilled ground toward the almost dry spring. As they walked, they saw the two steers struggling in the wire and heard the bellowing of their complaints.

“Sure. Tell us your troubles,” Benton said to them under his breath. “If you weren’t so damn mule-headed, you wouldn’t get stuck in there.” But he knew it was really because he didn’t have enough men to keep a closer watch on the herd. How could one man keep tabs on two hundred head?

As they came to the edge of the mud hole, Benton and Lew unbuckled their gunbelts and lay them on the top of a boulder.

“Let’s get the wrinkle-horn out first,” Benton said.

“Right,” Lew said and they struggled out into the viscous mud toward the older steer with its wrinkled, scaly horns. Benton gritted his teeth as the smell of hot slime surrounded him.

“Oh, shut up!” he snapped as the steer bellowed loudly, trying, in vain, to dislodge its legs.

Quickly, with angrily driven shovel strokes, Benton dug around the steer’s legs. The steer kept struggling, sometimes sinking deeper into the hot, reeking muck, its angry, frightened bellows blasting at Benton’s eardrums.

Once, its muzzle crashed against Benton’s shoulder as he straightened up for a moment and knocked him onto his side, getting his Levi’s and shirt mud-coated. Jumping up, he grabbed hold of the scaly horn and shoved the steer’s head away with a curse, then started digging again.

Finally, he’d freed most of the front leg and, stepping over the back leg, he started working on that quickly so the mud wouldn’t come back around the free leg. On the other side of the struggling steer, he heard his own curses echoed by Lew Goodwill.

“Damn fool!” Lew snapped. “Stop fussin’ so!”

As he dug, trying to breathe through his clenched teeth, Benton felt great sweat drops trickling down the sides of his chest from his armpits. He kept digging, plunging the shovel point in and hurling the black mud away with angry arm jerks. It’s times like this—he thought—when I wish I was back in the Rangers where the only thing a man has to worry about is getting shot.

He hadn’t slept much the night before. Julia had kept talking about Robby Coles and he was still thinking about it when he fell into an uneasy doze.

He dreamed that Matthew Coles was tying him to a hitching post while Robby stood nearby, waiting to fire slugs into him. When the first bullets had struck, he’d jolted up on the bed with a grunt, wide awake.

Then Lew Goodwill had ridden in from the first night watch and said he thought there better be another man to help Joe Bailey on the second watch because there was some electric lightning in the sky and the herd was getting spooky.

Benton had dressed and ridden out to the herd and stayed with Joe a couple of hours until the lightning was gone. Then he’d ridden back to the house. In all, he’d gotten about three hours of sleep.

“All right, get on your horse,” he said to Lew.

“Ain’t finished the back leg, boss.”

“I’ll get it, I’ll get it,” Benton snapped. “Get on your horse.”

“Okay.” Lew slogged out of the mud hole and moved up to where his horse was tied. He cinched up the saddle as tightly as the latigo straps could be drawn, then led the animal down to the edge of the mud hole.

“All right, toss in your rope,” Benton said.

Lew lifted the rope coil off his saddle horn and shook it loose, then tossed one end of it to Benton who tied it securely around the steer’s horns. While he did that, Lew fastened the other rope end around his saddle horn and drew it taut. Mounting then, he backed off his sturdy piebald until the lariat was taut.

“All right,” Benton called, “drag her out!”

The piebald dug in its hooves and started pulling at the dead weight of the steer. Dust rose under its slipping, straining legs and the muscles of its body stood out like sheathed cables. In the mud hole, Benton shoved at the steer from behind, trying to avoid the spray of mud from its flailing legs but not always succeeding.

“Come on, you wall-eyed mule!” Benton gasped furiously as he shoved the steer, his muscles straining violently.

Slowly, the steer was pulled loose and dragged up onto hard ground. When they tailed it up, it charged Benton and he had to make a zig-zag dash for the bush. Then Lew chased the steer off and they went back into the mud for the second one.

By the time they had that one out, they were both spattered with mud from head to knee and caked solid below that. They sat in the shade a little while, panting and cursing under their breath.

They were sitting like that when the gelding came over the rise. “Who’s that?” Lew asked.

Benton looked up and sudden alarm tightened his face. “My gun,” he muttered, and stood up quickly as Matthew Coles spurred his gelding down the gradual slope and reined up.

“What do you want?” Benton asked, realizing that Coles was unarmed.

“I’m here as second for my son,” Coles said, stiffly.

“You’re what?” Benton squinted up at the older man.

“You will be in town by three o’clock this afternoon to defend yourself,” stated Matthew Coles.

Benton stared up incredulously. “What did you say?”

“You heard what I said, sir!”

Benton felt the heat and the dirt and the exhaustion all well up in him and explode as anger. “God damn it, get off my ranch! I told you that girl lied! Now—”

“Either you come in like a man,” Matthew Coles flared, “or my son will ride out after you!”

Benton felt like dragging the older man off his horse and pitching him head first into the mud hole. His body shook with repression of the desire.

“Listen,” he said. “For the last time, you tell your kid that—”

“By three, Mister Benton. Three o’clock this afternoon.”

“Coles, I swear to God, if you don’t—”

Matthew Coles pulled his horse around and rode quickly up the incline as Benton started forward, his face suddenly whitening with fury.

Benton stopped and watched the older man ride away.

“He’s loco,” Lew Goodwill said then and Benton glanced over at the big man. “He’s tryin’ to kill his own kid,” Lew went on. “He must be loco.”

Benton walked away on stiff legs and stood by the boulder buckling on his gunbelt. What was he supposed to do now, he wondered. Did he stay out on the ranch and wait to see if Robby Coles really would come after him? It was what he felt like doing. Without any trouble at all, he could convince himself that the kid wasn’t going to commit suicide.

But he didn’t try to convince himself. He stood there worriedly, staring at the crest of the slope where Matthew Coles had disappeared.

Finally, he exhaled a heavy breath and groaned because he knew what he had to do. “Oh . . . damn!” he muttered to himself and started in quick, angry strides for his horse.

“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he told Lew. “Tell Merv and Joe I . . .” Another disgusted hiss of breath. “Tell ’em I have to go into the damn town again.”

“Take it easy, boss,” Lew said and Benton grunted a reply as he started up the slope.

As he swung into the saddle, he ran his right hand across his brow and slung away the sweat drops on his fingers. Then he nudged his spurs into the horse’s flanks and felt the animal charge up the incline beneath him.

What do I do first? The thought plagued him as he galloped for the ranch. Should he try Robby first or his father, Louisa or her aunt or her mother, the Reverend Bond or maybe even the sheriff? He didn’t know. All he knew was that things were too damn complicated. Some stupid little girl makes up a story about him and, in two days, everybody expects him to defend his life.

It was hard not to let them have their way. Certainly he was fed up enough just to let it happen the way they wanted. But then he knew again that killing Robby wasn’t the answer. Robby wasn’t any villain to be killed; he was only a pawn.

Why did I leave the Rangers? He was asking himself the question again as he rode up to the house and jumped off his horse.

Julia was in the doorway before he’d even tied up the panting mount.

“John,” she said breathlessly, staring at his mud-spattered clothes.

“It’s all right,” he said quickly as she ran to him.

“Oh.” She swallowed and caught his hand. “Mud. I thought—” She swallowed again and didn’t finish. “What happened, John?” she asked instead.

He told her briefly as he went into the house, pulling off his mud-caked shirt and starting to wash up at the pump.

“What are you going to do?” she asked, apprenhensively.

“Go into town,” he said. “No, I’m not takin’ a gun with me,” he added quickly, seeing the look in her eyes. “I’ll try talkin’ reason to them again.” He dashed water in his face and washed off the soap. “There must be one of them that’ll listen to reason. I sure can’t see shootin’ that kid over nothin’ at all.”

“I want to go with you,” Julia said, suddenly.

“No, I’ll get there faster by myself,” he told her.

“John, I want to go,” she said again and this time it wasn’t just a request. He looked over at her as he lathered his muddy arms.

“Honey, who’s goin’ to feed the boys? They gotta have their chuck, you know.”

“They can manage by themselves one day,” she said. “I’ll leave the food on the table.”

“Julia, there isn’t that much time.”

“Then I’ll leave a note telling them where everything is,” she argued. “If there isn’t much time, it’s even more important that I go with you. There may be a lot of people to see and two of us can do more than one. And—besides—the women are more likely to listen to me than you.” She spoke quickly, submerging the rise of dread in a tide of rapid planning.

Benton hesitated a moment longer, looking at her intent face. Then he turned away with a shrug. “All right,” he said, wearily. As she sat down to write the note, she heard him muttering to himself about how the ranch was going to go to hell because of all this lost time.

“We’ll tie Socks behind the buckboard,” she said, looking up from the note, “then, when we get into town, we can separate and get more done that way.”

“Well, there isn’t much time,” Benton said, looking at the clock, “it’s almost eleven now. It’ll take till quarter of twelve to reach town even if we push it.”

“He didn’t set a time, did he?” she asked, her voice suddenly faint.

“Three,” he said.

“This afternoon?” She knew even as she said it that it had to be that afternoon. “Oh, dear God.”

Benton grunted, then turned from the pump. “I’m goin’ to change clothes now,” he said. “Will you get Socks and the dark mare outta the barn? I’ll put the other one away before we leave.”

He headed for the bedroom.

“John,” she said suddenly when he was almost out of the kitchen. He looked back over his shoulder.

“John . . . promise me that . . .” she swallowed, “. . . that whatever happens you won’t . . .” She couldn’t finish.

They looked at each other a long moment and it seemed as if the great conflict in their life and marriage were a wall being erected between them again.

Then John said, “There’s no time to talk now,” and left her staring at the place where he’d been standing. She listened to the sound of her pencil hitting the floor and rolling across the boards.