The Law of the Trigger

Chapter Eight

Owen Toller returned early from Reunion that Saturday. Before sundown Elizabeth saw him driving the team hard up the sharp incline toward the farm gate, and there was something about the way he stood spread-legged on the wagon bed, crouched forward at the waist, that sharpened the worry that had been nagging at her throughout the long afternoon.

He took the team straight to the barn, unhitched and unharnessed, then came to the house carrying a small box of supplies. Elizabeth tried not to see the hard, grim lines at the corners of her husband's mouth as Lonnie raced to the kitchen and clutched at Owen's leg.

“Daddy, what did you bring me?”

“I'm afraid I ran short of time today,” Owen said, trying to pry his son loose.

“Did you bring some gum drops?”

“No, I didn't,” Owen said shortly. “Now let go of my leg.”

The small boy's face began to break up at the harshness in his father's voice. With sudden gentleness Owen said, “I'm sorry, Lonnie, but I couldn't get around to everything today, I'll make it up to you next time.”

Elizabeth's gaze darted from the face of her son to that of her husband. Quickly she said, “Your daddy's busy, Lonnie. Don't bother him now.” She moved the bewildered boy to the door and out of the kitchen.

Owen said, “Elizabeth, I need a can of lye, some yellow soap, and a pan of hot water.”

His wife frowned in surprise. “What on earth for, Owen?”

“Never mind, just get them for me, will you?” He turned and walked stiffly to the bedroom, where he changed into his work clothes. Elizabeth had the things laid out for him when he came back to the kitchen. He gathered them up without saying another word and took them out to the barn.

An almost uncontrollable anger choked him as he attacked the job before him. One word, three feet high, was painted in brazen yellow along the full length of the wagon bed. Owen tried not to look at it as he stirred the full can of lye into the pan of hot water, as he shaved the yellow soap into the lye water and mixed it with the stub of a broom until the rich suds slopped over on the ground. Then he lifted the foaming mixture to the wagon bed and began scrubbing the first letter with the broom stub.

He worked furiously, as though it were a matter of life and death, and under the savage scrubbing the giant letter C slowly began to disappear. When the C was completely obliterated, he attacked the letter O, then the W, working along the entire length of the wagon bed. Letter by letter, the glaring yellow-painted word COWARD disappeared from the surface of the weathered plank's.

At last he was through and stood panting, with sweat dripping from his forehead. The word was no longer there, but it still maddened him when he thought of it. While his back was turned someone had painted it there. The painter had been afraid to say the word to his face!

Slowly his rage deserted him and left him only sickness. These upright citizens who paint dirty words while a man is not looking—were they the ones he had once fought to protect? How could they have the gall to expect him to protect them now?

A good deal of Owen's anger had disappeared in the savagery of his work. But within him was something more dangerous than anger—a cold bitterness that threatened to destroy every principle he had ever believed in. Giving in to this bitterness would mean that he had thrown away the best, strongest, most productive years of his life, for it would mean that civilization was not worth saving or fighting for. It would prove that government by the people was as senseless in theory as it too often was in practice, for the people themselves were obsessed by greed and selfishness and cowardice and incapable of governing themselves. It would indicate that any form of law was idiocy.

If he accepted this conviction, born in bitterness, he must also accept the following truth, that his own ideals were idiocies. Owen Toller was not an unintelligent man; he had not risked his life a hundred times as a law-enforcement officer without reason or principle. But now a war raged within his own mind and conscience.

That night, after the children had been put to bed, Owen sat beside the flickering light of a coal-oil lamp, staring hard and unseeing at the printed page of theReunion Reflex. On the other side of the parlor Elizabeth did her sewing beside another lamp. Owen still fought his silent battle.

At last, after a long wordless hour, Owen put aside the paper and seemed to notice his wife for the first time. “Iguess I haven't been easy to live with,” he said soberly. “I'm sorry.”

Elizabeth glanced up from her work, but there was nothing for her to say.

“I've been doing some thinking,” Owen said quietly. “I guess I've been trying to keep things from you, and that's not right.”

Elizabeth made herself smile. “You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to.”

“I want to. You've got a right to know how we stand in the community.” He shook his head. “I'm afraid it isn't good. You heard what Arch Deland said the other day, and today I found out that it's true. They're beginning to hate me, Elizabeth. Today while I was marketing on Main Street one of them painted something on the wagon bed. The word was 'coward,' and the letters were three feet high and spread out the length of the wagon. The paint was yellow.”

Elizabeth sat in shocked silence.

“So that's the way it is,” he said tightly. “They're worked up like people going to a lynching or a witch burning. To hide their own cowardice, they had to find a goat, and I'm it.”

His wife made a small sound in her dry throat. “Owen, are you sure it's as bad as you say?”

“I'm sure. I saw it in the faces of people who have been my friends for years. They aren't worth protecting!” he said angrily. “Even if they had put me in the sheriff's office, I think I'd quit, because they simply aren't worth the bother. But they aren't the ones who have to pay because of a gang like the Brunners. Oh, they might beat their breasts when a load of freight comes late, but it's people like the Ransoms that suffer. And the hillpeople too. I've known them, and they're no worse than any other people. That boy that brought the wounded girl here— maybe he was a gang member, but he wasn't truly bad.”

Restlessly Owen came to his feet, paced the length of the small parlor. He strode to the front door and stood looking out at the night.

“I don't know....” he said at last. “Maybe they're all right. Ben McKeever, Judge Lochland, the man who painted 'coward' on my wagon bed. If the railroad brought a spur line in here it would bring work and settle the country and maybe there wouldn't be any room left for people like the Brunners. Maybe McKeever was right about all that. And maybe Judge Lochland was right when he said the Brunners' stock in trade was hate, which they peddled to the hillpeople.”

Owen turned away from the door, frowning deeply.

“Elizabeth, Judge Lochland said it was a fact of history that civilization has managed to advance, despite fear and timidity, because it has always found a man of strength to fill the breach in times of crisis. Do you believe that?” Elizabeth Toller, who had majored in history at a famous seminary in Missouri, answered, “I don't know, Owen.”

“Maybe he was right,” Owen said quietly, “although I can't imagine why he came to me with the story.”

Elizabeth Toller looked at her husband then and tried to see him through the wise eyes of Judge Lochland. She realized that Judge Lochland had penetrated the exterior of the man and had discovered a quality that she had not recognized before. Perhaps it was not heroic in the classical sense; and yet there was strength here that she had not suspected, and moral power that she had never seen unleashed. Here was a man, but one who walked taller than other men she had known; that was why she loved him, and why she feared for him.

It was strange, but this brief insight into the bigness of the man whom she had married five years ago did not make her feel smaller by comparison; she grew a bit within her own mind to meet him.

Now, as Owen looked at her, worried by his own thoughts, Elizabeth came very erect in her chair and worked busily at her sewing. For a moment she had opened the gate of reality. She had seen her husband as others, with clearer eyes, had seen him. And she knew that a five-year dream was nearly over.

She sat quietly for a moment and discovered that her fear was not quite so formidable, now that she had faced it squarely. At last she put her sewing aside.

“Owen,” she said firmly, “what do you think you should do?”

He looked puzzled, coming slowly from the depths of his own thoughts. “What should I do?”

“Do you think it's your duty to go after the Brunners?”

He blinked. “What kind of question is that? Being a husband and a father are my duties.”

She stood up then and came to him. “Owen, I'm not thinking of the word that was painted on the wagon bed today, or what others might think of us. I'm not thinking of Ben McKeever and his threats, or of Judge Lochland and his appeals out of history; what they think isn't important. But what you think of yourself is. What do you think, Owen?”

He seemed almost angered at the question, but she was looking squarely into his face and he could not escape it. “I told you what I think,” he said shortly. “My duty is here with my family. What do you want me to think?”

She smiled, but not with humor or with relief. “I want you to think there is nothing in the world as important as your wife, and the children, and the farm. I wouldn't be a woman if I didn't want that. And I want you to understand, the way I do, that the Brunner gang is none of your affair. They're a long way from here and they're no concern of ours. And besides, there are men like Will Cushman who are paid to take care of such trouble.

“Those are the things I want,” she continued. “But I married you because you had a mind and ideals of your own. You were a law-enforcement officer, but I brought you to a farm, and I want to hold you here because I love you and I'm afraid.” She shook her head and smiled again, and this time the smile was real. “You don't understand women very well, do you, Owen?”

“I guess not, if I can't understand my own wife.”

“I just want you the way you are, with all your ideals and your strength. And at the same time I want you safe beside me. I'm beginning to understand that I can't have both.”

She hadn't expected him to understand immediately what she was trying to tell him. But he did. For one moment he held her hard against him and said, “Thank you, Elizabeth. I never doubted for a minute that I was free to do whatever I might have to do, but thanks anyway for telling me.”

That was the last they spoke of it that night. The next day Owen was out before sunup to do the morning milking, and when he came back to the kitchen with the heavy foaming buckets, he said, “Do you think you've got enough supplies to last out the week?”

And Elizabeth knew that he had made his decision. She looked at him but her voice had deserted her and she could only nod.

Later, when she went into the parlor, she saw that Owen had changed into the blue serge vest and trousers of his Sunday suit. He had brought in a straw suitcase and was now taking out a cartridge belt and holster. He buckled the belt around his waist and then began unwrapping several oily rags from around a beautifully blued, walnut-gripped Colt's single-action revolver.

He seemed uneasy when he looked up and saw his wife standing in the doorway. He said, “If you try, it won't take much to talk me out of this.”

“I won't try, Owen.”

“Then I guess I'll get started for Reunion pretty soon. I want to talk to Judge Lochland.” With sudden impatience he tightened and refastened the buckle of the cartridge belt. “I wish I could explain why I'm doing this,” he said, “but I don't think I can.”

“There's no need to explain, Owen.”.

“I don't know....” He shook his head. “Yesterday I caught myself hating people for the first time in my life; hating them just because they were people, with the normal fears and prejudices that you find in everybody. It was the first time that ever happened to me. Then I began to wonder if it was myself that I really hated, and if I was taking it out on others. Do you understand that, Elizabeth?”

She nodded. “Yes, I think so.”

“Here I am fitted for just one job in all the world; I trained for it from the time I was big enough to hold a rifle. In all this county I'm the only man who might have a chance of going into those hills and breaking up the Brunner gang before other Frank and Edith Ransoms get killed.”

“There's no need to explain,” Elizabeth said again!

But Owen went on, as though he hadn't heard her. “I got to thinking about it last night. I've tried making excuses to myself because I was afraid. The person who painted that word on the wagon was not entirely wrong, because when I look up at those hills, they scare me. I think of you and Lonnie and the baby and tell myself I've got no right to take this chance.”

He paused, then added: “Elizabeth, have I got that right?”

There was no answer to that. There was no rule book that said how much a man owed to himself and how much he owed to others. She put her arms around him and held him hard for one brief moment. “If I stopped you now,” she said, “you would no longer be the same man I married and I think that frightens me more than anything.”