HENRY BASCOMB, HIS drinker’s nose not quite so purple after the long ride from town with its extra sobering experience of finding the corpse of the Nelson boy, pulled up short as he rounded the side of the house and saw the rifle-toting Virginian crossing the yard toward him. He was afraid for just a moment, before he recognized Steele and remembered what had been happening before the headlong, gun-blazing assault on the farmstead in the hollow.
‘Oh, it’s you! My, I guess we all just forgot about you what with all the excitement, Mr. Steele. I saw you take the tumble off your horse. Are you all right? Not hurt? I’m going to bring the horses for the wagon and the buggy so we can—’
Matt Hope, whose horses the Begleys and Arness had rented, came hurrying around the corner, intent upon taking care of the chore for which he was obviously better suited.
‘I’m in good shape, all things considered,’ Steele answered, taking advantage of the pause that the liveryman’s arrival forced upon the disconcerted doctor. ‘But Kyle could use some of the attention you’re best able to give, doc.’
‘Orville Kyle?’ Hope blurted.
Bascomb demanded to know: ‘Where is the sheriff?’
‘I’m in the barn, Henry!’ the lawman tried to shout, but his tone was more a croak. ‘If you have your bag of tricks with you, I’ll be happy! But I need to talk to all you people before I … oh, shit, the bleeding’s started again!’
The doctor rapped out an order to the liveryman that he should go bring his bag from his horse, then broke into a long, striding walk toward the doorway of the barn. The Virginian thought about emphasizing Kyle’s plea that Hope should also bring the rest of the Rosarita men and the new owners of the place: but decided it was unnecessary. So he took just a few moments to spot where his horse was contentedly cropping grass on the open range beyond the fallen-down fence, and then turned to go after Bascomb.
On his way into the barn he dragged one of the doors open wider for the expected crowd. And was ignored by the sheriff and the doctor as they engaged in a subdued argument: Bascomb attempting to be both placating and threatening in face of Kyle’s croaking-voiced demands. A compromise was reached as Steele went to sit on a hay bale near the row of four stalls, only three of which were occupied by the rented horses. The agreement was reached on the basis that the gunshot man would be allowed to assume a seated posture with his back supported in the angle of the corner, provided the doctor could start his work at once.
It caused the big, bald-headed, haggard-looking lawman a great deal of pain as he was helped up into the attitude he wanted by the wiry little Bascomb, who kept making clucking noises of anxiety. Kyle pulled many faces, but managed to keep himself from crying out between his deep intakes of breath.
‘I certainly hope you think that was all worthwhile,’ the doctor said sourly. ‘Because it may well have shortened your life by a considerable—’
Kyle looked up from peering at the wet fresh blood which had spilled out of the re-opened bullet hole to provide a bright contrast with that which had congealed. And said, as many footfalls were heard approaching the barn: ‘Henry, a condemned man always has one last—’
‘Let’s see what kind of damage has been done to you before we start talking death, Orville,’ Bascomb snapped. And dropped to his knees beside Kyle so he was better able to unbutton the blood-sodden shirt.
The lawman looked to be drawing closer to total exhaustion by the moment. He also seemed to be on the point of throwing up. But then he shifted his pain-filled gaze from the doorway to fix it on Steele. And after a stretched second of intense concentration—like he was trying to remember who and where he was—he was able to overcome the heaviness of his drooping eyelids and to fight the acrid bile out of his rapidly working throat.
‘You don’t seem to be enjoying me going through this, mister?’ he challenged as one shadow and then many fell across the doorway.
The Virginian inclined his head and replied: ‘Maybe if I’d done it to you, feller?’
Then there was a whole barrage of questions asked and demands made as Matt Hope led the large group into the barn. Just the liveryman approached close to where Kyle sat and Bascomb eased the shirt away from the ugly bullet wound in the sheriff’s near hairless chest: and after the bag was set down within reach of the doctor Hope scuttled back to become a part of the fifteen-strong gathering that had halted noisily on the threshold.
‘Quiet!’ the tall and thin, gray-haired and mustached Fraser Sorrel commanded, waving his arms in the air and stepping clear of the press of people. Half turned so that he could glare at them and direct quizzical glances toward Steele and the two men in the corner. ‘Quieten it down and then maybe we’ll find out what this is all about!’
He had a revolver in one of his gesturing hands. And most of the Rosarita men were carrying a handgun or a rifle. Which stressed the prisoner status of Arness and the Begley mother and son, the three of them close together at the front of the group. The older man was as Steele had last seen him, but without the Winchester. Charlotte Begley was now wearing his suit jacket, cape fashion around her shoulders, with the lapels clutched tightly together at her throat. Dale, who seemed to be as recently out of bed as his mother, was hurriedly dressed in pants and shirt and boots that had not been laced. Fear had negated his arrogance and he looked shorter and thinner and paler than Steele remembered him from yesterday. And a great deal younger—a callow youth rather than a young man.
‘I’m real grateful to you, Fraser,’ Kyle rasped as the shocked group became subdued to such an extent that many of them held their breath. ‘I’m in no shape to yell my head off to get heard.’
‘What happened, Orville?’ the owner of the Pioneer asked out of deep shock—more distraught than anyone else as he struggled to come to terms with this latest link in a chain of violence that had killed his son.
For a moment the wounded lawman came close to being sick to his stomach again as he stared into the helplessly bewildered face of Pierce Nelson’s father. In this time, the fat little saloonkeeper shifted his gaze to look at Steele. And there was hostility in his tone and starting to reshape the expression on his face as he began:
‘I told Michael Masterson and the Webb woman they was crazy to turn him loose without you bein’ there to—’
‘It wasn’t Steele who plugged me, Dunc,’ the lawman said quickly, before Nelson could complete the move of tracking his rifle to aim it at the abruptly tense Virginian. ‘It was Pierce!’
There was a full second of stunned silence. Then an explosive burst of demands from many throats. That faltered and faded back into silence without anyone calling for quiet this time. And all eyes began to switch their gazes back and forth between Kyle and Nelson. Except for Bascomb, who continued to work on the lawman’s bullet wound, using swabs and a strong-smelling liquid from his bag.
‘Pierce is dead, Orville.’
‘I know, Dunc. I killed him.’
The two statements were made in the same bald manner: and the utter tonelessness with which the men spoke set the pattern for what followed: with everyone remaining so icily calm that most sensed they were frozen into a dream sequence over which they had no control.
‘Why’d you do that, Orville?’
‘To keep him from killing me, Dunc.’
Bascomb interrupted his wound-cleansing chore and leaned back so that he could share a grim look between Kyle and Nelson. Then he swept an earnest gaze over every expectant bystander as he warned: ‘Unless I get the opportunity to go in after the bullet pretty damn soon, the boy and the sheriff will have killed each other.’
‘I need to say my piece, Henry.’
‘Orville’s decision, Henry,’ Nelson added.
Bascomb sighed, shrugged and unfolded to his feet. ‘Just so long as everyone knows I’ve expressed my opinion. Here, it’s already infected, but we needn’t take any more risks than we are already.’
He had stooped to delve into his bag again. Produced a wad of dressing which he placed in Kyle’s good hand: then guided the hand so that the black hole encircled by a ridge of blue contusions was covered.
‘Obliged,’ the lawman said.
‘And I’ll be obliged if you’d get to how you and my boy came to—’
‘Sure, Dunc. Everyone here—and back in town, I guess—deserves to know the whole story. And I’ll tell it just like it happened. No excuses. And if anyone’s feelings are hurt, to hell with them. Nobody’s hurting more than me.’
He grimaced a lot of the time and occasionally drew up the knees of his splayed legs. Frequently he had to swallow hard and every now and then needed to raise his damaged hand to support the left one in holding the dressing to the bullet wound. But he kept talking in the same toneless voice with which he had first admitted to killing the Nelson boy.
‘Didn’t feel right, letting those city folks come out here to take over from Avery without giving them more of a warning than they were ready to listen to in town. Came here and did just that. They heard me out this time. But Avery’s woman and the boy and the city gunslinger with them made it plain to me they intended to stay and stand up against Lucas Hart. Since they have a right to what Avery left them, I figured I could do nothing more than warn them of the kind of trouble they’d likely bring down on themselves. And, like they rightly pointed out to me, as a peace officer it was my sworn duty to help them in protecting what was rightfully theirs.’
Dale Begley emphatically nodded, but a withering glare from his mother convinced him not to speak aloud his agreement.
‘Thought then to ride on out to the Double-H and talk some turkey with Lucas Hart. But I never got anywhere near the house. Had a run in with Buck Ashton and Wylie at the trail line shack. Knew it was me but took a couple of shots at me anyway. Said they could have killed me if they had wanted and I knew they were speaking the truth. Told me every Double-H hand has instructions to run strangers off the spread. And far as Hart’s concerned, anyone who doesn’t work for him is a stranger. Anyone who objects is to be given a hard time. The way that scar-faced Irwin Wylie looked at me I got a pretty good idea of what was meant by hard time.
‘Couldn’t see there was anything else for me to do but head on back for town and warn folks to stay clear of the Double-H. Which was what I was doing when I met up with Pierce, Dunc. He was riding like there was a bunch of warpainted Apaches after him, and when he stopped he set to talking near as fast as he’d been riding. He was doing some crying in with the talking and I didn’t understand too much of what he was blubbering. But I did get that he was planning on riding to the Double-H and asking Lucas Hart for a job.’
Now Duncan Nelson nodded, but it was less assertive than the Begley boy’s earlier gesture had been and he felt no urge to back it with words. He pointedly avoided taking part in an exchange of knowing glances with Bascomb.
‘I tried to talk Pierce out of what he planned,’ Kyle continued in the same dispassionate tone after a pause for a gulp that perhaps sucked another threat of nausea from out of his throat. ‘Started to tell him what happened to me with Ashton and Wylie. But he wouldn’t listen. Told me he was through with me and everyone else in Rosarita. Including you, Dunc. Ordered me to move out of his way. When I tried to take a hold of the bridle of his gelding he pulled a gun out from under the duster he was wearing. He said afterwards it was a mistake. He hadn’t meant to fire at me. The gun just went off.
‘I fell off my horse and I thought I was going to die right there and then. Pierce backed his horse off and started to yell at me that it was my own fault. And your fault, Dunc. That nobody ever let him do what he wanted. He was ranting and raving and saying crazy things. Scared more than anything, I figure now. Then, I was just sure he wanted to kill me. And it was a crazy kid who was going to make me cash in my chips. Felt the need to take Pierce with me, Dunc. Never was that close to dying before, way I saw it. Just couldn’t keep myself from drawing my gun and killing Pierce for what he was doing to me.
‘He took off. I don’t know if he was riding his horse or if the horse was in a bolt. Didn’t even know if I’d hit him. After I’d stayed down on the trail for a while I figured I wasn’t about to die there and then. Was able to get up and remount my horse. And I headed on back to town. Found where Pierce had taken a fall off his gelding and was stretched out in the brush. I stayed there with him when I saw he was still alive. He asked me not to move him because the bullet in his belly didn’t hurt him so much while he was down there in the brush the way he was. That’s when he told me he hadn’t meant to shoot me. Said a few other things, too. Amounted to that he was sorry for what had happened. To me. And that he’d been such a disappointment to you, Dunc. Then he died.’
Kyle was not through, but needed to take the time to concentrate his attention on not submitting to the compulsion to cry out as a wave of physical pain threatened to undermine his struggle to remain icily calm.
Nelson hung his head, gripped his rifle in white-knuckled fists and filled the pause with a strangled: ‘Oh, God.’
‘I didn’t think I could make it to town. I’d lost a lot of blood and this bullet inside me felt like it was making poison faster than I could make spit to chew tobacco. Had it in mind to tie Pierce to his gelding before I set the horse to running for home, but I didn’t have the strength. So I just set the horse to running. Then headed back for the Double-H. I still thought I was ready to cash in every step of the way and I guess I was off my head some, the way Pierce was. But the way it seemed, Lucas Hart was the one responsible for the mess I was in and I figured to call the bluff of Ashton or whoever else I might have run up against getting onto the Double-H. I already had one bullet in me. Get to see Hart and have it out with him, one way or the other. Prove I’m as good a lawman as Rosarita folks always thought I was.
‘Never made it. Reached the spur that comes out to this place and knew I’d never make it all the way to the Double-H. Not without some rest and some patching up. Planned to get that with the new people. I passed out someplace in the trees. Not for long, I guess. When I came out of it I was flat on my back on the trail and my horse was gone. Reached the house on foot. But wasn’t anybody home and the place was locked up. Made for the barn here and curled up in this corner. Maybe to die. Maybe not. Slept like a dead man, until I heard Steele and the city folks talking. Then the shooting. That’s it, Dunc. That’s how Pierce and me came to shoot each other.’
The saloonkeeper did not have to take time to examine his feelings after Kyle had finished his monotone explanation. For he had been only half listening or not listening at all to what the sheriff said after the manner of his son’s dying was recounted. And an expression of melancholy had gradually taken a firmer hold on his fleshy face.
‘All through?’ Bascomb asked, looking quickly between Nelson and Kyle as he squatted again beside the wounded man. ‘Can I make an overdue full examination of the patient now?’
‘I’m through,’ the lawman answered and now that he had spoken his piece he looked grayer and gaunter and much older: as if the powerful need to tell of the tragedy had sustained his strength.
‘It’s usual for a doctor to treat a case in private,’ Bascomb growled, with a critical glance that raked across all the bystanders.
But a mass move to comply with the request was checked when Duncan Nelson said morosely:
‘My fault as much as anybody else’s. Ever since his ma died so young and him so young, I acted more like a mother than a father to him. Babied him and bawled him out when he kicked against it. Always told me he’d run off one day if I didn’t give him no freedom. Last night when Henry and me got drunk in the Pioneer and—’
‘No sense in trying to undo what’s done, Dunc,’ Bascomb advised earnestly.
‘Well, I drove him away,’ the saloonkeeper went on, ignoring the interruption. ‘What with them hard-nosed Hart men sittin’ out the funeral in the Pioneer and then the dude gunslinger showin’ up in town. Filled Pierce’s head with nonsense. When me and Henry were full of liquor, I told Pierce I’d take down his pants and paddle his bare ass if he didn’t do like I wanted and cook us up a mess of supper. Made him feel small. And look it in front of Henry. He done what he was told, but later he upped and left town. My fault the next time I saw him, he was dead under a blanket.’
‘A blanket?’ Kyle queried, and now his voice sounded as exhausted as he looked.
‘I guess the stranger?’ Fraser Sorrel suggested with a quizzical glance at Adam Steele who had risen from the hay bale.
‘Knew you Rosarita people were on my back trail and would do the rest of what’s necessary,’ the Virginian said.
‘Later than was planned,’ the stage and telegraph office man answered. ‘Persuaded by some of the women to wait awhile longer for the sheriff to return.’
‘I’m obliged you covered the body, mister,’ Nelson said dully, gazing into the wretched middle distance instead of at Steele. ‘Sent James Bate and his boy back to town with the body. Old man Cooper will be doing what’s necessary by now, I figure.’
‘Any reason we can’t be startin’ back to Rosarita now?’ Matt Hope asked of anyone who cared to respond.
‘Doc?’ Sorrel asked, re-assuming his role as top hand among the townspeople now that they were no longer vengeance-bent vigilantes.
Bascomb ended his close-up examination of the bullet wound and dropped his magnifying glass in his bag. Stood up from the lawman who was breathing shallowly but in all other respects looked dead. ‘Orville’s going to die if I don’t dig the bullet out of him. The ride to town is going to shorten the odds on him pulling through. But he’d have no better chance if I did my surgery here without the proper facilities.’
‘So we’ll be getting back, all right, Dunc?’ Sorrel suggested.
Nelson nodded absently, still almost lost in a black world of remorse.
‘Best Orville rides back on that flatbed I saw out front,’ Bascomb said.
‘I’ll hitch up the horses,’ Matt Hope volunteered eagerly.
‘Hey, we rented and paid—’ Dale Begley began.
‘Now, son, let’s be charitable toward—’ his mother attempted to placate.
The incensed youngster jerked his arm free of her reaching hand and snarled: ‘Charitable, hell! They come out here to our place and shoot at us like … like I don’t know what! Then they accuse us of murder! And it’s my opinion they’d have lynched us if they didn’t find out it was one of their own who murdered—’
‘Leave it, Dale,’ Fletcher Arness warned, softly but insistently out of the side of his mouth.
And the partially dressed young man felt compelled to end his tirade as he immediately became aware of the dangerous mixture of contempt and menacing hostility with which he was being eyed by the Rosarita men. But it was the approach of the impassive-faced Steele that caused him to step back and to the side—and perhaps it was not his intention that he should move into the protective embrace of his mother. Although he made no attempt to break away from her this time.
‘You fired the first shot, kid,’ the Virginian reminded the apprehensive young man as he made for the gap in the group on the barn threshold left by Begley’s retreat.
‘But I thought it was all a trick and—’
‘So you made a mistake, Dale,’ Arness pointed out, as stone faced as the Virginian.
‘Yeah. That’s right. It was a mistake!’
‘Same as Pierce gettin’ killed was,’ the grieving father said dully. ‘Mistakes get made all the time.’
‘Some do, sure enough,’ Steele drawled as he directed an ice-eyed sidelong glance at the youngster cowering in the curled arm of his mother. ‘Others are born.’