‘SHE BIT ME! The cow bit me, goddammit!’
Steele had to take that first blow from the tall and powerfully built lawman, who was too slow and clumsy for effective brawling in a one-to-one situation. For even as he saw the roundhouse punch aimed at his belly clearly telegraphed, he felt certain that one of the men on the sidewalk still had him dangerously covered. Probably the son of James Bate, whose impatience with his father’s inefficiency and anger at Ellie Webb for causing trouble might easily find release in an over-eager firing of the Winchester.
So Steele had to pretend to be taken totally by surprise, and his arms still hung loosely at his sides as Kyle’s big fist thudded powerfully into the right side of his lower belly. He expected the punch to hurt and it did, exploding a searing pain that forced a groan to burst out of his mouth ahead of the rush of expelled breath that powered open his lips. He had hoped to stay on his feet, perhaps with his back supported by his horse, as the blow drove him into an ungainly backward stagger. But the brute strength behind the punch—vicious with hate—drained him of the ability to think fast enough to take account of how the opening moves of the brawl were not happening in the way he had envisaged them. He staggered back, sure enough, but the horse did not try to back off from him. The stallion stood stock still, and this had the effect of bouncing the Virginian off the point of his shoulder and breast. And at the critical moment when Steele started suddenly forward, he could summon no strength into his legs—because he could not feel his legs. Was totally disassociated from everything about his physical being save for the agony that flared with fierce intensity to every nerve ending in his torso. He was not even conscious of falling forward until his knees smashed into the hard-packed surface of the street and he was assaulted by pain from a different source.
The relationship of the earth to the sky had changed dramatically and as the edges began to melt into each other he had closed his eyes: afraid that confusion of what was real with what a punished mind might accept as a new brand of reality could signal a plunge into unconsciousness. In the darkness the pain seemed not so harsh, and he was able to concentrate on suppressing the urge to give vocal outlet to it. Time was twisted and stretched, and it would have been easy to imagine he had been locked in hurting darkness for much longer than the few seconds it must have been before he recognized the voice of Orville Kyle yelling at him:
‘I bet you never figured no hick town lawman with a bum hand and a bunch of his country bumpkin buddies would outsmart a tough talking, quick on the trigger—’
Steele worked at tightly compressing his lips to trap in his throat another groan as he cracked open his eyes. This as the familiar tones of the overweight and less than beautiful Ellie Webb cut across what the lawman was sneering.
‘Quit the crowing and get your dirty work over and done with!’
There was a clear distinction between the rooflines of the flanking buildings and the pale blue sky. A dozen or more figures could be seen in dark silhouette against the sun-bleached street, a long way in back of where the Rosarita sheriff towered over him at much closer quarters. The distant forms were unmoving as they peered toward the scene of the violence: perhaps frozen into immobility by shock—or maybe fascination. The only people the Virginian could see nearby, outside of the lawman, were the Bate boy, the saloonkeeper and the doctor, who continued to stand on the sidewalk in the shade of the roof out front of the grocery store. Their guns were dipped now and they showed expressions that signaled a degree of quiet satisfaction with what was happening. Like they considered they had contributed everything asked of them to the completion of a job that could not have been done better.
‘That friggin’ woman is getting to be a pain in the frigging ass!’ Kyle rasped softly, so that only he and Steele heard what he said as he took a half step forward—then swung his trailing leg, bent at the knee.
Because he had been struggling to get his bearings as a part of the exercise to fight the threat of unconsciousness, the Virginian only now realized he was down on his knees. That his pain-assaulted mind had not played a trick on him whereby he was a dwarf and everyone else was a giant. And the anger of humiliation at his attitude in the dust before the vengeance-bent sheriff acted to diminish pain. But it was not a hot anger. His life had been on the line too often, and if he had learned anything in the violent past it was that heated emotions encouraged recklessness.
Kyle’s knee, his pants neatly creased, came toward Steele’s face. The white-hot fire of pain in Steele’s belly was doused by the creation of an ice-cold ball of anger. And a part of a second before the swinging kneecap would have smashed into his jaw, Steele rocked to the left. Brought his left arm up and hooked it so the crook of the elbow went under the bent knee. The right hand of the Virginian streaked to where his kneeling attitude caused the slit in the outer seam of his pants leg to gape at the calf.
Kyle’s cry of alarm expanded into a roar of triumph as he felt certain he had beaten Steele’s attempt to topple him to the ground. But it had never been the Virginian’s intention to unbalance the lawman. For as his gloved right hand was jerked out from the slit in his pants leg, he halted the sideways motion of his body. But he retained his armlock around the leg of his attacker. And tightened it as his other arm swung upward, hand fisted around the wooden handle of the throwing knife he had drawn from the boot sheath. The double-edged weapon was as effective with a thrust as with a throw and he thrust it now, with a forward handed action—but checked it before the honed point found flesh. And Orville Kyle’s victory bellow came to an abrupt end and was followed by a pathetic whimper of fear. This at the same time as he froze, just a moment after he got started on attempting to kick clear of the grip on his leg. He even kept high and wide to the side his fisted left hand that he had been about to thud into Steele’s temple. The cause of his enervating terror was the knife blade that was held by a faintly trembling fist against his crotch.
‘Sweet Mary, no!’ he gasped. He stared with bulging eyes down at Steele as he delivered the plea. But then he swung his head to stare at the men who had backed his play. If there had been an instant of hope in his mind as he looked to them for deliverance, it was immediately dashed. ‘Back off!’ he commanded huskily.
Steele glanced at the front of the grocery now and saw that all three men had him covered again. But none of them was so rock solid in his stance or aim as before. And all of them were sweating in the shade nearly as much as was Kyle in the glaring heat of the sun as they contemplated firing at Steele and hitting the sheriff or—perhaps worse—blasting lead into the stranger but too late to save Kyle’s masculinity.
‘You want to hear him tell you that soprano?’ Steele snarled, and thought that probably only he knew his teeth were displayed and his eyes were glinting in a grimace of pain rather than a snarl of rage.
‘Sweet Mary, do it!’ Kyle pressed, and his voice was already made unnaturally high by the turmoil of his emotions.
‘Aw, shit!’ the son of James Bate snarled. And eased forward the hammer of the Winchester before he bent at the knees so that he was able to place the rifle on the threshold of the store and send it slithering across the floor inside. Nelson and Bascomb, expressing misery rather than anger, put the hammers of their Colts to the safe position before they pushed the revolvers into the waistbands of their pants.
‘What now, dude?’ the young man wanted to know. And started to smile in quiet satisfaction again as he saw Steele unwrap his left arm from around Kyle’s right leg. Then, with his knife hand no longer trembling as it held the blade firmly to the crotch of the terrified lawman, the Virginian eased the Remington out of the holster. And it was only as he hooked his thumb over the hammer of the revolver that he sensed something was wrong—that the kid’s scornful grin was not born of bravado, and Kyle’s terror was getting greater instead of lessening as the threat of death or horrific injury receded.
Then Steele checked the act of cocking the gun and tasted defeat in his mouth that was dried by pain: this as he did a fast double take up at the face of the lawman and realized Kyle was not staring awesomely into a middle distance in an attempt to detach himself from his anguish. Instead was gazing toward a source of slender hope from which he did not dare to draw comfort: yet.
The stallion whinnied and scraped a hoof on the street. A swarm of flies, dislodged when the animal shook his head, began to buzz around the head of Steele, briefly attracted by the sticky sweat that was beaded at his every pore. Then a circle of metal was pressed into the flesh at the nape of his neck and although the muzzle of the gun could not have been cold on such a hot day it felt to the Virginian like it was crusted with frost. That did not melt as its freezing effect spread in an instant throughout his entire body and dried the sweat.
‘If I have to kill you, stranger, it will be a sad day for me,’ the preacher said softly, and his Irish roots were more clearly heard now that he was not using a sermonizing tone. ‘For a man of God must not take life and I will therefore feel duty bound to renounce the cloth.’
‘Holy Mary, tell him to take the knife away from me, Masterson!’ Kyle demanded croakily.
‘I would ask you to do as the sheriff requests, stranger,’ the man behind Steele said in the same almost even tone that held just a hint of the sadness he felt at having to take a hand in the affair. ‘For as a citizen of this fine community I will feel duty bound to kill you unless you withdraw your threat to our peace officer.’
The Rev. Masterson applied a little more pressure to the gun and suddenly the muzzle felt red hot: sizzling the short hairs on Steele’s neck and causing sweat to break out on every part of his body again.
‘I reckon I have to believe the word of a man of God,’ the Virginian said as he returned the Remington to the holster.
Then Kyle vented a heartfelt sigh of relief as he lowered his arm to his side at the same pace as Steele withdrew the knife from between his legs. And then there was a flurry of movement on the sidewalk: as Nelson and Bascomb drew and cocked their revolvers and the Bate boy ducked in through the store doorway and re-emerged with the rifle. He aimed it from the hip this time, so that the beam on his face was fully in view.
‘Okay, Mr. Masterson!’ the young man snapped gleefully. ‘You did real good. We got him in our sights again now.’
‘I’m much obliged to you,’ Kyle said and recaptured Steele’s impassive-eyed attention away from the gloating Bate and the rather doleful looking older men who flanked him. The sheriff sounded like he had to work hard to beat a compulsion to roar with laughter at his deliverance. And then he did vent an uncontrolled guffaw, and attempted to mask his true reason with a joke. ‘Guess I’ll have to make a greater effort to attend services in future.’
‘The point has been proved, Mr. Kyle,’ Masterson said solemnly as he withdrew the gun muzzle from Steele’s neck. And the Virginian craned his head around to see that the short and stockily built man of fifty or so was now holding the derringer down at his side, still cocked but aimed negligently at the ground. There was an expression of poignant entreaty on his pale, hollow-cheeked face as he continued: ‘If you are truly grateful to me, you will simply make the stranger leave our town and—’
The cassock-clad man abruptly showed dismay as he curtailed the plea. And Steele had no time to snap his head around and see the reason for the sudden change of attitude. He instinctively took a tighter grip on the knife he had never released. But then the knee of Orville Kyle made delayed contact with his head. He was forced to whiplash backwards, and because he was on his knees the base of his spine crashed painfully against the heels of his boots. The side of the jaw where the kneecap had struck hurt so much he was sure the bone had been broken. But then, as he squeezed his eyes closed and was unable to prevent himself toppling over onto his side, all the pain was suddenly concentrated at a single point, and it was so intense he was certain he had reached his time of death. For it was in an area of his chest, left of center, that the agony was centered. And there flashed into his racing mind a memory of the Nelson father and son talking of the heart attack that killed Avery Begley.
He snapped open his eyes for a final view of the world at the end of a life that had given him such a raw deal for such a long time. And taunted himself for a fool because of the indulgence in self-pity. This as he saw in blurred vision the booted foot of Orville Kyle as the sheriff drew it back after delivering the vicious kick. What Steele had thought was a punishment-induced roaring in his ears came to an abrupt end a part of a second after he recognized it as a chorus of voices raised to express a whole range of emotional responses, from glee to disgust.
The Rev. Masterson warned in a voice that came through loud and clear to Steele: ‘In the name of God, stop it! You’ll kill the man!’
‘It was what you were ready to do!’ the Bate boy shrieked in high excitement.
‘He was a threat then!’
Although Steele’s hearing was now impaired as he found he had to fight for his breath, he was sure that he detected agreement with Masterson’s point as the consensus of opinion in a new eruption of vocal sounds. Then his pain-misted eyes saw unhurried movement just a few inches in front of where his head rested on the warm surface of the street. Something shaded him from the sun and he blinked rapidly in the hope that he could bring the dangerous world into sharp focus.
‘You sure as hell ain’t that any more, right?’ Orville Kyle queried evenly.
And the Virginian felt the pressure of a gun muzzle against his flesh again. His eyesight was still blurred, but from what he could see and feel and hear he was able to reason what was happening to him. He was curled up on his side on the street, winning his struggle to breathe normally but in danger of blacking out from the pain that was now filling his entire being again. The Rosarita sheriff was hunkered down on his haunches, casting a shadow across his face. Kyle was holding the Remington in his left hand, but he could be confident of firing a fatal shot since he was pressing the muzzle firmly into the flesh below the left ear of his potential victim. Steele was vaguely aware that the trio of men on the sidewalk and the town preacher were no longer the only bystanders close to him. For a crowd had begun to gather in an arc in back of where the sheriff squatted.
Steele flexed the fingers of his right hand and discovered the knife had slipped from his grip. His kerchief, that could be used as an effective weapon on certain occasions, was at present as useless as the Colt Hartford in the boot on his stallion’s saddle.
‘You know it, feller,’ he said and to his own ears his voice sounded like he was speaking in a small, bare room with an echo.
‘That is real fine,’ the lawman answered slowly and distinctly, his Southern accent stronger than Steele had ever heard it. ‘And you should know, mister, that you are under arrest.’
‘What the hell for, Orville Kyle?’ the familiar voice of Ellie Webb demanded to know from out of the vague background that existed beyond the Virginian’s world, which at that time was comprised of himself in pain and the Rosarita sheriff with a gun at his head.
‘Disturbing the peace sound good to you, Steele?’ the lawman asked evenly.
The Virginian replied grimly: ‘It sounds better than rest in it.’