His hands tense on the leather lines, Dick Fladness flicked a quick, searching glance at the two women who shared the tight buckboard seat with him.
“Brownwood just ahead,” he said.
He might as well have said nothing, for the women sat in dusty, tight-lipped silence, their eyes brittle on the scattering of frame buildings that spread out across the open prairie west of Pecan Bayou.
Dick’s mouth went hard again, and he flipped the reins at the ill-matched team to pick them up a little. He had hoped the long, hot ride might wear down the contempt that stood like an adobe wall between the women and himself. It had not.
He turned the corner by the blacksmith shop, and the trailing dust from the buckboard wheels caught up with him for a moment. Nora Matson sneezed. It was the first sound the girl had made the whole way in, except that she had sobbed quietly when they first pulled away from the stark pile of gray ashes and charred wood that had been the Matson ranch home.
Dick pulled up in front of the hotel on Center Street and climbed down, wrapping the reins around the right front wheel. He held up his callused hands to help Nora’s mother down from the buckboard. Her eyes lashed him in scorn. She was a tall, graying woman with a stiff puritan pride.
“I can get down by myself.”
Her daughter followed her. Nora was eighteen, slender and pretty, with wide brown eyes that used to dance in laughter. Nora’s eyes never touched Dick’s face now, not while he was looking.
“I’ll bring in your things,” he said, nodding toward the small bundle of clothing under the buckboard seat.
Mrs. Matson cut him short. “We can manage that too. There’s not much of it, since the fire.”
Wincing, Dick stood silently by the buckboard wheel while the two women climbed the steps to the high plank gallery of the frame hotel. The balding proprietor hurried out and took the bundle from Nora Matson’s hands. He turned solemnly around to the girl’s mother.
“We heard about your son, Mrs. Matson. I’m terribly sorry.”
She acknowledged his sympathy with a quick nod of her chin, which suddenly was set harder than ever. Stiffly she went on into the hotel, Nora behind her. The hotel man paused for a quick glance at Dick. His frown showed that he knew. The whole town must know.
Head down, Dick stepped up into the buckboard and flipped the reins. He pulled the team back around and rolled down to the livery barn at the end of the dusty street. He was conscious of idle eyes following him. He drew up within and tried to convince himself that he didn’t care.
Mike Lavender walked out through the big open door of the frame livery barn and waited for him. Mike was a stiffened old cowhand who had had to seek an easier way to round out his days. His leather-dry face was expressionless, but Dick felt a quiet friendliness in the faded blue eyes. He leaned eagerly toward that friendliness, needing it for strength.
“Walter Matson’s buckboard and team, Mike,” Dick spoke. “Walter said let you take care of them.”
Dick took his war bag and bedroll from the buckboard and started out. He walked with a faint limp.
Mike Lavender’s eyes followed him. “What about you, Dick? What you goin’ to do?”
Dick stopped in the open doorway, his saddle slung over his shoulder. “Leave, I reckon. Go someplace where people haven’t heard of me. Then maybe I can start over.”
Mike Lavender shook his head. “You can’t run away from a thing like this, Dick. It’ll follow you. Take my advice and stay right here.”
Dick dropped the saddle heavily, desperation raising the color in his face. “Look, Mike, I’m a coward. Anybody’ll tell you. I lost my head in a fight, turned tail and deserted my friends. And a man died.”
He lifted his hands. “Mike, do you think I could stay here and have people lookin’ at me the way they will, like I was a coyote or somethin’? Snickerin’ at me, maybe callin’ me a coward to my face?”
Mike’s pale eyes were patient. “Talk’s cheap. You don’t have to listen to it.” The old cowpuncher’s voice softened. “Son, these things have got a way of workin’ themselves out if you just give them a chance. Now, you pitch your bedroll on that spare cot back yonder. You’re stayin’ with me for a spell.”
Dick stood uncertainly, weighing Mike’s words. It was going to be tough, staying here with the name the town would give him. But it would be tougher leaving, for the memory would be with him always, haunting him with the image of what might have been, the futile knowledge of things left undone.
If he left now, there would never be any coming back. He thought of Nora Matson, the tinkling music of her voice, the warmth of her cheek against his as they stood in the moonlight, the cool evening breeze searching leisurely across the bayou.
Leave, and anything there might have been between them would be finished. Maybe if …
He picked up the bedroll and carried it to the empty cot.
Mike slouched in a cane-bottomed chair, idly whittling a stick of kindling wood down to a sliver. His pale eyes lifted as Dick came back. He said, “I’ve heard the story the way it’s been told around town. I’d like to hear it your way.”
Squatting on the ground, Dick stared hollowly at the pile of pine shavings growing around Mike’s big, worn-out boots.
“You’ve probably heard it just the way it happened,” he said. “It’s the barbed-wire fences that caused it. Ansel Hornby and his free-grassers have been cuttin’ Walter Matson’s fence, and we’ve been patchin’ it right up again. Three nights ago they cut it and left a placard hangin’ on a fence-post. Said if the fence went back up they would end the fight once and for all. Walter tore up the placard, and we fixed the fence.
“They waited till the sheriff had to be out of the country. Then last night they came. They were masked, but I know Ansel Hornby was leadin’ them. And I recognized the voice of Branch Collin, that foreman of his. They didn’t stop at the fence. They came right on to the house. We were puttin’ up a good fight, Walter and his son Lindy and three of us hands. Then they somehow set fire to the house.”
Dick’s hands began to tremble. “I tried, Mike. I tried to stay there and fight. But those flames got to reachin’ at me. My clothes went to smokin’. I couldn’t stand it. I jumped out the door and broke to runnin’. All I could think of was to get away from that fire. I didn’t quit runnin’ till I fell. I laid there till I finally got a grip on myself. I could tell the shootin’ had stopped. The fence cutters were gone. The house was gone. And Lindy Matson was dead.”
Dick’s head was in his hands. “Wasn’t a one of them would speak to me. They all looked at me like I had killed Lindy myself. Came daylight, the cowboys rode after some neighbor help. Everybody went up on the hill to bury Lindy. They wouldn’t let me help carry him. They wouldn’t even let me help dig his grave.
“And when it was all over, Walter told me to go. I brought the women to town, where they’ll be safe. Walter stayed. Swore he was goin’ to put the fence back up and fight Hornby’s free-grass men till he’s dead.” His face was grim. “He meant it, Mike. He’s got the guts of a Mexican bull. But Hornby’ll kill him. He knows the county’s watchin’ Walter. He knows if Walter’s fence stays up, there’ll be others, and the free-grass men will be fenced out. He won’t quit till Walter’s dead.”
Sitting on the edge of his cot, trying to figure out what to do, Dick heard the clatter of horses’ hoofs coming up from behind the barn. He caught the unintelligible conversation and the lift of careless laughter. Dick glanced at Mike and saw that the old cowboy was bent over in an uneasy nap.
Dick arose and walked toward the front of the barn. The limp was momentarily heavy from his having sat awhile. He heard riders hauling up on their reins and swinging to the ground in a jingling of spurs.
“Hey, Lavender,” a rough voice called, “how about us throwin’ our horses in a corral here for a while?”
Dick’s heartbeat quickened. That voice belonged to Branch Collin. Dick hesitated, looking back at the sleeping Mike Lavender. Then he walked on to the door. Facing Collin, he jerked a thumb toward Lavender’s pens.
“Mike’s asleep, but I reckon it’s all right.”
Branch Collin was a medium-tall, slender man with a quick, easy movement and a sharp, sensitive face. There was a hint of green in his eyes that seemed always to contain a devilish laughter. Ansel Hornby was boss of the ranch, but Branch Collin was undisputed boss when it came to trouble. There were people two counties away who broke into a cold sweat at the mention of his name.
Collin seemed momentarily surprised at sight of Dick. Then the laughter came to his eyes. “Richard the Lion-Hearted. I reckon you found where you really belong, swampin’ a stable.”
Dick gritted his teeth and held his anger inside.
Ansel Hornby kneed a big roan horse up closer. He had a narrow, intense face. Dick had never seen him smile. Hornby’s voice was flat and grim. “Boy, you should never have quit runnin’. You should have kept goin’ till you were clear out of the country. I would advise you to move on now.”
Anger beat against Dick, but his throat was tight. He could not speak.
Branch Collin said, “He’ll leave, Ansel.” Collin’s smile lingered. His eyes dwelt heavily on Dick’s. “But not before he puts up our horses for us.”
Dick opened the gate for the men to ride in. There were five besides Hornby and Collin. They unsaddled and turned their horses loose in the corral.
Collin shook his finger under Dick’s nose. “You feed them horses good, you hear? Otherwise you’ll find yourself runnin’ faster than you did last night.”
A couple of the men chuckled. Enjoying the approval of the little audience, Collin suddenly pulled Dick’s hat down over his eyes, hard. “There, that’s just to be sure your hat don’t blow off while you’re runnin’.”
Trembling with anger and humiliation, Dick pulled his hat up. Collin and the men were walking away, laughing. But Ansel Hornby stood there, his humorless eyes on Dick’s blazing face.
“Man down the road said you brought the Matson women in. They put up at the hotel?”
Dick’s answer came brittle and sharp. “You leave the women alone!”
Hornby’s eyes widened in speculation at this unexpected hardness in the cowboy who had run away. “I’m not here to hurt the women. But sometimes you can reason with a woman when you can’t talk to her men.” His eyes narrowed again. “You had better consider what I told you, Fladness. You can ride a good way between now and dark.”
Hornby turned and broke into a brisk stride to catch up with his men. Their spurred boots raised puffs of dry dust in the street. Dick watched Hornby point toward the hotel. But Collin shook his head and jerked his thumb at the saloon. Pleasure before business.
Dick’s mind turned to Nora Matson and her mother. If only Sheriff Adams were in town.…
Dick stepped hurriedly back into the barn. In his haste he almost knocked down Mike Lavender. The old man had awakened to the lift of voices and had seen at least part of this.
Dick took his belt and gun from his war bag.
Lavender watched him worriedly. “You sure you know what you’re doin’?”
Dick’s glance touched him, then dropped away. “I don’t know, Mike. I only know I’ve got to do somethin’.”
Summer heat clung heavily over the empty street as Dick hurriedly walked up Center. He sensed men watching him. A remark was made just above a whisper, and he knew he was meant to overhear it. The blood rose warmly to his face, but he held his eyes straight ahead.
An idler leaning against the smoky blacksmith shop pointed a crooked finger at him. “You’re runnin’ the wrong way. They’re in front of you, not behind you.”
Choking down anger, Dick stepped up onto the long gallery of the hotel. A backward glance showed him Hornby and Collin pushing out of the saloon. Dick moved on in. The proprietor eyed him suspiciously.
“I’ve got to see Mrs. Matson and Nora,” Dick told him.
The hotel man frowned. “Don’t you think you’d better move on? I don’t believe they’ll care to see you.”
Dick’s nervous hands gripped the desk edge. “I know what you think of me. I know what the town thinks. But that doesn’t matter right now. Ansel Hornby and Branch Collin are on their way here to see Mrs. Matson. She ought to know.”
The man’s eyes widened. “They’re upstairs in seven. I’ll go with you.”
Dick rapped insistently on the door. Mrs. Matson pulled it inward. Her grieved eyes hardened at sight of him. “I thought you’d be gone by now. What do you want?”
He told her. Mrs. Matson’s jaw was set like carved stone.
Dick finished, “I’ll be here if you need me.” He tried vainly to see past Mrs. Matson, perhaps for a glimpse of Nora.
Winter ice was in the tall woman’s voice. “We needed you last night. We can do without you now.”
Through the open door he watched her move back to a wooden dresser and reach into the drawer. Then Dick turned away. Slowly he walked down the stairs, the hotel man behind him. At the foot of the steps Dick stopped and waited. Ansel Hornby strode through the open front door and stood a moment, adjusting his eyes to the dark interior. Branch Collin came in behind him and stood at his side, mouth fixed in his usual hard grin. His eyes raked Dick in contempt.
A soft, feminine tread on the stairs behind him made Dick step aside. Mrs. Matson came down, and Nora. Dick glanced quickly at Nora. Her brown eyes sharply met his, then fell away. Her lips trembled.
In an empty gesture of politeness, Ansel Hornby removed his broad-brimmed hat and bowed slightly. Branch Collin never moved or changed expression. “Good afternoon, Mrs. Matson, Miss Matson,” Hornby said. “I heard about your son. I want to tell you how deeply I regret it, ma’am.”
Hatred darkened Mrs. Matson’s face.
Hornby went on, “It wasn’t necessary, Mrs. Matson. It isn’t necessary that there be any more deaths. You could stop it.”
Dick saw that her hands were trembling. One was covered by a dark brown shawl.
Hornby’s voice intensified. “It’s only the barbed wire, ma’am. I think I could talk to the fence cutters, if I had your assurance that the wire would not go up again. Your husband would listen. That’s all it would take, just a word from you.”
Mrs. Matson’s voice was quiet and flat. “It’s our land. It’s our right to fence it. We’ll be there when you’re dead!”
Hornby’s face began to cloud. “There’ll be more killin’s, Mrs. Matson. A word from you could save your men. Keep silent, and they may die.”
Mrs. Matson’s lips curved downward. “No, Ansel. It’s you who will die!”
The shawl fell away. Gun metal winked a reflection from the window. For just an instant Dick froze. He saw Branch Collin’s hand streak upward from his holster.
Dick leaped at Mrs. Matson, putting himself between her and Collin. He grabbed her hand and forced it down. The barrel blazed in his grip as the gun thundered and a bullet bored through the plank floor. In fury Mrs. Matson threw her body against him, struggling for the pistol. But Dick held his grip on the hot barrel and wrenched it away. It clattered to the floor at Hornby’s feet. Mrs. Matson fell back against her daughter. Her face was splotched red.
“You are a coward. Get out of my sight. If I ever see you again, Dick Fladness, I’ll kill you!”
She whirled and hurried back up the stairs. Dick flinched under the lash of contempt in Nora’s dark eyes.
Collin’s eyes followed the women. “Another second and I’d of shot her. Good thing for her that you did what you did, Fladness.”
Dick’s face twisted. “I wish I could’ve let her kill you, Hornby. One way or another, though, you’re goin’ to lose.”
Hornby tried to stare him down. Branch Collin’s cold grin came back, and he resembled a cat stalking a mouse. “Maybe you better apologize to Mr. Hornby.”
Dick clenched his fists. “I apologize for nothin’.”
Collin’s hand worked down toward the pistol on his hip. “That’s a good-lookin’ six-shooter you’re wearin’, Fladness. Maybe you’d like to try to use it.”
Dick went cold. “I couldn’t match you, Collin.”
Collin’s eyes remained on him, hard as steel. “See there? You’ve crawfished again.”
Impatiently, Hornby spoke. “What did you expect, Branch? You knew he was a coward. We’ll give the boys another hour at the bar. Then we’ll take a ride around the bayou and see about that wire. We’re goin’ to finish this thing once and for all.”
He turned on his heel and strode out, his spurs ringing dully to the strike of his heavy boots. Collin faced Dick a moment more. “Another hour,” he said grimly, “then we’ll leave. But you better be gone before that. If you’re still here, I’ll leave you hangin’ on the fence like any dead coyote.”
A chill on his shoulders, Dick stood and listened to the fading tread of Collin’s boots as the man stepped down from the gallery. Cold sweat broke on Dick’s forehead and on his suddenly weak hands.
The hotel man’s shaky voice broke the stillness. “That was better than I expected of you, Fladness. But you’d best move on. You can get a far piece in an hour.”
Woodenly Dick picked up Mrs. Matson’s pistol from the freshly swept floor. He handed it to the hotel man. “Take it to her. She’s liable to need it.”
Dick stood on the hotel porch, steadying himself against a post. The heat of late afternoon rushed against him, stifling him, crushing his lungs. The street seemed stretched out of shape. It swayed back and forth, and it looked a mile long. He knew it was his nerves. They tingled like telegraph wires.
Two men stood in front of the nearby saloon. The words of one came to Dick like the slap of a swinging rope. “Bet you the drinks he lights off of that porch in a high lope.”
Dick swallowed hard. Deliberately he stepped down into the street. He started back toward Lavender’s barn, his steps measured and slow. He was so scared he was sick at his stomach. But they weren’t going to see him run.
It seemed an hour before he gained the door of the barn. Mike Lavender’s chair was empty. Dick sagged into it. Lavender hobbled up, braced his long arm against the door and leaned on it, looking out across the town and saying nothing.
“You’ve heard about it?” Dick asked him finally.
Mike nodded gravely. “Collin means it, Dick. I told you a while ago that you ought to stay. I’ve changed my mind. You better go, son. I got you a horse in the pen back yonder.”
Dick stared at the ground. A thousand things hummed through his mind, memories of people he had known and ridden with and liked. He had especially liked Lindy Matson. Maybe Lindy’s death was Dick’s fault, and maybe it wasn’t.
“You goin’, or ain’t you?” Mike queried anxiously.
Dick shook his head. “Give me time to study.”
For a long time he sat there staring vacantly across the town. He watched a lazy cur dog make its leisurely way down the street, checking under high porches, sniffing at every corner. He watched a brown hen out back of a washerwoman’s house, scratching around in the thin shade of a mesquite, seeking a cool place to settle herself.
Most of all he watched the saloon where Collin and the Hornby crew were. Occasionally he would see one or two of them come out, look around and go back in. He could feel speculative eyes appraising him from a distance, and he wondered how poor the betting odds were that he might not run.
Mike Lavender tromped back and forth in the barn like a stallion in a small corral. Now and then he would stop in the door and look up the street with Dick. Once he drew an old stem-winding watch from his pocket. “Been half an hour, Dick.”
Dick nodded dully.
Mike said, “Son, I know that on a thing like this a man has got to make up his own mind. But anybody would know you ain’t got much chance against a man like Branch Collin. Supposin’ you leave now, there ain’t much people can say that they ain’t said already.”
Dick never answered. He sat in the doorway, watching.
He saw the flare of a long skirt on the gallery of the hotel. The girl stood looking down the street toward the barn. Her shoulders squared as she saw Dick sitting in the doorway. Quickly she lifted the hem and rushed down the steps onto the street. In a few moments Nora Matson stood in front of him, her young face pale.
“Dick,” she said huskily, “are you a fool? I thought you’d be gone by now.”
Bitterness coiled in him. “Like last night?”
She flushed. “Dick, it won’t help anything for you to stay here and get killed. It’s too late to bring Lindy back.”
He searched her eyes for some sign of the love he had seen there before. “Does it still matter to you, Nora?”
“It matters. Last night changed a lot of things, but I can’t forget what there was between us. I beg you. Go!”
Dick watched her walk hurriedly back toward the hotel, drawing upon her stout pride to keep her shoulders straight and her head high. Dick looked down, staring fixedly at the ground in front of his brush-scarred boots. He heard Mike Lavender stomping around behind him.
“Mike,” he said, “is that horse still out there?”
A sigh of relief passed the old cowhand’s lips. “He is, and it’s high time you used him.”
Stiffly Dick stood up. He glanced at the saloon long enough to know he was being watched. Then he moved back into the barn and picked up his saddle and bridle. He flipped a loop over the horse’s head, pulled him in, bridled and saddled him. The pen had an outside gate opening west. Going out through it, a man could leave town without using the street. But it wouldn’t keep him from being seen.
Mike strode out of the barn with Dick’s war bag. “Here’s your gear. Good luck to you.”
“Thanks, Mike,” Dick replied. “But it’s not me that’s goin’. It’s you!”
Lavender’s jaw sagged. “Me? What in the—”
Dick said, “Look, Mike, you know I couldn’t beat Collin if he came lookin’ for me. But I’m a fair enough shot. If I had surprise on my side, I might beat him.
“You’re about my size, Mike. You’re goin’ to spur out of this gate and head west in a lope. They’ll think it’s me. When Collin comes, he won’t expect me. Maybe that’ll be enough to give me an edge.”
The old man’s face was sharp with anxiety. “And maybe it won’t.”
Dick shrugged. “If it doesn’t, I sure appreciate the way you’ve stuck by me.”
Lavender placed his knotty hand on Dick’s shoulder. “Son, I know why you ran last night. I knew all along you wasn’t no coward. Good luck to you.”
Dick opened the gate for him. The old man spurred out and swung westward, the dust rising beneath the horse’s hoofs.
Dick watched him a minute. Then he latched the gate and hurried once again through the back door of the barn. In the shadowed interior he picked his spot, about twenty feet inside the barn door, where he would not readily be seen from outside. He pulled up a chair and sat down to wait. Holding the gun, he sat back, his hands cold with sweat, nervousness playing through him like lightning in a stormy sky. His eyes set on the open door, he waited.…
He heard the voices before he saw the men. They were laughing voices, lifted high by the warmth of liquor. Dick heard the easy jingling of spurs. Branch Collin and Ansel Hornby swung into view, their men trailing. Collin was laughing, and even Hornby’s normally somber face showed a little humor. The sight of the horseman spurring out the back way had been a joke even Hornby could enjoy.
Still in the sunlight, Collin threw back his head and roared, “Hey, Lavender, I see we flushed your quail.”
Collin and Hornby walked in through the door and passed into the shadow. Collin blinked away the momentary blindness and sought out Dick Fladness’s form in the dark of the barn. Dick stood up and took one step forward from the chair.
Collin’s jaw dropped as recognition hit him like the lash of a whip. His hand dipped.
But the surprise had delayed him a moment. In that moment Dick brought his pistol up into line. It exploded twice. Collin’s weapon cracked once, raising a puff of dust at the man’s toes just before he pitched forward onto his face.
Paralyzed, Ansel Hornby stared foolishly at Collin’s sprawled form. He grabbed at his own pistol, then realized belatedly how foolish that was. He stopped with it half out of the holster. He stared into the smoking muzzle of Dick’s six-shooter, and horror slowly crawled into his eyes as he felt death brush him.
He stammered, his voice failing as panic gripped him. “For God’s sake,” he managed, finally. “My God, man, don’t kill me!”
Dick held his pistol steady. He had every intention of squeezing the trigger, and Hornby must have seen it in his eyes. Hornby let his pistol drop to the dust. “Fladness, for the love of God…” His knees gave way, and he sank to the dust, crying.
Dick looked past Hornby at Hornby’s men. Muddled with drink, they had sobered quickly at the roar of guns. They stared in disbelief upon the man who had led them, now groveling in the dust, begging for his life.
Other men gathered, and they too, stared, and they knew who was the coward.
Dusk gathered heavily. Dick sat on the broad gallery of the hotel, the cool evening breeze bringing him relief from the heat and ordeal of the day. From inside the lobby Mike Lavender’s voice drifted out to him.
“You see, Mrs. Matson,” Mike was saying, “it was the fire that chased Dick away last night. It was several years back that me and Dick was workin’ for the same outfit. One night one of the hands got careless with a cigarette. We woke up with the bunkhouse burnin’ down around us. Smoke had already knocked out a couple of boys in their sleep.
“Wasn’t time for us to do anything except run. Dick tried to drag one of the boys out, but part of the roof fell in on him. Dick was pinned under a burnin’ timber that broke his leg. He laid there and seen that other boy burn to death. We finally got Dick loose just before the whole place caved in. That’s where his limp come from, and his fear of fire. Most anything else he could’ve stood. But when the fire got to burnin’ him last night, he couldn’t hold out.”
Presently Mrs. Matson came out onto the gallery. Nora was with her. “Dick,” Mrs. Matson said, “I wish there was some way to tell you…”
Hat crushed in his hands, Dick nodded. “I know.”
Mrs. Matson gripped his arm. “I wish you would go hitch the team to the buckboard. I want you to take us home.”
Dick shook his head. “There’s not much home left out there.”
Her shoulders braced. “No house, perhaps, but a house can be rebuilt. It takes more than fire to destroy a home.”
Dick stepped down from the porch and started toward the livery barn.
“Wait for me,” Nora said, and hurried after him. “I’d like to go with you.”