“Ole Aus has been shot!”
These strange words poured down into Rangey, the hill-town county seat. Old Aus Hanley was dying on the left bank of Troublesome Creek with a load of buckshot in his back. Men shouted the news hurrying to their stables. The courtroom was suddenly empty of tobacco-chewing spectators, jury, and judge. The dry creek bed became a stampede of men on mules and horses, some riding bareback, threshing their mounts with heel and spur.
Sheriff Byson, his black hat slanted against the wind and the ends of his red mustache curled toward his ears, called to a deputy: “Who done it?” The deputy did not answer, merely slapped his horse furiously with the palm of his right hand. Old Aus Hanley, meanest man on Troublesome—aye on God’s green earth—was going to die. Old Aus was going to lay back in his own blood—the man who had a graveyard all his own across Stormspur filled with men he had killed. The fox of the Kentucky hills had met the bullet God molded for him the day he was born.
Aus Hanley lay spraddle-legged upon the powdery sand, his head resting against a saddle-seat. Red stains spread out from a shapeless hat crushed against his side where the charge had come out. His face, swathed in a week’s growth of beard, was unwrinkled with any evidence of pain, but his eyes, black and burning, had that look of quizzical surprise seen in the eyes of a startled doe.
In a half hour they were all there; all of Rangey to the last man and child stood in a semicircle about the wounded man; all who lived for a mile up the Left Hand Fork and the Right Hand Fork of Troublesome Creek were there staring in a sort of reverent awe at the man they feared and admired. They had never thought it would come to this: Aus Hanley, with eleven notches in his gun, lying with his back on the ground. Mixed with the crowd were the kin of those he had slain, looking bewildered in the revenge they had not shared. None of them would have shot Aus Hanley in the back. It would have been like bedding a rabbit, or shooting a fox after it had gnawed a foot off to escape a trap.
Luke Storr had not tried to escape after the shooting. Standing on a jut of rock high above the creek bed, he had fired toward the broad back of Hanley as he passed. When Hanley tumbled to the ground he crept down the embankment and took his six-shooters. Now as he stood beside the sheriff, whose belt curved awkwardly with Hanley’s pistols, his trembling hands were trussed in handcuffs, and his thin face pale and twitching. Why he had shot Hanley in such a cowardly manner was not evident in his watery, red eyes. But there was a stink of green sugar-top on his breath.
Aus Hanley was gradually getting weaker. The patch of red spread out into the sand beside his body. He crushed the hat tighter against his side. A faint sallowness was beginning to show beneath his beard and the wind-tan. The sheriff and judge had offered to plug the wound but he waved them back without a word. Old Aus would make no compromise at this late hour with the law and justice. They thought if Old Doc Beardsley was there something might be done, but Doc was off on Pushback with a case of slow fever and might not be in for days. Words had been sent to Hanley’s wife and sons. It would be hours before the news could get across Hog Shoulder, down Squabble Creek, and up Laurel Fork and the Hanley family could urge their nags to the Forks of Troublesome.
Hanley stared into the crowd before him, looking into each face, examining it minutely as though he hoped to carry away a deathless impression of it. Presently his burning eyes fell on Luke Storr standing beside the sheriff. His eyes roved from Luke’s new brogans to his meal-yellow face, and there they rested, became calm and peaceful. Old Aus Hanley was sizing up the man who had done him to death.
Luke shuffled his feet nervously in the sand and tried to push into the crowd, but the sheriff thrust him back in front. His lips trembled and he bit them furiously. The bolstering courage of the sugar-top was wearing thin. Now he was thinking of Old Aus’s sons, Jabe and Pridemore. They would avenge their father, shoot him through the jail window the minute they galloped into Rangey. Nobody would try to stop them. Nobody ever tried to stop a Hanley from doing anything. The weight of his conviction bore upon him through his addled senses, and his knees felt brittle as dry canes.
Hanley cleared his throat and spat upon the ground. “Brang Luke over hyar, Byson,” he said. His husky voice was low and collected.
The sheriff pushed Luke forward to where Hanley lay.
“I didn’t figger to be killt by a lousy skunk-cat,” Hanley said. There was no emotion in his voice.
Luke began to snivel. “I was drunk. I wasn’t aiming to do it. . . .”
Hanley spoke again. “They was some who might have shot me in good rights, but I ain’t never had no trouble with you, nor any of yore kin.”
Luke was not afraid of Aus Hanley now. He feared only the inevitable revenge that Jabe and Pridemore would deal out before the sun-ball dropped behind the mountains. He fell upon his knees in the sand beside Hanley and began to beg.
“Aus, fer God’s sake tell ’em hyar to tell yore folks I didn’t mean to do it. I was drunk. I didn’t know what I was doing.”
Hanley shook his head slowly as if in great pain, drew his hand from the wound and stretched his arms until they were straight and stiff as boards. Anyone could see he couldn’t last much longer. Then he relaxed and his lips moved.
“My sons ain’t a-goin’ to kill you, Luke. I ain’t wanting them to follow in their old poppy’s way o’ life.” His voice trailed off thin and wistful. “Aus Hanley ain’t never shot no man in the back. I ain’t figgering these hyar hills whar I was born and raised is going to forgit that.”
Suddenly Hanley’s left arm shot out with the swiftness of a catamount’s paw, caught Luke across the small of the back, and drew him downward. His right arm lunged a single driving stroke toward Luke’s breast. The sheriff, caught for a moment off his guard, recovered and jerked Luke backward. Luke’s legs threshed about for a moment and were still. The handle of a Barlow knife protruded at an angle from his breast. When the startled crowd thought to look again at old Aus, his eyes were glassy and unseeing.