Three running shapes came noisily up the alleyway. Even though Bannion figured they would all be allies in this fight, he dropped to his knee between Ray King and the on-coming silhouettes. One of the men saw the moon glint upon Bannion’s handgun and called out a quick warning. Immediately the trio dissolved into the shadowy gloom.
All was quiet for several seconds, then two shots slammed deep into the barn from across the road, their echoes running on out into the night.
From out of the darkness of the alleyway, someone said: “Hey...is that you up there, Ray? It’s me...Hank. Austin and a deputy are with me. Ray? Are you all right?”
Bannion answered, lowering his weapon as he did so. “He’s all right. A little spent and dirty, but unhurt. It’s Sheriff Bannion. Come out slowly....”
Three men stepped forward, converging near the center of the alleyway. They stepped along and then halted a few feet from where Bannion now stood. He recognized Austin first, who was craning his neck to see behind the sheriff. Ray King had managed to stand up, and he was knocking dirt from his clothing.
Before anyone could say anything, the lone deputy across the road fired another shot into the barn. There was no answering gunfire from the gunfighter inside, just as there hadn’t been earlier when Bannion had fired into the barn. He called out to the deputy: “Hold your fire! Hold up for a minute around front.”
Bannion looked at Ray and motioned for him to side him as he slowly began edging back to the barn opening.
All was quiet in the barn, and Bannion called out: “Stranger, your friend didn’t get far trying to bust out on a horse! And you know your other friend is lying over at the hotel. You might want to surrender now, because, if you don’t, we’ll be rushing in from both the front and the back. You’ll likely never live through it.”
The men in the alleyway exchanged looks as Bannion’s words were met with silence. They all looked worn out, but uninjured, although one of the deputies must have been nicked by a bullet as he had a handkerchief wrapped around his upper left arm.
“All right,” came a thick voice from within the barn. “All right, come on in. My gun’s empty.”
“Just so there’ll be no misunderstanding,” Bannion said sardonically, “throw it out into the center of the runway.”
The men listened and heard the gun, or something, strike in the livery barn dirt. Bannion took a long breath, stepped in front of the doorway. Ray came up next to him, and they entered, slowly and cautiously. Behind them the others moved steadily forward, guns up and ready.
“Over here,” said a fading voice.
Following the sound, Bannion crossed to a tie stall. He could barely see the outline of a man’s hat there in the straw bedding. “Fetch a lamp,” he called, then put up his gun and stepped into the stall, and kneeled down beside the gunfighter. “How bad you hurt?” he asked.
“Oh, I’ll probably make it,” was the quiet answer to this. “Hit somewhere...there ain’t no sense of pain. For that matter, lawman, there ain’t no sensation of feelin’ at all.”
Ray King crouched down beside Bannion. The others stood outside the stall, this being a narrow tie stall without room for more than two men at a time.
Bannion looked around, saying irritably: “Where the hell is that lantern?”
“Coming!” Hank called, rushing out of a harness room with a desk lamp held high and flooding the barn with shifting light. “Be right there, Sheriff.”
Bannion watched as orange-red light fell upon the injured man’s face, his chest, then his lower body. He heard Ray draw back a sharp breath beside him.
The gunfighter raised himself up enough to look down his body.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” he said, then looked at Ray and Sheriff Bannion. “It’s the big one. I didn’t think it was serious. I was crossin’ the barn here, from one side to the other, when them fellers across the way there first rushed up. The damned slug knocked me down, but it didn’t hurt. I just crawled in here....”
Bannion looked around, met the eyes of one of the cowboys, and said: “Better go get Doc.”
One of the deputies headed toward the front roadway. In the silence the remaining men listened to his diminishing footfalls. There was nothing to say. Nothing to do. The bullet that had downed this gunfighter had hit him in the back, gone straight through right about at his navel, blown out a big hole.
The gunfighter looked down at his booted feet; he seemed to be straining. Perspiration stood out on his upper lip and his forehead. Then he slumped, saying: “Can’t move ’em. Can’t move my legs. Can’t even move my toes.” He looked at Bannion. There was a graying pallor coming to his cheeks, to his lips. “Who the hell wants to spend their life ridin’ a wheelchair.” He tried to smile, but it was more a grimace. “You know somethin’, lawman...this is real easy. I never saw a man die this easy before. No hurt, no struggle.”
Bannion said: “What’s your name?”
“Brady Elam.”
“What was the name of the feller who tried riding out of here?”
“Hodge...Hodge Fuller. You fellers kill him in the alleyway?”
“Just knocked him out,” said Bannion. Then he asked: “Would you like a slug of whiskey, Brady?”
“Yeah, I’d like that.”
Hank said softly, “I’ll get it,” and went running from the barn.
The doctor entered the barn through the front. Brady didn’t seem to be aware of the medical man’s fierce denunciations as he stamped deeper into the barn.
Then Brady Elam just tipped his head against Bannion’s leg, and died.
Ray King got up and moved aside for the doctor, who got down with a grunt and a sharp look of anger at Bannion. The doctor bent, squinted into that serene countenance, then straightened up.
“You don’t need me,” he said to Bannion. “You need the undertaker. He’s deader’n a chilled mackerel.”
Bannion pushed himself up. “Yeah,” he said softly, and moved clear of the tie stall. He touched Ray’s arm, saying: “Let’s get Fuller...take him along to my office.”
The men filed out the barn’s rear doorway, leaving Brady Elam for the undertaker.
Outside, Austin King helped get the groggy gunfighter to his feet. He shook him, braced him at the waist, and, with Ray’s help, started him along toward Bannion’s office. The doctor went along beside Bannion, occasionally looking slantwise into the sheriff’s face.
Near the jailhouse he started to say: “Doyle....”
Bannion indicated with his hand that he didn’t want to talk. “Later, Doc. Whatever it is...later.”
“But this is important. It’ll surprise hell out of you.”
“I said later. Right now I’ve got no stomach for more trouble...or surprises, either.”
The medical man looked around, taking in the King brothers, the deputies, before turning back to Bannion. He shrugged. “All right. If that’s how you want it,” he said, and continued to walk along beside the sheriff. When the others halted, moving aside for Bannion to enter the jailhouse first, the old medical practitioner stood there watching Bannion push on inside...and then stop with his back to everyone.
The doctor stepped through the door and hurried up to Bannion, saying: “I tried to tell you, Doyle.”
In one of Bannion’s two little strap-steel cells sat John Rockland. He looked rumpled and weary. He stood as Bannion stared with a puzzled expression.
Bannion turned to address the old doctor. “You...?” he began.
“Yes...me...well, not alone. I told you I had a notion to get up a posse of my own and bring Rockland in. He didn’t put up much of a fight, came in pretty willingly.”
Bannion remembered his conversation with the doctor, in which he had said that Rockland deserved a humbling. He’d forgotten about it over the course of this day. He glanced at John Rockland, standing with his hands around the cell bars, and then went over to his desk, threw down his hat, and gestured for Austin and Ray King to put the gunfighter they were supporting into the second cell.
“Lock him up,” he said, opening a drawer and taking out the ring of keys that held those to the cells, which he tossed to Ray.
When this had been accomplished, Bannion said to Ray: “Take Doc over to the hotel and see about Al. Then, after Doc’s done with what he needs to do, send someone back here with word on whether Al’s going to make it or not. If he isn’t...Rockland and every man-jack who works for him will be charged with murder.” He waved a hand in dismissal. “Go on.”
Looking very uncomfortable, the only other man in the office—one of the deputized cowboys—quickly followed Ray and the doctor out the door, and gently closed it. Bannion sat down. He kicked his chair around and exchanged another long, silent stare with John Rockland. When he spoke, his voice sounded as dry as wind rustling old cornhusks.
“Now tell me you didn’t send for those three gunfighters, Mister Rockland. Go ahead...lie to me so I can tell you exactly what I think of you.”
Rockland dropped his hands from the cell bars. “I sent for them, Sheriff. But that was before the Kings saved Judy’s life.”
“Why didn’t you stop them?”
“I...would have. I didn’t think they’d arrive in town before tomorrow at the very earliest. Frankly I was worn out, dead-tired. And I had every intention of riding in tomorrow, paying them off, and sending them on their way. I had no idea....”
“Rockland, you’re a fool. An arrogant, overbearing fool. I guess there’s really nothing the law can do to you for what happened in Perdition Wells tonight...but as long as I live I’ll never forget what trouble you caused here. And I doubt that I’ll be the only one who remembers.”
“Sheriff, I’m ashamed...and I’m very sorry,” Rockland said.
“Hell,” grumbled Bannion, “I’ve got a cellar full of apologies from fools like you. It makes me sick listening to you.” Bannion turned away, the legs of the chair scraping across the floor. He brought out his six-gun, stared at it, and tossed it on his desk. Then he bent to make a cigarette. He sat and smoked it, then leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes. When a half hour had passed, he rolled another cigarette, which he was lighting when Ray King came in through the front door.
He smiled at Bannion, and told him the doctor’s report was favorable. “Al’s got a perforated lung,” he said, “but the damage is high up, and likely he’ll be all right. He’ll need some time here to recover...bed rest...but he should be OK.”
Bannion nodded his head, pursed his lips just as the door opened. Ray stepped aside. Bannion’s hand stopped halfway to his face as his eyes fell upon Judith Rockland entering the office, wrapped in a heavy coat. Her eyes met those of her father in the cell.
Bannion stood up, casting a dark glance at Ray King. “She shouldn’t be here, Ray. Doc said....”
“It wasn’t my idea,” Ray responded, shrugging. “I tried to talk her out of it.”
Judith walked deliberately toward the cell, her gaze never faltering from her father’s face. She stood there a long time, studying his face, ignoring both Bannion and Ray King who were both growing increasingly uncomfortable.
Finally she said: “Why did you do it? Last night when you came to my room at the hotel, you told me you were grateful to the Kings for saving my life. You said you were going to talk....”
“Judy, honey, I didn’t mean for this to happen,” John Rockland tried to explain. “I swear that to you.”
“But it did happen,” she insisted. “You sent for those killers, didn’t you?”
“Yes, but that was before I knew they’d saved you....”
Judith stopped listening, turned her back on her father. Then she walked over to Ray King. “I know words aren’t enough,” she said, looking steadily into his eyes. “But they’re all I can give you right now. I’m ashamed for my father. I’m sorry for what’s happened tonight from the bottom of my heart. I’ll do anything I can to set this to rights, Mister King.”
Ray smiled. He reached out his hand, saying nothing. Judith put her fingers into that hand. Then Ray said gravely: “All right, Judy. The first thing you can do to help square things is come back to the hotel with me. You know you shouldn’t have left. You’re not completely recovered yet.”
He then took her hand and laced it under and over his arm, patting her fingers as they rested on his upper arm. “May I escort you back?” he asked.
Judith nodded and smiled. She did not look back at her father. As they were passing through the door, Ray said loud enough for Bannion and her father to hear: “And the second thing you can do is let me take you riding when you’re well again.”
She looked at him with that disconcertingly level glance of hers, and said: “Mister King, if you hadn’t asked me that, I was going to ask you.”
Bannion got up from his desk chair and went over to door and give it a good kick, then he stood a moment, considering John Rockland. He walked to his desk, picked up the keys, and scuffed over to the cell, which he unlocked. Then he stepped back and called Rockland several names, using what would be considered choice fighting words.
Almost meekly, Rockland passed out of the cell. He stopped next to Bannion. “I had that coming,” he admitted. “All right, Sheriff. You’ve left me no doubt about how you feel toward me. Now it’s up to me to prove that a man can return to what he once was.” He continued to stand there.
Bannion crossed over to his roadside door and flung it wide open. “Get out of here,” he ordered. “I can’t stand the sight of you.”
He closed the door, listening to Rockland’s retreating footsteps, then he returned to his desk, dropped down there, picked up his unfinished cigarette from the ashtray, lit it, and blew out a big cloud of bluish smoke. He rummaged in a drawer for a nearly empty bottle of whiskey, poured himself a powerful drink, and downed it, neat. When his eyes began to water, he laughed and said aloud: “I didn’t know I had any tears left in me.” He rubbed his eyes, thinking that no man could ever become so old, so hardened to life, that he could not feel anguish for the shortcomings of other men.