Richard Matheson - The Gun Fight

“Tomorrow,” Robby said. “Tomorrow I will.”

His brain seemed to be hanging in a great, icy emptiness, like some crystalline machine suspended in a winter’s night, bodiless—clicking and moving of itself, divorced from all fear and trepidation. There was a responsibility to be assumed, nothing else mattered. Manhood required it and he must live or fall by the demand. Tomorrow he would fight John Benton in the only way it could be done.

Robby Coles knew his father was shaking his hand strongly but he didn’t feel it and he hardly saw it.

Chapter Seventeen

“No, sir,” John Benton said over the supper table that night, “I admit I’m still a tenderfoot when it comes to cattle ranchin’ but one thing I do know; you’re not goin’ to get as strong a cow horse lettin’ ’em graze. Feed ’em grain; they earn it. They’re a lot better workers for it.”

Lew Goodwill shrugged his thick shoulders. “Well, I guess that’s up to you, boss,” he said. “Most outfits I rode with, though, let their hosses graze.”

Benton took a drink of his hot coffee, then put down the cup. “No, grain makes harder muscles,” he said. “Gives ’em more endurance, I know that for a fact.”

Julia brought more biscuits to the table and sat back down to her supper without a word. She probed listlessly at her meat, the fork held apathetically in her fingers.

Benton noticed how she toyed with her food and reached across the broad table to put his hand on hers. She looked up with a faint smile.

“Honey, stop worryin’,” he told her. “Nothin’s goin’ to happen.”

Her smile was unconvincing. “I hope so,” she said.

Merv Linken made a wry face as he chewed his beef. “Ma’m, you ain’t got nothin’ to fret about. Robby Coles ain’t bucklin’ on no iron against yore husband.” He made a mildly scoffing sound. “That’d be like tryin’ t’scratch his ear with his elbow.”

Julia tried to appear reassured but was unable to manage it.

“Saw the Reverend ridin’ out o’ here, this mawnin’,” Lew Goodwill said, looking up from his food. “What’d he want?”

Benton always wanted his men to feel as if they were part of the family and, as a result, there were few secrets among them.

“Yeah, what’d that ol’ sin-buster want, anyway?” Merv asked, his leathery face deadpan, his light blue eyes fixed on Julia.

“Merv, you stop that,” Julia scolded and the deadpan changed to cheerful grinning. Julia tried not to smile back but couldn’t keep from it.

“You’re a terrible man, Merv Linken,” she said, the corners of her mouth forcing down the smile. “There’s no hope for you.”

“He came out to say I should ride into town and clear it all up,” Benton told Lew Goodwill when his wife had finished. “You know the rest.”

Lew shook his heavy head. “Darndest thing,” he said, “makin’ such a fuss over nothin’.”

“It’s something to them,” Benton said. “They’re usin’ both barrels on me.”

“Well . . .” Julia looked worried again. “Well, shouldn’t we go in and try to settle it then? We could have the Reverend get everyone together in his house and . . .” She hesitated. “. . . well, clear it up,” she finished.

“Honey, I told ya the way they all acted,” John told her. “They just about threw me outta town. Even the barber’s spreadin’ lies about me.” He exhaled disgustedly. “Then when that kid, that—what’s his name?—O’Hara tried to fill his hand on me . . .” He shook his head grimly. “I’ve had enough, Julia. I’ll just stay out here on the ranch and let ’em all stew in their own juice till they cook themselves.”

“But, what if Robby comes after you?”

“Ma.” John looked patiently at his wife. “Can you feature that? Can you feature that little feller puttin’ on a gun and comin’ after me?”

Julia looked down at her plate. “You know what his father is like,” she said, quietly. “You know what Mr. Coles said.”

“He was riled,” Benton said, grinning. “I called him an old man and that bristled him.” The two other men chuckled. “No, Coles isn’t goin’ to push his own boy into the grave,” Benton finished.

“I . . . suppose.”

Julia still played with her supper, finally putting down the fork altogether and drinking some coffee. Then she got up and brought an apple pie to the table and cut thick slices of it for the three men.

While she cleaned the supper scraps onto the hound dog’s plate, she heard the three men talking about bits. None of them sounded concerned, least of all her husband. And Benton wasn’t the type of man who hid his worries very effectively.

Julia thought to herself. John was probably right. There was a lot of fuss, yes, but Robby Coles knew John’s reputation and couldn’t possibly consider trying to fight him with a . . .

But what if he did , what if he was forced to? Julia stood by the pump, staring across the kitchen at her husband. What if Robby did come after him?

Julia Benton closed her eyes suddenly and did the only thing she could think of at the moment. She prayed; but it wasn’t out of fear for her husband’s life, it was something else.

Chapter Eighteen

It was dark in the room, silent. Out in the breezeless night, crickets rasped like a thousand files grating on metal. A block away, she heard the muffled trotting of a horse as someone rode home late from town. The hoofbeats faded, disappeared, and the curtain of dark silence settled once again over the street, the house, the room in which she lay, sleep-less, on her bed.

In the back bedroom, in the bed so painfully large for her, her mother dozed fitfully, mumbling and whimpering in her sleep. Her husband had been dead eight years now but Elizabeth Harper still slept in the outsize four-poster, cold, restless, and lonely. She had never been quite the same since the funeral. They had, almost literally, buried her in the cemetery with her husband.

At least her spirit was there in the ground with his resting bones. Since his death, she had never been quite up to coping with life; and this affair about Louisa and Benton and Robby Coles and everybody else had completely unhinged her. Weeping, she regarded it, attempted to deal with it, able to think of how simple it would be if her dear husband were alive.

Louisa rolled on her stomach and gazed out moodily at the great tree in the front yard which stood etched against the moonlit sky like a black paper cutout. She rested her chin on her small hands and sighed unhappily.

Now she had to stay in the house until it was all settled. She didn’t mind not going to the shop, she liked that part of it. But not being able to do anything else at all, that she didn’t like; being cooped up with her doting, moist-eyed mother. And all because of that stupid story.

Louisa rolled on her back abruptly and squirmed irritably on the sheet. She raised up her feet and kicked off the blankets, her flannel gown sliding up her legs with a sighing of cloth as she kicked.

She didn’t pull it back down again but lay there in the darkness, feeling the cool air on her flesh. She closed her eyes and tried to summon up the vision of that ride again.

She couldn’t. Her aunt had ruined it, ruined everything. Whenever Louisa thought about it now, her aunt’s gaunt, accusing face would materialize in her mind, blotting out the dream. She couldn’t envision John Benton anymore without summoning up attendant visions of Robby, of Benton’s wife, of her mother, her aunt, of the glittering-eyed Mrs. DeWitt, Mrs. Cartwright and all the women who had come to her aunt’s shop to see her and gloat and imagine things.