It was just ten minutes past noon when he came riding slowly down Armitas Street. At the twelfth stroke of noon, he had risen from the bench of his gunsmith shop, donned his coat and hat, and locked up the shop, leaving in the door window the thumb-worn sign which read simply DINNER. He had mounted the docile chestnut and started for his house where, by God, Jane had better have dinner immediately ready to eat. Precision and efficiency—Matthew Coles was especially guided by these coupled verities.
Mr. Coles was in a particularly sour humor that afternoon. His elder son, Robby, had not appeared at the shop promptly at eight thirty as he was supposed to; as a matter of fact, Robby had not shown up at all. That was an added reason why Matthew Coles rode stiffly, his back a ramrod of irked authority, his face set with dominance defied. He wore black, as always, for it made his five foot ten inches appear taller and, he fancied, made him look unusually handsome for a man in his middle fifties.
As he rode into the alleyway beside the house, he saw his son’s roan tied up in back and his mouth twitched angrily. The horse hadn’t been rubbed down, it was streaked over with dry sweat. Beneath taut lips, Matthew Coles’ false teeth clamped vice-like. Fool!—he raged within. Robby didn’t deserve a horse and, by God, if he didn’t take better care of it, he wouldn’t have a horse!
The gelding stopped. Matthew Coles eased his right leg over its croup and let himself down with a grunt. Then he led the horse into the small stable and tied it up near the water trough.
He crossed the backyard with vengeful strides, then clumped loudly up the wooden porch steps, removing his hat as he ascended.
The kitchen door thudded shut behind him and his wife Jane straightened up over the chair in which Robby sat slumped.
“Good afternoon, dear,” she said hastily. “I’ll get you your—”
“What is the meaning of leaving your mount untended?” Coles asked loudly, ignoring his mouse-haired wife.
Robby looked up, his drained features tensed with nausea. “I was sick,” he muttered. “I—”
“Speak up, sir. I can’t hear you when you mumble like a child.” Mr. Coles hung up his hat with one authoritative motion.
Robby swallowed, grimacing with pain, his hands pressed over the waist of his belt-loosened trousers.
“Matthew, he’s ill.”
Matthew Coles impaled his small-framed wife with an imperious glare. “Is my dinner ready?” he challenged.
“I was—”
“I’ve been working,” her husband explained with the carefully measured articulation of a harried father addressing his idiot daughter. “I’m hungry. Are you going to stand there gaping at me or are you going to make my dinner?”
Mrs. Coles tried to look agreeable but could not summon the long-lost ability to smile. She turned away and hurried toward the stove.
“Well, sir?” Mr. Coles re-addressed his bent-over son.
“I’m sorry, sir,” Robby said, his lips drawn back from his teeth. He groaned slightly and, by the stove, his mother cast a look of anguished concern toward him.
“What’s wrong with you, sir?” Matthew Coles demanded. “And where were you this entire morning?”
“I was—” Robby leaned over suddenly, jamming the end of one fist against his pale-lipped mouth.
“Matthew, he’s ill,” Mrs. Coles said suddenly. “Please don’t—”
“This is not your discussion,” her husband informed her, face tensed with the expression of a soldier attacked on all sides. “I have an appointment at the bank at one o’clock. I expect to be there exactly on time—fed.”
Jane Coles’ hands twitched in futile empathy with her upset condition and she turned back to the stove, a hopeless expression on her face.
“Where is the boy?” her husband asked her.
“He’s not home from school yet,” she answered.
“I can’t hear you.”
“I say, he’s not home from school yet.”
“He’s supposed to be home. I think a little strapping is in order for that young man.”
His wife said nothing, knowing that no answer was expected. She went about quietly at her work as Matthew Coles concentrated on Robby again.
“Why weren’t you at your work this morning?”
Robby looked up at his stern-faced father with pain-glossed eyes.
“Sir, I expect an answer.”
“I went out,” Robby said, weakly.
“Out? Out where?”
“T-to . . . John Benton’s . . . ranch.”
“And what, may I ask, were you doing there?”
“I . . .” Robby swallowed and gasped in air. “I wanted to see . . . to see him.”
“About what?”
Robby stared at his father, his lean chest rising and falling with tight, spasmodic movements.
“I am waiting, sir,” his father said clearly.
“I . . . sir, I’d rather not—”
“What was that?” His father spoke the words in a cold, threatening tone and spots of color flared up in Robby’s pale cheeks. His throat moved again as he looked up fearfully into the hard face of his father.
Robby bit his lip. “I had to see B-Benton,” he said.
“What about?” Matthew Coles spoke the words slowly, with the repetitious demanding of a man who would not be put off.
Robby looked down at his boots. “Lou-Louisa,” he said.
“Miss Louisa Harper?” asked his father, announcing her name as if it were the title of a book.
Robby nodded slowly without looking up.
“And what about Miss Louisa Harper?”
“I . . .”
“Answer me this moment, sir!”
Robby looked up in hopeless despair. “I wanted to f-find out about her and . . . and Benton.”
At the stove the father and son heard Mrs. Coles catch her breath. “Robby,” she murmured faintly.
Matthew Coles paid no attention. His face a block of carved stone, he caught at the situation as one worthy of his stern attention.
“Make yourself clear, sir,” he said firmly and distinctly.
Robby’s throat moved convulsively as he stared up.
“Well?”
“Louisa told me that . . . that Benton annoyed her and . . . tried to . . . to—”
“To effect a meeting?” His father completed the sentence with imperial outrage, his nostrils flared, his hands clenched suddenly at his sides.
Robby’s head slumped forward and a harsh breath shuddered his body. “I guess,” he muttered.
Mr. Coles drew back his shoulders slowly as if he were getting ready to gird his loins for a battle with all the forces of evil in the world.
“You saw Benton,” he said and it wasn’t a question.
Robby nodded. “I . . . yes, I . . . did.”
“And what was his defense?”
“He . . . he acted like he didn’t kn-know anything about it.”
A thin, humorless smile raised the ends of Matthew Coles’ lips. “Of course,” he said quietly, “that would be what he’d say.” He looked down dispassionately at his son’s pain-tightened face. “There was a fight,” he stated.
Robby nodded and mumbled something.
Then Matthew Coles was leaning over his son and Mrs. Coles was watching her husband with uneasy eyes.
“Miss Harper is your intended bride, is she not?” said Matthew Coles, his voice calm.
Robby looked up quickly at his father and nodded. “Y . . . yes,” he said, almost tentatively, as if he suspected that his father was going to throw the admission back in his face.
“Well, then,” Mr. Coles said, still calmly, as he straightened up. “What do you mean to do about it?”
In the sudden silence of the kitchen, Robby distinctly heard the frightened sound his mother made. But there seemed nothing visible in the entire room except his black-suited father looking down commandingly at him.
Chapter Five
Alittle after twelve, the spotted hound raced t
o the Dutch door and reared up excitedly, its blunt claws scratching at the wood, its hoarse barking echoing in the kitchen. Julia Benton looked up from her pea shelling with a quick smile that drove the tense absorption from her face.
Five minutes later the buckboard came creaking across the yard and braked up in back of the house.
Julia walked over to the door and opened the top half. She saw her tall husband reaching over the iron railing for one of the baskets in the buckboard. “Hush now,” she told the baying hound.
“Hello, ma,” John said, grinning as he came struggling toward the door with his heavy load.
“Hello, dear.” Julia pulled open the bottom half of the door and the wriggling hound rushed out, its long tail blade whipping at its flanks. “Howdy, mutt,” Benton said as he entered the kitchen, heeled by the excited dog.
Benton set the basket down heavily on the table and straightened up with a quickly exhaled breath. “Am I late?” he said.
Julia nodded, smiling. “The boys finished half hour ago. Sit down and I’ll warm you what’s left.”
“Right. I’ll get the rest of the chuck first, though.” Benton left the kitchen, the dog prancing and growling happily at his boots. “Easy there, Jughead,” Julia heard her husband tell the hound.
A minute later, Benton sat at the table, checking the supply list while Julia warmed his dinner.
“Twenty pounds Arbuckle’s,” he said, laying down the coffee sack. “Canned cow. Salt. Flour.”
“Molasses?” she said.
He nodded with a grunt. “Yup,” he said, “black strap.” He checked off the item. “Oh, I forgot,” he said, “I got you canned peaches. Maxwell just got some in from the east.”
“Oh,” she said, happily surprised, “that’s nice. We’ll have them Sunday morning.”
Benton smiled to himself and worked on the list until Julia put his dinner on the table. Then he washed up and sat down. By the stove, the hound was going back to twitching sleep again.
“John?” Julia asked him while he ate.
“What?”
“What did Robby Coles want to see you about?”
He looked up from his plate in surprise. “How did you know about that?” he asked.
“He rode here first looking for you.”
“He did, eh?” Benton sipped a little hot coffee from the mug. “Well, I’ll be,” he said, shaking his head.
“You saw him in town then,” she said.
Benton nodded. “Yeah. Funny thing too,” he said. “He was all horns and rattles. Came into the Zorilla Saloon and threw a fist at me.”
She stood by the table looking concerned. “But why?” she asked.
He shrugged, food in his mouth, then swallowed. “I don’t know,” he said. “That’s the part that don’t make sense. He told me to stop botherin’ his girl.”
She looked at him silently a moment. “His girl?” she said.
“That’s right. Came up to me blowin’ a storm and tells me to leave his girl alone. Then he throws a punch at me. What do you think o’ that?”
Julia shook her head slowly. “But . . . why should he say such a thing to you?” she asked.
“Don’t ask me, ma. I didn’t even know who the girl was until the Sutton kid told me.”
“Who is she?”
“Louisa Harper, Sutton said. Who’s she?”
“Louisa Harper.” Julia put two fingers against her cheek and stared into space, trying to place the name. “I don’t think I ever—”
Suddenly her mouth opened a second in surprised realization. “I think I know,” she said.
“What?” he said, still eating.
“You know the girl I keep telling you about; the one who stares at you in church?”
“You tell me there’s a girl who stares. I never saw one.”
“Oh, you wouldn’t notice,” she said with the affectionate scorn of a wife. “But she does stare at you. And . . . yes, come to think of it,” she went on, nodding to herself, “I think I’ve seen her walking with Robby Coles after church.”
“So,” he said. “Any more coffee?”
She poured the heavy black coffee into his mug. “You know what I think?” she asked him.
“What’s that?”
“I think she told Robby Coles that you pestered her.”
“That’s right, that’s what I said,” he answered, nodding. “That’s what Coles told me she said.”
“Well, of course,” she said.
Benton looked up at his pretty wife with a grin. “Of course what, ma?” he asked.
“Louisa Harper is in love with you.”
He stared at her, speechless. “She—”
“In love with you.” Julia nodded with a confident smile. “Of course she is. All the girls in Kellville are in love with you. You’re their big hero.”
“Oh . . .” Benton waved a disgusted hand, “. . . that’s hogwash.”
She smiled at him.
“That’s nonsense, Julia,” he insisted.
“No, it isn’t,” she said with a laugh. “Ever since we moved here everyone’s looked up to you. The boys look at you as if you were a god. The girls look at you as if—”
“Why should they?” John said, embarrassed.
“Because you’re a hero to them, dear,” she said. “You’re John Benton, the fearless Ranger, the quick-shooting lawman.”
He peered at her until the mock-serious expression on her face broke into an impish grin. “Ha, ha,” he said flatly.
“It’s true,” she said. “To them you’re Hardin and Longley and . . . and Hickok all rolled into one.”
“That’s nonsense,” he said. “I haven’t worn a gun in town the whole two years we’ve been here.”
“Yes, but they know what you did in the Rangers.”
“Oh, that’s silly,” he mumbled and reached for his coffee mug.
She sat down with her peas again. “Yes, I expect that’s what it is,” she said. “She’s in love with you and she probably dreamed out loud in front of Robby.”
“Well, that’s stupid,” he said in disgust. “If it’s true, that is. What’s the matter with the girl, doesn’t she know any better than that? She has that Coles kid thinkin’ I’m a . . . a gallivantin’ dude or somethin’.”
Julia laughed. “He’ll get over it,” she said, “as soon as he knows it isn’t true.”
“How do you know it isn’t true?” Benton said, forcing down the grin with effort.
Julia looked up at her husband with soft eyes for a moment, then back to her moving fingers.
“I know,” she said, gently.
Chapter Six
Agatha Winston walked down Davis Street in the late afternoon, her thin legs whipping like reeds against the heavy blackness of her skirt and the half dozen petticoats beneath. She was a tall, gaunt woman with eyes of jade, and features molded in sharp angles and pinches. She was a hidebound churchgoer who used her self-styled Christianity as a bludgeon on all those not in the accredited fold.
Right now Agatha Winston was on a crusade.
Like a dark bird of vengeance, she swooped down on the small house of her sister, umbrella stem clicking on the plank sidewalk, skirts a vindictive rustle. Mouth a gash, she shoved in the gate and kicked it shut behind her as she clumped and swished toward the porch steps.
Inside the house, the bell tinkled reactively to the wrathful tugging of Agatha Winston’s clawlike fingers. She stood tensely before the door, one black and pointed shoe-tip tapping steadily at the porch, the other pressing down a corner of the welcome mat.
There was a stirring in the house. From its depths, Miss Winston heard the voice of her sister calling, “I’ll be right there,” and then the light sound of her sister’s shoes across an inside floor. Through the gauzy haze of freshly laundered curtains, Miss Winston saw her sister’s approach.
The door opened. “Agatha,” said the widow Harper in surprise.
“Elizabeth,” Miss Winston replied with a concise
moving of lips.
“Come in, my dear, please,” Elizabeth Harper said, stepping aside, her soft, pink face wrinkled in a welcoming smile. “My, what a lovely surprise.”
“That’s as it may be,” declared Agatha Winston. “You may not think so when you find out why I’m here.”
The widow Harper looked confused as she shut the door quietly, then turned back to her sister who was driving her black umbrella into the stand like a mariner harpooning a whale. She stood smiling pleasantly while Agatha removed her bonnet with quick, agitated motions.
Agatha Winston lifted a piercing glance up the stairwell. “Where is Louisa?” she asked in a guarded tone.
“Why . . . up in her room, Agatha,” Elizabeth Harper said, looking curiously at her sister. “Why do you—”
Miss Winston took her sister’s arm with firm fingers and led her into the quiet, sun-flecked sitting room.
“Sit down,” she said curtly and the widow Harper settled like a diffident butterfly on the couch edge, one hand plucking at the grey-threaded auburn of her curls. She was forty-four, a gentle woman, helpless in all things.
Agatha Winston looked down grimly at the rose-petal cheeks of her sister.
“I don’t suppose you’ve heard,” she said.
“Heard?” The widow Harper swallowed nervously. She had always been somewhat afraid of her elder sister.
“It’s shocking,” Miss Winston said in sudden anger. “It’s just shocking.”
Elizabeth Harper looked dismayed. Her hands stirred restlessly in the lap of her yellow patterned calico, then twined frail fingers.
“What . . . is, Agatha?” she asked, uneasily.
“The terrible gossip that’s going around town,” Agatha Winston said. “The shameful story . . . about Louisa.”
Alarm flared up suddenly in the widow Harper’s face as she heard mentioned her only child. “Louisa?” she said hastily. “What about her, Agatha?”