Later, over dinner, Benton shook his head and groaned to himself, thinking about all the work time he was going to lose.
“This is hogwash,” he muttered.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to come with you?” Julia asked.
Benton shook his head. “No, I’m ridin’ in fast. Maybe I can get it settled quick and come back in time to get some work done.”
Julia poured in more coffee, then stood beside the table, smiling down at her husband. After a moment, he looked up at her. A slow grin relaxed his mouth.
“I know,” he said, amusedly, “get a haircut.”
Julia laughed. “How did you guess?”
Chapter Eleven
He was surrounded by guns. On the wall racks behind him and at his right were rifles—a Springfield .45 caliber breech-loader, a Sharps and Hanker .52 caliber rim-fire carbine, a Henry Deringer rifle, a Colt .44 revolving rifle, a new Sharps-Borschardt .45, three 45/10 nine-shot Winchesters—all of them resting on wooden pegs, their metal glinting in the sunlit brightness of the shop, their stocks glossy with rubbed-in oils.
Across from him, behind his father’s bench, was the board on which his father and he hung repaired pistols like a watchmaker hung repaired watches. Dangling by their trigger guards were five Colt revolvers, a Remington .36 caliber Navy pistol, an Allen and Thurber .32 caliber pepperbox, and three .41 caliber Deringer pistols. All of them had tags tied to them which had the names of the owner and the cost of the repair job.
On the bench in front of Robby Coles were the parts of a .44 caliber 1860 Model Colt which he had converted from percussion to cartridge fire by cutting off the rear end of the cylinder and replacing it with a breechblock containing a loading gate and rebounding fire pin. He’d only managed to get a section of it assembled all morning.
He couldn’t seem to concentrate, that was the trouble. Every few moments he’d start thinking about his father or O’Hara or Louisa and his fingers would put down the part he was working on and, for a long time, he’d sit staring across the small shop, brooding.
Then, in the middle of a thought, Robby’s eyes would focus suddenly and he’d find himself staring at the pistols hanging across the shop from him. He would sit there, looking at the long-barreled Colts, at their plow-handle shaped stocks, their hammers like steer horns jutting out behind the cylinder, the scimiter triggers filed to a hair.
He’d think of John Benton aiming one of them at him, squeezing the trigger. And, suddenly, he’d shudder in the warm shop and his cheek would be pale. No, he’d think, no. And go back to work; or, at least, try to go back to work.
But then, a few minutes later, abruptly, he’d remember the look some men gave him as he rode to work that morning. And his throat would move and the chain of thoughts would begin all over again. He’d end up staring at the pistols on the board again and shuddering. Through ten o’clock, through eleven, through—
Robby’s hands twitched on the bench top, dropping the smooth cylinder as heavy footsteps sounded in the doorway. Looking up quickly, Robby saw his father coming across the floor, seeming very tall in his dark suit and hat, his face grave and still. Robby felt his hand start to shake and, around the edge of his stomach, all the muscles and tendons started tightening in like drawn wires.
Matthew Coles stopped by the bench and looked down at the litter of Colt parts across the bench top. He glanced up at Robby, his face a mask of unpleasant surprise.
“Sir?” he said
Robby swallowed. “I’m sorry, father. I . . .”
“I understand your concern with other thoughts, sir,” said Matthew Coles. “However . . . we have duties to perform in life beside those necessary ones of honor.”
“Yes, sir.” Robby picked up the cylinder again and started working, hoping that his father would leave it at that.
“I’ve just come from the bank,” said Matthew Coles, removing his dark coat and hanging it up carefully on the clothes tree in a back corner of the shop. “There was talk about the Benton incident. Hard talk, sir.”
Robby’s throat moved again and his teeth gritted together as he kept on trying to work.
“I was asked by several men when you were going to settle this matter.” Matthew Coles was adjusting arm garters to keep the sleeves up and away from filings and oil. “I told them,” he said, “that it was your decision to make but that I assumed it would be soon.”
Robby felt his stomach muscles start throbbing. Then, a bolt of terror numbed him as he felt a betraying looseness around his eyes. He forced his lips together and stared down at the bench without seeing anything, his eyes strained and unblinking.
“. . . a matter of honor that needs settling,” he heard the tail-end of his father’s words but didn’t dare reply for fear there would be a break in his voice. His hands fumbled and pretended to work on the cool metal of the Colt parts.
Silence a moment as his father adjusted the apron over his shirt and trouser front, sat down at the other bench, and looked over the disassembled Winchester.
Matthew Coles reached for the long barrel, then glanced up.
“Son, between you and me,” he said, “when do you intend to settle this thing? Mind you, I’m not pushing; you’re of age and I believe the final decision is yours to make. But the situation is getting more grave by the hour. I heard talk of it all over town. People are expecting this thing of you, sir. And soon.”
Robby drew in a ragged breath. “Father, I . . .”
“It’s Thursday today,” Matthew Coles estimated. “I believe the matter should be settled before the weekend.”
Robby’s eyes closed suddenly as he bent over his work. A low gasp caught in his throat. No . . . no! He bit his shaking lower lip. He was in a corner, everyone was surrounding him, pushing him, demanding.
“I have heard that Louisa Harper is being kept in her house until this situation is cleared up. For myself, I believe that there is no other way. Certainly, she cannot face anyone in the street while the matter goes unsettled.”
Stop looking at me! Robby’s mind erupted, still working, head down, fingers unable to do more than fumble and slip.
“I spoke to young Jim Bonney,” said Matthew Coles. “He agreed with me that your decision to face Benton was the only one possible under the circumstances. However, he also said that, if he were in your place, he would have ended the situation immediately.”
Robby swallowed with effort. “Easy for him to talk,” he said, without looking up. “He doesn’t have to do it.”
He didn’t even have to look up to know the expression on his father’s face. It was the one that said as clearly as if words were spoken—What has that to do with what we are discussing?
“Sir?” his father asked.
“Nothing,” Robby said.
“Sir?” Urgency now; bilked authority.
Robby felt the cold shudder running down his back and across his stomach.
“I said it was easy for him to talk,” he repeated, holding his voice tightly in check, “he doesn’t have to put on a—” his throat moved convulsively. “He doesn’t have to face Benton.”
“I fail to see . . .” His father left the question a challenge hanging in the air.
Robby looked up quickly and forced himself to stare straight into his father’s eyes. The two of them looked at each other across the shop.
“Father,” Robby said, tensely, “Benton has been in the Rangers, he’s killed thirteen men—”
“I fail, sir, to see what this has to do with the situation at hand,” Matthew Coles interrupted, his voice rising steadily to the end of the sentence.
No, you wouldn’t!—the words tore at Robby’s mind but he didn’t have the strength to speak them aloud. He lowered his head and went back to the pistol, screwing on the walnut stock with tense, jerky movements.
“Sir, I’m beginning to wonder just what you’re trying to say to me,” Matthew Coles challenged, putting down the Winchester barrel with a determined thud.
Robby shook his head. “Nothing. I—”
“Sir?”
He shook his head again. “It’s nothing, father.” He felt his heart start pounding heavily.
“Sir, I demand an explanation!”
“I told you I’d do it!” Robby shouted, head jerked up so suddenly it made his neck muscles hurt. “Now leave me alone, will you!”
He couldn’t seem to get the lump out of his throat. He kept swallowing futilely while his fingers shook helplessly on the Colt parts. He kept his eyes down, sensing the look his father was directing toward him.
Rigid control; that was the sound in his father’s voice when he spoke again. The sort of rigid control that only a lifetime of practice could achieve; the sort of control based upon unyielding will.
“I have already accepted your statement to that effect,” said Matthew Coles flatly. “It is no longer a question of doing or not doing, it is a question of time. Let me remind you, sir, that it is not only the honor of your intended bride that is at stake. Your own honor, too, as well as the honor of our family name, is at stake.” Pause, a brief sound of metal clicking on metal.
“The next few days will determine the future of that honor,” said Matthew Coles.
There was silence in the shop then, a heavy, ominous absence of sound, broken only occasionally by the slight clicking sounds of his father’s work, the infrequent insect-like gasp of the small files. Robby Coles sat numbly, working on the pistol. Another chance was gone; he was in deeper yet. Every time he wanted to bring up the point of whether he should face Benton at all, his father or someone would make it clear that this point was not even in question, that the only thing that mattered now was—when?
Robby looked up cautiously at his father but Matthew Coles was studiedly absorbed in his work. For a long moment, Robby looked at the hard features that seemed chipped from granite—a deep blow for each eye, several harsh cuts for the large dominant nose, one long, unhesitating blow for the straight, unmoving mouth.
Then he looked back to his work. While he finished putting the Colt together with quick, agitated hand motions, he thought of Louisa being kept in the house because of what had happened.
The more he thought of it, the more it bothered him. She was his girl; he loved her and wanted to marry her. It was his job to defend her; nothing anyone said could change that, no argument could refute it.
And, after all, no one really wanted to see him die. His father hadn’t raised him twenty-one years just to push him into being killed. O’Hara didn’t have any reason to want Robby dead. All the people in town had no grudge against him. It was simply that they all expected him to defend the honor of his woman and Louisa was his woman. Either he stood up for her or he lost her for good and, with her, his self-respect. It was as simple as that; the thought struck him forcibly.
It was strange how this different approach to the matter seemed to pour courage, strength, into him. Louisa was his woman. He loved her and he’d fight for her. That was his responsibility, his duty. Louisa was his intended bride, it was his job to—
The clicking of the trigger made Robby’s flesh crawl.
He found himself suddenly, the assembled Colt held tensely in his right hand, his finger closed over the trigger.
With a spasmodic movement, he shoved the pistol away from himself and it banged down on the bench.
“Be careful!” Matthew Coles snapped.
Robby hardly heard his father. He sat shivering, his eyes fixed to the heavy, glinting form of the Colt, in his mind the hideous impression that, somehow, it was Benton’s pistol and that he’d repaired it and put it together for Benton and it was in perfect working order now; it could fire, it could shoot a bullet.
It could kill.
Chapter Twelve
When Mrs. Angela DeWitt left the shop, Louisa came back to where her aunt sat writing in the ledger.
“Aunt Agatha?” she asked meekly, standing by the desk, her face drained with nervous worry.
Agatha Winston went on with her figures, her eyes shrewd and calculating behind the spectacles, her pen running crabbed hen-tracks of numbers across the lined page.
“Aunt Agatha?”
Agatha Winston’s eyes closed shut. Beneath the mouse-fuzz of her mustache, her pinched mouth grew irked. Slowly, decisively, she put down the pen.
“What is it, Louisa?” she asked in the flinted tone that she conceived to be one of patience and forbearing.
Louisa stammered. “Aunt Agatha . . . please,” she said. “May I—”
The jade eyes were hidden behind quickly lowered lids and Agatha Winston cut off the appearance of the world.
“You may not go home,” she said, concisely. “There is much too much work to be done.”
Louisa bit nervously at her finger, eyes pleading and lost.
“Heaven only knows,” her aunt continued, “I ask little enough of your mother and yourself in return for the help I give you freely, with Christian affection.” Agatha Winston sighed, head shaking once. “I’m tired, Louisa,” she said. “I would like nothing better than to retire . . . and live on my small savings. But, for your mother’s sake and for your own . . .” another sigh, “. . . I go on working. Asking nothing in return but a little help in the shop a few days out of the week.” She fixed an accusing look upon her niece. “Is that so much to ask?” she said. “Is that so—stop that!”
Louisa jerked the moist, chewed knuckle from her lips and swallowed nervously.
“Is it, Louisa?” asked her aunt.
“No, Aunt Agatha, it . . . isn’t that. I like to help you in the shop but . . .” She bit her lower lip and couldn’t help the tear that wriggled from beneath her right eyelid and trickled down her cheek. “They all look at me so,” she said, brokenly.
“And what would you like to do?” her aunt challenged. “Go home? Hide away as if you had something to be ashamed of?”
“No, Aunt Agatha, it isn’t—”
“You might just as well confess your guilt as do that!”
Louisa’s mouth twitched. “G-guilt?” she murmured, eyes wide and frightened.
“Yes,” her aunt said. “Guilt. Is that what you want people to think; that you have something to be ashamed of?”
“No, Aunt Agath—”
“That’s all there is to it,” stated Agatha Winston firmly. “We have nothing to hide and we will not hide.”
Louisa stared helplessly at her aunt.
“Let John Benton hide his face!” Agatha Winston said angrily. “Not us.” She glared at Louisa, then picked up her pen. “Now . . . kindly take care of the shop until I finish my work.”
Louisa still stood watching until her aunt looked up again, dark eyes commanding. “Well?” said her aunt.
Louisa turned and walked slowly down the length of the counter. She stopped at the front of the shop and looked out the window at the sunlit square.
She stared bleakly at the reversed letters painted on the glass—MISS WINSTON’S LADIES APPAREL. Then her eyes focused again beyond the letters and she looked at the plank sidewalk, the dirt square, the shops across the way. She looked a while at the motionless peppermint-stick pole in front of Jesse Willmark’s Barber Shop. She thought of the look Jesse had given her when she passed him that morning with her aunt. The memory made her breath catch.
Then she saw a horse man ride by and look into the shop and she turned away quickly, her cheeks coloring embarrassedly. She hoped the man didn’t see her blush. The way he looked at her . . .
She stood with her back to the window a long time, feeling a strange quiver in her body. She reached up and brushed away a tear that dripped across her cheek. Why did everybody look at her that way?
All during the last sale, Mrs. DeWitt had kept staring like that, always turning down her gaze a little too late to hide the curious brightness in her eyes. Never once did she say a word about the situation Louisa knew she was thinking about. She talked about shifts and stockings and corsets as if there were nothing el
se on her mind. And, all the time, her eyes kept probing up, then down, as if she were attempting to penetrate Louisa’s mind and ferret out its secrets.
All through the sale, Louisa had tried to smile, to repeat the things about the merchandise her aunt had taught her. Oh, yes this is what every woman back East is wearing now. This is delicate but completely sturdy. I think you’ll find it will not bind or roll. This is the best material of its type on the market. Words repeated in a nervous voice, when all the time she wanted to run away and hide.
Louisa glanced over her shoulder again and saw that there was no one in front of the shop. She turned back and looked out the window again. Far down in the south end of the square was the shop where Robby worked. Louisa looked in that direction.
All morning she’d been dreadfully afraid that Robby was going to come in and ask her if the story about Benton was really true. Every time she’d heard footsteps in the doorway or heard hoofbeats out front, her head had jerked up from whatever she was doing and she’d looked fearfully at the shop entrance, heart pounding suddenly. What would she tell him if he asked? How could she say she lied when Aunt Agatha was right there to hear the confession? She couldn’t; she knew she couldn’t.
He’d just have to stay away from her until everyone forgot about that silly story. They couldn’t keep thinking about it forever. As long as they left her alone, it would be all right. She wished she could stay in the house until the story was forgotten. She didn’t like people staring at her like that. It was terrible the way people gossiped and talked. All Louisa wanted to do was keep out of everyone’s way until things were back to normal again.
Louisa started suddenly at the footsteps in the doorway and her body tightened apprehensively as she turned to see who it was.
Mrs. Alma Cartwright came waddling to the counter, hurriedly erasing from her plump face the curious look that had crossed it when she saw Louisa standing there.
“How are you, my dear?” she asked.
Louisa smiled faintly. “Well, thank you,” she said.
“And your dear mother?” Mrs. Cartwright asked, sheep eyes looking quizzical.