Matagorda (1967) (18 page)

He moved a step forward, putting his foot down with the utmost care, and letting it sink into the wet leaves. Then he took another step. As he moved, his mind was telling him that at that distance he would probably do better than they could, for though they were used to guns, they were not likely to have had as thorough a training as he had had, nor the experience in the cavalry.

He took a third step-each step was a short one. They would turn soon, and that was the way he wanted it. He did not want to surprise them into shooting. If possible, he would take them without any shooting, and without killing.

He stood now beneath a huge pecan tree and looked at the three men across the small hollow. They were talking quietly, and smoking. He smiled at that. An Apache would have smelled that smoke-as he had-long before he saw them.

One of the men knocked out his pipe against his heel, a sound that would carry too far ... these men were not the sort he was used to dealing with. The man started to put his pipe in his pocket, and he turned just a little as his hand reached back for his coat pocket. With that motion his head turned slightly to the right, as it often will with such a movement, and he saw Duvarney.

He froze with the movement half completed, staring hard, obviously unwilling to believe what he saw, or unsure of it. The position in which Duvarney was standing would be even worse for them to see clearly than was their position for Tap.

"Pinto," he said. "Pinto . . . look."

When Pinto turned his head Tap saw the scar ... a bad powder burn, he would guess, although it was impossible to tell at that distance.

"You boys waiting for me?" Duvarney asked in a conversational tone. "There doesn't have to be a shooting, you know. You can just shuck your guns and back off. I'm down here on business-I'm not trying to run up a score."

They looked at him, unwilling to believe that he was actually there, that he had moved up behind them without their knowing it. It offended their pride . . . after all, they were fighting men.

He held the Smith & Wesson in his hand, the muzzle down slightly, but ready.

"You'd better do that," he added. "Just loosen your gun belts and let them fall."

Pinto Hart was getting slowly to his feet-slowly and carefully. Tap watched them all without any partiality, and he could catch any move. When Pinto was on his feet, he said, "I'll be damned if I will."

"You boys better talk to him. I shoot pretty straight, but at this distance I might nail any one of you. I'll surely get him, but one of you might get hurt."

One of the two men sitting there had a rifle across his knees, but he would have to swing ninety degrees to bring it to bear . . . it would take too long, and the man knew it. The other man was the one who put the pipe in his pocket, and his hand was still there, clutching the pipe. Nobody wants to die, and this man knew he had a good chance of not living out the next two minutes, and he was sweating.

"Talk to him, boys," Tap said again, "or pull him down. He'll only get you killed."

"Pinto?" The man with the rifle was speaking. "I think-"

Pinto took a step back and went for his gun. Tap hesitated a fraction of a second to see what the others would do, and then shot Pinto Hart through the lower right corner of his breast pocket. He fired only once, then held his fire.

"How about it, boys? What's in it for you that will weigh as heavy as a bullet in the head?"

Very carefully the man with the rifle pitched it from him, and unbuckled his belt.

The other man moved gingerly to do the same.

"Why don't you boys just head for Refugio and take the stage on west? Arizona's a good country. So's New Mexico."

They turned with great care and, stiff-backed, walked away as Duvarney followed them.

He glanced once at the body of Pinto Hart. A tough, reckless man, and a game one.

It was a pity, but he had thought of himself as a good man with a gun, and that kind of belief can get a man killed. A reputation for being tough can give a man some standing with his fellows, but there always comes a time when he has to back it up ... and the same men who praised your skill will sneer at it by comparison with the man who shoots you.

"We got to get our horses," one of the men said.

"Walk," Duvarney said. "A good walk in the rain and the wind will give you time to consider your ways. And boys-be sure you take that stage. If I saw you around I might just think you were waiting for me, and I'd have to shoot on sight, I wouldn't want to do that."

He watched them go, and then he walked back to the cabin and went in the door.

The old man was tipped back in his chair, and he let the chair legs down hard when Duvarney came in. Welt Spicer merely gave Tap a satisfied look, and Lawton Bean stretched.

"Two of them are walking to Refugio," Duvarney said. "It will cool them off a bit."

"Pinto?" the old man asked quickly.

"Pinto's out there. Will you take care of him, amigo?

We'll take those horses, too," he added. "I think we're going to need them, the way the weather is."

"You killed Pinto Hart?" The old man could not find it in himself to believe it could happen that way.

"He killed himself," Duvarney said. "He made an error in judgment."

They rode to the south and then east, and within a few miles they began to see Rafter K cattle.

Chapter
Fourteen.

Jessica Trescott huddled in her mackintosh, half asleep. The wind filled the day with a dreadful roaring, like nothing she had ever heard. Outwardly, Jessica was calm; inwardly, she trembled. It was a trembling down deep inside her, the trembling of a fear such as she had never known.

The others were gathered about her, together yet alone; for in a terrible storm each person is alone within their minds, cowering with their own private fears, their uncertainties. There is no isolation like that brought on by storm, for the voice cannot rise above the wind, nor can it reach that private place within the head where man hovers in the midst of all that he is and has been.

Jessica's hands were thrust deep in her pockets, her shoulders were hunched, as much to shut out the sound as to bring warmth.

The courthouse was of concrete, and it was strongly built. The rise of ground on which it sat lifted it somewhat above the waters.

And now, for the first time, the great waves began to break over the island.

Up to now the wind had driven the waters of the bay upon the shore, had driven great volumes of water through the passages between the islands, and the swells had pounded the outer islands, but only now had the sea begun to roll its swells clear across the island and up on the low shores.

It began in the town with a mighty wave that sent a rolling wall of water up the street. This was almost immediately followed by another. The outer buildings of the town, battered by the gigantic winds, now crashed before the onrushing sea.

"Ma'am?"

Jessica looked up to see Bill Taylor standing beside her, hat in hand. "Ma'am," he repeated, "you got to see this. Maybe you'll never see the like again."

With Mady and Bob Brunswick, she followed him up the stairs to the second floor.

Up there she was conscious only of the mighty sound of the wind. The building seemed to give before the weight of it pressing against the walls. It even seemed to suck the breath from her lungs, causing her to gasp for each breath. When he led her to a window with a broken shutter, she looked out over Indianola and was appalled.

As far as her eyes could see, in the intervals between the gusts of wind and rain, there was only water. The rushing waves were smashing the buildings now, floating the less securely anchored, sending them crashing one against another with tremendous, splintering force.

There was no longer a harbor, no longer any piers to be seen, or any land at all.

Here and there a tree, rooted more deeply than the others, still held its place, almost drowned by the rising water.

The boardwalk where she had stood not long ago was gone, and the hotel itself canted over weirdly. For a moment she thought of her clothing there ... of the pictures of her father and mother, her diary ... all would be gone, carried away by the flood.

Mady was thinking of those dresses, too. "All those beautiful gowns!" she wailed.

Jessica glanced at her, and said wryly, "I don't believe those clothes have much to do with what is really worthwhile, and I doubt if Tappan will even realize they are gone."

"I wish I had them."

"The only things I regret are a few personal keepsakes and my books, and I haven't really lost them, I suppose. Once you have read a book you care about, some part of it is always with you."

She looked out at the frightful havoc of the storm. A town was dying out there, being wiped from the earth, but guiltily she realized that all she could think about was Tappan. Where was he? Was he safe?

The worst of it was, there was nothing she could do. Those who could reach the courthouse were there. Bill Taylor and a few others had performed amazingly, rescuing men, women, and children, and getting them all inside. Taylor, awaiting trial for his part in a shooting, had worked harder than anyone in getting people to safety.

She went back and sat down. The water was over the steps now, and the town was simply caving in under the combined attack of sea and wind.

Here and there clusters of men bunched together. Once Taylor came over and squatted near by. He knew Mady, of course, but it was to Jessica he talked. "Stories are going around," he said, "that there's been more shooting south of here. But don't you worry; that man of yours is a good hand. I watched him out there against Eggen and Wheeler.

He'll take care of himself."

He did not look at Mady or speak to her. Once she started to address him and he pointedly looked away. She flushed.

"Tom Kitt'ry," Taylor said, "ran into a bunch of trouble. Seems they knew right where to find him, and they did. Feller rode into town . . . he's downstairs right now ... he heard Pete Remley and Joe Breck were dead . . . Roy Kitt'ry too. Tom's hurt, an' he's hid out. Somebody wished him no good," Taylor added insinuatingly, "and folks know it. If
there
ever was a talker, it was that show-off, Ev Munson."

From the corners of her eyes, Jessica looked at Mady. Her face was shockingly white and pinched. She seemed shrunken, somehow, and she stared straight ahead in a kind of stark shame.

"Tom's goin' to win now. That man of yours, Duvarney-he makes the
difference
. Those men he's got, they're good ones, but it's Duvarney . . . he's outguessed them every turn."

After a while, Taylor moved away, and the two girls sat silent. Finally, Jessica could restrain herself no longer. "Mady . . . why did you do it?"

"Oh . . . you!

You think you know so much! How do you know how it is to live in a place like this, year after year? I wanted Tom to leave. I wanted him to get out. And I knew he never would as long as that crazy feud was going on! Anyway, I had nothing to do with what happened."

"I saw you talking to Every Munson, Mady."

"What if you did? I've known Ev Munson all my life. I never cared about their silly feud. All I wanted was for Tom to take me away."

"Away from all he knew? Did that seem wise, Mady? This is Tom's life. He knows cattle.

He knows the range, the people. In the city he would be just another man struggling for a living among men who had grown up in a life he had never known."

"Tom would do all right," Mady said defiantly.

"And so you betrayed him?"

Mady turned on Jessica, her eyes hot with anger. "I did no such thing!"

"I think you did, Mady.
I
also think you were there when Lon Porter was killed."

Mady was silent. After a moment she said, "I did see that, but I had nothing to do with it. When I got to the corral Lon Porter was tying up his horse and asking for Major Duvarney. He said he had a message from Tom. . . . Well, he talked too loud and Jackson Huddy heard him."

"Did Jackson Huddy kill him?"

"Yes, he did. He shot him through the back of the head, and I saw it. Oh, he didn't see me, and I was so scared I couldn't move if I'd wanted to! Jackson Huddy wasn't more than thirty feet from him, and Lon Porter never knew anybody else was around, and you can just bet that hostler isn't going to tell of it."

The wind was rising, and talk was becoming impossible. Sheets of rain battered the walls, seeping through around window casings and falling in huge drops from the ceilings.

Outside, almost nothing could be seen, and nobody wanted to risk standing near enough to a window even to try.

All of those on the ground floor had now climbed the stairs, for water was coming through under the doors, and one of the windows had been smashed by the wind. The wild banshee howling of the storm was maddening, and Jessica crouched on a bench, her legs drawn up under her, her head sunk behind the collar of her mackintosh, and her hands over her ears.

Once, Taylor caught her shoulder and pointed. A window had smashed and water was pouring in, blown by the howling wind. A momentary lull gave them a glimpse of the town . . . only there was no town, only a torn and ravaged sea, littered with wreckage and the hull of a bottom-up ship. Then the streaming rain and blown spray shut out the sight again.