Ride the Man Down (11 page)

She said, “John's dead,” and Will nodded.

Sam tramped heavily down the corridor and came into the room and said, “What? What's that, Will?”

“Cavanaugh shot him.”

Sam looked skeptical. “How do you know?”

Briefly Will told of what had passed at Ten Mile and of what the girl had told him.

Celia only half listened to him. She was gauging the depth of Will's temper now, listening to his quiet, unemotional, words, and she detected in them a reluctance to talk about this. In herself she strangely felt nothing, and she knew it was because she had expected it, was certain it would happen. In her own mind she had been grieving for John Evarts these past three days, and she knew that Will had too. It was Sam who was shocked, whose slow mind turned over these facts uncomprehendingly, really only half believing them.

As Will concluded he was looking at her, talking to her, and she had a fleeting glimpse of his anger. He would be as implacable as an Indian now, and Celia, seeing this, was afraid.

Will said to her, “Hatchet's yours now, Celia,” and walked over to the desk.

She didn't say anything, and Will turned and looked searchingly at her. Then his glance dropped and he said quietly, “I'm quitting.” His glance raised quickly again, holding hers, searching for understanding.

I've got to be careful
, Celia thought, and she said nothing. She walked over to the worn sofa and sat on it, hearing Sam say, “There's nothing more you can do, Will,” in an unctuous tone of voice that she hated.

Will didn't look at Sam, didn't answer him. He came out into the middle of the room, facing her, his big shoulders a little stooped, and he was waiting for her answer.

Celia understood instinctively that a choice was here and that it would be irrevocable. Will was going to kill a man, and he did not want her to share the blame. If she was silent Will would ride off Hatchet and never blame her for her decision, and she knew deep within her that she would not let him go. He was a part of her and a part of her life. If she had liked that in him which she had seen each day these past six years then she must like this, because this was Will Ballard too. Nothing mattered now, except that she must take the ugly with the fine. And even now, Will was generous; he was trying to free her of any responsibility.

Only a corner of her mind acknowledged Sam Danfelser as she said, “I'll stand by you, Will.”

Will said, “Celia, I—”

“I know,” Celia said quickly. “If it's what you have to do, Will, then do it. I'll stand by you.”

Sam looked in puzzlement from one to the other, not understanding this. Neither of them was including him, and he said in flat protest, “Celia, what are you talking about?”

Will looked at him and said, “Cavanaugh.”

Sam didn't even understand then for a long moment, but when he did the alarm in his eyes was immediate.

“Now wait, Will,” he began.

Will said flatly, harshly, “Cavanaugh killed John,” and he turned and left the room.

Celia didn't watch him; she tucked one foot under her and was aware that Sam's outraged glance was on her. He came over to her and said, as if he were talking to a child, “But he's going to kill Cavanaugh.”

“I know.” Celia's slim face held a sadness he did not see.

“But, Celia!” Sam said harshly. “That's murder!”

Celia shook her head. “No, Sam. That's less than murder for murder, and you know it.”

She rose and brushed past him, and Sam put out his hand and took her elbow. She didn't fight against him; she let him turn her around to face him, and she was not even angry. She was thinking bitterly,
Poor Will
.

Sam said accusingly, “You let him go.”

“Dad trusted Will. I do too.”

Sam shook her roughly in his impatience. “But don't you understand? He's going out to murder a man, and you let him go!”

“Let me go, Sam,” Celia said quietly.

Sam looked down at his hand which was grasping her arm tightly, and then he let go of her. He shook his head from side to side almost like a man in pain. “But, Celia, we have laws; we have a sheriff; we have a jail; we have a judge; we can get a jury. Try the man. Don't kill him!”

Celia responded, “This is Will's affair.”

“But you wouldn't let him quit Hatchet! You asked him to stay on, knowing where he was going. You're to blame as much as he is!”

“And I'm willing to take it.”

Sam was baffled. There was a terrible urgency in his face, in his eyes, and Celia felt a momentary pity for him. He was like a man who suddenly discovers among friends that his language is unaccountably not understood by them.

She said quietly, “Sam, there's so much you don't understand. There's lots I don't, too, but I understand the way Will feels now. Don't you see? Hatchet's on trial. Will we revenge our own or will we take this to a lawyer and watch him argue in a courtroom in front of all those people who hate us and hold us in contempt?” She shook her head, her eyes pleading. “Don't you see that Will can't do it, Sam? Right or wrong, he's got to do it this way.”

Sam spoke with a thick fury in his voice. “You talk like a drunken squaw!”

“I guess I do,” Celia said quietly, miserably—and stubbornly.

They stood there facing each other, neither speaking, Sam solid and implacable and filled with a righteous fury. Celia seemed even smaller than usual now in her meekness. But she did not go to him; she faced him, reading angry, unspoken thoughts in his ruddy face.

Sam groaned softly. “Why, Celia?” he pleaded softly. “Why?” His eyes were questioning, too, and Celia would rather have faced his anger.

“It's just the way I am, Sam,” she answered quietly.

Sam hesitated a moment, and a slow, shrinking distaste came into his face as he said, “Are you in love with Will?”

“I'm going to marry you, Sam,” Celia said quietly.

“He's done something to you,” Sam said slowly, wrathfully. “He's changed you into something—something I can't put a name to—until now you can tell him to go out and kill a man, and it doesn't do, anything to you.”

Celia was silent, accepting this. Everything Sam said was true, and yet she felt no guilt and she wondered why.

Sam turned away from her as if to go out, and then he paused and came back. “Celia,” he said grimly, “you're going to get rid of Will.”

There was a fleeting protest in Celia's gray eyes, and she did not answer.

Sam started for the door again, and Celia said, “Where are you going, Sam?”

“To tell him he's through with Hatchet.”

“But he isn't,” Celia said quietly. “You can tell him, but he won't believe you.”

There was a pride in her now as she went on back into the corridor, leaving Sam alone.

He stood there scowling at the door and then went after her. Turning into the living room, he walked across to the sofa where his hat lay. He picked it up and stepped out into the late-afternoon sun and headed for the corral where he had turned his horse in.

Jim Young, watching him from the bunkhouse steps, drifted down to the corral after him. Ike, since the brush with Garretson yesterday, had left him at the ranch to keep watch over the captive herd in the horse pasture.

He held open the gate for Sam, who did not even bother to nod his thanks. Jim watched him head out north, taking the same trail Will had taken before him.

Paused at the gate, Jim Young considered. He could read murder in a man's eyes, and he had read it in this heavy man's face, just as he had read it in Will's face a half-hour ago, both when he went into the house and came out. Will hadn't even spoken to him, but Jim knew.

There was a moment of indecision as he watched Sam's stocky horse disappear beyond the house. Then, with only a faint stirring of conscience, Jim reached for his rope on the gatepost and stepped inside the corral to catch his horse.

There was not a light in Cavanaugh's place. Will made sure of that before he drifted down the timbered slope in the darkness sometime after midnight and came into the hard-packed yard in front of the mean shack that lay deep and remote in the Ridge country.

At the well he paused to listen and, hearing nothing, he went on up to the porch and halted in front of the door. He drew his gun then and kicked the door open and stepped aside and said, “Come out, Cavanaugh!”

There was no answer. He waited, hearing nothing but his own soft breathing, and presently he slipped inside, clinging to the wall. Still he heard nothing. Fumbling in his shirt pocket, he brought out a match and wiped it alight on one of the wall logs. The shabby interior of Ray Cavanaugh's one-room house came into sudden focus now. The bunk in the back corner was empty. Dirty dishes littered the table, and there was a pot on the stove next the end wall.

The match died, and Will moved over to the stove and put his hand on it and found it cold.

He stood there in the dark a moment, debating, and then, his judgment given, he went over to the bunk and lay down on it. He put his gun beside him, pillowed his head on his arms, and watched the door. He was going to wait, certain that Cavanaugh would return sometime.

Lying there in the dark, he put his mind to what would happen afterward, and moments later discovered that he was thinking not of that but of Celia. He saw her as he had left her, sitting on the sofa, a foot tucked under the worn dress that Sam Danfelser had doubtless surprised her in. She had not failed him; she was Phil Evarts' girl. Somberly Will pondered what that meant for her, and he knew her decision had been bitter. Sam Danfelser, like a hulking, obstinate bear, was to be faced afterward, and that would not be easy for her. Will had tried to help her in a thousand things, large and small, but he could not help her with Sam. She had never asked for any help, never spoken a disloyal word of Sam, but, nonetheless, Will sensed things were not right between them. He thought bleakly of Sam Danfelser then and knew that when Celia and Sam married it would be time for him to leave Hatchet. That would please Lottie.

He shifted his weight on the bunk and had a sudden hunger for a cigarette. Slowly, though, his thinking reverted to Lottie again, and he was faintly troubled. She had never liked his remaining at Hatchet, and now what would she think in the face of this turn of events? What would she think of him here, now, tonight, waiting patiently to kill a man?

He put this instantly from his mind and sat up. He fumbled in the dark for his tobacco and fashioned a cigarette and put it in his mouth. Match in hand, he was weighing the risk of having the smell of tobacco linger in this room to give his presence away against the hunger pulling at his nerves. And then he heard it.

A horse was being ridden into the yard.

He balled up the cigarette and discarded it, coming silently to his feet. Moving away from the bunk, he held his gun at his side and waited, listening, his nerves pulling taut.

He heard the rider dismount, heard his step on earth and then on the porch, and now a figure darkened the opening of the doorway.

Gun at side, he waited, and then came the simultaneous scratch of a match and its light.

Sam Danfelser stood just inside the door, match held over his head, peering through squinted lids at Will.

Will let his breath go and didn't move.

Sam said contemptuously, “Is that the way it's done? Catch him in the dark?”

He moved heavily over to the table and lifted the chimney from the lamp and lighted the wick, and then his gaze lifted to Will, who hadn't moved.

Will's eyes glittered darkly as he watched Sam, and he was impatient and curious and disgusted.

Sam said, “We've got to talk, Will.”

“Later,” Will murmured.

“No. Now.”

Will said with rising intolerance, “I've got something to do, Sam. You're in the way. Get out.”

“I'll get out when I've finished. It's time we talked.”

Behind his obstinacy Will detected a note of urgency in Sam's voice, in his face, and he felt a small start of curiosity. “What do you want, Sam?”

“You're through at Hatchet.” Sam's voice was flat, final. He stood by the table, solid and thick-bodied, and in his ruddy face was the expression of a man who had been pushed beyond the limit of patience. He could not have hidden the hatred for Will in his eyes if he had cared to, and he did not. Will saw this, and a startled caution was in him. For an instant he tried to understand Sam's anger and he could not, and the effort vanished in the dark narrow framing of a question.

“Did Celia send you?”

“I came for myself. I say you're through with Hatchet. You're not going back.”

With calculated insult Will said, “You're ahead of yourself, Sam. Hatchet isn't yours to boss yet.”

Sam came around the table and halted, and his face was ugly. “She's done with you, I say. You've turned her into a silly fool with your damned reckless talk. You've killed her uncle and you've turned her against me. Get out—while you're still alive.”

Will felt his belly harden and the muscles in his chest grow taut. Sam stood with feet apart, one hand grasping the edge of the table, and his lips were white with anger.

Will said soberly, “You can bully women, Sam. Keep to them and don't bother with me.”

Sam lunged for him then. Will dropped his gun and came at him at the same instant, so that their movements seemed almost prearranged. They met with an impact that drove their breaths from them, and Sam wrapped his thick arms around Will as if to crush him. Wordlessly, their feet scuffling on the dirt floor for bracing, they wrestled for long seconds, Sam trying to crush Will, and Will trying to break the hold. And then Sam's grip broke and Will came away, his fist lashing out to clout Sam on the ear.

Again Sam rushed, but this time Will met him with a driving blow in the mouth. Sam shook his head and started to slug, and they stood toe to toe, trading lopping, hurting blows, both men silent except for grunts of savage exertion. Will felt a murderous exaltation, a kind of maniac lust to crush and smash this man. All the contempt for Sam, the thousand dislikes that he had kept to himself because of Celia now burst in his mind like water pouring over a dam.