The Gun Fight Read online

“This is something which must be spoken of,” Matthew Coles went on firmly. “And it will be spoken of. There will be no shrinking from the truth in my house. I hope I shall never see the day when men no longer defend the honor of their women. How would you like it, ma’m, if I refused to defend your honor against insults?”

  Mrs. Coles said nothing. She knew that Matthew wanted no reply but preferred the advantage of asking challenging questions which were not answered. She knew it gave him the pleasure of unopposed refuting.

  “No, you have no answer,” said Matthew Coles with a tense nodding of his head. “You know as well as I do that when men cease to defend their women and their homes, our society will cease to exist.”

  Robby drank a little water and felt it trickle coldly into his near-empty stomach. He hoped his father would go on ranting at his mother, beleaguering Jimmy—anything except stay on the subject of Louisa and John Benton. He’d been on it all afternoon at the shop where he’d insisted that Robby perform his usual tasks, ill or not.

  “That a son of mine,” said Matthew Coles grimly, “should be afraid to stand up for the honor of his intended bride.” He shook his head. “Especially since the poor girl has no family man to speak for her.” He shook his head again. “In my day . . .,” he mused solemnly, probing at his beef with fork stabs.

  “May I be excused?” Robby asked.

  “You may not, sir,” said his father. “The meal is not over.”

  “Does your stomach still hurt, dear?” Mrs. Coles asked Robby gently.

  An attempted smile twitched at the corners of Robby’s lips. “I feel better, mother,” he said.

  “Is there anything I can get for—”

  “Don’t coddle the boy!” her husband broke in furiously. “Are we raising daughters or sons? It’s no wonder he’s too cowardly to face John Benton, the way you’ve coddled and protected him!”

  “Matthew, he did tell John Benton to leave Louisa alone,” she said, the faint spark of re sis tance born of her defending love for Robby.

  “Is that what you call defending honor!” shouted Matthew Coles, his face suddenly livid with fury at being contradicted. “Getting hit in the stomach and whining like a dog all day!”

  Jane Coles looked disturbedly toward Jimmy who was staring at his father, his slender body unconsciously cringed away from Matthew Coles’ imperious presence.

  “Matthew, the—”

  “What is this—a house of women!” her husband raged on. “Why don’t you teach them how to cook and sew!”

  “Matthew, the boy,” his wife pleaded, a break in her tired voice.

  “Don’t tell me about the boy! It’s time he learned the place of a man in his society!” His head snapped over and he looked accusingly at Jimmy. “Don’t think you’re going to live your life without fighting,” he said to the white-faced boy. “Don’t think you’re going to get away without defending the honor of your women.”

  He leaned forward suddenly, neck cords bulging, dark eyes digging into the young boy.

  “Tell me, sir,” he said with thinly disguised calm, “what would you do if a man insulted your mother?”

  “Matthew,” his wife begged in anguish, “please . . .”

  “Would you just sit by and let the insult pass? Is that what you’d do?” He finished in a sudden burst that made Jimmy’s cheek twitch.

  “N-no, sir,” the boy mumbled.

  “Speak up, sir, speak up! You’re a man, not a woman, and a man is supposed to be heard!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Is that what you’d do; let the insult pass?”

  “No, no,” Jimmy said hurriedly.

  “No, what?”

  “No, I wouldn’t let the—”

  “No, sir.”

  Jimmy bit at his lower lip, a rasping sob shaking in his throat.

  “Woman!” cried Matthew Coles. “A house of women!”

  “Matthew . . .” His wife’s voice was weak and shaking.

  Matthew Coles drew in a deep, wavering breath and sawed savagely at his meat. He crammed it into his mouth and started chewing while his family sat tensely in their places, unable to eat.

  “Stop that sniveling,” Matthew Coles said in a low, menacing voice. Jimmy caught his breath and hastily brushed aside the tears that welled in his eyes, dripping down across his freckled cheeks.

  “Eat your food,” said Matthew Coles. “I don’t buy food to be wasted.”

  Jimmy picked up his fork with shaking fingers and tried to retrieve a piece of potato which kept rolling off the tines. He bit his lip to stop the sobbing and stuck the fork into a piece of meat.

  “What would you do?” his father asked.

  Jimmy looked over, his face twisted again with frightened apprehension. Robby looked up from his plate, his jaw whitening in repressed anger.

  “Well, answer me,” Matthew Coles said in a level voice, his fury mollified by the silence of his family. “Would you let some man insult your mother?”

  Jane Coles turned her head away abruptly so her sons would not see the mask of sickened anguish it had become.

  “N-no, sir,” Jimmy said, his stomach turning, tightening.

  “What would you do?” Matthew Coles didn’t look at his son. He ate his beef and potatoes and drank his coffee, all the time staring into space as if the discussion were of no importance to him. But they could all sense the threat of violence beneath the level of his spoken words.

  “I . . . I don’t know.”

  “Don’t know, sir?” asked his father, voice rising a little.

  “I’d, I’d, I’d—”

  “Stop-that-stuttering.”

  “I’d fight him,” Jimmy blurted out, trying desperately to find the answer that would placate his father.

  “Fight him, sir, with your fists?” Matthew Coles stopped chewing a moment and looked pointedly toward his nerve-taut son.

  “I, I—”

  “With your fists?” said his father, loudly.

  “I’d get a gun and—”

  The hissing catch of breath in his mother’s throat made Jimmy stop suddenly and glance toward her with frightened eyes.

  Matthew Coles looked intently at Robby, still addressing his younger son.

  “You’d get a gun?” he questioned. “Is that what you said, sir?”

  “Matthew, what are you trying to—”

  “You’d get a gun, you say?” Matthew Coles’ rising voice cut off the tortured question of his wife. “A gun?”

  “Oh, leave him alone!” Robby burst out with sudden nerve-snapped vehemence. “It’s me you’re after, talk to me!”

  Matthew Coles’ nostrils flared out and it appeared, for a moment, that he would explode in Robby’s face.

  Then a twitching shudder ran down his straight back and he looked down to his food, face graven into a hard, expressionless mold.

  “I don’t talk to cowards,” said Matthew Coles.

  Chapter Eight

  The Reverend Omar Bond was working on the notes for his Sunday sermon when he heard the front doorbell tinkling. He looked up from his desk, a touch of sorrowing martyrdom in his expression. He had hoped no one would call tonight; there was so much necessary work to be done on the sermon.

  “Oh my,” he muttered to himself as he sat listening to his wife, Clara, come bustling from the kitchen. He heard her nimble footsteps moving down the hall, then the sound of the front door being opened.

  “Why, good evening, Miss Winston,” he heard Clara say and his face drew into melancholy lines. Of all his parishioners, Miss Winston was the one who most tried his Christian fortitude. There were times when he would definitely have enjoyed telling her to—

  “Ah, Miss Winston,” he said, smiling beneficently as he rose from his chair. “How good of you to drop by.” He ignored the tight sinking in his stomach as being of uncharitable genre. Extending his hand, he approached the grim-faced woman and felt his fingers in her cool, almost manlike grip.

  “Reverend,” she said, d
ipping her head but once.

  “Do sit down, Miss Winston,” the Reverend Bond invited, the smile still frozen on his face.

  “May I take your shawl?” Clara Bond asked politely and Agatha Winston shook her head.

  “I’ll only be a moment,” she said.

  The Reverend Omar Bond could not check the heartfelt hallelujah in his mind although he masked it well behind his beaming countenance.

  He settled down on the chair across from where Miss Winston sat poised on the couch edge as though ready to spring up at a moment’s provocation. Clara Bond left the room quietly.

  “Is this a social visit?” the Reverend Bond inquired pleasantly, knowing it wasn’t.

  “No, it is not, Reverend,” said Agatha Winston firmly. “It concerns one of your parishioners.”

  Oh, my God, she’s at it again, the Reverend Bond thought with a twinge. Agatha Winston was forever coming to him with stories about his parishioners, nine tenths of which were usually either distorted or completely untrue.

  “Oh?” he asked blandly. “Who is that, Miss Winston?”

  “John Benton.” Agatha Winston rid herself of the given and family names as though they were spiders in her mouth.

  “But, I . . .” the Reverend Bond stopped talking, his face mildly shocked. “John Benton?” he said. “Surely not.”

  “He has asked my niece, Louisa Harper, to . . .” Miss Winston hesitated, searching for the proper phrase, “. . . to meet him.”

  Omar Bond raised graying eyebrows, his hands clasped tightly in his lap.

  “How do you know this thing?” he asked, a little less amiably now.

  “I know it because my niece told me so,” she answered firmly.

  The Reverend Bond sat silently a moment, his eyes looking at Miss Winston with emotionless detachment.

  “And it’s worse than just that,” Miss Winston went on, quickly. “It would be one thing if the incident were known only to those immediately concerned. But almost the entire town knows of it!”

  “I’ve heard nothing of it,” said the Reverend, blandly.

  “Well . . .” Agatha Winston was not refuted. “Begging your pardon, Reverend, but . . . well, I don’t think anyone would pass along gossip to you.”

  Someone would, thought Omar Bond, looking at Miss Winston with an imperceptible sigh.

  “But this makes no earthly sense,” he said then. “John Benton is a fine man, a regular churchgoer and, moreover, an extremely respected man in Kellville.”

  “Be that as it may.” Miss Winston’s mouth was a lipless gash as she spoke. “My niece’s honor has been insulted by him.”

  The Reverend Bond rubbed worried fingers across his smooth chin and, behind his spectacles, his blue eyes were harried.

  “It’s . . . such a difficult thing to believe,” he said quietly, groping for some argument. Agatha Winston always made him feel so defenseless.

  “The truth is the truth,” stated Miss Winston slowly and clearly. “Believe me, Reverend, when I tell you that if I were a man, I wouldn’t be here talking about this shocking thing. I’d get myself a horse whip and—”

  She broke off as the Reverend raised a pacifying hand.

  “My dear Miss Winston,” he said, concernedly, “reason, not violence; is that not what our Lord has taught us?”

  The colorless skin rippled slightly over Agatha Winston’s taut cheeks. There were definitely times when Christianity did more to thwart than aid, she felt. This was one of the times when she would have preferred a more hardened ethic; this loving humility had its limitations.

  But she nodded once, tight-lipped, not wishing to alienate the head of local church activities.

  “I came here because I am a woman,” she said. “Because I am helpless to do anything by myself.”

  Christianity does not become you—the Reverend Bond was unable to prevent the thought from shaking loose its repressive bonds. Once again, he hid the thought behind the mild and wrinkled facade he almost always presented to the world.

  “Isn’t it possible this gossip is exaggerated?” he suggested then. “You know how some people talk. A chance meeting between Benton and your niece might be construed in an entirely false manner.”

  “I would agree with you,” said Agatha Winston, lying, “if it were not for the fact that Louisa, herself, verified the story.”

  “Oh,” he said, cornered again, “Louisa . . . herself.”

  “Believe me, Reverend, when I say I no more wanted to believe this ugly thing when I first heard of it than you want to believe it now. I’m not the sort of woman who accepts every scrap of gossip as the truth, you know that.”

  I do not know that, Omar Bond reflected silently, his sad eyes on the face of Agatha Winston.

  “Before I accepted one word of this terrible story, I went directly to my niece and questioned her most carefully.”

  She stiffened her back, fingers tightening in the lap of her black skirt. “The story is true,” she declared.

  The Reverend Bond licked his upper lip slowly. He started to say something, then exhaled slowly instead while Miss Winston sat waiting for him to call down the wrath of church and Lord upon the head of John Benton.

  “What exactly,” asked the Reverend Bond, “did Louisa say?”

  The thin eyebrows of Agatha Winston pressed down over unpleasantly curious eyes.

  “Say?” she asked, not certain of what the Reverend was getting at.

  “Yes. Surely, you verified her story?”

  “I told you,” she said tensely, “I asked her if the incident were true and she said it was.”

  “Was she upset?”

  Agatha Winston looked more unpleasantly confused. “Of course, she was upset,” she said. “Her honor was insulted; naturally, she was upset. Especially when I told her how her intended husband, Robby Coles, fought John Benton in defense of her.”

  The Reverend Bond strained forward, his face suddenly concerned. “Fought?” he asked. “Not . . . not with . . . guns?” His voice tapered off in a shocked whisper.

  “No, not with guns,” Miss Winston said. “Although—”

  The look on the Reverend Bond’s face kept her from continuing but she knew that he was fully conscious of what she had been about to say.

  “What I am getting at,” Omar Bond continued, preferring to overlook her probable remark, “is that . . . well, Louisa is very young, very impressionable.”

  “I don’t see how—”

  “Let me explain, Miss Winston. Please.”

  Agatha Winston leaned back, eyes distrusting on the Reverend’s face.

  “John Benton is what you might call . . . oh, an idol in this town, is he not?” asked Bond.

  “Men shall not bow down before idols,” declared Miss Winston.

  The Reverend Bond controlled himself.

  “I mean to say, he is extremely admired. I do not, for a moment, say that I condone admiration for a man which is based primarily on an awe of his skill with instruments of death. However . . . this does not alter the fact that, among the younger people particularly, John Benton has achieved almost a . . . a legendary status.”

  She did not nod or speak or, in any way, indicate agreement.

  “I have seen myself,” the Reverend Bond went on, “in the church—young boys and girls staring at him with . . . shall we say, unduly fascinated eyes?”

  “I do not—”

  “Please, Miss Winston, I shall be finished in a moment. To continue: From the vantage point of my pulpit, I have seen your own niece looking so at John Benton.”

  Miss Winston closed her eyes as if to shut away the thought. “I can hardly believe this,” she said, stiffly.

  “I say it in no condemning way,” the Reverend Bond hastened to explain. “It is a thoroughly natural reaction in the young. I would not even have mentioned it were it not for what you have just told me.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Agatha Winston. “Are you telling me that Louisa lied? That her story is
a deliberate falsehood?”

  “No, no,” the Reverend said gently, a smile softening his features, “not a lie. Call it rather a . . . a daydream spoken aloud.”

  Miss Winston rose irately.

  “Reverend, I’m shocked that you should stand up for John Benton, a man who lives by violence. And I’m hurt—deeply hurt that you should accuse my niece of deliberately lying.”

  The Reverend Bond rose quickly and moved toward her.

  “My dear Miss Winston,” he said, “I assure you . . .”

  Agatha Winston brushed away a tear which had, somehow, managed to force its way out of her eye duct. A sob rasped dryly in her lean throat.

  “I came to you because there is nothing my sister and her daughter can do to defend their good name. But instead of—”

  Another sob, dry and harsh.

  Against his better judgment, the Reverend Omar Bond found himself standing before Agatha Winston, explaining, apologizing.

  “I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” he finally said, growing desperate with her. “I’ll ride out personally to John Benton’s ranch and speak to him.”

  “He’ll deny it,” Agatha Winston said, agitatedly. “Do you think he’ll—”

  “Miss Winston, if the incident occurred as you said, John Benton will admit it,” the Reverend Bond said firmly. “That’s all I can say for now. I sympathize with your situation, I most certainly will speak out Sunday against the insidious cruelty of this gossiping.” He gestured weakly. “And . . . and I’ll go out to see John Benton in the morning.”

  He was leading her to the door finally.

  “Please don’t upset yourself, Miss Winston,” he told her, “I am confident we can work it out to the satisfaction of all.”

  “Oh, if only there were a man in our family to speak for us,” Agatha Winston said, vengefully.

  “I will speak for you,” said Bond. “Remember, my child, we are all one family under God.”

  Frankly, Miss Winston did not accept that tenet of Christianity. Her mind pushed the concept aside angrily as she strode off into the night, unsatisfied.

  The Reverend Omar Bond shut the door and turned back as Clara came out of the kitchen, drying her hands.

  “What’s wrong, dear?” she asked, concernedly.