A Time For Hanging (18 page)

"Talkin' that way won't do no good," Len said.
 
"Let's get on back before they leave without us."

He walked by Harl and over to the door.
 
"Come on.
 
I ain't gonna wait for you all day."

Standing there in the doorway, the light behind him, he looked to Harl like a skeleton with a rifle dangling from its

Benteen drew Charley to a table in a corner of the saloon.
 
He had a few things he wanted to say before they left.
 
It wouldn't hurt to let everyone have a few more drinks; liquor was just the thing to get them in the mood for what they were about to do.
 
Benteen himself was not a drinking man, but he understood the appeal it had for others.

"I want to talk to you a minute," he told Charley when they were seated.
 
"What's this about the sheriff calming Lucille down?"

"She was a little upset with me," Charley explained.
 
"She was doin' a little shootin'."

Benteen nodded.
 
His daughter was a strong-willed, hot-tempered woman, and she knew how to handle a gun.
 
"She have a reason to be doing that?"

"Not a bit of one," Charley said, looking Benteen straight in the eye.
 
"I didn't have anything to do with that girl gettin' herself killed."

"I want to believe that," Benteen said, his glance not wavering from Charley's.
 
"It had better be the truth."

"It is," Charley said, hoping the old man couldn't read his mind and wishing he'd never gone out of the bunk house last night.
 
There were men right there in the room who knew he hadn't gotten there till late, but they hadn't said anything yet.
 
Maybe they wouldn't, ever.
 
You never could tell when they might, though.

"You're sweating a lot, Charley," Benteen said.
 
"You sure you're telling me everything."

"It's a hot day," Charley said.
 
He could feel the sweat running down the back of his neck.
 
"I hadn't been seein' Liz for more'n a month, and that's God's truth."

"Very well," Benteen said.
 
"And God help you if it isn't.
 
Let's see if we can get this little party started."

He moved his chair back from the table and got up.
 
Charley watched his straight back as he walked to the men at the bar.
 
Then he glanced around at one of the other tables and saw the preacher looking at him.
 
The preacher's eyes were like holes in a skull.
 
The sweat on Charley's body felt suddenly chilled.

#

Lucille Benteen saw the men leave the saloon, her father and Charley among them.
 
She heard them, too, yelling and calling out to each other as they stumbled around.
 
They mounted up and swirled away in a cloud of dust, but for some reason they were not headed for the ranch.
 
She wondered where they could be going.
 
It wasn't like her father to go off like that, without coming back by to tell her what he had said to Charley or what Charley had said to him.
 
And the preacher was with them.
 
What on earth would they be doing with the preacher?
 
Her father hadn't been to church in years.

As the last of the riders passed down the street, another man came out of the saloon door and stood watching them.
 
He looked familiar to Lucille, and she realized that he was Willie Turner.
 
She remembered how he had lost his family and taken to drinking.
 
He looked sober enough now, however.
 
She decided to satisfy her curiosity by asking him what was going on.

She went downstairs and through the lobby.
 
The desk clerk looked up as she passed, but he didn't say anything.
 
She was a very attractive woman, he thought, and he admired the way her riding britches fit, but she sure was a hellcat.
 
He would've hated to be that Charley Davis and have her mad at him.

When Lucille got outside, Willie Turner was still standing on the boardwalk under the saloon awning, though the riders were by now nearly out of sight.
 
Lucille crossed over to him, looking up and down the street as she did so.
 
There were very few people out in the heat of the day.
 
A woman with a parasol was going in the dry goods store, and one wagon moved slowly past.
 
Two lank dogs were barking as they chased a cat down the street and into an alley, but they didn't look or sound particularly enthusiastic about it.

Lucille stepped up on the boardwalk beside Willie.
 
"Mr. Turner?" she said.

Willie turned to look at her.
 
He hadn't shaved in a good while, and he was unpleasantly fragrant, but Lucille was used to cowhands who didn't bathe much more often than Willie.
 
She was not offended.

"Who're you?" Willie said.

"I'm Lucille Benteen, Roger Benteen's daughter."

"Oh," Willie said vaguely.
 
"I guess I should've known that.
 
Seems like I can't remember too good anymore, though."

"I was wondering," Lucille said.
 
"Where is everyone going?"

"The Morales place," Willie said.

"What are they going out there for?"

"You ain't heard?"

"Heard what?"

"About Liz Randall."

"No.
 
What about her?"

Willie was reluctant to tell the story, but at the same time he found himself wanting to tell, and it all came spilling out, even the part about how he knew that what they were doing was wrong.

Lucille was horrified by the story, especially by what had happened to Liz.
 
She had nothing against the girl; she blamed Charley entirely for whatever had been going on between them, and it was terrible to think that a killer could be lurking around Dry Springs.
 
But what Willie seemed to be saying now was even more horrifying.

"What do you mean they're doing the wrong thing?
 
What are they going to do?"

"I think they want to hang that boy," Willie said.
 
"And he didn't have anything to do with killin' Liz Randall."

"How do you know that?" Lucille said.

Willie's face twisted as if he were in pain.
 
"I don't know how I know it.
 
I just do.
 
It seems like I was there, like there's somethin' I oughta know, but that I just can't think of somehow."

"Did . . . did you kill her?" Lucille asked.

"That's the worst part," Willie said.
 
"I don't think I did, but I can't swear I didn't."

"And you let them go after that boy?
 
What kind of a man are you?"

"The kind that thinks too much of his own worthless hide," Willie said.
 
"I know that prob'ly sounds to you.
 
It sounds the same way to me.
 
I know how worthless I am, and I've thought more than once that I oughta kill myself to put myself out of my misery; but I've never had the guts to do it.
 
Maybe I shoulda told 'em that I was the one.
 
That way they'd've had somebody to kill and I --"

"Don't be stupid," Lucille said.
 
Her sense of justice was aroused.
 
"Try to think about last night.
 
Did you see that Randall girl?
 
Did you see what happened to her?"

Willie put both hands to his head and wagged it from side to side.
 
"I don't know," he said.
 
"I don't know.
 
I don't know."

"Stop it!" Lucille said.
 
She did not have much patience with self-pitying drunks.
 
"You must know something, or you wouldn't be acting this way.
 
Now try to think."

Willie shut up and tried to think.
 
He could remember seeing Liz's body, and he could remember seeing the Morales boy, but not both at the same time.
 
He could remember --

"That's it!" he said.
 
"I was stumblin' around, and that boy come up on the body.
 
He got scared and started in to runnin', and I went after him, to tell him it was all right, but he just started to run faster.
 
Then I got scared.
 
I thought, what if somebody came along and found me there?
 
So I left.
 
I thought the boy'd gone on home until this mornin', when I heard 'em talkin' in the saloon."

Lucille tried to make sense of what he had told her.
 
"So you were there before the boy was?"

"Yeah, that's right," Willie said.
 
More of it was coming back to him now.
 
"He was comin' along from town, and I hid in the brush so he wouldn't see me.
 
I thought he'd go right on by, but he didn't."

Lucille was exasperated with him.
 
"And knowing all that, you let those men to after him?"

Willie could not meet her eyes.
 
"I didn't know all that.
 
I didn't remember it till just now."

"You knew the boy was innocent all along," she accused him.

"I thought he was, but I couldn't say so.
 
Nobody'd listen to an old drunk."

"What is my father doing mixed up in this?" Lucille said.

"I don't know," Willie said.
 
"That Davis fella came in, tellin' about the boy's mama lettin' him out, and then your daddy came.
 
I guess they just thought goin' after him was the right thing to do."

There was more to it than that, Lucille thought, though she was not sure exactly what.

"We've got to stop them," she said.

"Stop 'em?
 
How're we gonna do that?"

"We're going after them."

"But I don't have any horse."
 
Willie had sold his horse along with everything else.
 
He hadn't had occasion to ride for years.

"Let me worry about that.
 
Come on."
 
Lucille grabbed his arm.
 
"We'll go down to the livery.
 
My horse is there, and I'll get you one."

Willie tried to pull his arm away.
 
"I don't think that's a good idea.
 
They won't listen to me.
 
You don't know how they are.
 
They're all worked up to get somebody, and they don't want any interference."

Lucille wasn't going to let that stop her.
 
"I don't care what they want.
 
We're going to stop them."

Willie thought she was wrong about that, but he couldn't get his arm out of her grip.
 
She was damn strong for a girl, he thought.
 
She half dragged him all the way to the livery stable.

"It won't do any good," he protested along the way.
 
"Besides, they might decide to kill me if they don't get their chance at the boy."

"Why would they do that?" Lucille asked.

"Because I was there.
 
They might think I --"

Lucille stopped in her tracks.
 
"You said you didn't kill her.
 
Now make up your mind.
 
Did you or didn't you."