Lando (1962) (19 page)

When we came together again in the center of the ring, I said, "Dun Caffrey, you and your folks robbed me, now I shall have a little of my own back."

He cursed me, and beat me to the punch with a left that jolted me. There was power in the man.

He was a fighter--I'll give him that.

The crowd was shouting wildly, their faces red with fury at me. They had not expected me to last so long, yet here I was, in danger of beating their man.

Sweat trickled into my eye and the salt stung, and, momentarily blinded, I failed to see the right with which he knocked me into the ropes. Now it was he who held me there, and as he battered at me with both fists, several men pounded the back of my head and my kidneys from beyond the ropes. Had they left it to one man he might have done me serious injury, but so eager were they, and most of them drinking, that they interfered with one another.

I got my head down against his chest and again the great strength of me helped, for I bulled him away from the ropes and into the center of the ring.

As we broke apart, each ready for a blow, sunlight flashed again in my eyes--sunlight reflected from a rifle barrel. In the window which until now had seemed empty, a man was aiming a rifle at me.

Wildly, I threw a punch at Caffrey, deliberately throwing myself forward and off balance so that I fell to the ground, but even as I fell I heard the whap of a rifle bullet as it whipped past me, and then I was on my hands and knees in the dirt and all about me there was silence.

Looking up, I saw the crowd drawing back.

Slumped against a ring post was a man with a round blue hole over one eye and the back of his head blown away.

In that instant, the Bishop, never one to miss a chance, sprang into the ring holding up a watch and claiming I had been off my feet for the count of ten--t I had lost, I had been knocked out.

"No!" Walton shouted, and drawing his own gun, he said, "the fight will continue. May the best man win."

The thugs and gamblers crowded back again toward the ring, shouting angrily that the fight was ended, but before they could reach the ropes, a horse vaulted over them and a man with a shotgun sat in the saddle.

"Stand back from the ropes!" His voice seemed not to be lifted above a conversational tone, but it had the ring of authority. "We'll have no interference here."

The thugs stared at the shotgun and the man who held it, and hesitated, as well they might.

Captain Mcationelly was not a man who spoke careless ^ws.

"I would advise you," he said, "to look about you before any violence is attempted. I am Mcationelly, and the men you see are my company of Rangers. We will see fair play here, and no violence outside the ring."

Their heads turned slowly, unwilling to believe what they saw, but thirty mounted and armed men are a convincing sight, and I confess, it was pleased I was to see them.

Mcationelly spoke to his horse, which easily lifted itself over the ropes again. "Sheriff Walton," he said quietly, "whenever you are ready."

"Time!" Walton said, and stepped back.

It was a bloody bit of business that remained, for I found no streak of cowardice in Dun Caffrey. Many things he might have been, but there was courage in the man. He had had a few minutes of respite, and now he came up to the mark, fresh as only a well-conditioned veteran can be.

For the veteran knows better how to rate himself, how to make the other man do the work and exert himself; and Caffrey was prepared to give me a whipping.

But the fighting had served a purpose with me also. No veteran of many fights, nonetheless I had sparred much with the Tinker and he had shown me many things, and practiced me in their doing, and the fight thus far had served to bring them to mind.

So if it was a strong and skilled man I still faced, it was a different one he faced now.

My muscles were loose now, my body warmed up, and I was sweating nicely under the hot sun.

The rhythm of punching had become more natural to me, and my mind was working in the old grooves.

As I came in more slowly, my mind was thinking back to what the Tinker had taught me. Caffrey shot a left for my face and, going under it, I hit him with a right to the heart, rolling inside of his right. I smashed my left to the ribs, then hooked a right to the head over his left.

The right landed solidly, and Caffrey blinked.

Moving in, I shook him with another right and a left. For a long minute we slugged. I could feel the buzz in my head from his punches, the taste of blood from my split lip. I saw his fist start and brushed it aside, driving my right to his chin inside his left. He backed up, trying to figure it out, but whatever else he was, Caffrey was no thinking fighter. Weaving, I hit him with both hands.

Outside, the air was filled with sound, men were shouting, cheering, crying out with anger. Not with blood lust, but with the excitement of any dramatic thing-- and what could be more dramatic than a fight like this one?

He hit me with a left, but the steam had gone from his punches. I tried a light left, watching for the move I wanted. And it came again, the same too-wide left he had tried only a moment before. Only that time my right caught him coming in. My fist struck solidly on the point of his chin, like the butt of an axe striking a log, and he fell face forward into the dirt.

For a moment there I stood looking down at him.

This was the man whose father and mother had cheated me and robbed me, and who had gone on to riches on the money that should have been spent for my education, the education I'd always wanted. Yet, suddenly, I no longer felt any hatred, all of it washed clean in the trial of battle.

Stooping down, I picked him up and helped him to his corner, and as I stopped him there, where of a sudden there was nobody to receive him, his eyes opened and he looked around.

Me, I let go of him and held out my mitt.

"It was a good fight, Dun. You're a tough man."

He blinked at me, then held out his own hand and we stood there looking surprised, like two fools.

And then I turned and walked away and leaned against the roan, which had been led up for me. The Tinker was handing me my sweater. "Get into this," he said; "you'll take cold."

Taking it from his hand, I said, "I got to see a man."

"The one who tried to kill you? He got away."

"No, he didn't."

We walked, the Tinker and me, along the dusty street. Doc Halloran walked behind us with Captain Mcationelly and Sheriff Walton.

Their rig was coming down the street toward us, and there for a moment I thought he was going to try to ride right over us, but he drew up and stopped when we stopped, barring his way.

Marsha was there in the seat beside her father, and nobody else with them. They were alone, those two, but somehow I had a feeling they'd always been alone.

Deckrow's face showed nothing, but it never had.

His eyes looked at me, cold and measuring, with no give to them.

"You shot and killed your brother-in-law, Jonas Locklear," I said, "and it was you tipped Herrara off that we were in Mexico, and what for."

"I do not have any idea what you are speaking about," he replied, looking at me sternly. "I am sure I would be the last man to shoot my own brother-in-law."

"I saw you shoot him," I persisted, "and Miguel did also. That's why he died. That's why you tried to kill me today."

"You ought to be ashamed," Marsha said, "telling lies about my father."

You know something? I was sorry for him. He was a little man and nothing much had ever happened to him, andwith all his planning and figuring he could never make any money; while Jonas, who did all the wrong things, was always making it. And now he had to pay for it all.

Trouble with me was, I was a mighty poor hater. There was satisfaction in winning, but winning would have been better if nobody had to lose.

That's the way I've always felt, I guess.

Seems to me I'm the sort of man who, if a difficulty arose, might knock a man down and kick all his teeth out, but then would help him pick them up if he was so inclined, and might even pay the bill for fixing them--alth that's going a bit far.

"That property," I said, "the ranch and the house and all, belongs to Gin and your wife, unless a will said otherwise ... not to you.

"You've no claim"--I spoke louder to prevent his attempted interruption--?and you tried to get one through murder. I will take oath, here and now and in court, that you betrayed and then shot down your brother-in-law. Furthermore," I said, and lied when I said it, "I can get Mexicans to testify they saw it.

"You sign over all claims to Gin and your wife--"

"My wife left me," he said.

"You sign over all claims or I'll have you on trial for murder."

He sat there holding the lines and hating me, but he hadn't much to say. The trouble was, he was a man with a canker for a soul, and he would be eaten away with his bitterness at failure, nor did I care much.

It is wrong to believe that such men suffer in the conscience for what they do ... it is only regret at being caught that troubles them. And they never admit it was any fault of their own ... it was always chance, bad luck. ... The criminal does not regret his crime, he only regrets failure.

The Bishop was standing by listening, but I paid him no mind. There had been a time when he seemed awesome and dangerous, but that was a while back.

"You remember what I said, Deckrow," I told him, "because wherever it is this is settled, San Antonio or Austin or wherever, I'll be there."

When I came up to the house pa was there, and Gin beside him. He looked fine ... they were a handsome couple if I ever saw one--but I was sure I'd never get around to calling her ma.

I stepped down from the saddle and slid my Winchester from the boot, and pa looked at me.

"Somebody gave you a beating," he said.

"He didn't give it to me," I replied, "I fought for it."

"You'll be coming with us now? I've held your share of the gold ... it's been waiting your return."

"Buy something with it in my name. I'll come for it one day ... or send a son of mine for it."

"You're going back for the rest?"

"When I left Tennessee for the western lands it was in my mind to become rich with the goods of this world, but by planning and trade, not by diving for dead men's gold. I shall go on to the West."

"You still want me along?" the Tinker asked.

"We left Tennessee together. I left with you and a mule. It's fitting we hold to our course.

However, we never did make a dicker for one of your knives. Now, I'd give--"

"Stand aside, Gin," Pa interrupted, "there's trouble."

When I turned around it put me alongside of pa, although there was a space between us. And the Tinker stood off to one side of me.

And there facing us were the three Kurbishaws, three tall men in dusty black, Elam, Gideon, and Eli.

Pa was first to speak. "You've come a long way from Charleston, Elam ... a long way."

"We came for you."

"You will find most of the gold still there ... if you can get it," pa said coolly. "We've had ours."

"It isn't for gold any more," Gideon said.

"There's more to it."

"I suppose there is," pa replied, his voice still cold. "You hounded your sister to death; you hunted my son."

"And now we got him," Elam replied, his--and you."

Pa didn't want it, I could see that. He was talking to get out of it, to get it stopped, but they would not listen. Strange men they were, but I'd see their like again, in lynch mobs and elsewhere. They were men who knew what I did not--they knew how to hate.

"You wouldn't try me alone," pa said. "Now there's two of us."

"Three," said the Tinker.

"We've come a far piece since then,"

Elam said, "and we've lived as we might, by the gun."

"Why, then," pa said, "if you'll have it no other way--"

Gideon was looking at me, so when pa drew I swung up the muzzle of my Winchester and levered a shot into him. I saw the bullet dust him at the belt line, and worked the lever again and fired. He threw his gun hand high in a queer, dance-like gesture, and then he tried to bring it down on me. I stepped forward and shot again and my bullet went high, striking at the collarbone and tearing away part of his throat as it glanced off.

The sound of shooting was loud in the street, and then there was stillness, the acrid smell of gunpowder mixed with dust, and we three stood there, facing them as they lay. The last one alive was Eli, tugging at one of Tinker's knives sunk deep into his chest.

"If that's the only way," I commented, "to get one of those knives, I'll wait."

Looking down at them, I thought it was a strange trail they had followed, those three, and how in the end it had only come to this, to death in a dusty street, nobody caring; and by and by nobody even remembering, except by gossip over a bar in a saloon.

Seemed it was just as well a man did not know where he was headed when he was to come only to this--a packet of empty flesh and clothes to end it all.