Wanderlust Creek and Other Stories (3 page)

“Doggone it, you know what I mean. And it
ain’t just me, Vern. You’re doing yourself an awful lot of harm, if
you don’t know that.”

“I know it.”

There was another short silence. “Benson’s
been having a grand old time telling it up and down town that
you’re afraid of him,” said Lars. “More’n likely he knows if he
ever stopped talking they’d hear his teeth chattering.”

“Don’t bother flattering me, Lars. You know
me better than that.”

Lars leaned closer. “Why’d you do it, Vern?
You could’ve bluffed him out the door with his tail between his
legs. Was you worried you’d have to kill him?”

Vern turned around, showing some impatience
at last. “Do I have to explain everything I do?”

He tried to look out the barn door, but he
could not seem to escape the old stableman’s keen eye. Lars’ voice
had become warm, sympathetic. “Did you go soft? You can tell me,
boy. Johnny’s a fool, but he’s the kind of fool you can feel sorry
for. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

His sympathy, so far off the mark, stung at
Vern. A tender-hearted, magnanimous master of the gun—that was how
hero-worshipping old Lars saw him! Would he feel such fervent
interest in a lame-handed, washed-up bounty-hunter—yes, he had just
said it to himself—with three months empty of exploits already
behind him?

For a minute an impulse to tell Lars the
truth came over him, and he wavered. One moment of commiseration
seemed worth whatever came afterwards. But the thought passed and
his jaw tightened again. He had chosen his course and they could
think what they liked. If they were really his friends they would
not believe him a coward.

And that was the final straw of reasoning
that kept him away from them all, those two dark days. He did not
dare to look Harry Keller or Judge Macklin or any of the others in
the eye and see them fail that ultimatum. Most of all he kept far
from the millinery shop. Never could he face Rosemary and see the
surprise and questioning in her eyes, even though he knew she must
be waiting to see him, wondering when he would come and explain.
Rosemary, he felt sure, would know there was an explanation.

For two days he was silent, and the town’s
whispers went on; heads turned furtively as he passed, eyes
straight ahead as was his custom; voices dropped suddenly when he
drew near. And on the second night, something broke inside him; he
could live with those looks of doubt no longer. Alone in his room,
he picked up his hat and went out, leaving the turned-low lamp
still burning. He walked up the street to the saloon. There were
men on the porch, in the shadows of the street. There were even
more inside. Vern went up the steps and pushed in through the
swinging door.

Johnny Benson was leaning against the bar,
and he had most of the heads in the room turned toward him, as had
happened often the past two days. He was enjoying this. His
shoulder was to the door and he did not see Vern Lennox come in;
and he was in the middle of a speech besides.

“Sure I heard about it. But I don’t believe
everything I hear, I’ll tell you that. I made up my mind I wouldn’t
believe anything I heard about him till I’d put him on the spot,
and you saw how that went. Y’all are lucky I came along and did it
for you; none of you’d ever have had the nerve.”

A stifling, throat-clutching silence had
fallen even before he reached the last words. Vern Lennox reached
the bar and laid a hand on it. He looked at no one but Benson and
spoke briefly and levelly.

“You talk too much to back it up.”

Johnny stared at him for a second, at first
in genuine astonishment. He had already convinced himself that his
insinuations of Lennox’s cowardice were true. Hence his bravado
came back quickly. An unpleasant grin took over his face. “I’m not
used to being talked to that way.”

“Get used to it.” Vern’s voice was level and
emotionless.

Johnny’s position had changed to one casual
but threatening. His thin shoulders swung loose; one hand dropped
to rest on his belt. “You better be ready to back
that
up.”

“I am.” Vern jerked his head briefly toward
the door. “Not in here. Outside.”

Johnny’s eyes slid ferret-like around to the
darkened windows. “All right,” he said. “But it’s too dark now.
Tomorrow morning.”

Vern Lennox nodded. “I’ll see you then.”

He turned and went out, as swiftly as he had
come in. The room was still paralyzed; this new development was too
much of a sensation for immediate speech.

Johnny Benson took a long breath, but one
side of his mouth was still perked up in a knowing smile. “Well, I
guess he had to do it,” he said to no one and everyone in
particular. “Either that or never show his face around here again.
Guess he couldn’t take it. Well—I ain’t afraid of him.”

* * *

The black gelding lifted his head softly at
Vern’s approach, ears coming forward in inquiry, gauging the
possibility of preparations for departure. It was just past
sunrise, and quiet in the livery stable—a different quiet than the
stagnation of afternoon; morning was a comforting hush.

Vern Lennox patted the horse’s neck, and
stepped halfway into the stall. He ran his eyes over the familiar
gear slung on the stall partition: saddle with the slicker strapped
on it, saddle blanket. He looked at the horse again, and then he
turned away, taking a scrap of paper and a pencil from his shirt
pocket. He rested the paper against the top of the partition near
the saddle and wrote—a process still slightly awkward with the
right hand. But it served enough for the few legible words he
wanted.

Lars—You can have my horse. Take care of
him or find him a good home
. He paused, and then wrote,
See
that Rosemary Worth gets the money I have in Preston’s bank.
Preston will take care of it if you tell him.

He folded the note and pinned it on the
saddle blanket, where Lars would be sure to find it. He could trust
them, he knew, to handle it without untoward gossip. If he wanted
Rosemary to have the money, that was his business and no more would
be said.

He slipped the pencil stub back in his shirt
pocket with his left hand, and looked ruefully down at the right
hand that had betrayed him after all those years of serving him
well. He flexed the fingers again and swung it down by his holster,
as if recalling the memory of it sound and steady could restore its
feeling that way.

A small sound made him look up. Lars was
standing a few feet away, looking at him as if he had been halted
by an unexpected sight. Lars’ eyes went from Vern’s face to his
right hand, which Vern had taken in his left by habit, to rub it in
the way he knew was useless now. He let go of it, but Lars had seen
enough to be suspicious. He came forward, his eyes behind their
small square spectacles still shifting from the younger man’s face
to his hand.

“Vern!” he said. “What in samhill you been
holding out on me for? What’s the matter with that hand?”

Vern tried to smile at him, not succeeding.
“I broke it, Lars. It’s all right now.”

“What was it—the hand?”

“No, the wrist. But it doesn’t make any
difference now.”

“Can you shoot with it?” Lars demanded
abruptly.

“Not so well as I used to. But I told you,
Lars, it doesn’t matter now. It’s all right.”

“You can doggone well say it ain’t!” said
Lars, scrambling to get in front of him as Vern stepped from the
horse’s stall. “You mean to tell me you’re going out to face Johnny
Benson with a bum hand, and him not knowing it? Nobody knowing it?
Why, it ain’t fair! He’ll kill you. You can’t
do
it,
Vern.”

He blocked Vern’s way again, looking up at
him earnestly. “This’s why you done what you did before, wasn’t
it?”

“It doesn’t matter now,” Vern repeated. He
was going to offer Lars his right hand to shake, but something in
him shrank from the thought. He put his left hand on the older
man’s shoulder for a second. “I’ll be seeing you, Lars.”

“Vern, you can’t do it! Vern, listen to me!
Vern!”

But Vern Lennox was gone, leaving the stable
and walking up the street with longer strides than usual, paying no
attention to Lars’ alarmed protests rising behind him.

He walked uptown, toward where the meeting
was to take place. Benson was nowhere to be seen yet when he came
in view of the saloon, so he leaned his shoulder against the post
of a porch, deep in the morning coolness of a shadowed place not
yet touched by the sun that day, and gazed out at the street. The
rising sun bathed the town in a light that made even the plain
square houses and storefronts seem beautiful. He looked at it all
for the last time, its beauty—the beauty of familiarity, and of his
love for it—rankling with a slight pain in his heart, and thought
that it was a stiff price to pay for honor.

And it was then that he saw the truth as
clearly as the sun-washed street in front of him. His cowardice was
not fear of death or pain; his real cowardice lay in fearing to
appear before his town shorn of the skills he believed they
respected him for. Fearing to be small, to rest only on his own
merits as a man and a friend. Was he really any better than Johnny
Benson, who wanted to be pointed out as the gunman that everyone
feared?

There was a movement on the porch of the
saloon. Johnny Benson stepped out from among the men there and came
down the steps, his thumbs hooked in his belt. Even at this
distance the defiant tilt of his head was discernible as he cocked
it sideways and looked down the street for his rival.

Vern Lennox leaned slowly forward from his
post, and walked a few steps toward the middle of the street. The
truth did him no good now. Had he told his friends the truth
before, he might at least have had their pity; his pride had only
left him open to their conjecture and censure. The solution was the
same; the only way to wipe out his cowardice as he saw it now was
to vindicate himself in their eyes.

There were people all along the
street—hanging back from the edges of the boardwalks for safety,
but still watching from the fancied shelter of open doorways and
their neighbors’ shoulders. From the corner of his eye Vern saw
Harry Keller and Marshall Preston standing together watching him,
their faces troubled.
I’ll give them a last good show,
anyway
, he thought.

He considered the possibility of dodging the
first shot. A slim one—besides, once beaten by Johnny Benson he was
finished as a gunfighter, and what was left for him beyond
that?

He had been walking slowly, musingly, and
now he was closer than he realized. Johnny Benson was standing with
his feet apart, a grin on his face, waiting for him.

Somewhere behind Lennox there was a
commotion. Judge Macklin was coming, all the joviality wiped from
his face, pushing his way through the people on the boardwalk with
Lars Holcomb close at his heels.

“Are you ready?” Johnny Benson called
out.

Vern Lennox did not deign to reply. He gazed
straight at Benson, his dark, shadowed eyes seeming to look on and
through him and see more besides.

He saw Johnny tense, straining more and more
with excitement, and knew that at the pitch of that excitement he
would break for his gun. It came. Vern’s hand moved automatically
for his own gun but he knew it was too slow. Johnny’s bullet
slammed into him like a hammer and his gun spilled from his hand as
he fell, pain blurring the moment until his head thudded on the
ground. He waited for the second shot, but it did not come. Truth
be told, Johnny Benson himself had been paralyzed for an instant at
the sight of Vern Lennox going down before his gun, and in that
space of time Judge Macklin plunged off the boardwalk into the
street and got between them.

“Stop!” he shouted.

Johnny had already recovered. “No!” he
yelled back. “You idiot! What d’you think you’re doing?”

It was indeed a sight that would be recalled
in the town long afterwards—Judge Macklin standing in the middle of
the street with his cane held aloft like a sword, holding the irate
young gunman at bay.

“Get out of my way!” yelled Johnny,
advancing a step. “I beat him! You saw!”

“Yes, you did!” shouted Judge Macklin. “You
beat a man with a crippled hand!”

There was a stunned silence. People looked
at each other—and at Johnny Benson. He stood stiff, his gun still
clutched out in front of him, his eyes distended, though the rest
of his thin face had fallen slack.

The Judge nodded, satisfied with the effect
his words had created. “You make the most of it, Johnny.”

People moved now, spilling forward off the
boardwalks, a number of them clustering around the wounded man.
Vern could see little from where he lay, but he sensed the crowd
around him, their voices an earnest clamor and their shapes
blocking the light. Harry Keller was leaning over him, a hand on
his shoulder. “Bad, Vern?”

“I don’t know.” Vern grimaced slightly at
the pain in his side. “Bad enough.”

“We’ll get the doctor. Take it easy, old
boy, you’ll be all right.”

“What sort of a stunt under the wide blue
heavens was
that ?
” demanded Judge Macklin, arriving on the
fringes of the group. “Do you realize you’ve taken ten years off my
life?”

“You shouldn’t have done it, Vern. It was as
good as suicide, anyone could have told you that!” Marshall
Preston’s voice came from somewhere overhead.

“When Lars came and told me I almost had a
conniption,” said the Judge. “I was so certain you’d handle Johnny
I wasn’t even coming to watch. Whatever possessed you to try and
make a martyr of yourself, without even bothering to bid us
goodbye?”

Their voices held irritation, reproof,
concern…spreading a warm feeling through him that made him want to
laugh in spite of the pain. They hadn’t changed. He had failed,
been humiliated, had made a fool of himself three times over, and
they were still his friends.