The Lawbringers 2, page 20
Dinwiddie regarded him with wry bemusement. “Looks like he put one over on you, Farris. I believe it’s the first time I ever saw you get slickered.”
“Then cherish the memory,” Rand said. “You won’t have many like it.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Dinwiddie remarked.
Clay looked out from under his lowered hat brim at the blur of the land ahead. Fatigue drove agony through him. Rain pelted the ground with steadily increasing pressure; it leaked down his neck, soaked through his pants, logged his gloves, runneled down before his face from the trough of his hat brim.
He almost capsized when the horse stopped.
He lifted his head drunkenly. Ahead of him the others had halted. Dinwiddie’s drawl swam into his awareness:
“ … ends it. You can’t find tracks now. This will wash them all out.”
Littlejack uttered a monosyllabic curse. Clay took off his hat. He closed his eyes and threw his head back. Rain dashed his face. He ran his fingers through strands of disheveled hair, replaced the glove on his hand and sat hatless. Rain soaked his head.
“He challenged the law,” the sheriff said. “He will not get away.”
Clay formed a loose fist and put his hat on.
He saw his father’s gravely wooden face through the rain. McAffee said, “Enough. Enough of this madness. A man with sense knows when to accept the inevitable.”
Dinwiddie said, “In a temporary seizure of insanity, we decided to ride with you, Farris. But the game’s all done. For Christ’s sake, Farris—”
“Go back,” the sheriff said. “All of you go back if you want. I’m going on.”
“I believe I’m your man,” Harry Greiff muttered, and moved his horse closer to the sheriff’s.
McAffee said, “You won’t get him back. Not by Tuesday morning.”
“I’ll get him back if it takes all winter, Colonel.”
McAffee swallowed a drink and corked his-bottle. “I don’t believe you will, Farris. At any rate I’ve had enough. I’m going home. Anybody going with me?”
“I, for one,” said Dinwiddie. He had lost his stovepipe hat in the storm; his hair was matted. “I’m sorry, Farris. I’ll keep my mouth shut.”
“What?” said Littlejack.
Dinwiddie said, “What about you, Clyde?”
“Hell, I got a business to run. I’m goin’ home.”
“All those trails leading nowhere.” Dinwiddie shook his head sadly. “You’re a foolish man, Farris.”
McAffee said, “You’re all through in Ocotillo.”
“I am not all through, gentlemen, until next Tuesday, and at that point it’s a matter of conscience for all of you. Just remember who abandoned the law when the trail began to cool—and who did not. You’ll feel a bit silly when I bring the prisoner into town Tuesday morning.”
“Farris,” said Dinwiddie, “you are incredible. If I had my hat, I’d take it off to you. But you’re still a Goddam fool.” He neck-reined his horse around and spurred it to a lope, heading north.
Littlejack said, “You get that Nigra, Farris, you give him a couple bullets for me, hey? Come on, Colonel.”
McAffee searched the sheriff’s face. For some reason that Clay sensed but did not understand, McAffee’s flaccid hand reached out. The sheriff gave him a short, hard handshake, and McAffee rode away, jouncing.
“Let’s move on, then,” said the sheriff.
Time and failure had pared the posse down to these three. They came across a place where some hopeful hard-rocker had tried to strike it rich; they passed on. Clay thought fitfully of Lavender—the way her eyebrows peaked up when she was earnest, the way she tossed her head when she laughed, the quiet warmth of her hazel eyes.
His jaw was slurred by a light beard. He had developed deep vertical creases between his brows. His face was whacked and burned into a leather mask, and his mouth was bracketed by brittle lines. The mark of fatigue had settled into his face as though it were indelible.
The wind carried light snowflakes in a powder-dusting. Just after dark they raised the lights of a lonely dwelling, below in a long dish of land. They rode forward. He saw his father take off his gloves and flex his fingers.
A parchment-faced old woman stood in front of the hut, watching them come up.
“ ’Noches,” said the sheriff. His voice was a dry rasp.
The woman neither moved nor spoke. A man came out, a shrunken old Indian, scrawny with a potbelly.
“Somos amigos,” said the sheriff.
“Seguro que si,” the old man said, sardonically. Sure you are.
The old man’s cyanotic hands fiddled with his shirt. The sheriff said, “Estd que ustedes hayan visto un Negro sobre un caballo bayo?”
The old man said, “Su amigo?”
“Es un ladrón.”
“He lo visto.” the old Indian said.
The sheriff said, “They’ve seen him.”
“When?” Clay said. “How long ago? Which way was he headed?”
The sheriff translated; the old Indian began to talk. He recounted all his ailments and the difficulties of his existence. “I am a man with many hurts.”
The sheriff said carefully in Spanish, “There is always sadness. There is no life without sorrows.”
“He went away to the south. Estd por alld.”
“Gracias.”
“Vaya con fortuna,” said the old man. “I hope you kill the ladrón.”
Under a pewter midmorning sky they halted the horses to breathe them. All night it had been a search for shadows. The horse ahead had pulled up lame, and the tracks were fresh.
Harry Greiff murmured to Clay, “Take your gloves off, son. A mistake like that can get you killed.”
“I’ve got no gun, anyway.”
“Uh. Forgot that.”
The sheriff held up his hand; they halted near a grove. They all heard it then: the soft thudding footfall of a horse browsing for forage.
Sweat was sticky in the small of Clay’s back, in his palms, in his crotch, on his lips and throat. It was a chilly day.
The sheriff said, “Could be a lot of people besides Ben passing through this way. But take care.”
They rode from tree to tree, through a thick growth of spring-fed brush and cottonwoods. An overwhelming anxiety poisoned Clay’s remaining patience.
They found the horse unsaddled and freed. It was hobbling on three legs.
“It’ll heal,” said Greiff after inspecting the horse. “But he’s on foot now. Less than an hour. That way.”
Clay’s heart raced. His anger kindled, he shouted at his father: “How do you expect to give him his law and order? In the belly or right between the eyes?”
His father’s knuckles whitened around the reins. He made no answer. Harry Greiff said, “That boy Ben will keep going until they put him in jail or in a grave.”
Clay’s father said, “Clay, you’re going to have to learn to stop asking questions that have no answers. You play the cards that are dealt you, that’s all.”
Harry Greiff broke in. His voice had no more feeling than if he were describing the weather. “That’s him up yonder, I reckon.”
Diminutive by distance, the figure of a man walked across the desert flats.
“Ben,” said Clay.
The sheriff lifted his horse to a lope.
Ben Harmony stopped and turned full around to face them, both hands empty. The sheriff jammed his horse to a bruising halt that spewed dirt clots.
The sheriff’s mouth worked.
Ben Harmony said, “You look like you haven’t slept in weeks.”
“Been a long time since I closed both eyes,” the sheriff said. “How are you, boy?”
“Still taking nourishment. Maybe footsore some. Hello, Chico, I didn’t expect to see you this soon.”
Clay brought his horse up and stopped. “Ben—”
The sheriff said, “You’ll be pretty hungry, I imagine. Mr. Greiff, let’s start a fire.” He stepped down. “I’ll take your guns, boy.”
“I didn’t figure you’d find me till I was ready to be found,” Ben said. “You’re pretty good, old man.” He unslung the rifle off his back and handed it over; he gave over his gun-belted revolver as well. “I guess there are some things you just can’t change, and you’re one of them. Going to take me back?”
“I believe I am,” said the sheriff.
Harry Greiff was away gathering fuel. Clay said in a taut, small voice, “You’ll do it, too, won’t you?”
“Did you ever doubt me?” his father said. His gaze swiveled toward the southern horizon, and he said to Ben Harmony, “Do you know where you are right now?”
“Not exactly.”
“Less than a mile from the Mexican border,” the sheriff said. He pointed with his arm and let it drop. “You almost did it, boy.”
“Hard luck, then. If I’d known that, I’d have run just a little bit faster. But like Mr. Lincoln said, if you can’t make a mistake, you can’t make anything. You’ve made a few yourself, old man.”
Harry Greiff built a fire. “First hot food we’ve seen,” he said. “Four days to go, sir. I reckon we can still make it back by election time.”
“Yes,” the sheriff said. He squatted by the fire and held out his palms.
Ben saw Clay regarding the guns hung on Harry Greiff’s saddle. Ben said, “I wouldn’t think about that, Chico.”
“I’m in a pretty wild mood right now,” said Clay.
The sheriff said, “I want to talk to both of you. Mr. Greiff, leave us alone.”
“Yes, sir.” Harry Greiff got up and went back to the horses. Clay followed Ben Harmony to the fire, and the sheriff pointed at the ground.
They sat. The sheriff said, “I guess there are a lot of things wrong with me.”
“Have been for a long time,” said Ben Harmony.
“Am I supposed to forget what you did to Shoumacher?”
“What did I do to Shoumacher?” Ben Harmony demanded. “I’ll tell you something, old man. I hit him once on the chin and he tripped over his own feet trying to get away from me. Hit his head on the printing press and knocked the lamp down. You call that murder?”
“Don’t tell me. It’s not a decision for me to make.”
“Sure,” said Ben Harmony. “It’s a decision for a white jury, isn’t it?”
The sheriff said, “I’d like to hold out an olive branch, boy. I wish I could do that.”
“Suit yourself,” Ben said. “I don’t aim to get on my knees and beg you to make peace.”
The wind buffeted Clay’s ears and made his hat brim flap. His father’s black-booted feet stirred in the dust. It was a shock for Clay to look into those red eyes deep in his father’s skull. It was as if a stopper had fallen from place and all the sand had run out.
“You’re just another outlaw, boy.”
“Reckon I am,” Ben Harmony agreed. “What are you trying to talk yourself into, old man?”
Clay said quickly to his father, “Today means more than yesterday.”
“Nothing’s changed,” his father said.
Clay said, “You’ve gone sour as vinegar.”
“There are a lot of things I wanted to say to both of you. Now the time’s come and I don’t know how. Christ, don’t you think I want to turn the leaf? I’m a lawman, a goddam lawman.”
“There’s law,” Clay said, “and then there’s justice.”
“And there’s my son,” said Farris Rand. “Both my sons. You are both my sons.”
Ben Harmony said, “What?”
“You are both my sons,” the sheriff said again, slowly and distinctly. He put his face down, as if to shield it from the wind. “Some things can burn the soul out of you.”
Ben Harmony was stretching his legs out along the ground, leaning back as if he were enjoying the looseness that might follow a big meal. He said, “Take me back if you want to. It’ll be all right now.”
“Because I said what you wanted to hear me say?”
“That was all I ever wanted from you,” said Ben Harmony.
Clay said in heat, “If Ben goes back to Ocotillo, he’ll hang. That hasn’t changed.”
“You’re both my sons,” his father roared. “I ask you to trust me.”
“Why,” said Ben Harmony, “we can do that. What do you say, Chico?”
“What’s going to happen?” Clay asked.
His father said, “What do you want to happen? I wish to God you’d stop looking at me like some kind of stranger, Clay.”
The sheriff stood up fast. He took an oilskin pouch from inside his coat and unwrapped it to remove a dry cigar. His fine white teeth flickered. He lighted up and said, “I need to have a few words with Mr. Greiff. I’d be obliged if you two would wait for me.” He took three paces away and paused; he said over his shoulder, “The border is one mile south of here,” and walked on to the horses.
Ben Harmony said, “Well, Chico?”
“If you make a run for it, he’ll turn himself in. You know he will.”
“No,” Ben Harmony said. “He told us to wait for him, didn’t he?”
He got up and began walking south.
Baffled, Clay looked toward his father. The sheriff was talking to his deputy, having maneuvered around so that in order to face him, Harry Greiff had to put his back to the fire. The cigar gestured up and down in the sheriff’s grip.
Clay trotted after Ben Harmony. He caught up and looked back. “Listen, we didn’t think about this.”
“I thought about it.”
“He’s got to throw away thirty years. He’ll be an outlaw himself.”
“I thought about it,” Ben Harmony said again, and walked on.
The fence was rusty and sagging. Clay put his boot on the middle barbwire strand and lifted the top wire. Ben Harmony stooped and slipped through. He stood up and said, “We wait here.”
“He’ll turn himself in, Ben. I know him. He’ll spend five years in jail for this.”
“Maybe he won’t.”
The sheriff and Greiff came over the rise on horseback, leading the third horse. The sheriff said, “Your wire cutters, Mr. Greiff.”
Clay said, “What’s that for?”
The deputy got down and clamped his cutters around the top strand. The wire broke with a crack and went singing away down the fence; the curled ends whipped back. Greiff bent down to sever the remaining strands.
The sheriff said, “Mr. Greiff, I’ve made myself a fugitive and I can’t give you orders. I make a personal request, as r friend. Ride through the fence with me.”
“Yes, sir,” Harry Greiff said, without remark. He put away his wire cutters, got on his horse and moved it forward. The two horsemen came through the break. The sheriff said “Leave a horse behind, Mr. Greiff.”
“Sir?”
“Clay won’t be coming with us.”
Clay’s mind had closed up; it wasn’t making sense of things.
The sheriff said, “You’ve got a ranch to run and a woman to think of. She’s too fine a woman to be left alone.”
“I never thought about leaving her alone. But I’ll go with you. I’ll send for her. She’ll come, you’ll see. Look, I did break Ben out of jail—it was my crime, too. Let me come.”
“Go on home,” his father said. “It’s your home, it belongs to you. It doesn’t belong to us anymore. You’ve got roots—don’t tear them up.”
“But I—”
“Do what he wants, Chico,” Ben Harmony said. “It’s what I want, too.”
His father said, “When you see your mother, tell her—” The sheriff took the cigar out of his mouth. He had bitten it cleanly in two. “Tell her your brother and I went prospecting in Sonora.”
The sheriff extended his arm. Ben Harmony gripped it and swung himself up behind the sheriff.
Clay moved like a sleepwalker, up to his father. He shook hands with both of them and said lamely, “Good luck to you.”
“Take care of yourself, Chico.”
His father said, “You may have to give McAffee a hand. Treat him kindly. Treat yourself kindly, boy.”
The horse wheeled away, packing double. Clay stood by the fence while Harry Greiff trotted past, tugging down his hat by the brim. Greiff yelled, “So long, son,” and spurred to catch up.
Clay did not move for a quarter of an hour. He saw them climb over a distant rise. Ben Harmony’s hat—it was Clay’s own hat; he had given it to Ben—lifted and waved.
They were gone. He walked over to the cigar his father had thrown away. He picked it up and went to his horse. He got mounted and adjusted the reins.
“The hell,” he said. He threw the cigar away, glanced once to the south, and turned his back on Mexico.
About the Author
The author of more than seventy books, Brian Garfield is one of USA’s most prolific writes of thrillers, westerns and other genre fiction. Raised in Arizona, Garfield found success at an early age, publishing his first novel when he was only eighteen – which, at the time, made him one of the youngest writers of Western novels in print.
A former ranch-hand, he is a student of Western and Southwestern history, an expert on guns, and a sports car enthusiast. After time in the Army, a few years touring with a jazz band, and a Master's Degree from the University of Arizona, he settled into writing full time.
Garfield is a past president of the Mystery Writers of America and the Western Writers of America, and the only author to have held both offices. Nineteen of his novels have been made into films, including Death Wish (1972), The Last Hard Men (1976) and Hopscotch (1975), for which he wrote the screenplay.
To date, his novels have sold over twenty million copies worldwide. Brian Garfield died on December 29 2018. He and his wife lived in California.
More on Brian Garfield
Brian Garfield, The Lawbringers 2
