The Gun Fight by Richard Matheson

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,