âHe was pullinâ his gun on me! I had to do it!â
Kennedy looked at him and said without spirit, âHe wasnât goinâ for his gun.â
âListen,â Cavanaugh pled hoarsely. âHe was goinâ for his gun. I saw him!â
Kennedy just looked at him, the honor still in his eyes.
Cavanaugh fought for a grip on himself. Like a small snake creeping experimentally, from under a stone, an idea, furtive and guileful, was coming to life in his sick brain. The rain beat down through his sandy hair, cooling the fever in him.
âListen, Wes,â he said. His voice had lost its panic and now had an ugliness to it. âYouâre in this too.â
Kennedy raised both hands and took a step backward. âOh no,â he said quickly. âNot me. I never shot him. I never had a gun. I never even saw it.â
âIâll tell Ballard you did.â
Kennedy just stared at him. Then he turned and raced for the porch. Scooping up the rifle, he trained it on Cavanaugh and came slowly and uncertainly toward him in the steady rain. âYou ainât dragging me into this, Ray. No sir.â
Cavanaugh said tauntingly, âGo ahead and shoot.â
Kennedy licked his lips and regarded Cavanaugh with helpless horror in which there was no anger even.
âLever a shell in. You forgot that,â Cavanaugh taunted.
Kennedyâs gun slacked off then, and he almost wailed. âWhatâll we do, Ray? Whatâll we do?â
Cavanaugh knew he had his man now. Wes Kennedy was a trifling man without the courage to protect himself. âGet out of the rain first,â Cavanaugh said.
âButââ
âHeâs dead, ainât he?â Cavanaugh snarled.
He shouldered past Kennedy and went up to the porch and into the shack. He wrenched a dirty blanket from the bunk and threw it around him and came out onto the porch. Kennedy was standing there, his gaze intent and afraid and somehow begging.
Cavanaugh smothered his shivering and said, âHow they goinâ to know heâs dead if they canât find him?â
Kennedy shook his head, didnât answer.
âWe got to bury him up in the timber,â Cavanaugh said. âThis rainâll hide the hole. Itâll hide his tracks cominâ up here.â
Kennedy licked his lips and said, âNo, Ray. No. Not on my place. Ballardâll kill me if he finds out.â
âHowâs he goinâ to find out?â Cavanaugh snarled. He coughed then, gagging on the violence of it. Afterward, he steadied himself against the wall and said to Kennedy, with a confidence he did not feel himself, âGet a shovel.â
Kennedy didnât move. Cavanaugh, afraid and desperate now, walked up to him and cuffed him across the face with the flat of his palm.
Then he reached out and grasped the lapels of Kennedyâs vest and shook him violently. The blanket fell off Cavanaughâs shoulders.
âYou damn jughead, weâre in this together, donât you see that! Youâre goinâ to bury him up there and Iâm goinâ to watch you. Then Iâm goinâ home. And you ainât goinâ to light out from here; you canât! Will Ballard will hunt you to China!â
He paused and let go Kennedyâs lapels, and Kennedy just looked at him with naked fear.
âBluff it out!â Cavanaugh snarled. âNobody can prove anythinâ. Now get a shovel!â
Chapter 5
Sam left D cross early and dropped down through the timbered foothills toward Alkali Flats. The ground mist was so thick on the flats after the rain that it seemed a pearl-gray sea. Sam rode briskly, for he had ground to cover this morning.
Around nine oâclock Sam crossed Bandoleer Creek and was presently off his own grass and onto Hatchet range, which adjoined it to the west. This was a waterless stretch, dry in the summer months, and it marked the boundary beyond which his cattle could not
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