Gun Shy. Les Savage Jr

shots still seemed to echo through the corridors of his mind, but he realized it was inside, some trick of his brain. The shooting had stopped. He crouched against the wall, holding his head, shaking violently.

      “Ma,” he called. “Ma. . . .”

      There was no answer. He wanted to run. He knew the shooting would begin again. He had to run. Hating himself, hating his weakness, he forced himself to turn back. He crawled along the tunnel. He was drenched with sweat, suffocated by his panic. He came out into the room, fighting for control. His father lay in the shambles below the broken window, hands still held against his bloody face. His mother lay huddled in the corner against the wall. Gordon went to one knee beside her. She had been hit twice. He saw that she was dead.

      “Gordon . . .” It came from Bob Conners. He still had one hand held blindly to his smashed face. Gordon saw that he had been hit in the body too. His chest was soaked with blood. He was fumbling for something beneath his shirt, pulling out a thin wallet. He made a rattling sound in his throat. “Blackhorn . . . last I heard . . . up in the Wind Rivers somewhere—near South Pass City . . . the Indians will know . . .”

      Gordon realized he would have been lying beside his father and mother if he hadn’t thrown himself into the tunnel during the firing. A sense of guilt swept him. He saw that his father meant him to take the wallet. It was wet with blood, in his hand. A convulsion shook Conners. He made a choking sound, clawed feebly at Gordon’s arm. He sagged back. The hand slid off his wrecked face.

      “Conners,” MacLane called from outside. “You’ve killed one of my men. You come out or we come in!”

      Gordon stared at his father. His brain seemed numb. He couldn’t feel anything. His father was dead. There was something wrong with him. His father was dead and his mother was dead and he couldn’t feel anything. He looked at the Sharps his father had dropped. He reached out. He made a broken sound. He couldn’t pick it up.

      The shooting started again.

      He fought it for a moment. The effort brought a sob from him. Then he lost control. He turned and ran. He couldn’t help himself. It was inside his head again, the sound, the roar, the crashing of guns, louder than reality, engulfing him with a primitive terror. He was in the tunnel, his head scraping dank clay from the low roof. He was at the other end, clawing to unbar the door. He was so panicked that he didn’t even wait to see if anybody was outside.

      He plunged into the brush that screened the door. The low ridge of earth hid him from the riders as he ran for the creek. Nobody knew about the back way out and apparently the fight had kept them all around front.

      Gordon reached the river, his shirt half torn off by the clawing brush. He was still wild with panic. He turned downstream in the shallows of the river. He ran like an animal.

      Chapter Two

      ROLAND BAYARD’S HOUSE was two miles across the basin from the Conners’ homestead. Gordon knew he would have headed that way even if his father hadn’t told him to. Bayard was the only one he could turn to in Table Rock.

      The man had been a close friend of Bob Conners in the past. Gordon had been a baby, too young to remember, and his folks had never talked much about it. But when the family was in debt or sick or up against it in any way, it seemed to Gordon that his mother was always telling his father to “look up Roland, he’ll help you.”

      Gordon’s father hadn’t done it till this year, only a few months ago, when things had turned so bad that they didn’t even have the fare to Table Rock, and had to walk the last hundred miles from Laramie. Bayard was division superintendent for the railroad in Table Rock. He had taken the day off to help, going with Conners to file on a homestead, obtaining credit for him at the store for the plough and stock and seed and supplies he would need. Bayard had come out to the homestead several times after that. Gordon had thought it was downright human for such an elegant man to sit in a dirt room and drink chicory coffee with his old friend. He had even invited the Conners family up to his place. It was a big house, whipsawed lumber shipped from a Laramie mill, tall hip roof to shed the Wyoming snow, a long gallery of smooth round stones cemented with grout.

      Gordon would never know how he reached the place that night. He guessed he must have run all the way from the dugout. He stumbled in through the grove of poplars. A whiskey jack scolded him from the branches and the trees shed their feathery tufts on him like a snowfall. He dropped to his knees and sagged across the stone steps, so spent he couldn’t move. He ached all over. It hurt so much to breathe he thought he was going to cry.

      The Bayards must have heard him from inside, sobbing for breath. The door was open and a yellow path of light fell across his dirty, bleeding figure sprawled on the steps.

      He saw figures silhouetted in the doorway. Curiously enough it wasn’t Roland Bayard who first crossed the porch to him. It was a gaunt man in a cranberry-red fustian. Gordon had met him here once before. He was Adam Chaney, Bayard’s brother-in-law. Although he looked anything but a cattleman he ran a few cows west of town in the Double X iron. Gordon had gotten the impression he was some sort of family black sheep. His long face had a yellow tinge, the same ague-color Gordon had seen in so many bottomlanders along the Missouri.

      “Pa” Gordon gasped. “Pa. Crazy Moon—out there. Saw ’em in the draw. He didn’t do it—”

      Roland Bayard crossed the porch after Chaney, saying sharply, “Snap out of it, Gordon. Settle down. I never saw a kid so spooked.”

      “Give him a chance, Roland,” Chaney said. He knelt beside Gordon, gripping his arm. He had a strange voice, almost like an echo. “Settle down now, Gordon. You’re with friends. You’re safe.”

      “They shot,” Gordon gasped. “All that shooting—”

      Bayard made an impatient sound. He was a big man, moleskin trousers the color of sassafras, a steel pen coat that must have cost a hundred dollars. Gordon was aware of Chaney shaking him gently, talking to him, until the fog of panic seemed to shred. Haltingly, in broken sentences, Gordon told them what had happened.

      As he talked he saw Opal’s face appear above him. Vaguely, he wondered how she had gotten back from town so soon, and realized Adam Chaney must have brought her. She had lived here with her aunt and uncle ever since her parents’ death. Doorlight made a yellow fire in her hair and she couldn’t keep the shock from her face.

      Her aunt stood beside her. Charlotte Bayard was a perfumed, bustled, crinolined creature, somewhere far outside Gordon’s world. She kept making squeaky sounds, and her soft hands fluttered like birds around her mouth.

      “He’s bleeding on the porch,” she said. “Can’t you take him somewhere?”

      “Aunt Charlotte,” Opal said sharply. It stopped the older woman, and Opal turned to Chaney. “Get him inside. I’ll put some water on to boil—there’s some arnica—”

      She hurried back into the house. Chaney was still crouched beside Gordon, looking up at Bayard. Bayard frowned. Muscle made a spastic little tic in his florid jowl. Then he shook his head and bent to help Chaney lift Gordon onto his feet.

      The parlor was all Charlotte Bayard. Its scent of perfume and flowers and incense was so heavy it almost made Gordon sick. The furniture made him think of the stuffed, padded, draped, silken fancy women he had seen promenading down Main. There were lambrequins all over every mantel and lampshade and windowseat. Gordon didn’t see how any woman could knot together that much ecru twine in her whole life. Charlotte must have had some time left over, though, because there were about a hundred samplers. WELCOME. GOD BLESS THIS HAPPY HOME. The embroidered mottoes hung on every wall.

      Chaney guided Gordon to a chair and Charlotte made a whimpering sound. “Adam—my good chair—”

      Adam Chaney gave his sister a look. Gordon didn’t know if it was indulgence or disgust. The man took off his red fustian and spread it over the plush chair. He told Gordon to sit down.

      Gordon put his head in his hands. He remembered how he’d been unable to feel