"YOU ACTED ON THE spur of the moment, Matthew," B. J. explained. "The shock of seeing your mother lying there on the floor, and knowing that your own father had… Anybody might have done what you did. You've got to understand that, and you must try to forgive yourself. Oh, it's going to take a long time to get over what happened. Maybe you never will. But believe me, son, in time you'll find a way to live with it… or live around it. And any time you feel that talking things out might help, well, we're here and we-"
"After I… did it, I dropped the gun on the floor," Matthew continued. Nothing B. J. had said had penetrated his mind. "I couldn't pick it up. I tried, but I couldn't make myself touch it."
"But you did pick it up," Ruth Lillian said, hoping to guide him back to reality. "You brought it here with you."
He blinked and looked at her with a confused frown, as though realizing that fact for the first time. "You're right. I… I brought it with me."
"Why?" B. J. asked. "Why'd you do that, Matthew?"
"I don't know. Maybe because it was Pa's. And because he never had any luck."
Ruth Lillian repeated his words in a wondering whisper. "Because your pa never had any luck… that's why you carried that gun more'n a hundred miles?"
He settled his eyes on her without answering. The storm was fleeing southeast as quickly as it had roared in from the northwest. The wind had suddenly fallen, and the last of the departing lightning billowed dimly within horizon clouds, followed at a long interval by the distant mutter of weary thunder.
"Matthew?" she repeated gently. "Is that why you brought it?"
"I hate that gun, Ruth Lillian. I really and truly hate it. I don't ever want to see it nor touch it again!"
"And you don't have to," B. J. assured him. "You'll never have to touch that gun again. If you want, I'll go over to your place with you and we'll-What was that!"
A gunshot from across the street. Followed by five more shots, the rounds squeezed off at regular, unhurried intervals.
B. J. rushed to the window.
Having emptied his gun into the air to attract attention, Lieder was standing on the porch of the hotel, lit from behind by a tombstone-shaped slab of light formed by the open bat-winged doors.
The wind had died away, but that heavy, soaking rain that follows the trailing edge of mountain storms continued to drill down vertically, making such liquid din on glistening roofs and in mud- lathered puddles that Lieder had to cup his hands around his mouth and shout, "I know you're out there, schoolteacher! Come out, come out, wherever you are! All-ye, all-ye ox-in-free!"
B. J. could make out two figures standing behind Lieder… his lackeys. And between them there was a tall- "Oh, God," B. J. whispered. "Oh, God!"
"What is it?" Ruth Lillian asked.
They had Coots. His arms were bound to his sides, and he was standing on a chair beneath the central beam of the hotel porch. B. J. couldn't see clearly, but he knew from the way Coots was standing-up on his toes to relieve the pressure-that there was a rope around his neck, running tight over the beam. And there were other men crowded along the wall of the porch, Lieder's "deacons". Witnesses.
Lieder shouted again, but some of his words got lost in the noise of the rain. "… Coots here… guilty… assassination! You… last words with…?"
With an agonized cry, B. J. rushed from the window and pounded down the stairs to the darkened shop, stumbling at the bottom and ending up on his knees. He scrambled up and staggered on through the dark, catching his hip on the counter and upsetting a stack of cans. He reached the front door, which he shook until the spring bell above complained, but it was locked! "Wait!" he cried. "Wait!"
"Come out, come out, wherever you are!"
B. J. barged blindly through the store to the back door, clawed it open, and lurched out into a puddle being excavated by a thick rope of water falling from guttering overburdened with rain. "Wait!"
Lieder had expected to see B. J. coming from the direction of the Livery, so he was surprised to see him emerge from between the Mercantile and the ruins of the Pair o' Dice Social Club, slithering in the mud.
"Well, now! What were you doing over at the Jew's? Come on, schoolteacher! Run! You can make it! Hurry up, there!"
"Wait!" B. J. rasped, his lungs screaming for air.
"Run!" Lieder set his foot against the chair on which Coots stood on his toes. "Come on! Go it, schoolteacher! Attaboy! You can make it!" He kicked the chair out from under Coots. "O-o-oh. Too late." The crack of his neck was audible through the rain; his body jerked twice with such convulsive force that he broke the cotton clothesline that bound his arms; then he hung still, turning slowly, his hands cupped, knuckles forward, his toes turned inward. There was an eternity of human suffering in those bare, gnarled old feet… turning.
B. J. stumbled up the steps of the hotel and grasped Coots around the knees. He tried to lift the body to take the weight from the rope, but he couldn't: the knees and waist were limp. "Help me!" he begged Tiny and Bobby-My-Boy, who looked on, interested. "Somebody help me!" There was a nervous stir among the deacons, but no one stepped forward. B. J. hugged the knees to his chest and moaned.
Matthew came running across the street, slipping in the mud. But before he got to B. J., Lieder grabbed him by the collar and snatched his face up close to his own. "Did you know about this, boy?! Did you know they meant to shoot me in the back?!"
Confused, frightened, Matthew cried, "What? What do you mean?"
"I knew it!" Lieder cried into the rain. "I knew it! I have always been a good judge of horse-flesh and man-flesh, and I just knew that one damaged boy couldn't never turn on another. They didn't tell you they planned to shoot me down in cold blood. No! They used you, boy. You let them use you just as bad as if you'd been a new boy in prison. Now maybe you know who your real friend is!" He looked down at B. J., who had slumped to his knees still hugging Coots's legs to him. "Oh for Christ's sake, old man! He's dead! All your sobbing and whimpering won't change that. He's dead, and it was your sneaking and plotting that killed him! Killed him just as sure as if you'd kicked that chair out from under him yourself. So stop slobbering on like an old woman!"
B. J. muttered something wetly into Coots's legs.
"What?"
"I want… take him down."
"Take him, then! Take him! I don't need no back-shooting nigger hanging around my front door! Go on! Take him!"
B. J. looked up at the beam and the rope, confused, tears streaming from his eyes and nose and mixing with the rain on his face. "Matthew…?"
Matthew fished his Barlow knife out of his pocket and held it out. B. J. climbed up on the chair and sawed at the rope, while Matthew did his best to lighten the strain by lifting Coots, but the legs were too limp, and when the rope parted with a dull twang, Coots slumped across Matthew's shoulders, the lifeless weight buckling his knees and making him stagger, but none of the deacons came forward to help him; they remained close to the wall, scared and drunk. B. J. peeled Coots's weight from Matthew's back and sat across the bottom step in the rain, holding Coots in his arms, the dead face buried in his neck.
"Now ain't that a picture?" Lieder asked, stepping out into the rain and standing before B. J. and Coots to occupy the center of attention. "Now, this here's what I call a picture of true friendship," he told his men and "deacons" with grave sincerity, the rain running from the brim of his hat onto Coots's chest. "You may not believe it, schoolteacher, but I appreciate how you must be suffering, knowing that you caused the death of your friend with your treachery and schemes. Friendship and loyalty are two qualities I admire… " He looked back up to his audience on the porch. "… just as I detest sneaks and tattletales. And one among you is just that, a sneak and a tattletale. One among you is a Judas. Schoolteacher?" Lieder placed his palm on B. J.'s head. "Shall I tell you how I found out about your nigger friend?"