B. J. didn't respond.
"No, maybe I shouldn't tell. After all, I gave my word. But then, I do loathe a tattletale. Always have, ever since school. I gave my word, so I cannot divulge who told me in hopes of getting in good with me. But I can say this much: he was a man of the cloth."
B. J. lifted his head, and his eyes found those of Reverend Hibbard among the silent onlookers.
Hibbard's eyes flickered, and he pressed back against the wall of the hotel, shaking his head in denial and lifting his palms in helplessness. "Yes but… but…" he babbled into the rain. "I only did what I had to do. I saw your Coots up at the Lode! I knew he'd be coming back down today. It wasn't hard to figure out he'd be trying something!"
B. J.'s eyes remained heavily on Hibbard: there was neither hatred nor anger in them, only infinite sadness, infinite pain.
"Don't blame me!" Hibbard cried. "What if your Coots had failed? Eh? Mr. Lieder would have thought we were all in on it! You didn't care what would happen to us, did you?"
B. J. closed his eyes and lowered his head to Coots's, but Matthew continued to glare at the preacher with cold loathing.
"Don't you look at me like that, boy! I did what I had to do! I acted for the greater good!"
"Oh now, don't piss yourself, Reverend," Lieder said. "Nobody's going to hurt you. After all… " He smiled. "… you enjoy my personal protection."
"Matthew?" B. J. said quietly. "I've got to get him home."
Matthew looked around for something to carry Coots on, then he decided to fetch the handbarrow he used to bring supplies up from the train. He hurried back across to the Mercantile, and he was dragging the barrow out of the shed when Ruth Lillian opened the back door. "Matthew…?" But he shook his head and plodded back through the rain.
They lifted Coots into the barrow as gently as they could, but his legs and arms dangled over awkwardly. B. J. grasped the handles and pushed Coots home, rain washing the tears from his upturned face, his arms stretched straight from his shoulders to the handles, his boots slipping on the mud through which Coots's bare heels dragged.
DAWN. AND THE RAIN had thinned to a chill mist that condensed in opalescent beads on the rusted wire fence between the donkey meadow and the burying ground. The gritty scrape of B. J. 's spade cutting into the yeasty earth was uncannily sharp and clear, as sounds are in mist. Unused to such heavy work, B. J.'s breathing soon became a rasp that galled his lungs, so he didn't object when Matthew took the spade from him and continued digging at the same rhythm.
B. J. sat on the ground beside Coots and placed a comforting hand on his blanket-wrapped chest, too deep in grief and pain to notice Matthew's peculiar expression as he dug: faraway eyes and a vague half-smile.
The handle of Matthew's spade stung his hands when the blade rang on the shelf-rock that lay about four feet beneath the sodden surface. He turned and began to bring the other end of the grave down to the same level. It wasn't until he stood up to take off his hat and wipe the sweat from his forehead that he noticed Frenchy standing behind B. J. and Coots. Without a word she hitched up her skirts and tucked the hem into her waistband until her cotton-stockinged legs were free up to her knee-length pantaloons. She stepped to the edge of the grave and held out her hand with an authority of gesture that dismissed argument. Matthew gave her the spade and watched her dig with the economic hip-swing of a woman who had done her share of field work as a girl, before she escaped to the glittering world. He was on her "scar side," and the immobile, dispassionate ugliness fascinated him.
He became aware of a soft humming behind him… an old Negro spiritual. He turned his head, and Lieder was standing there, his hat in his hand, his head bowed.
Without looking at Lieder, B. J. rose and took another turn, then he gave the spade to Matthew, who had struck shelf-rock from end to end before Frenchy's turn came again. And all the time, Lieder continued to hum in a soft, plaintive voice, his hands folded on the butt of the cocked pistol in his belt. The grave was only a few inches longer than Coots, so it wasn't possible to lower him in gracefully. Matthew stood in the hole with Coots's feet between his boots, while B. J. 's straddled his head. The face had become uncovered in the handling, so B. J. covered it up again, folding the fabric over tenderly. They climbed out and stood on the edge of the grave until B. J. said, "I guess I should…" But then he shook his head miserably. "No words." He pushed the spade into the newly dug earth and stood with it, but he was unable to dump it onto Coots.
Frenchy took the spade from him and led him back to the Livery, leaving Matthew to fill in the grave.
Lieder stopped humming and followed the departing B. J. with his eyes. "Just look at him. That schoolteacher is a broken man. Broken by suffering and loss. You saw how he couldn't even try to take his revenge on me? That poor old man's so full of grief and self-pity that there's no room left for hate. And a man needs hate. Sometime hate's all that keeps us going. Oh, it's all the old fool's own fault, of course, but still…" Lieder shook his head and sucked at his front teeth. "I hate to see a man's innards all scooped out like that. He won't be any good to anybody until the suffering burns itself out, and that'll take a long, long time. And you know what that means, Matthew? It means you're all alone now. You can thank your lucky stars that you and me, we're cut from the same cloth." He chuckled. "Rough old burlap! That's the kind of cloth we were cut from, right? Eh? What do you say?"
Matthew stood stiff and unresponsive, his eyes defocused, not even feeling the hand that Lieder had laid on his shoulder.
"It wasn't my fault that jig tried to back-shoot me, Matthew. I had to punish him. I didn't have any choice. But you can believe me when I tell you that I wish to God it hadn't happened. I didn't want to harm anybody in this sorry excuse for a town. But people just won't leave me alone!"
Matthew didn't respond. His eyes were fixed on the space where Lieder was standing.
"You listening to what I'm telling you, boy?"
Matthew blinked and brought Lieder's face into focus. "I got to bury Coots," he said dryly.
"All right then, you do that. We'll talk about things tomorrow. I've got plans for you, boy. A shining future!" And he left, humming the old spiritual that he found so comforting.
Matthew reached down until the loaded spade almost touched the blanket, because he wanted to sprinkle the dirt softly over the head and shoulders, but it was sodden and clotted, so chunks fell in, making him wince. Only after the head was covered with a thick layer could he shovel in the rest of the pile at a slow, regular rhythm, his eyes calm and distant.
PROFESSOR MURPHY FELT MISERABLE, both drunk and hung over at the same time. He would have swapped his front seat in hell for a chance to lay his throbbing head down… but no! No, they wanted hot baths… those two stupid animals!.. and he had been obliged to fire up the boiler. The big one had soaked himself for half an hour before climbing out and returning to the Traveller's Welcome. But this little one had demanded more hot water. And now he was wallowing in the tub, the rising steam blending with descending mist.
The Professor rolled his bloodshot eyes and wondered how much longer he would have to stay there, waiting for this damned-Now what?
He watched that Dubchek kid-or whatever his name was-step out from the marshal's office and walk toward the barbershop, a six-pointed badge pinned to the breast pocket of his canvas jacket, and that big old shotgun over his shoulder, barrel in his fist, stock in the air.
Tiny had bent his knees until the water was level with his lower lip and he was blowing bubbles across the scummy surface. He looked up to see Matthew standing between his bath barrel and the wheezing boiler. "You still trying to get shed of that old cannon, boy? I already told you that nobody wants no ten-ton antique that don't even have… any… ammu…" His voice trailed off as he saw Matthew cock back the hammer. His eyes flicked over to the chair where the Colt he had taken from that nigger lay on his pile of clothes, then back to Matthew's face. A weary smile bent Matthew's lips, and his eyes looked gently upon Tiny… or rather, upon the place where Tiny was. When he spoke, it was with the soft burr that Mr. Anthony Bradford Chumms had described as "carrying more menace than any angry snarl."