He had to keep her fighting. He leaned his Winchester against the free-stone fireplace and hauled out one of her limp hands to hold. “If you go before your son gets back he’ll never forgive you for leaving without saying your proper goodbyes. I’ll be mad at you, too.”
She sighed. “You’re always mad at me, Dan. Lord knows I’ve tried, and we loved each other, once. At least, you told me you loved me, and I really did love you. What happened to us, Dan? What happened that made you start hitting me instead of kissing me like you used to?”
There were times to talk sense and there were times a lady was in no condition to make sense. So he kissed her limp wrist and told her, “I’m sorry, honey. I was wrong to hit you and I’ll never do it again, hear?”
There was a little more grit in her delirious voice, as she told him, “You’ve told me that time and time again, Dan. Lord knows I want to believe you, but this time you even hit the boy. I thought you loved our only child, even when you’d been at the jug. But this time you hit Little Dan, too, and I don’t reckon I mean to forgive you this time. So let go my fool hand and let me fly on over Jordan, hear?”
He insisted, “Hang on. The boy is on his way with a trained nurse, and he needs you. We all need you. You got to hang on.”
She sighed. “Well, maybe just until Little Dan gets back, then. I would like to kiss my baby one more time afore I heads for heaven. Lord knows, I’ve served my time in hell.”
The next time he spoke to her she didn’t answer, but he could tell from her more relaxed breathing that she was more asleep than delirious, now. He wet the wool on her brow again and rose, still facing her with his back to the open door. He was sorry he’d done a fool thing like that when a male voice behind him demanded, “What are you doing in here with my woman, stranger?” in a tone midway between a growl and a whimper.
Longarm kept his hands polite as he slowly turned to face a disgusting mess with a twelve-gauge trained on him. The wife-beater was a tall, skinny drink of water dressed in ragged denim, gum-boots, and a blood-caked mop of greasy black hair. He could have used either a shave or a regular beard as well. Longarm ignored the shotgun trained on him, and said, “Howdy. My name is Custis Long. I was passing through when your son informed me the lady of the house was feeling poorly. As anyone can see, he told me true. So I’ve done what I could to make her comfortable until the boy gets back with some medical attention.”
The man scowled. “You had no right laying your hands on my woman, and if you’ve trifled with her honor, well, we both know what a man has to do about a thing like that.”
Longarm snorted in disgust. “You sure worry a lot about your woman’s honor, for a man who just beat her half to death, and we’ll see if it was only half, when that nurse gets here.”
The nester couldn’t meet Longarm’s knowing eyes. “That was a family argument I don’t have to explain to no damn saddle tramp,” he muttered. “You can leave, now. I’ll take over in here.”
Longarm said, “Not hardly. I ain’t about to leave an alley cat in your tender care, after seeing how you’d treat a wife and mother. As to whether I get to ride on, or have to take you back to town before I do, that will depend on whether she lives or not. Do you want me to take a look at that split scalp of your own whilst we wait? You ain’t bleeding fresh, but he surely gave you a good smack with the flat of that old axe, didn’t he?”
The man in the doorway raised the muzzle of his twelve-gauge as Longarm took a step toward him. “Don’t try nothing. I’ll kill you. I mean it,” he warned.
Longarm growled, “Aw, shit,” grabbed the muzzle in his left hand, and made the man let go the other end with a right cross that sent him flying out the door to land on his rump in the dusty dooryard.
As Longarm tossed the twelve-gauge one way and stepped the other to stomp some sense into the silly son of a bitch, he saw the man he’d downed had rolled up into a ball on one side to whimper and bawl, “Don’t hit me again! Please don’t hit me again! I’m hurt bad. My own son just slew me with an axe and I ain’t in no shape to fight right now.”
Longarm kicked him in the ribs to shut him up. “Get up and show some grit, you yellow-bellied nothing-much. Look, I’m taking my gun rig off. I’m tossing it aside, so’s you can show me what a ferocious he-man you are. Get up and fight a man, instead of women and children, for a change. Don’t you want the world to admire how ferocious you are? Ain’t that the whole point of all your man-of-the-house heroics?”
Big Dan, as he’d made them call him, stayed right where he was, at Longarm’s feet, as he blubbered, “I can’t fight you, I’m hurt, and you’re too big.”
Longarm sunk another boot tip into him, spat on him, and said, “You got that backwards. A grown man would be too big for you if you was feeling fine and he was five feet tall. Me or any other grown man could piss on you right now, if I felt like pissing right now, and you’d just enjoy the shower like the shit-eating dog you are. Ain’t that right? Ain’t you nothing but a whimper-faced woman-striking shit-eating dog?”
The man groveling at his feet didn’t answer until Longarm toed him again and made him say it aloud, every word. Then Longarm strode over to recover his gun rig from the grass, strap it back on, and say, “You can get up now. I won’t hit you no more, now that we’ve both agreed on what you are. We’d best have a look at that scalp, and your upper lip’s getting a mite fat, too.”
He led the man back inside and sat him in a corner on a nail keg. Then he stood over him with the canteen and a dish cloth, saying, “hold still. I only mean to wash the yard dirt off and let you scab clean. Chicken-dust in a cut can infect nasty as hell.”
The slightly injured man whimpered as Longarm tried to clean him up a little. Longarm said, “Mat scalp could do with a few stitches, but it ain’t so bad.”
Big Dan said, “My own boy done that to me. Hit his own dear daddy with an axe, he did!”
Longarm said, “Good for him. Had he buried the blade in your thick skull, there ain’t a jury in this country as would have found him guilty of anything more than doing right by his own mother. I want you to ponder them words, you dumb bastard. I fear your days as the ferocious ruler of this pathetic roost are numbered. Your boy’s growed big enough to fight you back like a man, and we both know woman-beaters ain’t up to fighting men, don’t we?”
The man of the house sobbed, “I never meant to hurt the boy. I never meant to really hurt Blanche, yonder. But she kept nagging me and nagging me, and you’ve no idea how sharp that little gal’s tongue can cut a man when she really gets to work on him about every bitty little mistake he’s ever made.”
Longarm said, “You’re wrong. Show me a man who ain’t been fussed at by a woman and I’ll show you a deaf monk. That’s just the way the Good Lord created the unfair sex. It ain’t their fault. It ain’t our fault. It’s just the way men and women was created. Women get to fuss at us because they ain’t big and strong enough to beat us up. We got to take it from ‘em because that’s just their nature and it just ain’t right to beat up anybody smaller, softer, and prettier than you are. Even if they ain’t pretty no more.”
“But she kept going on and on about how shiftless I am and how poor we’ve ever been,” Big Dan protested.
“I ain’t finished. But since you brought it up, I can see as good as any woman that you are shiftless and poor. I don’t know why you picked such a poor place to homestead any more than she did. But you did, and you’re either mighty lazy when you’re sober or drunk most of the time. For this spread is a disgrace and you know it. It wouldn’t cost you a cent to chink these walls with free mud and straw. A man with the ambition of a robin-bird would have sodded the roof by now, and at least drilled in some turnips and spuds. But let that go. I suspect she’d already told you that much, and more, before you beat her half to death. Let’s talk about why men beat women in the first damn place.”