Though Rafe couldn't follow the convolutions of Pike's reasoning, and didn't for a moment put any stock in his protestations, the Doc's final statement rang a bell deep inside him.
"How do you figure that?" he said.
"He's up to his ears in that place, been itching to take it over," Pike urged, "ever since he fixed up those papers for Bender. Spangler's the only thing that's stood in his way. You think he'd have steered you into the deal if he'd had any notion your name was the same?"
"Maybe not," Rafe growled, "but if Spangler is takin' all the profits outa the spread I can't see how he's hurtin' Chilton any. I would say he's playin' right into Chilton's—"
"That's because," Pike said darkly, "you don't—" and chopped off his talk as Bunny came wide-eyed into the room.
"Oh!" she cried, suddenly smiling, "you've got the bandages off. I'm so glad!" She looked at her father. "He'll be all right now, won't he? He'll be able to use them?"
Pike with his mouth puckered up looked undecided. He finally said, "I don't really know. If he keeps working them, puts in the time and the patience it will take, I'd say that right hand will maybe come out pretty good; but the left—They didn't leave much to work with. He'll get some use out of those fingers, but the first and third—I really ought to open."
"Not on your tintype!" Rafe snarled, glowering, and lividly thrust both hands behind him.
Bunny looked shocked. Almost reproachfully, she said, "If Daddy thinks—"
"By grannies," Rafe shouted, backing hastily away, "I don't care what he thinks! They're my hands, dammit! And they've had all the monkeyin' I'm goin' to stand for, you hear?" he yelled, bowing up like a cornered cat.
Bunny, appearing dismayed and bewildered, said, "But Daddy—"
"Never mind! I'll make out, don't you worry! Send me your bill. I'll pay it when I can, but don't either one of you come any nearer. I'm gittin' outa here an' nobody, believe me, better get in my way!"
"But you can't!" Bunny wailed. "Don't you know that's what they want?" She whipped around. "Daddy, tell him!"
Pike, sighing mightily, steepled his fingers. "I'm afraid your life wouldn't be worth a plugged nickel if they were to catch you out of this house right now."
Rafe, bristling with distrust, was half convinced in spite of himself. "'They'? What 'they'? You talkin' about that squirrel-faced banker an' his bought-an-paid-for sheriff?'"
Pike's eyes kind of goggled. His jaw flopped down like a blacksmith's apron. "Great Scott!" he exclaimed, sounding pretty upset. Peering nervously around, and with all his chins quivering, he cautiously lowered his elephant-like behind. With a considerable expulsion of grunts and wheezes he eventually got it settled in the chair. "Young man," he said, "the subject of your remarks is not one to be taken lightly." His simmering stare swiveled around to his daughter. "Show him, Bunny."
"Come along," she bade with her own glance averted, and Rafe followed her out into a room that faced the street. He trailed her over to the window. Being careful not to disturb the curtain she said, "Take a look at that."
Straight off Rafe didn't see a thing but the scenery. Then the wink of metal drew his narrowing stare to a scrub oak thicket a couple of hundred feet away. Barely discernible through the foliage was the shape of a squatting man.
Bunny touched his arm and they returned to the bedroom where she stopped beside her father. Following her eyes Rafe went again to look out. Another man was waiting in the rocks beyond the shed from which, the first time he'd quit this place, he'd got Bathsheba. "Well?" he said, staring hard at Pike. "What's about it?"
"If this were Chilton's doing," Bunny's father said, "they'd not need to be under cover."
But Rafe wasn't ready to holler calf rope yet. "Maybe," he said, "his tin-badge" had other fish to fry."
"You can't have it both ways," Bunny exclaimed indignantly. "If the sheriff was hand-in-glove with Mr. Chilton, and it was Mr. Chilton's intention to put you out of business, you'd be in jail right now. To be made a public example of!"
"Maybe it didn't suit—"
"Boy," Pike said, "I've heard enough of that nonsense. The facts speak for themselves. That pair you've just looked at are a couple of Spangler hardcases, and they're obviously out there to make sure you stay put."
Not even Rafe's hardshell prejudice could stand up against that. But he wasn't about to step down without a struggle. "Then why don't this wonderful Dry Bottom badge-toter make 'em clear out or shove 'em in the clink?"
Bunny, looking flustered, clouded up to say resentfully, "Nobody with a lick of sense would go out of his way to tangle with Spangler."
"Well, isn't that just fine!" Rafe scowled. "What's a feller have to do to get protection around here?"
"Mostly, around here," Pike said, staring back at him, "a crock is expected to stand on its own bottom."
VIII
Say what you will, that following week was the longest Rafe Bender had ever put in at anything. Whenever he looked Spangler's gunnies was out there. Maybe not the same pair all this miserable while, but there wasn't an hour there wasn't somebody at it, watching and waiting like a couple of damned toads. More than once he was almost tempted to step out, so fierce was the pressure, so frustrating the fury being piled up inside him.
He became hard to live with as Bunny had frankly said one day. But he was not too filled with his persecutions to forget the exercises Pike had prescribed. Hour after hour he worked his fingers, kneeding them, stretching them, flexing and bending them while the hate coursed through him like a heavy tide. He could feed himself now, could dress and shave himself too, do pretty near anything else but get out of there.
One thing he had made up his mind about: hereafter he was going to look out for himself, and the devil take the rest of them. There was no good trying to be a turn-your-cheek Christian in a land overrun by throat-slitting Philistines. From here on out he would be playing for Rafe Bender!
He could put together a smoke with his hands now, but the left, as Pike feared, healed up considerable short of maximum efficiency. Oh, it would pick up things and, after a fashion, manage to keep hold of them, but those first and third fingers didn't close the way they ought to. They tracked; that was about all you could say for them. He'd had to learn all over again to work at old skills that right hand had forgotten. Lifting and squeezing he kept both of them busy while he built back his strength and nursed his black fury.
Saturday the sheriff came, a washed-out, handle-barred, frame-shrunk old has-been whose rheumy eyes appeared frequently to seek, but never quite meet the pair staring back at him. Dropping his hat on the floor he took the proffered chair, heeled it back against the wall and said, "You've had a time, I guess."
Rafe considered that self-evident. Pike wasn't home and Bunny, after introducing the badge-toter as Ed Sparks, had gone back to the kitchen, leaving them alone.
"Mebbe," Sparks said now, "you better tell me about it."
"What's there to tell? Somebody beat the livin' daylights out of me, packed me off and left me out in them dunes to get blowed over with sand an' buried."