He took me by the shoulder with his left hand and lifted me to my feet. There was a light foam on his lips. His right fist was cocked. I strained against his grip, but my shoulder was wedged in a vise.
“Don’t hit him again, Hector. If you do I’ll shoot you. I’ve got to have that body with no bones broken.”
Land blinked at him stupidly and said in a changed dull voice: “I’m goin’ to break all his bones, Mr. Anderson.”
“No you’re not. He’s about my size. We’ll dress his body in my clothes and put my ring on his finger. Then we’ll burn down the ranchhouse with his body in it. The police will think it’s me, and they’ll stop looking for me. But if any of the bones are broken they’ll be suspicous.”
“Do you know who killed Bessie?” I said. “Anderson did. He killed Bessie because she was–”
“Shut up,” Anderson said to me. His speech was clipped and low, but it had a raw edge of uncertainty. “One more word and I’ll shoot.” He took a backward step so that his face was in shadow. The outer rim of the circle of light from the doorway glinted dully on his automatic.
“I want him to say his piece,” Hector Land said.
Anderson’s gun moved slightly so that it included us both in its threat.
“You know a gun can’t stop me,” Hector said.
“Anderson killed Bessie because she was going to tell the police about Black Israel.” My words poured out so fast I almost babbled. I didn’t know when a bullet would put a period to them, but they were my only chance.
“It’s a lie,” Anderson said. “He killed Bessie, and he’s trying to lie out of it. Stand back, Hector. I’m going to shoot.”
Hector Land stayed where he was beside me. His face was blank and heavy, but his small black eyes shifted continually from Anderson to me and back to Anderson again.
“Why should I kill Bessie, Hector? Did I kill the others? Did I kill Sue Sholto?”
“I wasn’t even in Detroit,” Anderson said. His voice had risen a full octave as if fear had struck a tuning fork in his head. He still held the gun but it did not encourage him.
“This man tricked you into doing his dirty work for him,” I said. “He pretended he wanted to help your people but when Bessie got dangerous to him he killed her. Are you going to let him go on using you, Land?”
“Put down your gun,” Hector said softly to Anderson. “I want to talk to you.”
His large body slanted towards Anderson in a slight movement which was as terrible as the slight movement of a stone statue.
Anderson said: “Stay where you are or I’ll fire.” The automatic shifted in his hand, and I saw his fingers tighten on the trigger.
All this time Land had been holding my shoulder, which ached in his grip. In the same moment he let go of me and moved swiftly towards Anderson in a crouching leap. The gun fired six times before it was knocked away. I jumped to the ground and searched for it in the dust, but couldn’t find it. When I looked up Anderson was standing on the porch white and shaken. Land was stretched out at his feet. I rushed Anderson and hit him with my left because my right was injured.
He kicked at my groin but only grazed my thigh. I closed with him and hit him with my left. I felt his nose break under my fist. He turned to run and I caught him from behind by shoulder and crotch and threw him over the railing of the verandah. He fell heavily in the dust, lay still for a moment, and began to get up.
I went after him and waited over him till he got up. Then I hit him with my left. One of his teeth showed through his upper lip. He saw that I aimed to kill him and closed with me groping for a headlock. He caught my head in a thick arm and for a minute I teetered on his hip. I set all the strength I had left against his weight, which was greater than mine. Finally I slipped my head free. I put my knee in his back and dragged him backwards with my arm around his throat. He fell heavily with me on top of him.
When he got up I hit him again with my left. The lower half of his face was bright with blood. Now a flap came loose over his eye and hung down showing the white bone. I hit him again with my left and he went down moaning. I pulled him to his feet and hit him again with my left. He kicked at me but lost his balance and fell on his back. I helped him to his feet and hit him again. My fist caught him in the center of the throat and broke his larynx. I heard it snap. When he fell down I let him lie. I was very happy.
Hector Land came down off the verandah then. He walked slowly and the blood ran down one side of his face from a bullet track across his temple. But when he pushed me out of the way I staggered my own length and fell in the dust.
I lay there and watched him kick Anderson to death. Anderson’s head became shapeless and muddy. There was nothing I could do and nothing I wanted to do. I was afraid of Hector Land and I wanted to see Anderson die. When I had seen him die I crawled around the corner of the house and sat in the shadow nursing my broken left hand.
14
AFTER a long time, during which my body was stiffened and chilled by the mountain air, I moved from my seat in the shadowed dust and looked cautiously around the corner of the house. Anderson lay where he had fallen, his face in the moonlight half-returned to indistinguishable earth. There was no trace of Hector Land except the destruction which I had begun and he had ended.
I left my hiding place and crawled in the dust below the verandah, clawing through it square foot by square foot, searching for the gun which Anderson had dropped. Not even the war had been able to convince me, but I was convinced now, that a gun was more precious than anything else. In a world of violence and terror a gun was the staff of life. My nerves were so shaken that I should not have been astonished if the mountains had spoken and threatened me, or if armed men had sprung up out of the ground. I sifted the dust for the gun as a prospector sifts gold-bearing sand, but I couldn’t find it.
Then came the one remaining thing which had power to astonish me, and the mental horror was added to the physical horror. Far off among the mountains I heard the hum of an automobile engine like a drone of insects, which grew louder as the car climbed the road towards the valley. I could see the beam from its headlights, first like a small faint dawn working its way across the brow of the pass into the valley, then like a white flare of torches flung intermittently against the night. Before the car itself came into sight I went back to my lair and squatted down to watch. With my whole body weak and sore, and without a gun, I felt helpless and declassed, without rights or hopes in a world which struck unpredictably against anyone who did not have a weapon and the will to use it.
The car bounded casually over the last ridge as if it were on a familiar track. When it began to descend into the valley I saw that it was a light roadster with the top down. When it reached the bottom of the hill and stopped, I saw that a woman was driving. When she stepped out of the car I saw that it was Mary Thompson.
“Mary!” I shouted, and ran towards her on knees which were almost unhinged by relief and reaction from shock and fear. She walked quickly towards me. Her hair, ashy in the moonlight, was blown by the wind.
She said, “Sam! What’s happened?”
I pointed to the body in the dust.
“Who is that?”
“It’s Anderson. Lorenz Jensen.”
Her mouth opened to scream and the tendons of her neck came out like fingers in bas-relief. She made no sound.
“Don’t look,” I said, and put out my hand to her shoulder to turn her away. But when she turned to me she had a small revolver in her hand. A wave of nausea swept through the middle of my body. It was almost more than I could bear to stand in a line of fire again, and to be invaded by the thoughts which sprang up full-fledged in my mind after long repression.