“I understand it,” Abe said. “I understand he has got people thinking he is Jesus Christ, so that makes me a black devil from hell. I understand it, and you too, Bud. I put you and Billy on when your Daddy died, Bud, but I guess you have surely forgot that.”
“No,” Bud said. “I haven’t forgot it. But there is other things I can’t forget either.”
Curley said quickly, “There is some things better forgot.”
“You son of a bitch!” Abe whispered. Curley saw that he had his hand on the haft of his knife. His lips were pulled back white against his teeth, and the long wrinkles in his cheeks were etched deep. “You son of a bitch!”
Bud licked his lips. When he spoke his voice was dead and dry. “I’ve come against things like that, is all,” he said. “A thing happened there at Rattlesnake Canyon that I guess had to happen because of what’d gone before. So what went before was wrong, and I will try to see— Do you think it is easy?” he said loudly. “Because you think I am for Blaisedell against you, when I am not. And people here think the other way around, when I am not. But I am come against what we did in Rattlesnake Canyon, Abe. And against what was tried that night in the Glass Slipper when Jack would have shot a man in the back like you’d kill a fly. One fly, or seventeen flies.”
Abe sucked his breath in; he cried, “If you say I fixed it to back-shoot Blaisedell you are a liar!”
Curley tried to say jokingly, “Why, Bud, that kind of hits at me, don’t it? I thought that was my fight. My back-off, anyhow.” But he felt sick all the way down. He sighed and said, “Where you’ve gone wrong, Bud. You know where you went wrong? There’s been bad things done, surely, but you went wrong lining up against your own instead of trying to change them. Against your friends, Bud; against your brother! That’s no good! They are the most important people there is to a man; why, nobody else counts. Your friends and kin — Billy. You know that’s wrong!”
“He doesn’t think so,” Abe said, easily now. “You can see that.”
Curley said, “Do you think Billy run that stage and killed that passenger, Bud?” He watched Bud look down at his hat, and crease the top with the edge of his hand.
“Happen to know he didn’t,” Abe said.
“Luke says he didn’t, Bud.”
“But you’d have him hang,” Abe said.
“He killed a posseman,” Bud said tiredly.
“Oh, that’s right,” Abe said, mockingly. “Banging away at him and he was supposed to just let himself get shot up. Hang for just trying to defend himself.”
“Let him plead it then,” Bud said. “He wouldn’t hang if he got a fair trial. But he will be lied off for what he didn’t do in the first place, and stuck with it. No, he won’t hang and he won’t even go to the territorial, for you will get him off. And I don’t guess you will ever see how you killed him by it.”
Curley stared at him, uncomprehending, and Abe laughed and said, “My, you are a real worrier, aren’t you?” His voice tightened as he went on. “Well, I know what you want — you want us all to hang for that in Rattlesnake Canyon. Don’t you? You are like a hellfire-and-damnation preacher gone loco on bad whisky. All for a bunch of stinking, murdering greasers that wasn’t worth the lead it cost to burn them down!” He stopped and rubbed a hand across his mouth, and Curley thought of Dad McQuown in one of his fits as he saw the shine of spit in Abe’s beard. “But you were there!” Abe cried. “Shooting and hollering with the rest!”
Then Abe said softly, “Well, I am warning you, Bud.”
Bud got to his feet and stood, stoop-shouldered, facing Abe. All at once he looked angry. “Warning me what?”
“Why, how Cade knows you have been making talk he was out to backshoot Blaisedell.” Abe swiped at his mouth again, and Curley saw his eyes waver from Bud’s; they would not meet his, either. Then Abe grinned and said, “But maybe Billy will keep him off you, if he doesn’t get hung.”
“Cade must be scared I’ll tell Blaisedell,” Bud said slowly. “Are you, Abe?”
Abe grunted as though he’d been hit in the belly, and snatched for his knife. Curley leaped toward him and caught his wrist. It took all his strength to thrust that steel wrist down, and the knife down, while Abe glared past him at Bud, panting, his teeth bared and beads of sweat on his forehead. “You are to quit this, Abe!” Curley whispered. “I mean right now directly! You are making a damned fool of yourself!” And Abe’s hand relaxed against his. Abe resheathed the knife.
“Because I won’t,” Bud said. “And haven’t. That’s done. You can get out of here now. We have said all we have to say, I guess.”
Abe’s eyes glittered as Curley stepped back away from him. “Why, Bud,” Abe said. “I’ll take almost anything off you, and have today — because we’ve been friends. But I won’t take you telling me to get out.”
“Let’s go get some whisky and get along to Bright’s, Abe,” Curley said. “I mean! I’m not going to hang around here if I’m not wanted.”
“Go, if you want,” Abe said. Footsteps came along the planks outside, a shadow fell in the door. Abe swung around with his hand jerking back.
Pike Skinner came in, and Curley almost laughed with relief. Pike looked uncomfortable in a tight-fitting suit; he wore a new black, broad-brimmed hat and his shell belt under his sack coat. He halted as he saw them, and scowled. His flap ears turned red.
“Well, howdy, Pike,” Curley said. “That is a mighty fine-looking suit of clothes you have got on there.”
“Friends come in to see you, did they?” Pike said to Bud, in a rasping voice.
“Anything wrong with it?” Abe said.
“Yes!” Pike said, his face going as red as his ears. He squinted suddenly as though he had a tic. “Looks like something going on to me. There is two sides clear now, Gannon. You’ve got your pick!”
“You’ve picked, have you?” Abe said. “It was clear enough brother Paul already did.”
“I surely have,” Pike said. He stood with his hands held waist-high, as though he didn’t really want to make a move, but thought he’d better have them handy in case his mouth got away from him.
“Boo!” Curley said, and laughed to see him start.
Pike flushed redder still. He said to Gannon, “If you are with these people, say so. And get out of here. You have got your pick now, and I will—”
“What if I don’t pick?” Bud said.
Pike’s eyes kept moving, watching Abe’s hands, and Curley’s. Curley heard Abe laugh softly. “Nobody sits the rail any more!” Pike said.
Grinning, Curley rested his hands on his shell belt and stretched his shoulders. “Why, give me a good rail to sit for comfort. I will do it every time.”
Bud said nothing, and Curley realized that Bud could have made to please Pike, who was on the Citizens’ Committee, and decent enough for a townsman, by repeating the order to get out. Bud didn’t, and he respected him for it. Bud looked as though he didn’t give a good God damn about anything right now.
“Let’s move along, Abe. I can’t stand this being picked against. Hurts my feelings.”
“Going to Bright’s City, Pike?” Abe asked.
“God-damned right I am!”
“See you there.” Abe moved sideways toward the door. “See you, Bud,” he said. “See you when we all hang together.”
Abe went on out. Curley tipped his hat back onto his head, saluted Pike, and followed Abe out. He didn’t look at Bud. Silently he walked back along the boardwalk beside Abe.
“Let’s get riding to Bright’s,” Abe said in a stifled voice. “I hate this rotten town.”