Not how, Stevens thought. They fooled him someway. They didn’t even bother to tie him up. They just fooled him.
On Wednesday night he received a telephone message from the Mottstown agent that Tyler Ballenbaugh had filed his claim.
‘All right,’ Stevens said. ‘Send him the message Monday, to come in Tuesday. And let me know when you know he has gotten it.’ He put the phone down. I am playing stud poker with a man who has proved himself a gambler, which I have not, he thought. But at least I have forced him to draw a card. And he knows who is in the pot with him.
So when the second message came, on the following Monday afternoon, he knew only what he himself was going to do. He had thought once of asking the sheriff for a deputy, or of taking some friend with him.
But even a friend would not believe that what I have is a hole card, he told himself, even though I do: That one man, even an amateur at murder, might be satisfied that he had cleaned up after himself. But when there are two of them, neither one is going to be satisfied that the other has left no ravelings.
So he went alone. He owned a pistol. He looked at it and put it back into its drawer. At least nobody is going to shoot me with that, he told himself. He left town just after dusk.
This time he passed the store, dark at the roadside.
When he reached the lane into which he had turned nine days ago, this time he turned to the right and drove on for a quarter of a mile and turned into a littered yard, his headlights full upon a dark cabin. He did not turn them off. He walked full in the yellow beam, toward the cabin, shouting: ‘Nate! Nate!’
After a moment a Negro voice answered, though no light showed.
‘I’m going in to Mr. Lonnie Grinnup’s camp. If I’m not back by daylight, you better go up to the store and tell them.’
There was no answer. Then a woman’s voice said: Toil come on away from that door!’ The man’s voice murmured something.
‘I can’t help it!’ the woman cried. ‘You come away and let them white folks alone!’
So there are others besides me, Stevens thought, thinking how quite often, almost always, there is in Negroes an instinct not for evil but to recognize evil at once when it exists. He went back to the car and snapped off the lights and took his flashlight from the seat.
He found the truck. In the close-held beam of the light he read again the license number which he had watched nine days ago flee over the hill. He snapped off the light and put it into his pocket.
Twenty minutes later he realized he need not have worried about the light. He was in the path, between the black wall of jungle and the river, he saw the faint glow inside the canvas wall of the hut and he could already hear the two voices — the one cold, level and steady, the other harsh and high.
He stumbled over the woodpile and then over something else and found the door and flung it back and entered the devastation of the dead man’s house — the shuck mattresses dragged out of the wooden hunks, the overturned stove and scattered cooking vessels — where Tyler Ballenbaugh stood facing him with a pistol and the younger one stood half-crouched above an overturned box.
‘Stand back, Gavin,’ Ballenbaugh said.
‘Stand back yourself, Tyler,’ Stevens said. ‘You’re too late.’
The younger one stood up. Stevens saw recognition come into his face. ‘Well, by—’ he said.
‘Is it all up, Gavin?’ Ballenbaugh said. ‘Don’t lie to me.’
‘I reckon it is,’ Stevens said. ‘Put your pistol down.’
‘Who else is with you?’
‘Enough,’ Stevens said. ‘Put your pistol down, Tyler.’
‘Hell,’ the younger one said. He began to move; Stevens saw his eyes go swiftly from him to the door behind him. ‘He’s lying. There ain’t anybody with him. He’s just spying around like he was the other day, putting his nose into business he’s going to wish he had kept it out of. Because this time it’s going to get bit off.’
He was moving toward Stevens, stooping a little, his arms held slightly away from his sides.
‘Boyd!’ Tyler said. The other continued to approach Stevens, not smiling, but with a queer light, a glitter, in his face. ‘Boyd!’ Tyler said. Then he moved, too, with astonishing speed, and overtook the younger and with one sweep of his arm hurled him back into the bunk. They faced each other — the one cold, still, expressionless, the pistol held before him aimed at nothing, the other half-crouched, snarling.
What the hell you going to do? Let him take us back to town like two damn sheep?’
That’s for me to decide,’ Tyler said. He looked at Stevens. ‘I never intended this, Gavin. I insured his life, kept the premiums paid — yes. But it was good business: If he had outlived me, I wouldn’t have had any use for the money, and if I had outlived him, I would have collected on my judgment. There was no secret about it. It was done in open daylight. Anybody could have found out about it. Maybe he told about it. I never told him not to. And who’s to say against it anyway? I always fed him when he came to my house, he always stayed as long as he wanted to, come when he wanted to. But I never intended this.’
Suddenly the younger one began to laugh, half-crouched against the bunk where the other had flung him. ‘So that’s the tune,’ he said. That’s the way it’s going.’ Then it was not laughter any more, though the transition was so slight or perhaps so swift as to be imperceptible. He was standing now, leaning forward a little, facing his brother. ‘I never insured him for five thousand dollars! I wasn’t going to get—’
‘Hush,’ Tyler said.
‘ — five thousand dollars when they found him dead on that—’
Tyler walked steadily to the other and slapped him in two motions, palm and back, of the same hand, the pistol still held before him in the other.
‘I said, hush, Boyd,’ he said. He looked at Stevens again. ‘I never intended this. I don’t want that money now, even if they were going to pay it, because this is not the way I aimed for it to be. Not the way I bet. What are you going to do?’
‘Do you need to ask that? I want an indictment for murder.’
‘And then prove it!’ the younger one snarled. Try and prove it! I never insured his life for—’
‘Hush,’ Tyler said. He spoke almost gently, looking at Stevens with the pale eyes in which there was absolutely nothing. ‘You can’t do that. It’s a good name. Has been. Maybe nobody’s done much for it yet, but nobody’s hurt it bad yet, up to now. I have owed no man, I have taken nothing that was not mine. You mustn’t do that, Gavin.’
‘I mustn’t do anything else, Tyler.’
The other looked at him. Stevens heard him draw a long breath and expel it. But his face did not change at all. ‘You want your eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth.’
‘Justice wants it. Maybe Lonnie Grinnup wants it. Wouldn’t you?’
For a moment longer the other looked at him. Then Ballenbaugh turned and made a quiet gesture at his brother and another toward Stevens, quiet and peremptory.
Then they were out of the hut, standing in the light from the door; a breeze came up from somewhere and rustled in the leaves overhead and died away, ceased.
At first Stevens did not know what Ballenbaugh was about. He watched in mounting surprise as Ballenbaugh turned to face his brother, his hand extended, speaking in a voice which was actually harsh now: ‘This is the end of the row. I was afraid from that night when you came home and told me. I should have raised you better, but I didn’t. Here. Stand up and finish it.’
‘Look out, Tyler!’ Stevens said. ‘Don’t do that!’
‘Keep out of this, Gavin. If it’s meat for meat you want, you will get it.’ He still faced his brother, he did not even glance at Stevens. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘Take it and stand up.’
Then it was too late. Stevens saw the younger one spring back. He saw Tyler take a step forward and he seemed to hear in the other’s voice the surprise, the disbelief, then the realization of the mistake. ‘Drop the pistol, Boyd,’ he said. ‘Drop it.’
‘So you want it back, do you?’ the younger said. ‘I come to you that night and told you you were worth five thousand dollars as soon as somebody happened to look on that trotline, and asked you to give me ten dollars, and you turned me down. Ten dollars, and you wouldn’t. Sure you can have it. Take it.’ It flashed, low against his side; the orange fire lanced downward again as the other fell.
Now it’s my turn, Stevens thought. They faced each other; he heard again that brief wind come from somewhere and shake the leaves overhead and fall still.
‘Run while you can, Boyd,’
