Free A Time for Hanging by Bill Crider Page B

Don't."
    "Harlot," Randall said.   "The Mother of Harlots and Abominations of the Earth."
    "No," Martha said.   "No."
    Randall's face was as somber as his voice.   "The Great Whore of Babylon."   He began to read again.   "'And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus.'"
    "She was your child," Martha said.   "She was your daughter."
    Randall continued to read.   "'For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities.'"   His voice rose in a frightening creshendo.   "Reward her even as she rewarded you, and double unto her double according to her works.'"   He slammed the Bible shut with a slap that echoed from the walls in the hot, close room.
    Martha Randall put her face into her hands and wept.

17.

    Roger Benteen rode into town with ten men, stirring the dust on the dry street.   It wasn't that he thought he needed them for anything.   He could handle his daughter by himself.   But he was used to having his men with him wherever he went.   He didn't like to ride out alone, and he hadn't done it in years.   It was as if having the riders along gave him a kind of authority that he might have lacked without them.   The riders impressed people in a way that Benteen himself might not have been able to.
    If they knew him, as everyone in Dry Springs assuredly did, they were impressed anyway, but he took always the riders.   He may have felt he needed them because of his stature, which was decidedly unimpressive.   He was no more than five feet tall, and that was with his high-heeled boots on.   Too, his face never frightened anyone or gave them cause to look on him with favor.   Though he was nearly seventy years old, he still looked in some ways like a boy, with wide, curious eyes and a sensual, full-lipped mouth.   Those features, passed on to his daughter, merely added to her beauty and allure.   On her father, they presented an oddly feminine aspect that belied his true nature.
    For Roger Benteen was as ruthless as a starving timber wolf and as cold as a sidewinder.   He could look at a man with those wide eyes and a smile on those full lips while at the same time plotting that man's downfall and ruin.   He had not accumulated his fortune and his holdings by being as soft as he looked.
    He had no plans to be soft with his daughter, either.   She had never defied him before, and maybe she thought she could get away with it for that very reason.   Maybe she thought that everyone deserved one defiant act.
    Well, she was wrong.   Roger Benteen was not going to tolerate even that much.
    It was not that he was so fond of Charley Davis.   True, Davis had shown he was a hard worker, and he appeared to be honest and at least moderately intelligent, but Benteen had once hoped for more for his only daughter.   He did not like settling for second best, but when you lived on the edge of West Texas you had to take what you could get.   It was a hard fact, and Benteen had grudgingly come to accept it.
    So what he was left with was Charley.   There were other cowhands, but Charley was the one who had showed the most drive and initiative when given the chance.   Most of the breed moved around a lot, traveling from job to job, from ranch to ranch, never settling down on one for more than a few years at most.
    Charley, however, had stuck it out with Benteen for four years now and showed no desire to move on.   He had taken each new responsibility that Benteen offered him and made the most of it, and he had shown a quick grasp of every new task.
    When Lucille began to notice the cowboy, Benteen could have stepped in.   He chose not to because by then he knew that she wasn't going to do any better.   Charley would never be the man that Benteen was, but maybe that didn't matter.   He would be able to managed the ranch, with Lucille's guidance, of course, after Benteen was gone, and maybe that was good enough.   He would never