The Gun Fight by Richard Matheson Read Free Book Online Page B

Coles said in a low, menacing voice. Jimmy caught his breath and hastily brushed aside the tears that welled in his eyes, dripping down across his freckled cheeks.
    “Eat your food,” said Matthew Coles. “I don’t buy food to be wasted.”
    Jimmy picked up his fork with shaking fingers and tried to retrieve a piece of potato which kept rolling off the tines. He bit his lip to stop the sobbing and stuck the fork into a piece of meat.
    “What would you do?” his father asked.
    Jimmy looked over, his face twisted again with frightened apprehension. Robby looked up from his plate, his jaw whitening in repressed anger.
    “Well, answer me,” Matthew Coles said in a level voice, his fury mollified by the silence of his family. “Would you let some man insult your mother?”
    Jane Coles turned her head away abruptly so her sons would not see the mask of sickened anguish it had become.
    “N-no, sir,” Jimmy said, his stomach turning, tightening.
    “What would you do?” Matthew Coles didn’t look at his son. He ate his beef and potatoes and drank his coffee, all the time staring into space as if the discussion were of no importance to him. But they could all sense the threat of violence beneath the level of his spoken words.
    “I . . . I don’t know.”
    “Don’t
know
, sir?” asked his father, voice rising a little.
    “I’d, I’d, I’d—”
    “Stop-that-stuttering.”
    “I’d
fight
him,” Jimmy blurted out, trying desperately to find the answer that would placate his father.
    “Fight him, sir, with your fists?” Matthew Coles stopped chewing a moment and looked pointedly toward his nerve-taut son.
    “I, I—”
    “With your
fists
?” said his father, loudly.
    “I’d get a gun and—”
    The hissing catch of breath in his mother’s throat made Jimmy stop suddenly and glance toward her with frightened eyes.
    Matthew Coles looked intently at Robby, still addressing his younger son.
    “You’d get a gun?” he questioned. “Is that what you said, sir?”
    “Matthew, what are you trying to—”
    “You’d get a gun, you say?” Matthew Coles’ rising voice cut off the tortured question of his wife. “A gun?”
    “Oh, leave him alone!” Robby burst out with sudden nerve-snapped vehemence. “It’s me you’re after, talk to me!”
    Matthew Coles’ nostrils flared out and it appeared, for a moment, that he would explode in Robby’s face.
    Then a twitching shudder ran down his straight back and he looked down to his food, face graven into a hard, expressionless mold.
    “I don’t talk to cowards,” said Matthew Coles.

Chapter Eight
    T he Reverend Omar Bond was working on the notes for his Sunday sermon when he heard the front doorbell tinkling. He looked up from his desk, a touch of sorrowing martyrdom in his expression. He
had
hoped no one would call tonight; there was so much necessary work to be done on the sermon.
    “Oh my,” he muttered to himself as he sat listening to his wife, Clara, come bustling from the kitchen. He heard her nimble footsteps moving down the hall, then the sound of the front door being opened.
    “Why, good evening, Miss Winston,” he heard Clara say and his face drew into melancholy lines. Of all his parishioners, Miss Winston was the one who most tried his Christian fortitude. There were times when he would definitely have enjoyed telling her to—
    “Ah, Miss Winston,” he said, smiling beneficently as he rose from his chair. “How good of you to drop by.” He ignored the tight sinking in his stomach as being of uncharitable genre. Extending his hand, he approached the grim-faced woman and felt his fingers in her cool, almost manlike grip.
    “Reverend,” she said, dipping her head but once.
    “Do sit down, Miss Winston,” the Reverend Bond invited, the smile still frozen on his face.
    “May I take your shawl?” Clara Bond asked politely and Agatha Winston shook her head.
    “I’ll only be a moment,” she said.
    The Reverend Omar Bond could not