The Transgressors Read Free Page A

Donna was like he was. She lived by the rules, never compromising, never blinded or diverted by circumstance. And Donna would—
    When he regained consciousness he was in Lord’s house, in the office of Doctor Lord, the deputy’s deceased father. Lord had been ministering to him, bathing his face, treating his many cuts and bruises with a variety of medicines.
    “Don’t worry,” Lord grinned at him genially as he opened his eyes. “I won’t mess you up none. Never got a degree, but I probably know more medicine than my Dad did.”
    McBride tried to get up. Lord pressed his chest gently, holding him on the lounge.
    “Right sorry about our little scuffle,” he went on. “Just couldn’t see no way out of it, y’know? Had to show you that if one fella starts misusin’ the law, another’n can do the same thing.”
    “So it was strictly a personal matter!” McBride said bitterly. “You didn’t care whether I had a gun permit or not! You—”
    “Ain’t everything personal?” Lord asked. “Any way of doin’ somethin’ that isn’t? You pulled this swindle on me, and it’s just business with you. There’s nothing personal in it. But—”
    “I negotiated an agreement with you for my company! An entirely legal agreement!”
    “Uh-huh. An’ I give you a beating in the interests of this county—an entirely legal beating. But it don’t make you feel no better, does it?” The deputy leaned forward earnestly. “Now, looky, McBride. I didn’t make any deal with your company. I made it with you, and it’s your responsibility to straighten it out—to try to anyways. If you’d just try, it…”
    McBride wasn’t listening to him. It would have made no difference if he had. In his struggle upward through the ranks, he had never belonged to a union. Insofar as he had a viewpoint, it was always identical with his employer’s. He was rigidly honest; that is, he had never broken a law. It was no concern of his if, as the instrument of his company, he perverted the law. There was a loser and a winner in every transaction. It was McBride’s job—his creed, his religion—to see that his employers were not the losers.
    Now, with Lord in midsentence, he arose determinedly and announced that he was leaving. “Unless you plan on giving me another beating. You’ve proved that you can do it.”
    “But—but wait a minute,” Lord frowned. “We can’t just leave things like this.”
    “That depends on you. I’ll never show my face in Big Sands again; I couldn’t after today. I’ll keep out of your way, you keep out of mine. Because if you don’t, Lord, if you ever stick your nose into my business without proper authority…”
    “Yeah? If I ever stick my nose into your business?”
    “I’ll blow it for you. Right through the back of your head.”
    Lord laughed softly. “Now, maybe I’ll give you a crack at doin’ that,” he said. “Yes, sir, I just may do that.”
    McBride did not appear in Big Sands again, going instead to another town that was twenty miles farther away. As far as his job was concerned, he was never able to completely reassert his authority. He fired a dozen men. He whipped as many others. But something had died inside of him, and he could not revive it. He went nowhere unless he had to. He talked to no one unless he had to. He withdrew deeper and deeper into himself. And he brooded.
    He brooded.
     
    Joyce Lakewood looked up from her compact as the convertible swung bumpily to the right. They were turning into the prairie, multitracked at this point by the treads of tractors, trucks, and other vehicles. Ahead of them, perhaps a mile, were the derrick and outbuildings of the drilling well. Here at roadside was a sign.
    To the uninitiated, it might have seemed ludicrously prolix. But in oil country it was commonplace, differing only in its details and their arrangement from innumerable thousands of such signs.
    It read:
    T. DeM. Lord Survey
    Pardee Co., Elsin Township
    So. 160, N.E.