Dark Kill by Todhunter Ballard

Author:Todhunter Ballard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
Publisher: Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.

VII

Ma Benton was exactly five feet tall and never in her life had she weighed more than ninety pounds. Her husband had been six feet two and every one of her five sons stood over six feet. But she was the brains of the family, and always had been. Hers was the driving power that stirred them into activity, and, although all the boys were now fully grown, she still tried to dominate them as she had dominated them as children.

Condon had always found her both interesting and amusing, and it had been for amusement as much as anything else that he had first become involved in the Bentons’ illegal enterprises. He was a man turned bitter by life, who resented what organized society had done to him, and he had begun to take a sardonic revenge in plotting the minor crimes which the Benton boys and their wild-riding neighbors carried out. That he had gotten involved far deeper than he intended was due to carelessness and accident, and to his ever increasing drinking, and the fact that his practice hardly managed to pay his enormous bar bills. As he grew older, he had become more and more careless, but when Duke and Prince finally waxed ambitious and planned the hold-up of the express car with its box that was reported to contain over $30,000, he had drawn back. He, far more clearly than they, understood that there was a vast difference between holding up an isolated stage and robbing a few passengers, and holding up the through limited and thus bringing down upon themselves a flood of railroad detectives and Pinkerton men. But although he had refrained from having any part in the hold-up planning, he had done his best, once Duke, Prince, and Hy West had been captured, to secure them the lightest sentences possible. Although never appearing openly, he had arranged for the lawyer from Fort Smith, and paid for the defense out of his own pocket, knowing that if he refused, the Bentons would turn on him like hungry animals. But now, even though he had done everything a man could, they were yapping at his heels, threatening him with exposure for Dave Lawrence’s murder.

There was no arguing with the Bentons. Their ignorance was so enormous that plain logic made not the slightest appeal. He had drunk himself into a stupor, trying to think of some method that might stand even a slight chance of freeing the two brothers from the Territorial Prison, and had thought of nothing. But he dared not admit to the Bentons that there was anything to which he could not somehow find an answer. His only hold on the unruly family came of their belief that once he really put his mind to it he could figure out anything. He had taken half a dozen drinks and was sweating profusely as he dismounted at the corral fence and moved up across the sloping yard. He still had no answer, but the liquor had given him courage.

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