The Conflict Between Ben Givens and William Harden

The conflict between Ben Givens and William Harden is a struggle over a stolen family shotgun that grows out of violence between their dogs, then changes when Ben decides he no longer wants the weapon. At first, Ben approaches the dispute as a search for the thief and a demand to recover what was taken. By the confrontation’s end, he treats the gun not as property to reclaim but as a burden he can choose to relinquish. The reversal resolves his part in the conflict without establishing reconciliation between the two men.

Origins of the Dispute

William Harden is associated with raising wolfhounds and sending them after animals. Ben connects that practice to a direct loss: William Harden’s hounds killed one of Ben’s Brittany dogs and maimed the other. Ben says he killed the hound that attacked his dogs, and identifies that killing as the reason William Harden stole his gun. The conflict is therefore reciprocal, but not symmetrical in what each man takes from the other: the dogs are harmed, Ben kills a hound, and William Harden answers by taking a weapon that belongs to Ben’s family.

The gun carries a history longer than the immediate quarrel. Ben later explains that it had been in his family for sixty years. His father used it to hunt birds before Ben did, and Ben acknowledges that he, too, killed many birds with it. That inheritance makes William Harden’s theft more than a dispute over an item, while Ben’s account also prevents the gun from standing as an innocent emblem of family continuity. It has been bound to repeated acts of killing across generations.

Ben’s Search and Resolve

On Joe Miller Road, Ben asks for directions to Wolfhound Orchard and drives south to the Harden property. The harvest is underway: bins crowd the siding, workers handle the fruit, and a tractor and forklift move through the orchard. Ben cannot identify William Harden among them. He has never seen the man’s face, though he believes William Harden would recognize him by his battered eye, a mark Ben regards as his distinguishing feature. The search thus begins with an imbalance of recognition: Ben is looking for a person whose appearance is unknown to him, while expecting that person to know him.

Ben parks the rented truck around a bend and prepares to wait. He recognizes that the day’s delays have functioned as a prolonged stall; now, he thinks, he is back on course, with nothing left to lose that has not already been lost. He plans to find William Harden in the morning, after resting enough to regain his strength, and take the shotgun back. This determination sits alongside physical limits: later, Ben rubs his persistently painful side and walks with a limp. His search is not presented as effortless bravado; it proceeds while he is hurt and worn down.

The Confrontation and Reversal

Before the face-to-face encounter, Ben tells Bea Harden that William Harden stole his gun. Bea describes him as a longstanding terror in the area and says his actions do not surprise her. When Ben explains that William Harden sends his hounds after anything that moves, she responds regretfully and says she wishes he had another hobby. Hearing that Ben killed one of the hounds, she understands why the gun was taken and says she will speak to William Harden.

Ben immediately asks her not to raise the matter. Although the gun is his, he says William Harden can keep it; he no longer wants it back. Bea objects that ownership is a matter of principle and later says they will recover it, but Ben repeats his refusal. He says the only thing he wants is to go home. That exchange marks a change in his objective before the final encounter: what began as a plan to retrieve the gun has become a wish to leave the quarrel behind. His answer about living on the other side of the mountains locates home elsewhere, beyond the immediate setting of the dispute.

When Ben finally addresses William Harden, the question of ownership is still present, but Ben reframes it through the weapon’s history. He tells William Harden that his father hunted birds with the gun and that Ben killed his share as well, before concluding that the gun had only ever been a bad thing. He then calls it cursed and says that all guns are cursed. The statement turns the confrontation away from a claim of possession: Ben does not argue that his family history makes the shotgun worth recovering; he uses that history to explain why he is done with it.

Meaning and Outcome

The physical arrangement of the final exchange makes the change concrete. Ben approaches William Harden despite limping and removes his glasses. William Harden holds a power drill firmly, like a weapon, and raises it as Ben comes closer. Ben tells him to take the shotgun and says he is passing it on and washing his hands of it. The encounter ends not with Ben recovering the gun or announcing a further retaliation, but with his explicit decision to surrender his claim.

That decision does not undo the harm between the dogs or establish that William Harden has changed. Nor does the evidence show the two men reconciled. What changes is Ben’s relationship to the object and to the pursuit: first he intends to take the family gun back; then, after describing its inherited history and its association with killing, he chooses to leave it with William Harden. His return toward the country where he grew up, accompanied by Bea, follows his stated desire to go home. In this conflict, letting the gun go is both a practical end to the dispute on Ben’s side and a rejection of the weapon’s place in the family story.