Lamarr Dean stood with his hand through the lever of the Henry, his finger on the trigger, but the barrel pointed down and almost touching the ground.
“Old Dr. Favor’s pretending he don’t see us,” Lamarr Dean said.
He moved me aside and motioned the McLaren girl over against the cutbank. “You all spread out so I can see my old friend.” Dean was looking directly at Dr. Favor then. “Things start to close in on you?” he asked.
“I’m afraid you’re beyond me,” Dr. Favor said, though not sounding surprised.
“Ahead of you,” Lamarr Dean said. “I’ve seen this coming for two, three months.”
“You’ve seen what coming?”
“Frank, he’s still pretending.”
Braden came up beside Lamarr Dean. “He’s used to it.”
“We’re going to Bisbee,” Dr. Favor said. “On business. We’ll be there two days at most.”
“No,” Lamarr Dean said. “You’ll be there just long enough to get a ride south. You’ll hole up in Mexico or else get a boat in Vera Cruz and head out.”
“You’re sure of that,” Dr. Favor said.
“That’s how it’s done.”
“And if I deny it, tell you we’re going back in two days?”
“What’s the sense?”
“He should be over here with a gun,” Braden said.
“No,” Lamarr Dean said. “He uses his ink pen. All you do is write down a higher beef tally than what comes in. Pay the trail driver U.S. government scrip for what’s delivered and keep the over-payment. Isn’t that right, Doctor?”
“Like he never saw you before,” Braden said.
Lamarr Dean looked at Mrs. Favor. “You pretending too?”
“I know you,” she said, pretty calmly, considering everything. “But I don’t remember him,” nodding to Braden.
“No, Frank wasn’t anywhere near. He was still in Yuma then.”
“I guess that’s enough,” Braden said. “We got things to do.”
“I was just trying to understand it,” Mrs. Favor said easily. Her eyes shifted to Lamarr Dean who she knew by now was the talker among them. “You were working for the man who had the contract to supply beef.”
“Mr. Wolgast.”
“And you found out about my husband.”
“Audra,” Dr. Favor said, sounding unconcerned but hardly taking his eyes from Lamarr Dean or Braden, while the rest of us couldn’t help but watch him. (My gosh, the things we were learning all of a sudden!) “Audra,” he said, “you know we don’t have to talk about our personal business to these people.”
Braden moved away. “Let’s get to it,” he said and nodded to Early who started unhitching the team horses. As he stripped off the harness and brought them out, slapping them and keeping them moving, the Mexican, who was still mounted, bunched the horses and started them along.
The road formed two tracks out across a grassy meadow that was wide, pretty wide across and stetched on at least a mile with slopes rising up on both sides. As soon as the Mexican was off a ways, Early mounted up again and started after him.
Braden was behind the coach now and we saw just part of him as he yanked down the canvas and started pulling the bags off.
Lamarr Dean started looking us over then, I mean to see if we were armed. He took a revolver from inside Dr. Favor’s coat, a small caliber gun that he studied for a minute then threw off into the brush on the other side of the road. He went on to Mendez, passing Mrs. Favor and the McLaren girl, and Mendez opened his coat to show he was unarmed.
“What about up in the boot?” Lamarr Dean asked.
“A shotgun,” Mendez said.
“See it stays there and you here,” Lamarr Dean said. He came on to me and I opened my coat as Mendez had done.
As Lamarr Dean looked me over Mendez said, “You think it’s worth it? You won’t be able to show your face again.”
“I appreciate it,” Lamarr said, “but don’t give me no advice please.”
“I would bet you’re dead or arrested in two weeks,” Mendez said.
Lamarr glanced at him now. “You won’t have nothing to bet with.”
“All right, then remember it,” Mendez said. “You already have witnesses.”
“I don’t see any,” Lamarr Dean said. Braden came from behind the coach with a leather satchel. “Frank, you see any witnesses?”
“Not here,” Braden said. He knelt down to open the satchel.
Lamarr Dean moved on to Russell. “This one doesn’t look like any witness to me. Mister,” Lamarr said, “are you a witness?” He pulled Russell’s Colt as he said it and flung it backhanded, high up so that it glinted with the sun catching it, and down the road, bouncing and skidding way down it.
But Lamarr Dean wasn’t watching the gun. He was staring at Russell, up close to him and squinting, looking right in his face.
“I’ve seen you somewhere,” Lamarr said. The way he said it you knew it bothered him. He waited for Russell to help him, but Russell didn’t say a word. They stared at each other and every second you expected Lamarr to remember that day at Delgado’s, and you could just imagine him suddenly swinging that Henry rifle up and giving Russell the same thing Russell gave him, or worse.
Or Braden might say something about “the Indian” and then Lamarr Dean would remember. You waited for that to happen too. But, when Braden looked up, the bag open on the ground in front of him, he said, “I’d say it was a good day’s pay.”
Lamarr Dean looked from Braden over to Dr. Favor. “How much you steal so we won’t have to count it?”
Dr. Favor didn’t say anything. He was a man in a dark suit and hat standing there watching, with one thumb hooked in a vest pocket and the other hand at his side. The McLaren girl, Mrs. Favor, Mendez, John Russell-all of them in fact just stood there patiently, as if they had stopped by to watch but didn’t have anything to do with what was going on.
“He figures he’s helped out enough without giving us a tally,” Braden said. He rose, handing the satchel to Dean who took it and transferred the currency to his saddlebags.
“About twelve thousand I figured,” Lamarr Dean said.
“Somewhere around it,” Braden said.
“He did all right,” Lamarr Dean said. “But I guess we did better.” He saw Braden looking at the two horses that still trailed the coach on a line. “What do you think?” he said then.
“I guess they’ll do.” Braden looked up at the coach. “And the two saddles.”
Lamarr Dean looked at him. “What do you need two for?”
“You’ll see,” Braden said. He motioned to me. “You get them down.”
That’s how I came to be up on the coach when they rode out. I threw down Braden’s saddle, then Russell’s, looking at him as I did.
Russell watched, not saying a word as Braden freed the line and pulled in the horses and slipped the hackamores off them. He put his own saddle on one horse and told Russell to put his on the other.
Right then I thought, they’re taking Russell along as a hostage. It made sense; they hadn’t bothered us up to now, but they certainly weren’t going to be so kind as to just ride off. Which turned out to be right. Only it wasn’t Russell they took.
It was Mrs. Favor. Braden brought the horse over to her and said, “I thought you’d come along with us a ways,” sounding nice about it.
And just as nice she said, “I’d better not,” as if they were discussing it and she had a choice.
Braden held out his hand. “You’ll be all right.”
“I’ll be all right here,” Mrs. Favor said.
Braden stared at her. “You’re coming, one way or the other.” And that was the end of the discussion.
He helped her up, Mrs. Favor holding the skirt to cover her legs as she sat the saddle, and they moved off down the road. Braden stayed close to her and neither of them looked back. We all kept watching, nobody saying anything. Dr. Favor in fact didn’t say anything even before, when Braden was forcing his wife to go with him.
Lamarr Dean mounted up then. He sat there cradling the Henry across his arms, looking down at the people there and finally up to me, thinking about something, maybe wanting to be sure he hadn’t made any mistakes.
He thought of one thing. “The shotgun,” he said. “Open it up and throw it away.”
I climbed down to the driver’s seat and did as I was told, emptying both shells before heaving the gun off into the brush. Lamarr Dean nodded. He wheeled around and took off after Braden and Mrs. Favor, not hurrying though.
By now Braden and Mrs. Favor were about a hundred yards off, out in the wide-open part of the meadow. Way off beyond them there was just dust to show that Early and the Mexican were up there somewhere driving the horse teams.
I felt the coach shake; I remember that. But I didn’t look around till a moment later. When I did, there was John Russell kneeling on the roof right behind me unbuckling the cartridge belt from his blanket roll. He glanced up, keeping an eye on Dean who was taking his time moving away from us. Russell slipped the Spencer out, looking at Lamarr Dean again, and that was when he spoke.
He said, “How do they get that sure of themselves?”
I didn’t know what he meant, and certainly couldn’t believe he intended to shoot Lamarr Dean. I said, “What?”
“How do they get that sure with the mistakes they make?” Already he was slipping a cartridge into the breech, loading it quick for single fire. I guess I didn’t say anything then.
He was busy and it was like he was telling it to himself. “Luck then,” he said. “They think they know how to do it, but it’s luck.” I saw him slip three cartridges from the belt and hold them in his left hand. All of a sudden he held still.
I looked around and saw Dean riding back toward us. Braden and Mrs. Favor, two hundred yards off, had come around and reined in as if to wait for him.
Lamarr Dean had put his rifle in the saddle boot, but now, as he approached us, he drew his Colt.
3
Lamarr Dean was close now.
“I pretty near forgot something,” he said. Then he noticed Russell up on the roof behind me. “What’re you at up there?”
“Getting my things,” John Russell said. The Spencer was down between his legs as he knelt there, sitting back on his feet, his hands flat on his thighs.
“Expect you’re going somewhere?”
“Well,” Russell shrugged, “why sit here, uh?”
“How far you think you’ll get?”
“That’s something to find out.”
Lamarr Dean heeled his horse, moving to the back of the coach. He stood up in the stirrups to reach one of the two waterskins hanging there, unhooked it, and looped the end thong over his saddle horn. Then he came back with the skin hanging round and tight in front of his left leg. He pulled the horse around so he was facing us again.
“You didn’t say how far you’d get,” Lamarr Dean said.
Russell’s shoulders went up and down. “We find that out after a while.”
Lamarr Dean raised the revolver, hesitating, making sure we saw what he was going to do. Mendez yelled something. I’m not sure what, maybe just a sound. But as he yelled it, Lamarr Dean pulled the trigger and the waterskin still hanging from the back of the coach burst open. It gushed and then trickled as the bag sagged, all the water wasting itself on that sandy road, and Lamarr Dean just sat there looking at us. He didn’t smile or laugh, but you could see he enjoyed it.
He said to Russell, “Now how far?”
There wasn’t supposed to be an answer to that. Lamarr Dean took up his reins and started around. Russell waited till that moment.
“Maybe,” he said, “as far as Delgado’s.”
Lamarr Dean held up, taken off-stride, and now he was sideways to us, his gun hand on the offside and he had to turn his head around over his shoulder to look up at Russell.
“You said something?”
“Maybe if we get thirsty,” Russell said, “we’ll go to Delgado’s and have mescal.”
Lamarr Dean didn’t move, even with his head turned in that awkward position. He stared up at Russell, and I’m certain that right then something was dawning on him.
He said, “You do that.” For a few more seconds he looked up at Russell, then nudged his horse and started off again with his back to us and holding to a walking pace to show that he wasn’t afraid of anything.
I kept watching him-thirty, forty, fifty feet away then, about that far when Russell’s voice said, “Get down,” not suddenly, but calmly and in a quiet tone.
I dropped down on the seat, ducking my head, and Russell said, “All the way down-”
And that last word wasn’t quiet, still it wasn’t yelled or excited. I saw the Spencer suddenly up to his face and I dropped, looking around to see where I was going and catching a glimpse of Lamarr Dean sixty feet out and wheeling his mount and bringing the Colt gun straight out in front of him, thinking he had time to be sure and bam the Spencer went off in my ear and Lamarr Dean went out of that saddle like he’d been clubbed in the face, his horse swerving, then running.
Russell must have been sure of his shot, for he was already reloaded and tracking the horse, and, when he fired, the horse stumbled and rolled and tried to get up. And out past the horse you could see Braden coming in. Coming, then swerving as that Spencer went off again, banging hard close to me and cracking thin out in the open. There was the sound of Braden’s revolver twice and I hugged the floor of the boot, looking up to see just the barrel of the Spencer. Russell was full length behind it now, resting the barrel on the front rail, tracking Braden with the sights and not hurrying his fire. Braden swerved again and this time kept going all the way around full circle and back the way he had come toward the small figure way out there that was Mrs. Favor, so you knew Russell had come close. At least Braden didn’t want any part of him right then.
I raised up. Russell was loading again, now that there was time, taking a loading tube from his blanket and putting seven of the.56-56 slugs in it and shoving the tube up through the stock of the Spencer.
“They’ll all come back now,” I said. “Won’t they?”
“As sure as we have what they want,” Russell said.
There was a space there where nothing happened. I saw Dr. Favor and Mendez and the McLaren girl, all three of them in a row, crouched against the cutbank where they’d gone when the shooting started. It was quiet now, but still nobody moved.
Russell was buckling on his cartridge belt, over his left shoulder and down across his chest, working it around so that the full cartridge loops were all in front. While he did this, his eyes never left the two specks way out on the meadow.
We had some time, but I did not think of it then. Braden had to get Early and the Mexican before he came back and they could be a mile off running the stage horses. I kept thinking of how Russell had brought up his Spencer and put it on Lamarr Dean, the way a man might aim at a tin can on a fence, and killed him with one shot. Then he had dropped the horse that was running away with the water bag. He had killed a man, sure of it, and in the same second he had known he must get the horse and he did that too.
The space where nothing happened lasted maybe a minute altogether. Then it was over for good.
Russell moved past me, frontwards, stepping on the wheel and then jumping. He was carrying his Spencer of course, and in the other hand his blanket roll and the canteen he and Mendez had used. (Little things you remember: there was no strap on the canteen, only two metal rings a strap had once been fastened to, and Russell hooked a finger through one of the rings to carry it.)
I don’t think he even looked at the others, but started off down the road we had come up, only stopping to pick up his Colt gun and shove it in his holster. Down just past there he left the road and started up the slope, moving pretty quickly through the greasewood and other brush.