Their weak point, Cable thought. Or their weakness.
Whisky…its effect on Joe Bob. His act of bravado, throwing the one-load revolver out after him, telling him to use it on himself.
What if he did?
What if they heard a shot and thought he did? Would they come outside? The one-load revolver could be Joe Bob’s mistake. His weak point.
There it was. A possibility. Would one come out, or both? Or neither?
Just get them out, he thought. Stop thinking and get them out. He crawled on his hands and knees along the water’s edge until he found a rock; one with smooth edges, heavy enough and almost twice the size of his fist. He rose now, moved back to the chest-high bank, climbed it and stood in the dark willow shadows. Drawing the revolver, cocking it, he moved closer to the trunk of the willow. Then, pointing the barrel directly at the ground, he squeezed the trigger.
The report was loud and close to him, then fading, fading and leaving a ringing that stretched quickly to silence; and now even the night sounds that had been in the trees and in the meadow across the river were gone.
Through the heavy-hanging branches he watched the house, picturing Joe Bob standing still in the room. Wonder about it, Cable thought. But not too long. Look at your friend who’s looking at you and both of you wonder about it. Then decide. Come on, decide right now. Somebody has to come out and make sure. You don’t believe it, but you’d like to believe it, so you have to come see. Decide that one of you has to watch Martha. So only one of you can come out. Come on, get it through your head! That’s the way it has to be!
And finally the door opened.
He saw a man framed in the doorway with the light behind him. The man stood half turned, talking back into the room. Then he stepped outside, drawing his revolver. Another figure appeared in the doorway, but the man outside came on alone. Cable let his breath out slowly.
He stood close to the trunk of the tree now, holding the rock against his stomach, watching the man coming carefully across the yard. He was not coming directly toward Cable, but would enter the trees about twelve or fifteen feet from him.
Now he was nearing the trees, moving cautiously and listening. He came on and a moment later was in the willows, out of sight.
“I don’t see him!” The voice came from the trees, shouted toward the house. It was Royce.
From the doorway, Joe Bob called back, “Look along the bank.”
Cable waited. He heard Royce. Then saw him, moving along the bank, stepping carefully and looking down at the sand flat. Cable tightened against the tree, waiting. Now Royce was near, now ducking under the branches of Cable’s tree-his revolver in his right hand, on the side away from Cable. Royce stepped past him and stopped.
“I don’t see him!”
From the house: “Keep looking!”
Royce started off, looking down at the sand flat again. Cable was on him in two strides, bringing the rock back as he came, holding on to it and slamming it against the side of Royce’s head as the man started to turn. Cable’s momentum carried both of them over the bank. He landed on Royce with his hand on the revolver barrel and came up holding it, cocking it, not bothering with Royce now, but ducking down as he wheeled to climb out of the cutbank and into the trees again.
From the house: “Royce?”
Silence.
“Royce, what’d you do?”
Take him, Cable thought. Before he goes back inside. Before he has time to think about it.
He took the barrel of the revolver in his left hand. He wiped his right hand across the front of his shirt, stretched his fingers, opening and closing his hand, then gripped the revolver again and moved out of the trees.
Joe Bob saw him and called out, “Royce?”
Cable remembered thinking one thing: You should have taken Royce’s hat. But now it was too late. He was in the open, moving across the yard that was gray and shadow-streaked with moonlight.
“Royce, what’s the matter with you!”
Cable was perhaps halfway across the yard when he stopped. He half turned, planting his feet and bringing up the revolver; he extended it straight out, even with his eyes, and said, “Joe Bob-” Only that.
And for a moment the man stood still. He knew it was Cable and the knowing it held him in the light-framed doorway unable to move. But he had to move. He had to fall back into the room or go out or draw. And it had to be done now-
Cable was ready. He saw Joe Bob’s right-hand revolver come out, saw him lunging for the darkness of the ramada and he squeezed the trigger on this suddenly moving target. Without hesitating he lowered the barrel, aiming at where Joe Bob would have to be and fired again; then a third time; and when the heavy, ringing sound died away there was only silence.
He walked through the fine smoke to where Joe Bob lay, facedown with his arms outstretched in front of him. Standing over him, he looked up to see Martha in the doorway.
“It’s all right now,” Cable said. “It’s all over.”
“Is he dead?”
Cable nodded.
And Royce was dead.
Now, remembering the way he had used the rock, swinging viciously because there was one chance and only one, Cable could see how it could have killed Royce. But he hadn’t intended killing Joe Bob. He had wanted badly to hold a gun on him and fire it and see him go down, doing it thoroughly because with Joe Bob also he would have only one momentary chance; but that was not the same as wanting to kill.
Cable found their horses in the pines above the barn. He led them down to the yard and slung the two men facedown over the saddles, tying them on securely. After that he took the horses across the river and let them go to find their way home. Let Vern see them now, if he put them up to it. Even if he didn’t, let him bury them; they were his men.
When Cable returned to the house he said, “In the morning we’ll go see Janroe. We’ll ask him if you and the children can board at the store.”
Martha watched him. “And you?”
“I’ll come back here.”
Bill Dancey came in while the Kidstons were eating noon dinner. He appeared in the archway from the living room and removed his hat when he saw Lorraine at the table with two men.
“It’s done,” Dancey said. “They’re both under ground.”
Vern looked up briefly. “All right.”
“What about their gear?”
“Divvy it up.”
“You could cast lots,” Lorraine said.
Duane looked at her sternly. “That remark was in very poor taste.”
Duane was looking at Vern now and not giving Lorraine time to reply.
“You mean to tell me you weren’t present at their burial? Two men are murdered in your service and you don’t even go out and read over their graves?”
“They were killed,” Vern said. “Not in my service.”
“All right.” Duane couldn’t hide his irritation. “No matter how it happened, it’s proper for the commanding…for the lead man to read Scripture over their graves.”
“If the head man knows how to read,” Lorraine said.
“I didn’t know you were burying them right away.” Duane’s voice became grave. “Why didn’t you tell me? I’d have read over them. I’d have considered it an honor. Two boys giving their lives defending-”
Vern’s eyes stopped him. “That’s enough of that. Duane, if I thought for a minute you sent those two over there-”
“I told you I didn’t. They went on their own.”
“Something else,” Bill Dancey said. “Cable’s moved his wife and kids into Denaman’s.”
Vern looked at him. “Who said so?”
“Man I sent to the store this morning. He saw the wagon and asked Luz about it. Luz says the woman and the kids are staying there, but Cable’s going back to his place.”
Vern rose from the table and walked around it toward Bill Dancey. He heard Duane say, “You’ll run him out now; there’s nothing to stop you. Vern, you hear me? You let me know when you’re leaving because I want to be there.” Vern did not reply or even look at Duane. Dancey turned and he followed him out through the long, beam-ceilinged, adobe-plastered living room, through the open double doors to the veranda that extended across the front of the house.
Dancey said, “What about their horses?”
“Put them in the remuda.”
“Then what?”
“Then work for your money.” As Dancey turned and started down the steps, Vern said, “Wait a minute.” He moved against a support post and stood looking down at Dancey.
“How do you think he did it?”
“With a Colt and a rock,” Dancey answered dryly.
“I asked you a question.”
“And I don’t know the answer you want.” Dancey walked off, but he stopped within a few strides and looked back at Vern. “Why don’t you ask Cable?”
“Maybe I will.”
“With Joe Bob’s brother along?”
“He hit you, too, Bill. The first time you met him.”
“Not that hard,” Dancey said. He turned away.
Vern watched him continue on. So now it was even starting to bother Dancey, this fighting a lone man.
He was almost sure Cable had not murdered them. He was sure Joe Bob and Royce had gone to him with drawn guns, but somehow Cable had outwitted them and had been forced to kill them. And that was the difficult fact to accept. That Cable was capable of killing them. That he could think calmly enough to outsmart them, to do that while having a wife and children to worry about; and then kill them, one of them with his hands, a rock, yes, but with his hands.
What kind of a man was this Cable?
What was his breaking point? If he had one. That was it, some people didn’t have a breaking point. They stayed or they died, but they didn’t give up.
And now, because he had handled Joe Bob and Royce, Cable’s confidence would be bolstered and it would take more patience or more prying or more of whatever the hell it was going to take to get him off the Saber.
Kidston had made up his mind that the river land would be his, regardless of Cable or anyone else who cared to contest it with him. This was a simple act of will. He wanted the land because he needed it. His horses had grazed the lush river meadow for two years and he had come to feel that this land was rightfully his.
The news of Cable’s return had caused him little concern. A Confederate soldier had come home with his family. Well, that was too bad for the Rebel. Somehow Cable had outmaneuvered three men and made them run. Luck, probably. But the Rebel wasn’t staying, Kidston was certain of that.
He had worked too hard for too many years: starting on his own as a mustanger, breaking wild horses and selling them half-green to whoever needed a mount. Then hiring White Mountain Apache boys and gathering more mustangs each spring. He began selling to the Hatch & Hodges stage-line people. His operation expanded and he hired more men; then the war put an end to the Hatch & Hodges business. The war almost ruined him; yet it was the war that put him back in business, with a contract to supply remounts to the Union cavalry. He had followed the wild herds to the Saber River country and here he settled, rebuilding the old Toyopa place. He employed fourteen riders-twelve now-and looked forward to spending the rest of his life here.
During the second year of the war his brother Duane had written to him-first from their home in Gallipolis, Ohio, then from Washington after he had marched his own command there to join the Army of the Potomac-pleading with Vern to come offer his services to the Union army. That was like Duane, Vern had thought. Dazzled by the glory of it, by the drums and the uniforms, and probably not even remotely aware of what was really at stake. But it was at this time that Vern received the government contract for remounts. After that, joining the army was out of the question.
The next December Duane arrived with his daughter. Duane had not wanted to return to Gallipolis after having been relieved of his command. They had made him resign his commission because of incompetence or poor judgment or whatever shelling your own troops was called.
It had happened at Chancellorsville, during Duane’s first and only taste of battle. His artillery company was thrown in to support Von Gilsa’s exposed flank, south of the town and in the path of Stonewall Jackson’s advance. When Von Gilsa’s brigade broke and came running back, Duane opened fire on them and killed more Union soldiers than Jackson had been able to in his attack.
Duane, of course, gave his version. It was an understandable mistake. There had been no communication with Von Gilsa. They were running toward his position and he ordered the firing almost as a reflex action, the way a soldier is trained to react. It happened frequently; naturally mistakes were made in the heat of battle. It was expected. But Chancellorsville had been a Union defeat. That was why they forced him to resign his commission. A number of able commanders were relieved simply because the Army of the Potomac had suffered a setback.
Vern accepted his explanation and even felt somewhat sorry for him. But when Duane went on pretending he was a soldier and hired four new riders for his “scouts,” as he called them, you could take just so much of that. What was it? Kidston’s Guard, Scouts for Colonel J. H. Carleton, Military Department of Arizona. It was one thing to feel sympathy for Duane. It was another to let Duane assume so much importance just to soothe his injured pride.
And Lorraine, spoiled and bored and overly sure of herself. The worst combination you could find in a woman. Both she and her comic-opera officer of a father living under one roof. Still, it seemed there were some things you just had to put up with.
Though that didn’t include a home-coming Confederate squeezing him off the river. Not after the years and the sweat, and breaking his back for every dollar he earned…
That had been his reaction to Cable before he saw Cable face to face, before he talked to him. Since then, a gnawing doubt had crept into his mind. Cable had worked and sweated and fought, too. What about that?
Duane’s logic at least simplified the question: Cable was an enemy of the Federal government in Federal territory. As such he had no rights. Take his land and good damn riddance.
“His family is his worry.” Duane’s words. “But in these times, Vern, and I’ll testify to it, men with families are dying every day. We are a thousand miles from the fighting, but right here is an extension of the war. Sweep down on him! Drive him out! Burn him out if you have to!”
Still, Vern wished with all his strength that there was a way of driving Cable out without fighting him. He was not afraid of Cable. He respected him. And he respected his wife.
Vern found himself picturing the way Martha had walked out from the house with the shotgun under her arm. Cable was a lucky man to have a woman like that, a woman who could keep up with him and who had already given him three healthy children. A woman, Kidston felt, who thoroughly enjoyed being a woman and living with the man she loved.
He had thought that Luz Acaso was that kind exactly. In fact he had been sure of it. But ever since Janroe’s coming she seemed a different person. That was something else to think about. Why would a woman as warm and openly affectionate as Luz change almost overnight? It concerned Janroe’s presence, that much Kidston was sure of. But was Luz in love with him or mortally afraid of him? That was another question.
He heard steps behind him and looked over his shoulder to see Lorraine crossing the porch. She smiled at him pleasantly.
“Cabe makes you stop and think, doesn’t he?”
“You’re on familiar terms for only one meeting,” Vern said.
“That’s what his wife calls him.” Lorraine watched her uncle lean against the support post. He looked away from her, out over the yard. “Don’t you think that’s unusual, a wife calling her husband by his last name?”
“Maybe that’s what everybody calls him,” Vern answered.
“Like calling you ‘Kid.’ ” Lorraine smiled, then laughed. “No, I think she made up the name. I think it’s her name for him. Hers only.” Lorraine waited, letting the silence lengthen before asking, “What do you think of her?”