“Steaks,” she said.
“Good,” he said. “I like bovines better than edentates.”
“What?”
“I like beef better than I like armadillo.”
“So do I,” she said.
She used pot holders and took two plates out of a warming oven. Each held a medium-sized rib-eye steak, and a large mound of mashed potato and a smaller mound of fried onions. She put them side by side on the kitchen table, with a fork on the left of the left-hand plate and a knife all the way to the right, h looked like a double-barreled meal.
Billy was my cousin,” she said.
“He probably still is,” Reacher said. “Josh got it worse.”
“Josh was my cousin, too.”
“Well, I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Different branch of the family,” she said. “More distant. And they were both fools.”
Reacher nodded. “Not the sharpest chisels in the box.”
“But the Greers are sharp,” she said. “Whatever it is you’re doing with the Mexican woman, you should remember that.”
Then she left him alone to eat.
He rinsed both plates when he finished and left them stacked in the sink. Walked down to the horse barn and sat down to wait in the foul heat inside because he wanted to stay close to the house. He sat on a hay bale and kept his back to the horses. They were restless for a spell, and then they got used to his presence. He heard them fall asleep, one by one. The shuffling hooves stopped moving and he heard lazy huffs of breath.
Then he heard feet over on the boards of the porch, and then on the steps, and then the crunch of dry dust under them as they crossed the yard. He heard the Lincoln’s doors open, then shut again. He heard the engine start, and the transmission engage. He stood up and stepped to the barn door and saw the Lincoln turning around in front of the house. It was lit from behind by the porch lights, and he could see Hack Walker silhouetted at the wheel, with Rusty Greer beside him. The porch lights turned her teased-up hair to cotton candy. He could see the shape of her skull underneath it.
The big car drove straight out under the gate and swooped right without pausing and accelerated away down the road. He watched the bright cone of its headlights through the picket fence, bouncing left to right through the darkness. Then it was gone and the sounds of the night insects came back and the big moths around the lights were all that was moving.
He waited just inside the barn door, trying to guess who would come for him first. Carmen, probably, he thought, but it was Bobby who stepped out on the porch, maybe five minutes after his mother had left to bring his brother home. He came straight down the steps and headed across the yard, down toward the path to the bunkhouse. He had his ball cap on again, reversed on his head. Reacher stepped out of the barn and cut him off.
“Horses need watering,” Bobby said. “And I want their stalls cleaned out.”
“You do it,” Reacher said. “What?” “You heard.” Bobby stood still. “I’m not doing it,” he said. “Then I’ll make you do it.” “What the hell is this?”
“A change, is what,” Reacher said. “Things just changed for you, Bobby, big time, believe me. Soon as you decided to set Josh and Billy on me, you crossed a line. Put yourself in a whole different situation. One where you do exactly what I tell you.”
Bobby said nothing.
Reacher looked straight at him. “I tell you jump, you don’t even ask how high. You just start jumping. That clear? I own you now.”
Bobby stood still. Reacher swung his right hand, aiming a big slow roundhouse slap. Bobby ducked away from it, straight into Reacher’s left, which pulled the ball cap off his head.
“So go look after the horses,” Reacher said. “Then you can sleep in there with them. I see you again before breakfast time, I’ll break your legs.” Bobby stood still.
“Who are you going to call, little brother?” Reacher asked him. “The maid, or the sheriff?”