“Hear anything else?”
“I was curious … so I started talk about the fight between you and Runyon.
That started an argument … everybody takes sides on that fight.”
“Did you mention my name?”
“No … I don’t think so.”
It might have been any cow-country general store at that hour, with rain on the roof and the Kiowa sitting at a table under a coal-oil lamp idly shuffling a pack of cards in his big brown hands. Dutch and Spanyer sat at one side on the counter, swapping stories of the old days.
Hardy cornered Chavez as the two men entered and went off in a comer, arguing with him. They might have been any group of cowhands waiting for the rain to pass, but tomorrow there would be quick, fateful movements, a thunder of hoofs, perhaps the thunder of guns. Tomorrow they would be riding into Obaro, the town that was the nemesis of outlaws.
Considine watched, fascinated at the flowing, smooth movements of the Kiowa’s brown hands. The man was a marvel with cards … The old scar on the half-breed’s face stood sharply clear under the lamp. Spanyer turned to Chavez. “Owe you for supper.”
“That’s all right. You’re a friend of Dutch. You forget it.”
He took a package from the counter and handed it to Lennie.
“What the devil is that?” Spanyer demanded.
Chavez shrugged his fat shoulders. “A present from Hardy here.” Spanyer’s lips thinned down, and he ripped open the package, exposing several folds of cloth Lennie had admired earlier. Abruptly he thrust the package back at Chavez, then he turned on Hardy.
“When my girl needs clothes, I’ll buy them. Your kind will throw a brand on anything you can. Stay away from her, you hear me?” “Take it easy … old man.” Hardy’s tone was careless, and he underlined the “old man” with faint contempt.
Spanyer’s face stiffened. “Why, you dirty pup!” Hardy’s hand dropped for his gun, but Dutch was too quick. He grabbed Hardy, then stepped between them, stopping the half-drawn gun. Hardy wrenched at the hand, trying to tear free, but aware that Spanyer’s gun had come smoothly into position.
“He’s too fast for you, Hardy,” Dutch said. “Lay off!” Hardy was suddenly very still. Over Dutch’s shoulder he looked into the slate-gray, icy eyes of the old man and saw no mercy there. Something within him seemed to shrink back. He was afraid of no man, but he knew death when he saw it. Only Dutch’s intervention had saved him. He had never seen a gun drawn so fast before—except by Considine.
“He didn’t mean any harm!” Lennie protested. “He was just trying to be nice.” “Get over there to your room!” Spanyer gestured toward the building across the plaza.
Lennie’s face flushed, but she turned obediently. She walked put of the door, and Spanyer bolstered his gun. His eyes went around their faces, coolly measuring them, and then he followed his daughter. Hardy stood silent for several seconds, and his anger evaporated—his anger and his surprise. “Thanks,” he said suddenly. ‘Thanks, Dutch.” “Forget it,” Dutch said, then he added in a mild tone, “That’s a tough old man, so don’t think you’ve lost your grip. I’d never try him with a gun, I know that.”
The Kiowa shuffled the cards, the flutter of the deck the only sound in the stillness of the store. Dutch picked up his blankets and started across the plaza, and after a minute Hardy followed.
They were all tense, for the realization of tomorrow was upon them all.
Wrapped in her blankets in the room with her father, Lennie stared wide-eyed and sleepless at the darkness above her. She was not thinking of the excitement of the near shooting, but of Considine.
She had never known a man like him—he was so quiet and self-contained, almost brooding. And, despite the fact that he was an outlaw, she knew her father respected him—and Dave Spanyer respected few men. On the trail after their meeting at the spring in the old outlaw hideout her father had warned her: “They ain’t no good, Lennie, and it’s a fool thing that Considine has in mind. They’ll get themselves killed, and nothing more.” Restlessly, she turned over and tried to go to sleep. In spite of the rain it was still hot. Water dripped from the eaves outside, and the room smelled of soiled bedding and damp walls. She turned and twisted, and at last she sat up. Her father was asleep, and she looked toward him in the darkness, feeling a vast pity for him. He tried so hard, but he knew so little of how to be tender or gentle with her. Yet it was in him to want to be gentle. Was Considine like that?
It was close in the tightly shut room, and she felt stifled. Rising with infinite care—even though her father slept more soundly in these days—she went to the door wearing only her flimsy shift. She glanced once more toward her father, and then eased open the door and stepped out on the long veranda. After the hot, stuffy room the rain was cool and pleasant. She crossed the yard toward the stable, liking the feel of the mud between her toes, as she had when she was a little girl. Often when lonely she came to the horses, filled with the need to give affection and tenderness.
A flash of lightning revealed low, massive thunderheads above the mesa’s black rim. Somewhere above the storm clouds the moon was out, and a diffused grayness lay over the rainscape.
She walked to the barn and entered. The horses rolled their eyes at her, snorting gently in mock terror. She could see the white of their eyeballs in the vague light within the barn. She whispered to them and rubbed the neck of her mare.
The mare’s head bobbed suddenly, and Lennie turned swiftly to see Considine come through the curtain of rain and into the barn. She drew back against the stall’s side, frightened.
“You shouldn’t be out here at this hour, Lennie.” He spoke quietly, and her fears left her. “This is Apache country.”
“It was so hot and stuffy,” she said.
“I know … but you can never tell about Apaches. They don’t like to fight at night, but that doesn’t keep them from prowling.” She had no words with which to respond, and she stood there, wanting to say something, to break down the wall between them, to let him see that she was a woman, to feel the tenderness she suspected lay within him. She had talked with few men, and those few were friends of her father’s, and older than she. “I shouldn’t be talking to you,” he said gloomily. “I’m no kind of a man to talk to a girl like you.”
“I … I like you.”
She said it hesitantly, feeling herself blush at saying such a thing to a man she scarcely knew. It was the first time she had said that to any man, and she was very still inside herself with the wonder of it. “I’m an outlaw.”
“I know.”
They stood together, facing each other, only a few feet apart, and on the roof above them the rain fell with a pleasant, soothing sound. The thunder had retreated sullenly into the canyons where it muttered and grumbled. She shivered.
“You’re cold,” he said. “You’d better go in.”
But she did not move to go, and he took her in his arms and kissed her gently on the lips. She held very still, trembling and frightened, yet liking it, and wanting him to hold her closer.
Outside the rain whispered and something moved. He reached behind him, feeling for the pitchfork. She had felt his hand leave her side, but had not divined its purpose.
“Afterwards … what will you do?”
“Go to Mexico.”
She knew about Mexico. Her father had told her that long ago men in trouble always went to Texas, but now they went to Mexico. Her father and mother had lived there before she was born.
“Will you ever come back?”
“Maybe … I don’t think so.”
He was listening, but there had been no further sound. Had he really heard something? He considered it, and knew there had been a sound that was not of the rain and the night. He turned around, lifting the pitchfork. He cursed himself for a fool, so preoccupied with the girl that he had come out without a gun. Suddenly a man stepped into the barn and faced them. It was Dave Spanyer, and he had a gun in his hand.
He gestured at Lennie. “You! Get to the room!”
As she went by him he said from the corner of his mouth, “And get dressed. We’re pullin’ out.”
Considine stood still, holding the pitchfork in his hand, but realizing he would not use it against this man, for he held nothing against him, and he could understand how it must seem to him.