Last Stand at Saber River

by Elmore Leonard

  “Now you can get up,” Janroe said.

  Cable rose. He stretched the stiffness from his body, working his shoulder to relieve the sharp muscle strain, his eyes returning to Janroe now and seeing the Walker in Janroe’s belt, tight against his stomach.

  “Did you prove something by that?”

  “I want you to know,” Janroe said, “that I’m not just passing the time of day.”

  “There’s probably an easier way.”

  “No.” Janroe shook his head slowly. “I want you to realize that I could have killed you. That I’d do it in a minute if I thought I had to. I want that to sink into your head.”

  “You wouldn’t have a reason.”

  “The reason’s behind you. Four cases of Enfield rifles. They’re more important than any one man’s life. More important than yours—”

  Cable stopped him. “You’re not making much sense.”

  “Or more important than the lives of Vern and Duane Kidston,” Janroe finished. “Does that make sense?”

  “My hunting license.” Cable watched him thoughtfully. “Isn’t that what you called it? If I was in the gunrunning business, I could kill them with a clear conscience.”

  “I’ll tell it to you again,” Janroe said. “If you worked for me, I’d order you to kill them.”

  “I remember.”

  “But it still hasn’t made any impression.”

  “I told you a little while ago, now it’s up to the Kidstons.”

  “All right, what do you think they’re doing right this minute?”

  “Maybe burying their dead,” Cable said. “And realizing something.”

  “And Joe Bob’s brothers—do you think they’re just going to bury him and forget all about it?”

  “That’s something else,” Cable said.

  “No it isn’t, because Vern will use them. He’ll sic them on you like a pair of mad dogs.”

  “I don’t think so. I’ve got a feeling Vern’s the kind of man who has to handle something like this himself, his own way.”

  “And you’d bet the lives of your family on it,” Janroe said dryly.

  “It’s Vern’s move, not mine.”

  “Like a chess game.”

  “Look,” Cable said patiently. “You’re asking me to shoot the man down in cold blood and that’s what I can’t do. Not for any reason.”

  “Even though you left your family and rode a thousand miles to fight the Yankees.” Janroe watched him closely, making sure he held Cable’s attention.

  “Now you’re home and you got Yankees right in your front yard. But now, for some reason, it’s different. They’re supplying cavalry horses to use against the same boys you were in uniform with. They’re using your land to graze those horses. But now it’s different. Now you sit and wait because it’s the Yankees’ turn to move.”

  “A lot of things don’t sound sensible,” Cable said, “when you put them into words.”

  “Or when you cover one ear,” Janroe said. “You don’t hear the guns or the screams and the moans of the wounded. You even have yourself believing the war’s over.”

  “I told you once, it’s over as far as I’m concerned.”

  Janroe nodded. “Yes, you’ve told me and you’ve told yourself. Now go tell Vern Kidston and his brother.”

  End it, Cable thought. Tell him to shut up and mind his own business. But he thought of Martha and the children. They were here in the safety of this man’s house, living here now because Janroe had agreed to it. He was obligated to Janroe, and the sudden awareness of it checked him, dissolving the bald, blunt words that were clear in his mind and almost on his tongue.

  He said simply, “I don’t think we’re getting anywhere.”

  Janroe’s expression remained coldly impassive; still his eyes clung to Cable. He watched him intently, almost as if he were trying to read Cable’s thoughts.

  “You might think about it though,” Janroe said. His eyes dropped briefly. He pulled the Walker from his waist and handed it butt-forward to Cable.

  “Within a few days, I’m told, Bill Dancey and the rest of them will start bringing all the horses in from pasture. That means Duane and maybe even Vern will be home alone. Just the two of them there.” Janroe lifted the lantern from the wall. Before blowing it out, he added, “You might think about that, too.”

  They moved out of the cellar into the abrupt sun glare of the yard, and there Janroe waited while Cable went inside to tell Martha goodbye. Within a few minutes Cable reappeared. Janroe watched him kneel down to kiss his children; he watched him mount the sorrel and ride out. He watched him until he was out of sight, and still he lingered in the yard, staring out through the sun haze to the willows that lined the river.

  He isn’t mad enough, Janroe was thinking. And Vern seems to want to wait and sweat him out. If he waits, Cable waits and nothing happens. And it will go on like this until you bring them together. You know that, don’t you? Somehow you have to knock their heads together.

  Manuel Acaso reached Cable’s house in the late evening. The sky was still light, with traces of sun reflection above the pine slope, but the glare was gone and the trees had darkened and seemed more silent.

  Manuel moved through the streaked shadows of the aspen grove, through the scattered pale-white trees, hearing only the sound of his own horse in the leaves. He stopped at the edge of the trees, his eyes on the silent, empty-appearing adobe; then he moved on.

  Halfway across the yard he called out, “Paul!”

  Cable parted the hanging willow branches with the barrel of the Spencer and stepped into the open. Manuel was facing the house, sitting motionless in the saddle with his body in profile as Cable approached, his face turned away and his eyes on the door of the house.

  He looks the same, Cable thought. Perhaps heavier, but not much; and he still looks as if he’s part of the saddle and the horse, all three of them one, even when he just sits resting.

  Softly he said, “Manuel—”

  The dark lean face in the shadow of the straw hat turned to Cable without a trace of surprise, but with a smile that was real and warmly relaxed. His eyes raised to the willows, then dropped to Cable again.

  “Still hiding in trees,” Manuel said. “Like when the Apache would come. Never be where they think you are.”

  Cable was smiling. “We learned that, Manolo.”

  “Now to be used on a man named Kidston,” Manuel said. “Did you think I was him coming?”

  “You could have been.”

  “Always something, uh?”

  “Why didn’t you run him when he first came?”

  Manuel shrugged. “Why? It’s not my land.”

  “You skinny Mexican, you were too busy running something else.”

  The trace of a smile left Manuel’s face. “I didn’t think Janroe would have told you so soon.”

  “You haven’t seen him this evening?”

  “No, I didn’t stop.”

  “But you knew I was here.”

  “A man I know visited the store yesterday. Luz told him,” Manuel said. “I almost stopped to see Martha and the little kids, but I thought, no, talk to him first, about Janroe.”

  “He wants me to join you, but I told him I had my own troubles.”

  “He must see something in you.” Manuel leaned forward, resting his arms one over the other on the saddle horn, watching Cable closely. “What do you think of him?”

  Cable hesitated. “I’m not sure.”

  “He told you how he came and how he’s helping with the guns?”

  “That he was in the war before and wounded.”

  “Do you believe him?”

  “I don’t have a reason not to. But I don’t understand him.”

  “That’s the way I felt about him; and still do.”

  “Did you check on him?”

  “Sure. I asked the people I work with. They said of course he’s all right, or he wouldn’t have been sent here.”

  Looking up at Manuel, C
able smiled. It was good to see him, good to talk to him again, in the open or anywhere, and for the first time in three days Cable felt more sure of himself. The feeling came over him quietly with the calm, unhurried look of this man who lounged easily in his saddle and seemed a part of it—this thin-faced, slim-bodied man who looked like a boy and always would, who had worked his cattle with him and fought the Apache with him and helped him build his home. They had learned to know each other well, and there was much between them that didn’t have to be spoken.

  “Do you feel someone watching you?”

  “This standing in the open,” Manuel nodded. “Like being naked.”

  “We’d better go somewhere else.”

  “In the trees.” Manuel smiled.

  He took his horse to the barn and came back, walking with a slow, stiff-legged stride, his hand lightly on the Colt that was holstered low on his right side, holding it to his leg. He followed Cable into the willows. Then, sitting down next to him at the edge of the cutback, Manuel noticed the horse herd far out in the meadow beyond the river.

  “You let Vern’s horses stay?”

  “I ran them once,” Cable said. “Duane brought them back.”

  “So you run them again.”

  “Tomorrow. You want to come?”

  “Tonight I’m back to my gun business.”

  Denaman, Cable thought. The old man’s face appeared suddenly in his mind with the mention of the gunrunning. He told Manuel what Janroe had said about John Denaman’s death. That he was worried about his business. “But I suppose that meant worried about the guns,” Cable said. “Having to sit on them and act natural.”

  “I think the man was just old,” Manuel said. “I think he would have died anyway. Perhaps this gun business caused him to die a little sooner, but not much sooner.”

  “I’m sorry—”

  “Thank you,” Manuel said, with understanding, as if Denaman had been his own father.

  “At first,” Cable said, “I couldn’t picture John fooling with something like this—living out here, far away from the war.”

  “Why?” Manuel’s eyebrows rose. “You lived here and you went to fight.”

  “It seems different.”

  “Because he was old? John could have had the same feeling you did.”

  “I suppose.”

  “Sure, and I think you going off to war, and the other people he knew who went, convinced him he had to do something to help. Since he couldn’t become a soldier he did this with the guns.”

  “Did he talk to you about it first?”

  Manuel shook his head. “There were already guns under the store when I found out. John got into it through some man he knew who lives in Hidalgo. He didn’t want me to help, said I had no part in it. But I told him if he believed in what he was doing then so did I, so why waste our breath over it.”

  “Do you believe in it?”

  “I believed in John; that’s enough.”

  “But what about now?”

  “He started it,” Manuel said. “I’ll finish it, with or without the help of this man who’s so anxious to kill.”

  “Something else,” Cable said. “Janroe told me that John was worried about Luz. That she was keeping company with Vern, and John didn’t like it.”

  Manuel nodded. “She was seeing him often before Janroe came. Sometimes it bothered me, Vern being around; but John said, no, that was good, let him sit up there in the parlor with Luz. If we sneaked around and stayed to ourselves, John said, then people would suspect things…. So I don’t think he was worried about Vern Kidston. If anything, John liked him. They talked well together; never about the war but about good things…. No, Janroe was wrong about that part. He figured it out himself and maybe it made sense to him, but he’s wrong.”

  “Luz stopped seeing Vern?”

  “Right after Janroe came.”

  “Do you know why?”

  “I think because she was afraid Janroe would kill him, or try to, and if it happened at the store it would be because of her.” Manuel paused. “Does that make sense?”

  “I suppose. Since she knew Janroe and Vern were on opposite sides.”

  “Luz is afraid of him and admits it,” Manuel said. “She says she has a feeling about him and sees him in dreams as a nagual, a man who is able to change himself into something else. A man who is two things at the same time.”

  “He could be two different people,” Cable said, nodding. “He could be what he tells you and he could be what he is, or what he is thinking. I don’t know. I don’t even know how to talk to him. He wants me to work for him and kill Vern and Duane because of what they’re doing.”

  Manuel stared. “He asked me to do that, months ago.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “To go to hell.”

  “That’s what I wanted to say,” Cable said.

  “But now Martha and the kids are living in his house and I have to go easy with him. But he keeps insisting and arguing it and after a while I run out of things to tell him.”

  In the dimness, Manuel leaned closer, putting his hand on Cable’s arm. “Do you want to find out more about this Janroe?”

  “How?”

  “I’ll take you to the man I work for. John’s friend from Hidalgo. He can tell you things.”

  “I don’t know—”

  “You were at the war and you’d understand what he says about Janroe. You’d be able to ask questions.”

  “Maybe I’d better.” Cable’s tone was low, thoughtful.

  “Listen, you’re worried about your land; I know that. But after this I’ll help you and we’ll run these Kidstons straight to hell if you say it.”

  “All right,” Cable nodded. “We’ll talk to your man.”

  It was still sky-red twilight when they rode out, but full dark by the time they passed the store, keeping to the west side of the river and high up on the slope so they wouldn’t be heard.

  Martha stood at the sink, taking her time with the breakfast dishes, making it last because she wasn’t sure what she would do after this. Perhaps ask Luz if she could help with something else. Luz, not Mr. Janroe. But even if there was something to be done, Luz would shake her head no, Martha was sure of that. So what would she do then? Perhaps go outside with the children.

  Her gaze rose from the dishwater to the window and she saw her children playing in the back yard: Davis and Sandy pushing stick-trains over the hard-packed ground and making whistle sounds; Clare sitting on a stump, hunched over her slate with the tip of her tongue showing in the corner of her mouth.

  They’re used to not seeing him, Martha thought. But you’re not used to it, not even after two and a half years. And now he seems farther away than before.

  That was a strange thing. She had waited for Cable during the war knowing he would come home, knowing it and believing it, because she prayed hard and allowed herself to believe nothing else. Now he was within one hour’s ride, but the distance between them seemed greater than when he had served with General Forrest. And now, too, there was an uncertainty inside of her. Because you haven’t had time to think about it, she thought. Or not think about it. This time you haven’t gotten used to not thinking anything will happen to him.

  For a moment the thought angered her. She had things to do at home. She had a family to care for, husband and children, but she stood calmly waiting and washing dishes in another person’s house, away from her husband again, and again faced with the tiring necessity of telling herself everything would be all right.

  Was it worth it?

  If it wasn’t, was anything worth waiting or fighting for?

  And she thought, if you don’t have the desire to fight or wait for something, there’s no reason for being on earth.

  That’s very easy to say. Now wash the dishes and live with it. Martha smiled then. No, she told herself, it was simply a question of stubbornness or resignation. If you ran away from one trouble, you would probably run into another. So face the
first one, the important one, and get used to it. She remembered Cable saying, years before, “We’ve taken all there is to take. Nothing will make us leave this place.”

  And perhaps you can believe that, just as you knew and believed he would come home from the war, Martha thought. So put on the big-smiling mask again. Even if it makes you gag.

  But I’m tired, Martha thought, not smiling now. Perhaps you can keep the mask on only so long before it suffocates you.

  She glanced over her shoulder as Luz entered the kitchen.

  “I think Mr. Janroe is going out,” Luz said. She pulled a towel from a hook above the sink and began drying dishes. “He’s in the store, but dressed to go out.”

  “Where would he be going?” Martha asked.

  “I don’t know. Sometimes he just rides off.”

  “Would it have anything to with the guns?”

  Luz looked at her. “You know?”

  “Of course. Don’t you think Paul would have told me?”

  “I wasn’t sure.”

  “Luz, do you have anything to do with it?”

  The girl nodded. “On the day the guns are to arrive, I ride down to Hidalgo in the afternoon. That night I return an hour ahead of them seeing that the way is clear. Manuel follows, doing the same. Then the guns come.”

  “Are you due to go again soon—or shouldn’t I ask that?”

  “It doesn’t matter.” The girl shrugged. “Tomorrow I go again.”

  “Aren’t you afraid?”

  “Not when I’m away from here.”

  “But you’re afraid of Mr. Janroe,” Martha said. “I’m sure of that. Why, Luz?”

  “You don’t know him or you wouldn’t ask that.”

  “I know he’s gruff. Hardly what you’d call a gentleman.”

  “No.” Luz shook her head solemnly. She glanced at the doorway to the main room before saying, “It isn’t something you see in him.”

  “Has he ever…made advances?”

  “No, it isn’t like that either,” the girl said. “It’s something you feel. Like an awareness of evil. As if his soul was so smeared with stains of sin you were aware of a foulness about him that could almost be smelled.”

  “Luz, to your knowledge the man hasn’t done a thing wrong.”