Last Stand at Saber River - Leonard Elmore John - Страница 26

“If you’re looking for Lorraine,” Cable said, “you’ve found her.”

The two riders were watching Cable, but now their eyes rose past him as Lorraine appeared.

She seemed a little surprised. “How did you know I was here?”

“Your daddy’s got everybody looking everywhere,” the dark man said. There was no trace of concern in his voice.

“Is he worried?”

“About out of his mind.”

“I can just see him.” Lorraine stepped down from the doorway and walked out to them. “You two will have to ride double,” she said, looking up. Neither of the men made a move to dismount. Lorraine moved toward the dark rider’s chestnut gelding. “This one.” Still the man hesitated and Lorraine added, “If you don’t mind.”

“Where’s yours?”

“I have no idea,” Lorraine answered.

The dark rider’s gaze moved to Cable. “Maybe we ought to use his then.”

Lorraine’s face showed sudden interest. “If he’ll let you.”

“He will.”

“We can’t do it while the girl’s here,” the other man said then. “Duane wouldn’t have any part of that.”

“I suppose we got time,” the dark one grunted.

“All we want,” the other rider said.

The dark one swung down. Not bothering to help Lorraine, he walked past her, raised his hand to the other rider and was pulled up behind him. He looked down at Cable again.

“Long as we got time.”

They rode out, past the house to the horse trail that climbed the slope. In the saddle now, straddling it with her skirt draped low on both sides, Lorraine waited long enough to say, “That was Austin and Wynn Dodd.”

Cable frowned. “I don’t know them.”

Lorraine smiled pleasantly. “You knew their brother. Joe Bob.”

She rode off toward the slope, following the Dodd brothers. Before passing into the pines behind the house, Lorraine looked back and waved.

There were times when Janroe could feel his missing hand; times when he swore he had moved his fingers. He would be about to pick something up with his left hand, then catch himself in time. A moment before this Janroe had absently raised his missing arm to lean on the door frame. He fell against the timber with his full weight on the stump, and now he stood rubbing it, feeling a dull pain in the arm that wasn’t there.

Luz Acaso appeared, coming from the back of the building. She was riding her dun-colored mare, sitting the saddle as a man would, her bare legs showing almost to her knees. Two of the Cable children, Clare and Davis, were following behind her as she crossed the yard toward the river.

Janroe stepped out to the loading platform.

“Luz!” The dun mare side-stepped as the girl reined in and looked back at him.

“Come over here.”

She held the horse, standing almost forty feet from the platform. “I can hear you,” she said.

“Maybe I don’t want to shout.”

“Then you come over here!”

Don’t ruffle her, Janroe thought. Something was bothering her. He had first noticed it as she served him his breakfast. She seldom spoke unless he said something to her first, so her silence this morning wasn’t unusual. Still, he had sensed a change in her. Her face was somber, without expression, yet he could feel a new tension between them. Even when she served him she avoided his eyes and seemed to reach out to place the coffee and food before him, as if afraid to come too close to him.

That was it. As if she was guarding something in her mind. As if she was so conscious of what she was thinking, she felt that if he looked in her eyes or even came too close to her, he would see it.

But while he was eating he would feel her eyes on him, watching him carefully, intently; although when he looked up from his plate she would be turning away or picking something up from the stove.

Now she was riding down to Hidalgo. Tonight there would be a gun shipment and Luz would lead it to the store, making sure the way was clear. Janroe said, “You’re leaving a little early, aren’t you?”

“I want to have time to see my brother.”

“About what?”

“Nothing.”

“You seem anxious enough over nothing.”

“I want to see him, that’s all.” She waited a moment longer, watching Janroe, but when he said no more she flicked the reins and moved on across the yard. Janroe watched her pass into the willows and even after she was out of sight he continued to stare at the trees. What was it about her-was she more confident? More sure of herself since the Cables had come home. Afraid when she was alone with him, still somewhat more confident.

He noticed the Cable children then. Clare and Davis were still in the front yard, standing close to each other now and looking up at him on the platform.

“I told you once to play in the back,” Janroe called out. “I’m not going to tell you again. I’ll get a stick next time, you understand?”

Clare stood rigid. Davis nodded with a small jerk of his head and reached for Clare’s arm. They turned to go.

“Wait a minute.” Janroe looked down at them sternly. “Where’s your father? Is he still here?”

“Upstairs,” the boy said.

“All right.” Janroe waved them away and they ran, glancing back at him as they rounded the corner of the building.

What do you have to do to a man like that? Janroe thought. A man that finds his house wrecked and comes moping in to buy tin plates and sit with his wife. Cable had arrived about mid-morning and had been here ever since.

Janroe stood for some time holding the stump of his arm, rubbing it gently. He was looking above the willows now, to the hillside beyond the full roundness of the treetops. But it was moments before he realized a file of riders had come down out of the pines and was descending the slope.

Perhaps because his hand still held the stump, or because he had jarred it and imagined the pain still present; because of this and then abruptly seeing the riders on the hillside and for the moment not caring who they were-his mind went back to another time, another place…

There had been riders then on a hillside; directly across the cornfield and not more than eight hundred yards away, a line of riders appearing along the crest of the hill, then stopping and dismounting. He had seen that they were unhitching the horses from artillery pieces-three of them-and rolling the guns into position.

He had waited then, studying the position through his field glasses for at least ten minutes, or perhaps a quarter of an hour; so by the time he brought his men out of the pines, screaming at them, shooting one and seeing the other soldier who had been afraid suddenly run by him, the field pieces were ready and loaded and waiting for him.

Janroe himself was no more than a hundred yards out from the woods when the first shell exploded. The blast was loud in his ears and almost knocked him down; but he kept moving, seeing two, then three, men come stumbling, crawling out of the smoke and dust that seemed to hang motionless in the air. One of the men fell facedown and didn’t move. As he watched, a second and third shell exploded and he saw one of the crawling men lifted from the ground and thrown on his back. Close around him men were flattening themselves on the ground and covering their heads.

But the ones in front of him were still moving, and with the next explosion Janroe was running again. He saw the man who had been afraid a few moments before, running, breathing heavily, his head back as if he was looking up at the three artillery pieces. Janroe was close to the man, almost about to run past him and yell back at him to keep coming, and then the man was no more.

It was as if time suddenly stopped, for Janroe saw the man, or part of him, blown into the air and he could remember this clearly, the fraction of a moment caught and indelibly recorded in his mind. And it was the same sudden, ground-lifting, sound-smashing burst of smoke and iron that slammed Janroe senseless and cleanly severed his left arm…