Smiling into the receiver I said, ‘Such thoughts, Walt, from you!’
‘It’s possible...’ he said uncomfortably.
‘It sure is. But there’s nothing to indicate it except for their not being married.’
‘Then you don’t think...?’
‘I’d say they’re certainly centred on each other, but how far it goes I couldn’t guess. The only time I’ve seen them together they’ve had their hands full of punts and guns.’
‘Yeah... well, maybe crime is how it takes them.’
I agreed that it probably was, and asked him if he’d got Matt set up for the insurance meeting.
‘I sure have,’ he said with satisfaction. ‘I called him this afternoon. It must have been soon after he’d been talking to Offen, I guess, because he seemed to be glad enough to be given a reason for going to Las Vegas. I suggested six PM which sounded all right, but he himself asked if I could make it later.’
‘He’ll probably want to feed the horses about then, when the day gets cooler,’ I said. ‘And those horses would come first.’
‘Yeah. At three million for two, they sure would. It beats me why he doesn’t guard them every minute.’
‘Against what?’ I said.
‘You got a point,’ he conceded. ‘Only us. And we’re obviously concentrating on the two at Orpheus. Right?’
‘Right.’
‘Anyway, Matt said could I make it later than six, and we agreed in the end on nine. That should mean he’ll take that gander at the roulette tables on his way home, and maybe give us most of the night to get the horses clear.’
‘Good,’ I said. ‘That’s fine. But Walt...’
‘Yes?’
‘Take care.’
‘Go teach your grandmother,’ he said, and I smiled wryly and asked him if he’d heard from Sam Hengelman.
‘Sure, he called this evening, like you asked. He’d reached Santa Rosa in New Mexico and he was going on to Albuquerque before stopping for the night. He said he’d be in Kingman by four or five tomorrow afternoon... today, I suppose, technically... and he’ll meet you at the Mojave Motel. I told him the return trip wouldn’t be starting before eight, so he’s going to take a room there and catch a couple of hours’ sleep.’
‘Thanks, Walt, that’s great,’ I said.
‘We’re all set, then?’ There was a hint of unease in his voice, and it raised prickles again in my early warning mechanism.
‘You don’t have to go to Las Vegas,’ I said reasonably. ‘We’ve time enough without it.’
‘I’m going,’ he said. ‘And that’s that.’
‘Well... all right. I think we could do with a checkpoint, though, in case anything goes wrong. Let’s say you wait in the lobby of the Angel Inn from eight to eight-thirty tomorrow evening. That’s where I stayed. It’s right on the edge of Las Vegas, but it’s an easy trip to Pittsville Boulevard. I’ll call you there sometime during that half hour; and if I don‘t, you stay put, and don’t go out to Matt’s house.’
‘OK,’ he said, and although he tried, there was distinct relief in his voice.
We disconnected, and I ate a sandwich and drank coffee at an all night lunch counter at the bus station before returning to my hired car and pointing its nose again towards the farm and the hills. The two flat stones came up again in the headlights, and re-stowing the car in its former hiding place, I finished the journey on foot.
Back in the shelter of the same jagged rock I tried for a time to sleep. There was still an hour or more before dawn, and the sun wouldn’t be too hot for a while after that, but in spite of knowing that I’d get no rest at all during the following night, my brain stayed obstinately awake. I supposed an inability to sleep on open ground surrounded by cacti and within yelling distance of a man who’d kill me if he had a chance could hardly be classed as insomnia in the ordinary way: but I had no illusions. That was precisely what it was. The restless, racing thoughts, the electrical awareness, the feeling that everything in one’s body was working full steam ahead and wouldn’t slow down; I knew all the symptoms much too well. One could lie with eyes shut and relax every muscle until one couldn’t tell where one’s arms and legs were, and still sleep wouldn’t come. Breathe deeply, count all the sheep of Canterbury, repeat once-learnt verses; nothing worked.
The sun came up and shone in my eyes. Inching out of its revealing spotlight I retreated round the side of the rock and looked down to the farm through the binoculars. No movement. At five-thirty Matt was still in bed.
I put down the glasses and thought about a cigarette. There were only four left in the packet. Sighing, I reflected that I could easily have bought some in Kingman, if I’d given it a thought. It was going to be a long day. All I’d brought with me beside the binoculars was a bottle of water, a pair of sunglasses, and the Luger in my belt.
At seven-thirty Matt came out through the rickety screen door of the house, and stood in the yard stretching and looking around at the cloudless cobalt blue sky. Then he went across to the barn and poked his head briefly inside.
Satisfied that the gold was still in the bank, he fetched buckets of water and joined it for long enough to muck out the stalls and see to the feed. After a time he came out with a barrowful of droppings and wheeled it away to empty on the far side of the barn, out of my sight.
The hens got their grits, and the calves in a near compound their ration of water, and Matt retired for his breakfast. The morning wore on. The temperature rose. Nothing else happened.
At noon I stood up for a while behind the rock to stretch my legs and restore some feeling to the bits that were numb from sitting. I drank some water and smoked a cigarette, and put on the sunglasses to circumvent a hovering glare headache: and having exhausted my repertoire except for a few shots from the Luger, folded myself back into the wedge of slowly moving shade, and took another look at the farm.
Status quo entirely unchanged. Maybe Matt was asleep, or telephoning, or watching television, or inventing systems for his trip to Las Vegas. He certainly was not doing much farming. Nor did he apparently propose to exercise the horses. They stayed in their stalls from dawn to dusk.
By two I knew intimately every spiny plant growing within a radius of ten feet of my rock, and found my eyes going far oftener to the broad sweep of desert on my left than to the dirty little farm below. The desert was clean in its way, and fierce, and starkly beautiful. All hills and endless sky. Parched sandy grey dust and scratchy cactus. Killing heat. A wild, uncompromising, lonely place.
When I first felt the urge just to get up and walk away into it I dragged my eyes dutifully back to the farm and smoked the second cigarette and thought firmly about Matt and the horses. That only worked for a while. The barren country pulled like a magnet.
I had only to walk out there, I thought, and keep on going until I was filled with its emptiness, and then sit down somewhere and put the barrel of the Luger against my head, and simply squeeze. So childishly easy; so appallingly tempting.
Walt, I thought desperately. I couldn’t do it because of Walt and the unfinished business we were embarked on. The horses were there in front of me, and Walt and Sam Hengelman were on their way. It was impossible just to abandon them. I hit my hand against the rock and dragged my mind back to the farm and the night ahead. And when I’d gone through that piece by piece I concentrated one at a time on Yola and Offen, and Eunice and Dave Teller, and Keeble and Lynnie, trying to use them as pegs to keep me believing that what I did mattered to them. That anything I did mattered to anybody. That I cared whether anything I did mattered to anybody.