Sundeen looked at his body, sucking in his stomach, then picked up a shirt from the chair and put it on. “I think somebody's selling somebody a bill of goods. All we have to say to them is, look here, you people don't move out, this is what happens to you. Take one of 'em, stick a gun in his mouth and count three. They'll leave.”
“Take which one?”
“It don't matter to me none. 'Cept it won't be Moon. Moon, I'm gonna settle with him. Early too. But I got time to think about that.”
Ruben Vega was nodding. “Threaten them seriously-it look pretty easy, uh?”
“Not hard or easy but a fact of life,” Sundeen said. “Nobody picks dying when there's a way not to.”
Ruben Vega would agree to that. He could say to his boss, And it works both ways, for you as well as them. But why argue about it with a man who did not know how to get outside of himself to look at something? It had happened to him at the wall. It could happen to him again. Ruben Vega said, “Well, I hope you get enough men to do it.”
Sundeen said, “Wait and see what's coming.”
It was already arranged, since his meeting with Vandozen in Las Cruces, Vandozen asking how many men he'd need. Sundeen saying he'd wait and see. Vandozen then saying it was his custom to know things in advance, not wait and see. So he had already recruited some twenty men, among them several former Yuma prison guards, a few railroad bulls and a good number of strike-breakers from the coal fields of Pennsylvania: all hired at twenty dollars a week and looking forward to a tour of duty out in the fresh air and wide open spaces.
Today was Tuesday. A message waiting for Sundeen when he reported to the company stated his bunch would all arrive in Benson by rail on Friday. Fine. Let them get drunk and laid on Saturday, rest Sunday and they ride up into the mountains on Monday.
Sundeen said to the Mexican, “If that's all you got, you didn't learn much.”
“He thought you were dead,” Ruben Vega said. “I told him you should be, but you stayed alive and now you're much wiser.”
Looking at him Sundeen said, “The fence-sitter. You gonna sit on the fence and watch this one too? Man, that time in Sonora-I swore I was gonna kill you after, if I hadn't been shot up.”
“I save your life you feel you want to kill me,” Ruben Vega said. “I think you still have something to learn.”
4
Bren had not realized he was tense. Until walking back to the house on Mill Street he was aware of relief and was anxious to be with the woman again. He had not told her about Sundeen. He didn't like to argue with her or discuss serious matters. She was a woman and he wanted her to act like a woman, one he had selected. He did not expect continual expressions of gratitude; nor did he want her to wait on him or act as though her life was now dedicated solely to his pleasure. But she could make his life easier if she'd quit assuming she knew more about him than he did. Women were said to “know” and feel things men weren't able to because men were more blunt and practical. Bren believed that was a lot of horseshit. Women took advantage of men because they were all sitting on something men wanted. If they ever quit holding out or holding it over men's heads everybody would be a lot happier.
Not that Janet Pierson ever bargained with him that way. She seemed always willing and eager. He only wished she would quit thinking and analyzing why he did things and saying he wanted to be like a son to her.
Sometimes though he would bring it up, because it was on his mind, or to convince her she was wrong-as he did now, entering the front door and hearing her in the kitchen, coming up quietly behind her, pulling her into his arms, his hands moving over her body.
“I missed you,” she said, resting against him.
“I missed you too. You think I'd do this to my mother?”
“I hope not.”
“Unh-unh.” Kissing her now, brushing her cheek and finding her ear with his mouth. “No…What you feel like to me is a young girl…soft and nice-”
She said, pressing against him, “That's what I feel. You make me aware of being a woman and it's a good feeling.” This way acknowledging and appreciating him as a man, but knowing that what he needed now was to be comforted and held. Protected from something. The little boy come home-but not telling him this.
After they made love she would put her arms around him and hold him close to her in the silence and soon he would fall asleep. Then, as she would begin to ease her arm from beneath his shoulder, he would open his eyes for a moment, roll to his side and fall asleep again, freeing her. Though if she moved her hand over him, down over the taut muscles in his belly, they would make love again and after, this time, he would get out of bed as Bren Early: confident, the man who wore matched revolvers and loved her when it occurred to him to express it or when he felt the physical urge…not realizing the simple need to hold and be held and to believe in something other than himself.
Sometime soon she would talk to him and find out what he believed and what was important to him. And what was important to her also.
5
Was it luck or was it instinct? Maurice Dumas hoped the latter. There was always something going on when he set out to get a story: this time not at the White Tanks agency but several miles up the draw at Dana Moon's place.
The luck was running into the Apache at the agency office and letting him know through sign language-trying all kinds of motions before pointing to the office and then sticking his tongue in his cheek to resemble a wad of tobacco-that he was looking for the agent, Dana Moon.
They climbed switchbacks up a slope swept yellow-green with brittlebush and greasewood, through young saguaros that looked like a field of fence posts and on up into the wide, yawning trough of a barranca with steep walls of shale and wind-swept white oak and cedar. They climbed to open terrain, a bare crest against the sky but not the top, not yet. A little farther and there it was, finally, a wall…first the wall, and beyond it a low stone fortress of a house with a wooden porch and a yard full of people, horses and several wagons.
What was this, another Meat Day?
No, Maurice Dumas found out soon enough, it was a war council.
He felt strange riding in through the opening in the adobe wall with all eyes on him. Though there were not as many people as he originally thought-only about a dozen-they were certainly a colorful and unusual mixture: darkies, Mexicans and Indians, all standing around together and all, he observed now, armed to the teeth with revolvers, rifles and belts of cartridges. Specifically there were three hard-looking colored men; four Mexicans, one in a very large Chihuahua hat and bright yellow scarf; and the rest Apache Indians, including the one who brought him up here and who, Maurice Dumas found out, was named Red, an old compadre of Moon's.
“I hope I'm not interrupting anything,” Maurice Dumas said, as Moon came down from the porch to greet him, “but there is something I think you better know about.”
“Sundeen's arrival?” said Moon, who almost smiled then at the young reporter's look of surprise. “There are things we better know about if we intend to stay here. Have his men arrived yet?”
Maurice Dumas, again surprised, said, “What men?”
“You'd know if they had,” Moon said. “So we still have some time. Step down and I'll introduce you to some of the main characters of the story you're gonna be writing.”
The man seemed so aware and alert for someone who moved the way Moon did, hands in his pockets, in no hurry, big chew of tobacco in his jaw: just a plain country fellow among this colorful group of heavily armed neighbors.
First, Maurice Dumas met Mrs. Moon, Kate, and felt he must have appeared stupid when he looked up and saw a good-looking lady and not the washed-out, sodbuster woman he'd expected. When she learned where he was from, Mrs. Moon said, “Chicago, huh? I'll bet you're glad to get away from the stockyards and breathe fresh air for a change.”