“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.”
“The feeling is a kind of knowledge itself.”
“But it isn’t something you can prove, is it?” Martha stood with her hands motionless in the dishwater, her full attention on Luz. “What if suddenly you realize that all you’ve said couldn’t possibly be true, that it’s all something out of a dream or-”
“Listen, I did dream about him! A number of times before, then again last night.” The girl’s eyes went to the main room and back again.
“I saw an animal in the dream, like a small wolf or a coyote, and it was slinking along in the moonlight. Then, in front of it, there was a chicken. The chicken was feeding on the ground and before it could raise its head, the animal was on it and tearing it apart with its teeth and eating it even while the chicken was still alive. I watched, cold with fear, but unable to move. And as I watched, the animal began to change.
“It was still on its haunches facing me, still eating and smeared with the blood of the chicken. First its hind legs became human legs; then its body became the clothed body of a man. Then the face began to change, the jaw and the nose and the chin. The teeth were still those of an animal and he had no forehead and his eyes and head were still like an animal’s. He was looking at me with blood on his mouth and on his hand…on the one hand that he had. And at that moment I ran from him screaming. I knew it was the face of Mr. Janroe.”
“Luz, you admit it’s a dream-”
“Listen, that isn’t all of it.” Luz glanced toward the main room again. “I awoke in a sweat and with a thirst burning the inside of my throat. So I left my bed and went down for a drink of water. The big room was dark, but at once I saw that a lamp was burning in here. I came to the door, I looked into this room, and I swear on my mother’s grave that my heart stopped beating when I saw him.”
“Mr. Janroe?”
Luz nodded quickly. “He was sitting at the table holding a piece of meat almost to his mouth and his eyes were on me, not as if he’d looked up as I appeared, but as if he’d been watching me for some time. I saw his eyes and the hand holding the meat, just as in the dream, and I ran. I don’t know if I screamed, but I remember wanting to scream and running up the stairs and locking my door.”
Martha dried her hands on her apron. She smiled at Luz gently and put her hand on the girl’s arm.
“Luz, there isn’t anything supernatural about a man eating with his fingers.”
“You didn’t see him.” Luz stopped. Her eyes were on the doorway again and a moment later Janroe appeared. Martha glanced at him, then at Luz again as the girl suddenly turned and pushed through the screen door.
Janroe came into the kitchen. He was holding his hat and wearing a coat, but the coat was open and Martha noticed the butt of a Colt beneath one lapel in a shoulder holster. Another Colt was on his hip.
“Did I interrupt something?”
“Nothing important.” Martha turned from the sink to face him. “You’re going out?”
“I thought I would.” He watched her with an expression of faint amusement. “Wondering if I’m going to see your husband?”
“Yes, I was.”
“I might see him.”
“If you’re going that way, would you mind stopping by the house?”
“Why?”
“Why do you think, Mr. Janroe?”
“Maybe he’s not so anxious to let you know what he’s doing.”
Now a new side of him, Martha thought wearily. She said nothing.
“I mean, considering how he dropped you here and ran off so quick.” Janroe hooked his hat on the back of the nearest chair. Unhurriedly he started around the table, saying now, “A man is away from his wife for two years or more, then soon as he gets home he leaves her again. What kind of business is that?”
Martha watched him still coming toward her. “We know the reason, Mr. Janroe.”
“The reason he gives. Worried about his wife and kids.”
“What other reason is there?”
“It wouldn’t be my business to know.”
“You seem to be making it your business.”
“I was just wondering if you believed him.”
He was close to her now. Martha stood unmoving, feeling the wooden sink against her back. “I believe him,” she said calmly. “I believe anything he tells me.”
“Did he tell you he led a saintly life the years he was away?”
“I never questioned him about it.”
“Want me to tell you what a man does when he’s away from home?”
“And even if I said no-”
“They have a time for themselves,” Janroe went on. “They carry on like young bucks with the first smell of spring. Though they expect their wives to sit home and be as good as gold.”
“You know this from experience?”
“I’ve seen them.” His voice was low and confiding. “Some of them come home with the habit of their wild ways still inside them, and they go wandering off again.”
He watched her closely, his head lowered and within inches of hers. “Then there’s some women who aren’t fooled by it and they say, ‘If he can fool around and have a time, then so can I.’ Those women do it, too. They start having a time for themselves and it serves their husbands right.”
Martha did not move. She was looking at him, at his heavy mustache and the hard, bony angles of his face, feeling the almost oppressive nearness of him. She said nothing.
Janroe asked, almost a whisper, “You know what I mean?”
“If I were to tell my husband what you just said,” Martha answered quietly, “I honestly believe he would kill you.”
Janroe’s expression did not change. “I don’t think so. Your husband needs me. He needs a place for you and the kids to stay.”
“Are you telling me that I’m part of the agreement between you and my husband?”
“Well now, nothing so blunt as all that.” Janroe smiled. “We’re white men.”
“We’ll be out of here within an hour,” Martha said coldly.
“Now wait a minute. You don’t kid very well, do you?”
“Not about that.”
He backed away from her, reaching for his hat. “I don’t even think you know what I was talking about.”
“Let’s say that I didn’t,” Martha said. “For your sake.”
Janroe shrugged. “You think whatever you want.” He put his hat on and walked out. In front of the store, he mounted a saddled buckskin and rode off.
He could still see the calm expression of Martha Cable’s face as he forded the shallow river, as he kicked the buckskin up the bank and started across the meadow that rolled gradually up into the pines that covered the crest of the slope. Then he was spurring, running the buckskin, crossing the sweep of meadow, in the open sunlight now with the hot breeze hissing past his face. But even then Martha was before him.
She stared at him coldly. And the harder he ran-holding the reins short to keep the buckskin climbing, feeling the brute strength of the horse’s response, hearing the hoofs and the wind and trying to be aware of nothing else-the more he was aware of Martha’s contempt for him.