A year later, and now a captain, Janroe lost his arm at the battle of Richmond, Kentucky. He was sent to the army hospital at Knoxville, spent seven months there, and was discharged sometime in March, 1863.
But Janroe didn’t go home. He learned that Kirby Smith had been made commander of the Trans-Mississippi Department, headquartered at Shreveport, Louisiana, and that’s where Janroe went. In the early part of April he was reinstated with the rank of lieutenant and served under Dick Taylor, one of Kirby Smith’s field generals.
Up to this point Cable had listened in silence.
“He didn’t tell me that.”
“I don’t care what he told you,” the bearded man said. “He served under Taylor in the fighting around Alexandria and Opelousas.”
But not for long. He was with Taylor less than two months when he was discharged for good. He was told that he had given enough of himself and deserved retirement. The real reason: his wild disregard for the safety of his men, throwing them into almost suicidal charges whenever he made contact with the enemy. This, and the fact that he refused to take a prisoner. During his time with Taylor, Janroe was responsible for having some one hundred and twenty Union prisoners lined up and shot.
Janroe pleaded his case all the way to Kirby Smith’s general staff-he was a soldier and soldiering was his life; but as far as every one of them was concerned, Janroe was unfit for active duty and immediately relieved of his command.
Janroe returned to St. Augustine, then in the hands of Federal forces. Through a man he had known there before, he made contact with Confederate Intelligence agents and went to work for them. And eventually-in fact after well over a year in Florida-he was sent to Mexico. There he was given his present assignment.
“I can see why he didn’t tell me everything,” Cable said.
The bearded man nodded. “Naturally.”
Cable watched him. “What do you think of Janroe?”
“He’s a hard man to know.”
“But what do you think?”
“I don’t care for his kind, if that’s what you mean.”
“Yet you have him working for you.”
“Mr. Cable,” the bearded man said, “Janroe seems to have one aim in life. To see the South win the war.”
“Or to see more Yankees killed.”
“What’s the difference?”
“You know what I mean.”
“I know he’s moved over two thousand rifles through the store since coming here,” the bearded man said.
“And now he wants to kill two men who aren’t even in the war.”
“Well, I wonder if you can blame him,” the bearded man said, somewhat wearily now. “A man is sent to war and taught how to kill; but after, the unlearning of it is left up to him.”
“Except that Janroe knew how to kill before he went to war,” Cable said.
So you’ll wait, Cable thought now, and wonder about Janroe and wonder when Vern will make his move, while you try to stay calm and keep yourself from running away.
He was perhaps a mile from his house, passing through a clearing in the pines, when he saw the two riders down in the meadow, saw them for one brief moment before they entered the willows at the river.
Cable waited. When the riders did not come out of the trees on this side of the river he dismounted, took his field glasses and Spencer from the saddle and made his way carefully down through the pines on foot. Between fifty and sixty yards from the base of the slope he reached an outcropping of rock that fell steeply, almost abruptly, the rest of the way down. Here Cable went on his stomach. He nosed the Spencer through a V in the warm, sand-colored rocks and put the field glasses to his eyes.
He recognized Lorraine Kidston at once. She stood by her horse, looking down at a stooped man drinking from the edge of the water. When he rose, turning to the girl, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, Cable saw that it was Vern Kidston.
Two hundred yards away, but with them, close to them through the field glasses, Cable watched. He studied Vern standing heavily with his hands on his hips, his shoulders slightly stooped and his full mustache giving his face a solemn, almost sad expression. Vern spoke little. Lorraine seemed to be doing the talking. Lorraine smiling blandly, shrugging, standing with one hand on her hip and gesturing imperiously with the other.
She stopped. For a moment neither of them spoke: Vern thoughtful; Lorraine watching him. Then Vern nodded, slowly, resignedly, and Lorraine was smiling again. Now she moved to her horse. Vern helped her up. She rode off at once, heading north out into the meadow, and did not look back. Vern watched her, standing motionless with his hands hanging at his sides now.
He was close, his hat, his mustache, his shirt, his gun belt, his hands, all in detail. Then the glasses lowered and Vern Kidston was a small dark figure two hundred yards away.
There he is, Cable thought. Waiting for you.
He put the field glasses aside and took the solid, compact, balanced weight of the Spencer, his hands under it lightly and the stock snugly against the groove of his shoulder.
There he is.
It would be easy, Cable thought. He knew that most of the waiting and the wondering and the wanting to run would be over by just squeezing the trigger. Doing it justifiably, he told himself.
And it isn’t something you haven’t done before.
There had been the two Apaches he had knocked from their horses as they rode out of the river trees and raced for his cattle. He had been lying on this same slope, up farther, closer to the house and with a Sharps rifle, firing and loading and firing again and seeing the two Chiricahua Apaches pitch from their running horses, not even knowing what had killed them.
And there had been another time. More like this one, though he had not been alone then. Two years ago. Perhaps two years almost to the day. In northern Alabama…
It had happened on the morning of the fifth day, after they had again located the Yankee raider Abel Streight and were closing with him, preparing to tear another bite out of his exhausted flank.
He lay in the tall grass, wet and chilled by the rain that had been falling almost all night; now in the gray mist of morning with a shivering trooper huddled next to him, not speaking, and the rest of the patrol back a few hundred yards with the horses, waiting for the word to be passed to them. For perhaps an hour he lay like this with his glasses on the Union picket, a 51st Indiana Infantryman. The Yankee had been closer than Vern Kidston was now: across a stream and somewhat below them, crouched down behind a log, his rifle straight up past his head and shoulder. He was in plain view, facing the stream, the peak of his forage cap wet-shining and low over his eyes; but his eyes were stretched wide open, Cable knew, because of the mist and the silence and because he was alone on picket duty a thousand miles from home. He’s wondering if he will ever see Indiana again, Cable had thought. Wondering if he will ever see his home and his wife and his children. He’s old enough to have a family. But he hasn’t been in it long, or he wouldn’t be showing himself.
I can tell you that you won’t go home again, Cable remembered thinking. It’s too bad. But I want to go home too, and the way it is now both of us won’t be able to. They’re going to cry and that’s too bad. But everything’s too bad. For one brief moment he had thought, remembering it clearly now: Get down, you fool! Stop showing yourself!
Then someone was shaking his foot. He looked back at a bearded face. The face nodded twice. Cable touched the trooper next to him and whispered, indicating the Yankee picket, “Take him.”
The man next to him pressed his cheek to his Enfield, aiming, but taking too long, trying to hold the barrel steady, his whole body shivering convulsively from the long, rain-drenched hours. “Give me it,” Cable whispered. He eased the long rifle out in front of him carefully and put the front sight just below the Indiana man’s face. You shouldn’t have looked at him through the glasses, he thought, and pulled the trigger and the picket across the stream was no more. They were up and moving after that. Not until evening did Cable have time to remember the man who had waited helplessly, unknowingly, to be killed…