Kergosen sat heavily in the saddle. He had not shaved this morning and his eyes told that he'd had little sleep. "You won't draw a gun against me?"
"No, sir."
"Why?"
"If I did, I'd have to live with Ellis the rest of my life the way you're doing now."
"So you're in a hole."
"But no deeper than the one you're in."
Kergosen studied him. "I underestimated you. I thought you'd run."
"Because you told me to?"
"That was reason enough."
"You're too used to giving orders," Treat said.
"You've been Number One a long time and you've forgotten what it's like to have somebody contrary to you."
"I didn't get where I am having people contrary to me," Kergosen stated. "I worked and fought and earned the right to give orders, but I prayed to God to lead me right, and don't you forget that!"
"Mr. Kergosen," Treat said quietly, "are you afraid I can't provide for your daughter?"
"Provide!" Kergosen's face tightened. "An Apache buck provides. He builds a hut for his woman and brings her meat. Any man with one hand and a gun can provide. We're talking about my daughter, not a flat-nosed Indian woman--and you have to put up a damn sight more than meat and a hut!"
Treat said, "You think I won't make something of myself?"
"Mister, all you've proved to me is that you can read sign and shoot." Kergosen paused before asking, "Why didn't you sign a complaint to get Ellis back? Don't you know your rights? That what I'm talking about. You can track a renegade Apache, you can stand off five men with a Colt, but you don't know how to live with a white man!" "Mr. Kergosen," Treat said patiently, "I could've got a writ. I could've prosecuted you for tearing down my house. I could've killed Leo Pyke with almost a clear conscience. I could've done a lot of things."
"But you didn't," Kergosen said.
"No, I waited."
"If you're waiting for me to die of old age--"
"Mr. Kergosen, I'm interested in your daughter, not your property. We can get along just fine with what we're building on."
"Which is nothing," Kergosen said.
"When you started," Treat asked, "what did you have?"
"When I married I had over one hundred square miles of land. Miles, mister, not acres. I was going on forty years old, sure of myself and not a kid anymore."
"I'm almost thirty, Mr. Kergosen."
"I'll say it again: And you've got nothing."
"Nothing but time."
"Listen," Kergosen said earnestly. "You don't count on the future like it's nothing but years to fill up. You fill them up, good or bad, according to your ability and willingness to sweat, but you're sure of that future before you ask a woman to face it with you."
Treat said, "You had somebody picked for Ellis?"
"Not by name, but a man who can offer her something."
"So you planned her future, and it turned out different."
"Damn it, I try to do what's right!"
"According to your rules."
"With God's help!"
"Mr. Kergosen," Treat said, "I don't mean disrespect, but I think you've rigged it so God has to take the blame for your mistakes. Ellis and I made a mistake. We admit it. We should've come to you first. We would've got married whether you said yes or no, but we still should've come to you first. The way it is now, it's still up to you, but now you're in an embarrassing position with the Almighty. Ellis and I are married in the eyes of the same God that you say's been guiding you all this time, thirty years or more. All right, you and Him have been getting along fine up to now. But now what?"
Kergosen said nothing.
"We could probably argue all day," Treat said, "but it comes down to this: You either go home and send out some more men, or you use that scattergun, or you come inside and have some coffee, and we'll talk it over like two grown-up men." Kergosen stared at him. "I admire your control, Mr. Treat."
"I've learned how to wait, Mr. Kergosen. If it comes down to that, I'll outwait you. I think you know that."
Kergosen was silent for a long moment. He looked down at his hands on the shotgun and exhaled, letting his breath out slowly, wearily, and he seemed to sit lower on the saddle.
"I think I'm getting old," he said quietly. "I'm tired of arguing and tired of fighting."
"Maybe tired of fighting yourself," Treat said. Kergosen nodded faintly. "Maybe so."
Treat waited, then said, "Mr. Kergosen, I'm anxious to see my wife."
Kergosen's face came up, out of shadow, deeplined and solemn, but the hard tightness was gone from his jaw. He shifted his weight and came down off the saddle, and on the ground he handed the shotgun to Treat.
"Phil," he said, "this damn thing's getting too heavy to hold."
From his pocket Treat brought out the bank draft Kergosen had given him. He handed it over, saying, "So is this, Mr. Kergosen."
They stood for a moment. Kergosen's hand went into his pocket with the bank draft and when they moved toward the adobe, the bitterness between them was past. It had worn itself to nothing.
The Nagual
Ofelio Oso--who had been a vaquero most of his seventy years, but who now mended fences and drove a wagon for John Stam--looked down the slope through the jack pines seeing the man with his arms about the woman. They were in front of the shack which stood near the edge of the deep ravine bordering the west end of the meadow; and now Ofelio watched them separate lingeringly, the woman moving off, looking back as she passed the corral, going diagonally across the pasture to the trees on the far side, where she disappeared.
Now Mrs. Stam goes home, Ofelio thought, to wait for her husband.
The old man had seen them like this before, sometimes in the evening, sometimes at dawn as it was now with the first distant sun streak off beyond the Organ Mountains, and always when John Stam was away. This had been going on for months now, at least since Ofelio first began going up into the hills at night.
It was a strange feeling that caused the old man to do this; more an urgency, for he had come to a realization that there was little time left for him. In the hills at night a man can think clearly, and when a man believes his end is approaching there are things to think about.
In his sixty-ninth year Ofelio Oso broke his leg. In the shock of a pain-stabbing moment it was smashed between horse and corral post as John Stam's cattle rushed the gate opening. He could no longer ride, after having done nothing else for more than fifty years; and with this came the certainty that his end was approaching. Since he was of no use to anyone, then only death remained. In his idleness he could feel its nearness and he thought of many things to prepare himself for the day it would come.
Now he waited until the horsebreaker, Joe Slidell, went into the shack. Ofelio limped down the slope through the pines and was crossing a corner of the pasture when Joe Slidell reappeared, leaning in the doorway with something in his hand, looking absently out at the few mustangs off at the far end of the pasture. His gaze moved to the bay stallion in the corral, then swung slowly until he was looking at Ofelio Oso. The old man saw this and changed his direction, going toward the shack. He carried a blanket over his shoulder and wore a willow-root Chihuahua hat, and his hand touched the brim of it as he approached the loose figure in the doorway.
"At it again," Joe Slidell said. He lifted the bottle which he held close to his stomach and took a good drink. Then he lowered it, and his face contorted. He grunted, "Yaaaaa!" but after that he seemed relieved. He nodded to the hill and said, "How long you been up there?"
"Through the night," Ofelio answered. Which you well know, he thought. You, standing there drinking the whiskey that the woman brings. Slidell wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, watching the old man through heavy-lidded eyes. "What do you see up there?"