The silence was such that Watchman heard Rand’s lips pull apart with a sticky gumming sound.
Watchman gave him a reluctant nod. “All right. Better bring the artillery from the car, and let’s get both cars out of sight.” He handed the Volvo keys to Stevens and turned to Rand. “We’ve got one rifle. I could use the loan of another one.”
Rand pivoted toward the door. “Rig him for a crossfire. Sounds good to me. I’ve got a pretty good ’Ought-Six, that do?” He left the room without waiting a reply.
2.
There was rain.
It came with a slow heavy beat against the roof. It was only just past five o’clock but the daylight had drained out of the sky and the house was dismal in gloom. Wearing one of Rand’s tailored rodeo jackets and a pair of Rand’s tinted glasses Buck Stevens went around the house switching on lights, taking risks but moving fast enough to discourage a chance gunshot from any window.
Rand had explained the emptiness of the house. His current wife was a film actress currently on location in Spain; in her absence Rand had wanted solitude and dispatched the house staff for a long weekend in Las Vegas. None of the ranch crew was likely to come up to the main house; Rand’s privacy was respected by those who worked for him.
Rand restricted his movements to those rooms in which they had drawn the drapes tight. Stevens played Rand in the rest of the house. Victorio raided the kitchen for cold roast beef and lettuce and went around distributing sandwiches and beer; Watchman wolfed down two sandwiches and wondered when he was ever going to put his belly around a decent meal.
He phoned Angelina. “I had him but he got away from me. He’s got a little dysentery but he’s all right. So far.”
“What’s going to happen, Sam?”
“I can’t tell you anything happy,” he said. “We’ll try to take him alive, that goes without saying. It’s mainly up to him.”
“My dumb brother.” There was a depth of concern and affection in her voice. “Isn’t there anything at all we can do to clear him?”
“He’s already cleared. We arrested Dwight Kendrick for the murders. But Joe’s got a poison in him, he wants to kill.”
The line crackled; it was a broken interval of time, not susceptible to measurement. At the end of it she said, “Try to keep anybody from getting hurt, Sam. Joe or anybody else.”
He pictured her face, the hair falling around it. He sketched for her what had happened. She asked a few questions but he cut her short. “I’ll call you later. Maybe have some good news.”
“I hope so. I haven’t prayed in a long time, Sam. But I don’t want anybody hurt. Anybody.”
“Then praying can’t hurt. I’ll see you.”
When the connection broke he stood with his hand on the receiver and felt the sweat of it.
3.
The rain beat at the window. Watchman checked the time. Nearly five-thirty. Buck Stevens walked past the window, past the ten-inch gap between half-drawn drapes; he sat down at the side of the window, out of the line of fire. “What if he doesn’t come?”
“The little hairs on the back of my neck tell me he’s around here right now.”
“Come on. There’s a limit to that stuff, Sam.”
“Well it’s not just instinct. Joe knows things today that he didn’t know yesterday. He talked to me this morning, he knows I know he’s going after Rand. It stands to reason he’d either abandon the whole thing or try to get here before I could get Rand out of his way. So if he’s coming at all he’ll come now. And he’s coming because if he wasn’t he wouldn’t have walked away from me this morning.”
It took great effort of will to maintain the patient waiting. Finally he put down the beer can and slid along the wall to pull the drawstring and close the drapes. “I’d like to speed this up. Let’s take a little chance.”
“I’m just as tired of this as you are,” Stevens said. “Name it.”
“Let me have that jacket you’re wearing.”
“Hold on a minute. You know he’ll never buy that. You’re too thin, you’re too dark. You don’t look anything like Rand.”
“Outside in the rain he’ll never spot the difference.” Watchman took one of Rand’s white cowboy hats off the rack and settled it above his ears. “Come on.” He beckoned and Stevens reluctantly shrugged out of the jacket and handed it over. It hung a little loose on Watchman’s shoulders. There was a transparent plastic rain-slicker hanging on the peg and he put that on. “Get Victorio in here.”
“You sure about this, Sam?”
“It’ll smoke him out if he’s around here, I’m sure about that.”
Stevens left the room with a brooding face. Watchman checked the loads in the .30-’06 and worked the bolt to slide the top cartridge into the chamber. He left the safety off.
When Victorio followed Stevens into the room Watchman handed the rifle to the lawyer. “It’s ready to go, the safety’s off. Can you handle it?”
“I’m fair, that’s all. Just fair.”
“Don’t kill him if you can help it.”
Stevens said, “What’s the script?”
“You take the window on the porch at the corner out in the front room there. Tom takes the window on the side of the house, same corner. No lights in the room behind you. Between you you’ll cover that whole quarter from the house. Keep your eyes on the trees between here and the bunkhouse because that’s where he’ll show himself.”
“He will?” Victorio said. “Why should he?”
“It’s a rotten light for shooting. That ’scope won’t be any good to him. He’ll have to get in close to make sure he doesn’t miss.”
“And you’re just going to stand out there and wait for him to pick you off?”
“I don’t know about you no-account Apaches,” Watchman drawled, “but up where I come from we don’t believe in suicide. No, I’m not going to stand there and let him pot me.”
There was a Western Horseman magazine on the table by the office door. He picked it up and folded it open. “This’ll do. Some papers in my hand, that’s what I want him to see.”
He led them forward through the house. At the end of the hall he reached around through the doorway and hit the wall switch inside the front room. It plunged the room into near blackness.
Rand’s voice came out of the dark television room. “How the hell long do I sit in here?”
“It won’t be long now,” Watchman said. “Just stay put ten minutes.”
He went into the front room with Stevens and Victorio and posted them at the corner windows. Slowly they raised the sashes. Rain sprayed in, bouncing on the sills.
Watchman said, “I’m going to make a run for the bunk-house with this paper in my hand. I’ll go inside and pass the time of day with whoever I find in there. That should give Joe time enough to work his way down in the trees here. Right now he’s probably up behind the house someplace, looking for a way in, but he’ll see me run across and he’ll come down and wait for me to come out of the bunkhouse and back to the house here. That’s when he’ll make his play.”
Stevens said, “Jesus. He’ll nail you cold.”
“I won’t give him the chance.”
“Shouldn’t one of us be out there in the trees, wait for him to come down and get in behind him when he shows up?”
“He won’t show himself. He’s careful. And if anybody leaves the house right now he’ll spot it. This’ll have to do.”
“You better zig and zag like a son of a bitch.”
“Bet your bottom.”
4.
Moving as if he had lead in his shoes he dropped off the porch and jogged toward the fountain, the plastic oilskin flapping around him. With the hat pulled low over his face it was hard to see much of the trees but there wasn’t much chance Joe was anywhere near here yet.
He skirted the grass by the fountain and made an abrupt turn; just in case. Ran on toward the bunkhouse, then stopped suddenly as if he had forgotten something; shook his head in exasperation and ran on. The performance was designed merely to destroy Joe’s timing if in fact Joe was close enough to be aiming at him.