Elmore Leonard - Last Stand at Saber River

Janroe glared at her. “Like any soldier murders.”

“This isn’t war-he isn’t a soldier now!”

“We’ve been all through that,” Janroe said. “Whether it bothers his conscience or not, your husband doesn’t have a choice. He’s got to kill them before they kill him.”

That evening, as soon as it was dark, Janroe slipped under the platform and let himself into the locked storeroom. He measured three strides to the crates of Enfield rifles stacked against the back wall, then stood in the darkness, wondering if there would be room for the wagon-load of rifles due to arrive later that night. The rifles that were here should have been picked up days ago.

You can worry about it, Janroe thought, or you can forget it and ask Luz when she comes. She should be here within two hours. Perhaps they told her in Hidalgo why the rifles had not been picked up. Perhaps not. Either way, there was something more immediate to think about. Something raw and galling, because it was fresh in his mind and seemed to have happened only moments before though it had been this afternoon, hours ago.

He had almost convinced Cable. No, not almost or maybe. He had convinced him. He had handed the man his gun and told him to kill the Kidstons or be killed himself, and Cable had seen the pure reality of this. If he had left at that moment, he would have gone straight to the Kidston place. Janroe was sure of it.

But Martha had interfered. She talked to her husband, soothing the welts on his face with a damp cloth while she soothed his anger with the calm, controlled tone of her voice. And finally Cable had nodded and agreed not to do anything that day. He would go home and watch the house-that much he had to do-but he would not carry the fight to the Kidstons; at least not while he felt the way he did. He agreed to this grudgingly, wearily, part by part, while Martha reasoned in that quiet, firm, insisting, never-varying tone.

Perhaps if he went out to see Cable now? No, the guns were coming and he would have to be here. In the morning then; though by that time the sting would be gone from the welts on Cable’s face and that solid patience would have settled in him again.

He had convinced Cable-that was the absolute truth of it-until the woman had started in with her moral, monotonous reasoning-

Janroe straightened. He stood listening, hearing the faint sound of a horse approaching. The hoofbeats grew louder, but not closer, and when the sound stopped, he knew the horse had reached the back of the store.

Luz? No, it was too early for her. He left the storeroom, carefully, quietly padlocking the door, came out into the open and took his time mounting to the platform and passing through the darkened store. He saw Martha first, standing in the kitchen, then Luz, and saw the girl’s eyes raise to his as he moved toward them.

“You’re early.”

“They’re not coming,” Luz said.

“What do you mean they’re not coming?”

“Not anymore.”

“All right,” Janroe said. “Tell me what you know.”

“The war’s over.”

She said it simply, in the same tone, and for a moment Janroe only stared at her.

“What are you talking about?”

“It’s true,” Martha said. “They told her as soon as she reached Hidalgo.”

He looked at Martha then, seeing her face no longer composed but for the first time flushed and alive and with a smile that was warm and genuine and seemed to include even him, simply because he was here to share the news with them.

He turned to Luz again. “Who told you?”

“Everyone knows it. They told me to come back and tell you.”

“But how do they know? How can they be sure?”

“They know, that’s all.”

“Listen, wars don’t just end like that.”

“How do they end?” Martha asked, not smiling now.

“There’s some warning-days, weeks before, that it’s going to end.”

“You know how news travels out here,” Martha said.

“No”-Janroe shook his head-“we would have heard something. It’s a false alarm, or a Yankee trick. It’s something else because a war just doesn’t end like that.”

“We’re telling you that the war is over,” Martha said. “Whether you believe it or not it ended five days ago, the day we came home.”

“And they’re just finding out now?” Janroe shook his head again. “Uh-unh, you don’t sell me any of that.”

“Would they have lied to Luz?”

“I don’t even know what they told her! How do I know she even went there?”

Martha was staring at him. “You don’t want to believe it.”

“What am I supposed to believe-everything this girl comes in and tells me?”

“Luz”-Martha glanced at the girl-“can I take your horse?”

Janroe saw Luz nodding and he said anxiously, “What for?”

“To tell my husband,” Martha answered, looking at him again.

“You think you should?” Janroe asked. It was moving too fast again, rushing at him again, not giving him time to think, and already it was the next step, telling her husband. They would not just stand and talk about it and see how ridiculous the news was; they would bring Cable into it, and if he argued about the sense of her going she would go all the quicker.

“I mean riding out alone at night,” Janroe said. He shook his head. “I couldn’t see you doing that.”

“I think my husband should know,” Martha began.

“I believe that,” Janroe said. The words were coming easier now. “But I think I better be the one to go tell him.”

Martha hesitated. Before she could say anything, Janroe had turned and was gone. She looked at Luz, but neither of them spoke, hearing Janroe just in the next room.

When he came into the kitchen again he was wearing a hat and a coat, the armless sleeve flat and ending abruptly in the pocket, but bulging somewhat with the shape of a shoulder holster beneath the coat.

“You will see him?” Martha said. “I mean make sure he finds out?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“And you promise to tell him everything?”

“I won’t be long.” Janroe went out the back door and mounted Luz Acaso’s dun mare.

He crossed the river and hurried the dun up the slope to the horse trail, following it north, almost blindly in the night darkness of the trees, brushing branches in his haste and kicking the dun. He moved along the ridge, though with no intention of visiting Cable.

He knew only that there was no time for Cable now. He could admit that to himself without admitting the other, that the war was over. Certainly it could be at the very edge of the end. This could be the last day. It might very well be the last day. All right, it was the last day and now there was no time for Cable. The war was not over yet, he told himself, but there was time to do only one thing now.

Four, raging, uninterrupted years of war did not end with two women standing in a kitchen and saying that it was over. You would expect that of women. It was typical. A woman would tell you anything. Lies became truth to them because they felt justified in using any means at hand to hold life to a sweet-smelling, creeping pace; to make this a woman’s existence with no room for war or fighting or so many of the things that men did and liked to do and only really proved themselves as men when they were doing them.

If he had not entered the kitchen he wouldn’t have heard anything. A man couldn’t wait and plan for eight months and know what he had to do, and then see it all canceled by walking into a kitchen. That couldn’t be.

So the two women had lied and it was stupid to think about it. And even if it was not a matter of their lying, then it was something else, something equally untrue; and whether the something was a lie from the women or a trick or an untruth from another source was beside the point.