Гарольд Роббинс - The Raiders

The dinner was what she'd asked for because she knew it was what the ranch kitchen most easily afforded — besides which she did not want to invade the food stocked for the Christmas Eve party. She and Nevada sat facing each other across the table, over steaks and potatoes, salads, and a bottle of red wine. Neither had changed clothes since their ride. Nevada actually wore buckskins. Jo-Ann wished he would wear them tomorrow night but knew he wouldn't. She would like to show up at the party in her jeans and wool shirt — and knew she wouldn't.

"If I asked him," she said, "I think my father might let me come and live here. My mother would hate it, but —"

"You'd be lonesome out here," said Nevada. "Tomorrow this house is gonna be full of folks. It isn't that way most of the time."

"You'd come and see me, wouldn't you? It's only a short drive. And I could come and see you."

"You can't count on me," he said.

"What? We've always counted on you. My grandfather, my father —"

"Not much longer," said Nevada.

" Nevada ... ?"

He smiled. "A man ain't forever, y'- know. I'm seventy years old."

"Kiowa men live to be ninety."

He shook his head. "Not this Kiowa. I tell you because you talk about countin' on this ol' man, like the Cords have always counted on me. If you tell your father what I'm goin' to tell you, then you ain't my friend. But the Great Unknowable has started callin' fer Nevada. Fer Max. That's my real name, y' know: Max Sand. I sit on my porch and look at the country. The country's callin' me. I kin hear it in the wind."

"What are you saying, Nevada?" Jo-Ann asked, alarmed.

"Promise me you won't tell."

"I promise."

Nevada stared for a moment at the bite of rare beef on his fork. "By god, that's good," he said. "There ain't nothin' better to eat than a real good piece of beef. We didn't have it in the old days, you know. This comes off a fat steer, one that couldn't a lived on the range grass. We —"

"Nevada You're changing the subject."

He sighed loudly. "Man doesn't know how long he's got. But they's signs. Mine don't read good."

Jo-Ann put down her knife and fork. "You can't read life and death from owl feathers," she said. "Or anything like that."

"Don't be so sure. But that don't make no difference. That's not what I'm readin'. I've started rottin' away inside. I can feel it, and I can smell it. When a man don't smell good —"

"Nevada! Have you seen a doctor?"

He nodded. "Cancer."

"Oh, my god! But you must tell my father! There are wonderful hospitals where —"

"You gave me your word you wouldn't tell him."

She had exacted from Robair a promise to wake her when her new half brother arrived. He did. She had not been asleep, really. What Nevada had told her, the cancer, had intruded on every sleep fantasy and jarred her awake. It was nearly one o'clock. She dressed in tight blue jeans and the blue-and-white wool shirt she had worn in the afternoon and at dinner. She brushed out her hair and put on a little lipstick.

They were in the living room waiting for her, standing before the fireplace where Robair had kept the fire going.

Jonas the Third stepped toward her, smiling broadly, his hand reaching for hers. "Jo-Ann! I've been looking forward to meeting you and am only sorry it didn't happen sooner. Let me introduce Antonia Maxim."

He was not what she expected, not in any way. Having heard he had been born and reared in Mexico, she had expected a swarthy, dark-haired man with a Spanish accent. This tall, handsome man was blond. He looked nothing like their father. He spoke perfect American English and yet not like their father's. She could detect no family resemblance at all.

The woman he had brought with him was beautiful. "Call me Toni" were her first words, and she reached out with both her hands and took both of Jo-Ann's.

Jo-Ann was polite to Toni, but her eyes fastened on Bat. She had wanted to dislike him, had decided to dislike him. But how could a woman — how could anyone — dislike a man with laughing eyes that drew you in and invited you to share whatever was making them laugh? Her half brother was naturally, gracefully magnetic, even more so than her father was.

"We've wakened you in the middle of the night," said Jonas the Third. "And we've been up since dawn. What time do we meet for breakfast, Jo-Ann?"

"Oh, let's be late. When our father is here, he'll be at the table by six-thirty, eating bacon and eggs and potatoes and God knows what. The Christmas Eve party is at seven and will go on well after midnight, but plan on being up at dawn again on Christmas Day. I don't have to tell you that his schedule will be our schedule."

On Christmas afternoon, Nevada took Toni out to teach her to fire her Winchester. Bat and Jo-Ann came along. The weather was raw. The sky was pale, and snow threatened. Except for Nevada, they wore coats from the ranch house closets: sheepskin that cut the wind.

Watching the old man, after what he had told her two days ago, was painful for Jo-Ann. That Nevada Smith was mortal had never occurred to her. And he walked and talked like a man who expected to live to be a hundred. He put wine and liquor bottles on fence posts. He talked quietly with Toni, telling her how to hold her rifle and aim; then he stood back and let her try.

She shattered three bottles with her first three shots, missing only the fourth.

"Know why y' done?" Nevada asked her.

Toni shook her head.

"Locked y' elbow. Keep 'er loose, Miss Toni. Nothin' stiff, nothin' locked. Easy ... easy ..."

She missed twice in knocking down his bottles. Now he set up beer cans, half as big. She needed eight shots to knock down five of them.

"Got a natural talent for it," he said. "Let's let Jo-Ann try."

Jo-Ann shot about as well as Toni.

"How 'bout you, Bat?"

"I'm better with a pistol," said Bat. "Happen to have brought one out from the house. What I like to shoot at is empty shotgun shells, but I couldn't find any. But I found a bunch of bottle corks."

Nevada shrugged as Bat walked forward and set up wine corks on the fence posts.

Five corks. Six shots.

Nevada grinned. "Y' ever decide y' bored bein' a lawyer, I kin prob'ly git y' a job in a Wild West show."

Jo-Ann tried to hide her feelings. Her new half brother was too goddamned good! Give him a blackboard and chalk, he'd probably square the circle.

She had one more chance to talk with Nevada. She didn't know it, but it would be the last time. They went riding, alone.

"What do you think of my new brother?" she asked.

"Y' dad's lucky to find him," said Nevada blandly.

"Bullshit. What do you think of him?"

"He's gonna be a handful," said Nevada, staring at the mountains and not turning his eyes toward her. "You know somethin'? He's a Cord. Your old man's figured that one out. I ain't sure he likes it much."

Jo-Ann smiled and nodded. "He'd have liked to have a son he could —"

"What his father wanted," Nevada interrupted. "A boy who'd take orders. Well, they didn't neither of them git that kind of son. This new boy has got somethin' of his gran'dad in him. Jonas sees it. That's hard for him to take. Could be this boy's got the old man's tough and your dad's smarts. Could be."

"Shuts me out of everything, doesn't it, Nevada?"

"Wouldn't think of it that way. I'd make my peace with the new man, if I was you. Looks to me like an honest sort of fella. He ain' gonna take on your dad right off, but them two's gonna go nose to nose. I'm not ready to place my bet."

Jo-Ann broke her word to Nevada, and three weeks later he was admitted to the Sloan-Kettering Institute in New York City.