Chapter Twelve
“I thought I heard someone down here in the kitchen,” Lorena O’Brien drew her dressing gown closer around her neck. “It’s cold, Jacob. Why are you sitting here alone at this time of night?”
“Drinking coffee, smoking, thinking. I couldn’t sleep.” The hard planes of Jacob’s face were deeply shadowed in the dim lamplight.
“Mind if I sit?” Lorena asked.
Jacob rose. “Not at all.” He held a chair for her and when she sat, pushed her closer to the table. “You want some coffee, Lorena?”
“No, no thank you.” The woman sat in silence for a while, then said, “Will talking about it help?”
Jacob smiled and sat down across from her. “A woman’s question.”
“And sincerely meant.”
“I think you know what troubles me.”
“You killed a man today.”
“Every time I kill a man something inside me dies, something small but significant. How many more men can I kill before I’m finally used up and all of me dies?”
“You may never have the need to kill a man again.”
Jacob’s smile was slight under his mustache. “Lorena, the Mexicans will be back. I’ve seen their kind before. They want to plunder this house and take what they can.”
“Is that what they want, Jacob, to steal—”
“Everything we have.”
“Should I worry about my husband and my son?”
Jacob shook his head. “Worry is like riding a rocking horse, it never takes you anywhere.” He rose to his feet again. “You sure you don’t want coffee? It’s how Luther taught me to make it. He said—and I beg your pardon, Lorena—it should be stronger than stud hoss piss with the froth farted off.”
Lorena smiled. “No, thank you. Now I really do think I’ll pass.”
“Don’t blame you.” He poured coffee then sat at the table again. “You should be going back to bed, Lorena. You’ll get a chill.”
“Will you be all right, Jacob?”
“I don’t know. You can’t see it, but over there in the dark corner by the door there’s a black dog. He just sits there, staring at me, waiting his chance to spring. I’ve known him for many years and he’s attacked me a lot of times.”
“I know about all about you and the black dog, Jacob. So many times I’ve seen you go from light to darkness and nobody knows when it will happen.”
“Least of all me.”
“Why don’t you play the piano, some Chopin or Brahms? It might lift your mood.”
“And wake up the whole household. My brothers would love that. I don’t know about my mood, but they’d sure lift my hair.”
“You’re worried about the colonel, aren’t you?”
“Yes, him. And Luther. I love that old man. He raised me, you know. Pa was always busy with the business side of Dromore, so he pretty much handed me to Luther and said, ‘Here, rear him.’”
“He did just fine with you, Jacob . . . and with your brothers.”
“Luther taught me a lot.” Jacob smiled. “Much of it to the colonel’s dismay.”
“I’ve often heard Shamus say so,” Lorena said, smiling. She rose to her feet, a beautiful woman, the lamplight tangled in her unbound hair. “Jacob, I’m going to get a switch and chase that black dog out of the corner.”
“It’s all right, Lorena,” Jacob said. “If I see him ready to pounce, I’ll chuck a rock at him.”
“Well, that might work.”
Lorena stepped to the door, but Jacob’s voice stopped her. “Thank you.”
“I didn’t help much.”
“You listened.”
“Anytime you want to talk, Jacob . . .”
“I know.”
Lorena nodded, smiled, and walked out of the room, and only the memory of her perfume lingered.
Too restless for sleep, Jacob poured himself more coffee, then left the kitchen and stepped outside.
The night was cool, the sky scattered with stars. A hollow moon hung above Glorieta Mesa and bathed its summit in mother-of-pearl light. A breeze rustled in the pines near the house and made the badly wounded rooster weather vane point its beak and creak.
Jacob laid his coffee cup at his feet and built a cigarette, his eyes scanning the darkness. His face glowed scarlet as a match flared for his smoke. He shook out the flame let the spent match drop and said, “You better step out grinning from your butt to your eyebrows.”
“It’s me, Jake. It’s Shawn.”
“You could get killed walking up quiet on a man like that.”
“But I knew it was you.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t know who you were.”
Shawn stepped beside Jacob and accidentally kicked over the coffee cup.
His brother swore. “Shawn, didn’t Luther teach you to walk like an Indian?”
“Hell, Jake, who leaves a cup on the ground?”
“I do.”
Shawn looked at his brother in the gloom. “Why aren’t you in bed?”
“Can’t sleep. And I ask your question right back at you.”
“I can’t sleep either.” Shawn wore his gun, a thing Jacob noticed. His brother seldom went armed around Dromore.
“They’re out there somewhere, huh?” Jacob said.
“That’s my guess,” Shawn said. “When will they hit us, you reckon?”
“Today, tomorrow, who knows? But they will.”
“There’s a bunch of them.”
“And most of the hands are out on the range for the gather, scattered to hell and gone.” Jacob smiled without humor. “Great time for an attack by a bunch of Mexican bandits.” He drew deep on his cigarette, then said, “You ever hear of Álvaro Castillo before yesterday?”
“Maybe,” Shawn said, and then fell silent.
Jacob stared at him. “Well?”
“I was in Santa Fe . . . remember when the colonel sent Luther and me up there to buy a Studebaker wagon and we came home with a ’Paloos stud instead?”
“Yeah, that was a couple years back. I recollect that the colonel had you and Luther cleaning out stalls for a month.”
“Well, anyway, I recall that we spoke to a newspaperman in a saloon and he said a town down Texas way had been wiped off the map by Mexican bandits. By all accounts, it wasn’t much of a town, but the bandits plundered the place, burned the buildings, and killed everybody they could catch, and that included women and children.”
“You think it was Castillo and his men?”
“I’m pretty sure that was the boss bandit’s name.”
“How pretty sure?”
“Well, now I study on it, I’m sure, sure. Castillo . . . yes, that was the name all right. Hell, Jake, now I can even remember the town. It was called Two Horses. The newspaper feller said the citizens named it that because they didn’t want their burg to be called a one-horse town. I remember we laughed, but it sure doesn’t seem so funny now.”
Jacob said, “Well, if it’s the same man—”
“It is,” Shawn said.
“Then we’re in for some gun trouble. As Pa would say, I reckon we can put the kettle on for that.” Jacob was silent for a while, thinking, then he said, “Shawn, tell Samuel and Patrick about that Texas town, but don’t let Lorena hear you. There’s no use getting the womenfolk all worked up, especially if there’s the slightest chance Castillo figured he had enough yesterday and moved on.”
“Do you think he has?”
“Not a chance in hell.” Jacob’s voice was flat and lifeless and his soul had grown dark.
The black dog had finally sprung.