Bill Pronzini has worked in virtually every genre of popular fiction. Though he’s best known as the creator of the Nameless mystery novels, he has written several first-rate Westerns, as well as a half-dozen remarkable novels of dark suspense. This is not to slight his western stories at all, with novels such as Starvation Camp, Quincannon, and Firewind establishing him as a master of the Western. In addition to his novels, Pronzini is an especially gifted short-story writer, several of his pieces winning prestigious awards, including the Shamus.
He sat with his back to the wall, waiting.
Shadows shrouded the big room, thinned by early daylight filtering in through the plate-glass front window. Beyond the glass he could see Boxelder’s empty main street, rain spattering the puddled mud that wagon wheels and horses’ hooves had churned into a quagmire. Wind rattled the chain-hung sign on the outer wall: R. J. CABLE, SADDLEMAKER.
Familiar shapes surrounded him in the gloom. Workbenches littered with scraps of leather, mallets, cutters, stamping tools. A few saddles, finished and unfinished—not half as many as there used to be. Wall racks hung with bridles and hackamores, saddlebags and other accessories. Once the tools and accomplishments of his trade had given him pleasure, comfort, a measure of peace. Not anymore. Even the good odors of new leather and beeswax and harness oil had soured in his nostrils.
It was cold in the shop; he hadn’t bothered to lay a fire when he had come in at dawn, after another sleepless night. But he took little notice of the chill. He had been cold for a long while now, the kind of gut-cold that no fire can ever thaw.
His hands, twisted together in his lap, were sweating.
He glanced over at the closed door to the storeroom. A seed company calendar was tacked to it—not that he needed a calendar to tell him what day this was. October 26, 1892. The day after Lee Tarbeaux was scheduled to be released from Deer Lodge Prison. The day Tarbeaux would return to Boxelder after eight long years.
The day Tarbeaux had vowed to end Reed Cable’s life.
His gaze lingered on the storeroom door a few seconds longer. The shot gun was back there—his father’s old double-barreled Remington that he’d brought from home yesterday—propped in a corner, waiting as he was. He thought about fetching it, setting it next to his stool. But there was no need yet. It was still early.
He scrubbed his damp palms on his Levi’s, then fumbled in a vest pocket for his turnip watch. He flipped the dustcover, held the dial up close to his eyes. Ten after seven.
How long before Tarbeaux came?
Noon at the earliest; there were a lot of miles between here and Deer Lodge. If he could work, it would make the time go by more quickly … but he couldn’t. His hands were too unsteady for leathercraft. It would be an effort to keep them steady enough to hold the shotgun when the time came.
A few more hours, he told himself. Just a few more hours. Then it’ll finally be over.
He sat watching the rainswept street. Waiting.
IT WAS A quarter past twelve when Lee Tarbeaux reached the outskirts of Boxelder. The town had grown substantially since he’d been away—even more than he’d expected. There were more farms and small ranches in the area, too—parcels deeded off to homesteaders where once there had been nothing but rolling Montana grassland. Everything changes, sooner or later, he thought as he rode. Land, towns, and men, too. Some men.
He passed the cattle pens near the railroad depot, deserted now in the misty rain. He’d spent many a day there when he had worked for Old Man Kendall—and one day in particular that he’d never forget, because it had been the beginning of the end of his freedom for eight long years. Kendall was dead now; died in his sleep in ’89. Tarbeaux had been sorry to hear it, weeks after it had happened, on the prison grapevine. He’d held no hard feelings toward the old cowman or his son Bob. The Kendalls were no different from the rest of the people here; they’d believed Cable’s lies and that there was a streak of larceny in Tarbeaux’s kid-wildness. You couldn’t blame them for feeling betrayed. Only one man to blame and that was Reed Cable.
Tarbeaux rode slowly, savoring the chill October air with its foretaste of winter snow. The weather didn’t bother him and it didn’t seem to bother the spavined blue roan he’d bought cheap from a hostler in the town of Deer Lodge—something of a surprise, given the animal’s age and condition. Just went to show that you couldn’t always be sure about anybody or anything, good or bad. Except Reed Cable. Tarbeaux was sure Cable was the same man he’d been eight years ago. Bits and pieces of information that had filtered through the prison walls added weight to his certainty.
Some of the buildings flanking Montana Street were familiar: the Boxelder Hotel, the sprawling bulk of Steinmetz Brewery. Many others were not. It gave him an odd, uncomfortable feeling to know this town and yet not know it—to be home and yet to understand that it could never be home again. He wouldn’t stay long. Not even the night. And once he left, he’d never come back. Boxelder, like Deer Lodge, like all his foolish kid plans, were part of a past he had to bury completely if he was to have any kind of future.
A chain-hung shingle, dancing in the wind, appeared in the gray mist ahead: R. J. CABLE, SADDLEMAKER. The plate-glass window below the sign showed a rectangle of lamplight, even though there was a “closed” sign in one corner. Tarbeaux barely glanced at the window as he passed, with no effort to see through the water-pocked glass. There was plenty of time. Patience was just one of the things his stay in the penitentiary had taught him. Besides, he was hungry. It had been hours since his meager trailside breakfast.
He tied the roan to a hitch rail in front of an eatery called the Elite Cafe. It was one of the new places; no one there knew or recognized him. He ordered hot coffee and a bowl of chili. And as he ate, he thought about the things that drive a man, that shape and change him for better or worse. Greed was one. Hate was another. He knew all about hate; he’d lived with it a long time. But it wasn’t the worst of the ones that ate the guts right out of a man.
The worst was fear.
WHEN CABLE SAW the lone, slicker-clad figure ride by outside, he knew it was Lee Tarbeaux. Even without a clear look at the man’s face, shielded by the tilt of a rain hat, he knew. He felt a taut relief. It wouldn’t be much longer now.
He extended a hand to the shotgun propped beside his stool. He’d brought it out of the storeroom two hours ago, placed it within easy reach. The sick feeling inside him grew and spread as he rested the weapon across his knees. His damp palms made the metal surfaces feel greasy. He kept his hands on it just the same.
His thoughts drifted as he sat there, went back again, as they so often did these days, to the spring of ’84. Twenty years old that spring, him and Lee Tarbeaux both. Friendly enough because they’d grown up together, both of them town kids, but not close friends. Too little in common. Too much spirit in Tarbeaux and not enough spirit in him. Lee went places and did things he was too timid to join in on.
When Tarbeaux turned eighteen he’d gone to work as a hand on Old Man Kendall’s K-Bar Ranch. He’d always had a reckless streak and it had widened out over the following two years, thanks to a similar streak in Old Man Kendall’s son Bob. Drinking, whoring, a few saloon fights. No serious trouble with the law, but enough trouble to make the law aware of Lee Tarbeaux.
Not a whisper of wildness in Reed Cable, meanwhile. Quiet and steady—that was what everyone said about him. Quiet and steady and honest. He took a position as night clerk at the Boxelder Hotel. Not because he wanted the job; saddlemaking and leather work were what he craved to do with his life. But there were two saddlemakers in town already, and neither was interested in hiring an apprentice. He’d have moved to another town except that his ma, who’d supported them since his father’s death, had taken sick and was no longer able to work as a seamstress. All up to him then. And the only decent job he could find was the night clerk’s.
Ma’d died in March of that year. One month after Tarbeaux’s aunt—the last of his relatives—passed away. And on a day in late April Bob Kendall and Lee Tarbeaux and the rest of the K-Bar crew drove their roundup beeves in to the railroad loading pens. Old Man Kendall wasn’t with them: he’d been laid up with gout. Bob Kendall was in charge, but he was a hammerhead as well as half wild: liquor and women and stud poker were all he cared about. Tarbeaux was with him when the cattle buyer from Billings finished his tally and paid off in cash. Seventy-four hundred dollars, all in greenbacks.
It was after bank closing hours by the time the deal was done. Bob Kendall hadn’t cared to go hunting Banker Weems to take charge of the money. He wanted a running start on his night’s fun, so he turned the chore over to Lee. Tarbeaux made a halfhearted attempt to find the banker, and then his own itch got the best of him. He went to the hotel, where his old friend Reed had just come on shift, where the lobby was otherwise deserted, and laid the saddlebags full of money on the counter.
“Reed,” he said without explanation, “do me a favor and put these bags in the hotel safe for tonight. I or Bob Kendall’ll be back to fetch ’em first thing in the morning.”
It was curiosity that made him open the bags after Tarbeaux left. The sight of all that cash weakened his knees, dried his mouth. He put the saddlebags away in the safe, but he couldn’t stop thinking about the money. So many things he could do with it, so many ambitions he could make a reality. A boldness and a recklessness built in him for the first time. The money grew from a lure into a consuming obsession as the hours passed. He might’ve been able to overcome it if his mother had still been alive, but he was all alone—with no prospects for the future and no one to answer to but himself.
He took the saddlebags from the safe an hour past midnight. Took them out back of the hotel stables and hid them in a clump of buck brush. Afterward he barely remembered doing it, as if it had all happened in a dream.
Bob Kendall came in alone at eight in the morning, hung over and in mean spirits, just as the day clerk arrived to serve as a witness. There was a storm inside Reed Cable, but outwardly he was calm. Saddlebags? He didn’t know anything about saddlebags full of money. Tarbeaux hadn’t been in last evening, no matter what he claimed. He hadn’t seen Lee in more than two weeks.
In a fury Bob Kendall ran straight to the sheriff, and the sheriff arrested Tarbeaux. The hardest part of the whole thing was facing Lee, repeating the lies, and watching the outraged disbelief in Tarbeaux’s eyes turn to blind hate. But the money was all he let himself think about. The money, the money, the money… .
It was his word against Tarbeaux’s, his reputation against Tarbeaux’s. The sheriff believed him, the Kendalls believed him, the townspeople believed him—and the judge and jury believed him. The verdict was guilty, the sentence a minimum of eight years at hard labor.
Tarbeaux had made his vow of vengeance as he was being led from the courtroom. “You won’t get away with this, Reed!” he yelled. “You’ll pay and pay dear. As soon as I get out I’ll come back and make sure you pay!”
The threat had shaken Cable at the time. But neither it nor his conscience had bothered him for long. Tarbeaux’s release from Deer Lodge was in the far future; why worry about it? He had the money, he had his plans—and when one of the town’s two saddlemakers died suddenly of a stroke, he soon realized the first of his ambitions.
CABLE SHIFTED POSITION on the hard stool. That was then and this was now, he thought bitterly. The far future had become the present. Pain moved through his belly and chest; a dry cough racked him. He sleeved sweat from his eyes, peered again through the front window. A few pedestrians hurried by on the west sidewalk; none was Lee Tarbeaux.
“Come on,” he said aloud. “Come on, damn you, and get it over with!”
TARBEAUX FINISHED HIS meal, took out the makings, and rolled a smoke to savor with a final cup of coffee. Food, coffee, tobacco—it all tasted good again, now that he was free. He’d rushed through the first twenty years of his life, taking everything for granted. And he’d struggled and pained his way through the last eight, taking nothing for granted. He’d promised himself that when he got out he’d make his remaining years pass as slowly as he could, that he’d take the time to look and feel and learn, and that he’d cherish every minute of every new day.
He paid his bill, crossed the street to Adams Mercantile—another new business run by a stranger—and replenished his supplies of food and tobacco. That left him with just three dollars of his prison savings. He’d have to settle someplace soon, at least long enough to take a job and build himself a stake. After that … no hurry, wherever he went and whatever he did. No hurry at all.
First things first, though. The time had come to face Reed Cable.
He felt nothing as he walked upstreet to where the chain-hung sign rattled and danced. It had all been worked out in his mind long ago. All that was left was the settlement.
Lamplight still burned behind the saddlery’s window. Without looking through the glass, without hesitation, Tarbeaux opened the door and went in under a tinkling bell.
Cable sat on a stool at the back wall, an old double-barreled shotgun across his knees. He didn’t move as Tarbeaux shut the door behind him. In the pale lamp glow Cable seemed small and shrunken. His sweat-stained skin was sallow, pinched, and his hands trembled. He’d aged twenty years in the past eight—an old man before his thirtieth birthday.
The shotgun surprised Tarbeaux a little. He hadn’t figured on a willingness in Cable to put up a fight. He said as he took off his rain hat, “Expecting me, I see.”
“I knew you’d come. You haven’t changed much, Lee.”
“Sure I have. On the inside. Just the opposite with you.”
“You think so?”
“I know so. You fixing to shoot me with that scattergun?”
“If you try anything I will.”
“I’m not armed.”
“Expect me to believe that?”
Tarbeaux shrugged and glanced slowly around the shadowed room. “Pretty fair leather work,” he said. “Seems you were cut out to be a saddlemaker, like you always claimed.”
“Man’s got to do something.”
“That’s a fact. Only thing is, he ought to do it with honest money.”
“All right,” Cable said.
“You admitting you stole the K-Bar money, Reed? No more lies?”
“Not much point in lying to you.”
“How about the sheriff and Bob Kendall? Ready to tell them the truth, too—get it all off your chest?”
Cable shook his head. “It’s too late for that.”
“Why?”
“I couldn’t face prison, that’s why. I couldn’t stand it.”
“I stood it for eight years,” Tarbeaux said. “It’s not so bad, once you get used to it.”
“No. I couldn’t, not even for a year.”
“Man can be in prison even when there’s no bars on his windows.”
Cable made no reply.
“What I mean, it’s been a hard eight years for you, too. Harder, I’ll warrant, than the ones I lived through. Isn’t that so?”
Still no reply.
“It’s so,” Tarbeaux said. “You got yourself this shop and you learned to be a saddlemaker. But then it all slid downhill from there. Starting with Clara Weems. You always talked about marrying her someday, having three or four kids—your other big ambition. But she turned you down when you asked for her hand. Married that storekeeper in Billings, instead.”
The words made Cable’s hands twitch on the shotgun. “How’d you know that?”
“I know plenty about you, Reed. You proposed to two other women: they wouldn’t have you, either. Then you lost four thousand dollars on bad mining stock. Then one of your horses kicked over a lantern and burned down your barn and half your house. Then you caught consumption and were laid up six months during the winter of ’90 and ’91—”
“That’s enough,” Cable said, but there was no heat in his voice. Only a kind of desperate weariness.
“No, it’s not. Your health’s been poor ever since, worsening steadily, and there’s nothing much the sawbones can do about it. How much more time do they give you—four years? Five?”
“Addled, whoever told you that. I’m healthy enough. I’ve got a long life ahead of me.”
“Four years—five, at the most. I’m the one with the long life ahead. And I aim to make it a good life. You remember how I could barely read and write? Well, I learned in prison and now I can do both better than most. I learned a trade, too. Blacksmithing. One of these days I’ll have my own shop, same as you, with my name on a sign out front bigger than yours.”
“But first you had to stop here and settle with me.”
“That’s right. First I have to settle with you.”
“Kill me, like you swore in court you’d do. Shoot me dead.”
“I never swore that.”
“Same as.”
“You think I still hate you that much?”
“Don’t you?”
“No,” Tarbeaux said. “Not anymore.”
“I don’t believe that. You’re lying.”
“You’re the liar, Reed, not me.”
“You want me dead. Admit it—you want me dead.”
“You’ll be dead in four or five years.”
“You can’t stand to wait that long. You want me dead here and now.”
“No. All I ever wanted was to make sure you paid for what you did to me. Well, you’re paying and paying dear. I came here to tell you to your face that I know you are. That’s the only reason I came, the only settlement I’m after.”
“You bastard, don’t fool with me. Draw your gun and get it over with.”
“I told you, I’m not armed.”
Cable jerked the scattergun off his knees, a gesture that was meant to be provoking. But the muzzle wobbled at a point halfway between them, held there. “Make your play!”
Tarbeaux understood then. There was no fight in Cable; there never had been. There was only fear. He said, “You’re trying to make me kill you. That’s it, isn’t it? You want me to put you out of your misery.”
It was as if he’d slapped Cable across the face. Cable’s head jerked; he lurched to his feet, swinging the Remington until its twin muzzles were like eyes centered on Tarbeaux’s face.
Tarbeaux stood motionless. “You can’t stand the thought of living another five sick, hurting years, but you don’t have the guts to kill yourself. You figured you could goad me into doing it for you.”
“No. Make your play or I’ll blow your goddamn head off!”
“Not with that scattergun. It’s not loaded, Reed. We both know that now.”
Cable tried to stare him down. The effort lasted no more than a few seconds; his gaze slid down to the useless shotgun. Then, as if the weight of the weapon was too much for his shaking hands, he let it fall to the floor, kicked it clattering under one of the workbenches.
“Why?” he said in a thin, hollow whisper. “Why couldn’t you do what you vowed you’d do? Why couldn’t you finish it?”
“It is finished,” Tarbeaux said.
And it was, in every way. Now he really was free—of Cable and the last of his hate, of the past. Now he could start living again.
He turned and went out into the cold, sweet rain.
CABLE SLUMPED AGAIN onto his stool. Tarbeaux’s last words seemed to hang like a frozen echo in the empty room.
It is finished.
For Tarbeaux, maybe it was. Not for Reed Cable. It wouldn’t be finished for him for a long, long time.
“Damn you,” he said, and then shouted the words. “Damn you!” But they weren’t meant for Lee Tarbeaux this time. They were meant for himself.
He kept on sitting there with his back to the wall.
Waiting.