“I know that,” Hackberry said.
“I’ll fix something for us to eat here. We don’t need to go to town,” Ruby said.
“That’s not the plan. I have us a reservation at the best restaurant in Trinidad. The kind of place Yankee swells eat in.”
“Then what is the plan? Tell me, would you please? Yes, I would love to know the plan.”
Hackberry couldn’t find words to answer her question. In the room’s silence he could hear the wash flapping on the line, the door to the privy slamming on its hinges, a ball of tumbleweed slapping against the window. The light had gone out of Ishmael’s face. “Is something wrong?” he said.
TWO HOURS LATER, when Hackberry returned to the hotel, a telegram was waiting for him in his key box. Without reading it, he folded and placed it in his coat pocket and rode upstairs in the birdcage elevator, determined that the content, whatever it was, would not control him. But before the operator could open the collapsible door, Hackberry split the envelope and unfolded the square of yellow paper the telegrapher had handwritten the message on. It read, “Harry and Harvey at house. Afraid. Come home. Maggie.”
He went to the telegrapher’s office, but it was closed and would not be open until eight A.M. He bought a Pullman ticket for a train headed south at 4:17 A.M., then walked back to his hotel room and lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling until it was time to leave. Woe be unto the wicked, he thought. He couldn’t remember if the admonition was from the Bible or if he had made it up. Why did it matter? Regardless of what he did, the end result was the same: broken trust, flaming buildings, spilled blood, and the object of his affection eluding his grasp. “Dear Lord,” he said to the ceiling. “I get nothing right. If you want me to wear sackcloth and ashes, I’ll gladly do it. I’ve got nary an answer to my troubles.”
If there was a response, he did not hear it.
MAGGIE WAS WAITING for him in the buggy when the train pulled into the station at dawn three days later, the air brown with dust, the eastern sky as red as a forge. She had fixed coffee and hot milk for him in a covered pail. He drank it with both hands as she drove the buggy out of town, her shoulders erect, her face tight. She glanced sideways at him. “You miss me?”
“In your telegram you said you were afraid.”
“I was. Answer the question.”
He studied the side of her face. “Of course I missed you. You’re my wife. Where are they?”
“Where are who?”
“Longabaugh and Harvey Logan. Who else would I be talking about?”
“I don’t know where they are. They came to the ranch.”
“What for?”
“Old times’ sake. They don’t need a reason. Maybe they plan to rob a bank.”
“You let them in?”
Her cheeks were blotched with color.
“They were in our home?” he said.
“Harvey was drunk. Harry went to buy more liquor. I was alone with Harvey.”
He waited for her to continue, but she didn’t.
“Stop the buggy,” he said.
She reined in the horse and glared into his face. “What?”
“What did Logan do?”
The rims of her nostrils were white, her cheeks bladed.
“I’ve been on a train three days, two of them in
a chair car,” he said. “Now, tell me what happened or get out and walk.”
“Sometimes I hate you,” she replied. She pulled the top of her blouse loose from her skin, her chin up.
“Logan did that?” he said.