Echo Burning (Jack Reacher #5)

Echo Burning (Jack Reacher #5) Page 5

The boy filled a whole new page in his notebook. The men with the telescopes called out descriptions and the exact sequence of events. The arrival of the sheriff, the return of the beaner and the kid with the new guy in tow, the kid running off to the barn, the sheriff leaving, the beaner and the new guy entering the house, a long period of nothing doing, the emergence of the beaner and the new guy onto the porch, their walk together down toward the bunkhouse, her return alone.

"Who is he?" the boy asked.

"Hell should we know?" one of the men replied.

Very tall, heavy, not neatly dressed, shirt and pants, can't tell how old, the boy wrote. Then he added: Not a wrangler, wrong shoes. Trouble?

The grade fell away behind the bunkhouse and made it a two-story building.

The lower floor had huge sliding doors, frozen open on broken tracks. There was another pick-up in there, and a couple of green tractors. At the far end to the right was a wooden staircase without a handrail leading upward through a rectangular hole in the ceiling. Reacher spent a minute on the ground floor looking at the vehicles. The pick-up had a gun rack in the rear window. The air was hot and heavy and smelled of gasoline and motor oil.

Then he used the staircase and came out on the second level. All the interior carpentry was painted red, walls, floor and roof beams alike. The air was hotter still up there, and stale. No air conditioning, and not much ventilation. There was a closed-off area at the far end, which he guessed was the bathroom. Apart from that the whole of the floor was one big open space, with sixteen beds facing each other eight to a side, with simple iron frames and thin striped mattresses and bedside cabinets and footlockers.

The two beds nearest the bathroom were occupied. Each had a small, wiry man lying half-dressed on top of the sheets. Both men wore blue jeans and fancy tooled boots and no shirts. Both had their hands folded behind their heads. They both turned toward the staircase as Reacher stepped up inside the room. They both unlaced their nearer arms to get a better look at him.

Reacher had done four years at West Point, and then thirteen years in the service, so he had a total seventeen years' experience of walking into a new dormitory and being stared at by its occupants. It wasn't a sensation that bothered him. There was a technique involved in handling it. An etiquette. The way to do it was to just walk in, select an unoccupied bed, and say absolutely nothing at all. Make somebody else speak first. That way, you could judge their disposition before you were forced to reveal your own.

He walked to a bed two places away from the head of the staircase, against the north wall, which he judged would be cooler than the south. In the past, in the army, he would have had a heavy canvas kit bag to dump on the bed as a symbol of possession. The kit bag would be stenciled with his name and his rank, and the number of restencilings on it would offer a rough guide to his biography. Kit bags saved a lot of talking time. But the best he could do in this new situation was take his folding toothbrush from his pocket and prop it on the bedside cabinet. As a substitute gesture, it lacked physical impact. But it made the same point. It said I live here now, same as you do. You got any kind of a comment to make about that?

Both men kept on staring at him, saying nothing. Lying down, it was hard to judge their physiques with any degree of certainty, but they were both small. Maybe five-six or -seven each, maybe a hundred and fifty pounds. But they were wiry and muscular, like middleweight boxers. They had farmers' tans, deep brown on their arms and their faces and their necks, and milky white where T-shirts had covered their bodies. They had random knobs and old swellings here and there on their ribs and arms and collarbones. Reacher had seen marks like that before. Carmen had one. He had one or two himself. They were where old fractures had set and healed.

He walked past the two men to the bathroom. It had a door, but it was a communal facility inside, four of everything with no interior partitioning. Four toilets, four sinks, four shower heads in a single elongated stall. It was reasonably clean, and it smelled of warm water and cheap soap, like the two guys had recently showered, maybe ready for Friday evening off. There was a high window with a clogged insect screen and no glass. By standing tall he could see past the corner of the horse barn all the way up to the house. He could see half of the porch and a sliver of the front door.

He came back into the dormitory room. One of the guys had hauled himself upright and was sitting with his head turned, watching the bathroom door. His back was as pale as his front, and it had more healed fractures showing through the skin. The ribs, the right scapula. Either this guy spent a lot of time getting run over by trucks, or else he was a retired rodeo rider who had passed his career a little ways from the top of his trade.

"Storm coming," the guy said.

"What I heard," Reacher said.

"Inevitable, with a temperature like this."

Reacher said nothing.

"You hired on?" the guy asked.

"I guess," Reacher said.

"So you'll be working for us."

Reacher said nothing.

"I'm Billy," the guy said.

The other guy moved up on his elbows.

"Josh," he said.

Reacher nodded to them both.

"I'm Reacher," he said. "Pleased to meet you."

"You'll do the scut work for us," the guy called Billy said. "Shoveling shit and toting bales."

"Whatever"

"Because you sure don't look like much of a horse rider to me."

"I don't?"

Billy shook his head. "Too tall. Too heavy. Center of gravity way up there. No, my guess is you're not much of a horse rider at all."

'The Mexican woman bring you in?" Josh asked.

"Mrs. Greer," Reacher said.

"Mrs. Greer is Rusty," Billy said. "She didn't bring you in."

"Mrs. Carmen Greer," Reacher said.

Billy said nothing. The guy called Josh just smiled.

"We're heading out after supper," Billy said. "Bar, couple hours south of here. You could join us. Call it a get-to-know-you type of thing."

Reacher shook his head. "Maybe some other time, when I've earned something. I like to pay my own way, situation like that."

Billy thought about it and nodded.

"That's a righteous attitude," he said. "Maybe you'll fit right in."

The guy called Josh just smiled.

Reacher walked back to his bed and stretched himself out, keeping still, fighting the heat. He stared up at the red-painted rafters for a minute, and then he closed his eyes.

The maid brought supper forty minutes later. She was a middle-aged white woman who could have been a relative of Billy's. She greeted him with familiarity. Maybe a cousin. Certainly she looked a little like him. Sounded like him. The same genes in there somewhere. She greeted Josh with ease and Reacher himself with coolness. Supper was a pail of pork and beans, which she served into metal bowls with a ladle taken from her apron pocket. She handed out forks and spoons, and empty metal cups.

"Water in the bathroom faucet," she said, for Reacher's benefit.

Then she went back down the stairs and Reacher turned his attention to the food. It was the first he had seen all day. He sat on his bed with the bowl on his knees and ate with the spoon. The beans were dark and soupy and mixed with a generous spoonful of molasses. The pork was tender and the fat was crisp. It must have been fried separately and mixed with the beans afterward.

"Hey, Reacher," Billy called over. "So what do you think?"

"Good enough for me," he said.

"Bullshit," Josh said. "More than a hundred degrees all day, and she brings us hot food? I showered already and now I'm sweating like a pig again."

"It's free," Billy said.

"Bullshit, it's free," Josh said back. "It's a part of our wages."

Reacher ignored them. Bitching about the food was a staple of dormitory life. And this food wasn't bad. Better than some he'd eaten. Better than what came out of most barracks cookhouses. He dumped his empty bowl on the cabinet next to his toothbrush and lay back down and felt his stomach go to work on the sugars and the fats. Across the room Billy and Josh finished up and wiped their mouths with their forearms and took clean shirts out of their footlockers. Shrugged them on and buttoned them on the run and combed through their hair with their fingertips.

"See you later," Billy called.

They clattered down the stairs and a moment later Reacher heard the sound of a gasoline engine starting up directly below. The pick-up, he guessed. He heard it back out through the doors and drive away. He stepped into the bathroom and saw it come around the corner and wind around the horse barn and bounce across the yard past the house.

He walked back through the dormitory and piled the three used bowls on top of each other, with the silverware in the topmost. Threaded the three cup handles onto his forefinger and walked down the stairs and outside. The sun was nearly below the horizon but the heat hadn't backed off at all. The air was impossibly hot. Almost suffocating. And it was getting humid. A warm damp breeze was coming in from somewhere. He walked up past the corrals, past the barn, through the yard. He skirted around the porch and looked for the kitchen door. Found it and knocked. The maid opened up.

"I brought these back," he said.

He held up the bowls and the cups.

"Well, that's kind of you," she said. "But I'd have come for them."

"Long walk," he said. "Hot night."

She nodded.

"I appreciate it," she said. "You had enough?"

"Plenty," he said. "It was very good."

She shrugged, a little bashful. "Just cowboy food." She took the used dishes from him and carried them inside. "Thanks again," she called.

It sounded like a dismissal. So he turned away and walked out to the road, with the low sun full on his face. He stopped under the wooden arch. Ahead of him to the west was nothing at all, just the empty eroded mesa he had seen on the way in. On the right, to the north, was a road sixty miles long with a few buildings at the end of it. A neighbor fifteen miles away. On the left, to the south, he had no idea. A bar two hours away, Billy had said. Could be a hundred miles. He turned around. To the east, Greer land for a stretch, and then somebody else's, and then somebody else's again, he guessed. Dry holes and dusty caliche and nothing much more all the way back to Austin, four hundred miles away.

New guy comes to gate and stares right at us, the boy wrote. Then looks all around. Knows we're here? Trouble?

He closed his book again and pressed himself tighter to the ground.

"Reacher," a voice called.

Reacher squinted right and saw Bobby Greer in the shadows on the porch. He was sitting in the swing set. Same denims, same dirty T-shirt. Same backward ball cap.

"Come here," he called.

Reacher paused a beat. Then he walked back past the kitchen and stopped at the bottom of the porch steps.

"I want a horse," Bobby said. "The big mare. Saddle her up and bring her out."

Reacher paused again. "You want that now?"

"When do you think? I want an evening ride."

Reacher said nothing.

"And we need a demonstration," Bobby said.

"Of what?"

"You want to hire on, you need to show us you know what you're doing."

Reacher paused again, longer.

"O.K.," he said.

"Five minutes," Bobby said.

He stood up and headed back inside the house. Closed the door. Reacher stood for a moment with the heat on his back and then headed down to the barn. Headed for the big door. The one with the bad smell coming out of it. A demonstration? You're in deep shit now, he thought. More ways than one.

There was a light switch inside the door, in a metal box screwed to the siding. He flicked it on and weak yellow bulbs lit the enormous space. The floor was beaten earth, and there was dirty straw everywhere. The center of the barn was divided into horse stalls, back to back, with a perimeter track lined with floor-to-ceiling hay bales inside the outer walls. He circled around the stalls. A total of five were occupied. Five horses. They were all tethered to the walls of their stalls with complicated rope constructions that fitted neatly over their heads.

He took a closer look at each of them. One of them was very small. A pony. Ellie's, presumably. O.K., strike that. Four to go. Two were slightly bigger than the other two. He bent down low and peered upward at them, one at a time. In principle he knew what a mare should look like, underneath. It should be easy enough to spot one. But in practice, it wasn't easy. The stalls were dark and the tails obscured the details. In the end he decided the first one he looked at wasn't a mare. Wasn't a stallion, either. Some parts were missing. A gelding. Try the next. He shuffled along and looked at the next. O.K., that's a mare. Good. The next one was a mare, too. The last one, another gelding.

He stepped back to where he could see both of the mares at once. They were huge shiny brown animals, huffing through their noses, moving slightly, making dull clop sounds with their feet on the straw. No, their hoofs. Hooves? Their necks were turned so they could watch him with one eye each. Which one was bigger? The one on the left, he decided. A little taller, a little heavier, a little wider in the shoulders. O.K., that's the big mare. So far, so good.

Now, the saddle. Each stall had a kind of a thick post coming horizontally out of the outside wall, right next to the gate, with a whole bunch of equipment piled on it. A saddle for sure, but also a lot of complicated straps and blankets and metal items. The straps are the reins, he guessed. The metal thing must be the bit. It goes in the horse's mouth. The bit between her teeth, right? He lifted the saddle off the post. It was very heavy. He carried it balanced on his left forearm. Felt good. Just like a regular cowboy. Roy Rogers, eat your heart out.

He stood in front of the stall gate. The big mare watched him with one eye. Her lips folded back like thick rolls of rubber, showing big square teeth underneath. They were yellow. O.K., think. First principles. Teeth like that, this thing is not a carnivore. It's not a biting animal. Well, it might try to nick you a little, but it's not a lion or a tiger. It eats grass. It's an herbivore. Herbivores are generally timid. Like antelope or wildebeests out there on the sweeping plains of Africa. So this thing's defense mechanism is to run away, not to attack. It gets scared, and it runs. But it's a herd animal, too. So it's looking for a leader. It will submit to a show of authority. So be firm, but don't scare it.

He opened the gate. The horse moved. Its ears went back and its head went up. Then down. Up and down, against the rope. It moved its back feet and swung its huge rear end toward him.

"Hey," he said, loud and clear and firm.

It kept on coming. He touched it on the side. It kept on coming. Don't get behind it. Don't let it kick you. That much, he knew. What was the phrase? Like being kicked by a horse? Had to mean something.

"Stand still," he said.

It was swinging sideways toward him. He met its flank with his right shoulder. Gave it a good solid shove, like he was aiming to bust down a door. The horse quieted. Stood still, huffing gently. He smiled. I'm the boss, O.K.? He put the back of his right hand up near its nose. It was something he had seen at the movies. You rub the back of your hand on its nose, and it gets to know you. Some smell thing. The skin on its nose felt soft and dry. Its breath was strong and hot. Its lips peeled back again and its tongue came out. It was huge and wet.

"O.K., good girl," he whispered.

He lifted the saddle two-handed and dumped it down on her back. Pushed and pulled at it until it felt solid. It wasn't easy. Was it the right way around? Had to be. It was shaped a little like a chair. There was a definite front and a back. There were broad straps hanging down on either side. Two long, two short. Two had buckles, two had holes. What were they for? To hold the saddle on, presumably. You bring the far ones around and buckle them at the side, up underneath where the rider's thigh would be. He ducked down and tried to grab the far straps, underneath the horse's belly. He could barely reach them. This was one wide animal, that was for damn sure. He stretched and caught the end of one strap in his fingertips and the saddle slipped sideways.

"Shit," he breathed.

He straightened up and leveled the saddle again. Ducked down and grabbed for the far straps. The horse moved and put them way out of his reach.

"Shit," he said again.

He stepped closer, crowding the horse against the wall. It didn't like that, and it leaned on him. He weighed two hundred and fifty pounds. The horse weighed half a ton. He staggered backward. The saddle slipped. The horse stopped moving. He straightened the saddle again and kept his right hand on it while he groped for the straps with his left.

"Not like that," a voice called from way above him.

He spun around and looked up. Ellie was lying on top of the stack of hay bales, up near the roof, her chin on her hands, looking down at him.

"You need the blanket first," she said.

"What blanket?"

"The saddle cloth," she said.

The horse moved again, crowding hard against him. He shoved it back. Its head came around and it looked at him. He looked back at it. It had huge dark eyes. Long eyelashes. He glared at it. I'm not afraid of you, pal. Stand still or I'll shove you again.

"Ellie, does anybody know you're in here?" he called.

She shook her head, solemnly. "I'm hiding," she said. "I'm good at hiding."

"But does anybody know you hide in here?"

"I think my mommy knows I do sometimes, but the Greers don't."

"You know how to do this horse stuff?"

"Of course I do. I can do my pony all by myself."

"So help me out here, will you? Come and do this one for me."

"It's easy," she said.

"Just show me, O.K.?"

She stayed still for a second, making her usual lengthy decision, and then she scrambled down the pile of bales and jumped to the ground and joined him in the stall.

"Take the saddle off again," she said.

She took a cloth off of the equipment post and shook it out and threw it up over the mare's back. She was too short and Reacher had to straighten it one-handed.

"Now put the saddle on it," she said.

He dropped the saddle on top of it. Ellie ducked underneath the horse's belly and caught the straps. She barely needed to stoop. She threaded the ends together and pulled.

"You do it," she said. "They're stiff." He lined the buckles up and pulled hard. "Not too tight," Ellie said. "Not yet. Wait for her to swell up."

"She's going to swell up?"

Ellie nodded, gravely. "They don't like it. They swell their stomachs up to try to stop you. But they can't hold it, so they come down again."

He watched the horse's stomach. It was already the size of an oil drum. Then it blew out, bigger and bigger, fighting the straps. Then it subsided again. There was a long sigh of air through its nose. It shuffled around and gave up.

"Now do them tight," Ellie said.

He pulled them as tight as he could. The mare shuffled in place.

Ellie had the reins in her hands, shaking them into some kind of coherent shape. "Take the rope off of her," she said. "Just pull it down."

He pulled the rope down. The mare's ears folded forward and it slid down over them, over her nose, and off.

"Now hold this up." She handed him a tangle of straps. "It's called the bridle."

He turned it in his hands, until the shape made sense. He held it against the horse's head until it was in the right position. He tapped the metal part against the mare's lips. The bit. She kept her mouth firmly closed. He tried again. No result.

"How, Ellie?" he asked.

"Put your thumb in."

"My thumb? Where?"

"Where her teeth stop. At the side. There's a hole."

He traced the ball of his thumb sideways along the length of the mare's lips. He could feel the teeth passing underneath, one by one, like he was counting them. Then they stopped, and there was just gum.

"Poke it in," Ellie said.

"My thumb?"

She nodded. He pushed, and the lips parted, and his thumb slipped into a warm, gluey, greasy socket. And sure enough, the mare opened her mouth.

"Quick, put the bit in," Ellie said.

He pushed the metal into the mouth. The mare used her massive tongue to get it comfortable, like she was helping him, too.

"Now pull the bridle up and buckle it."

He eased the leather straps up over the ears and found the buckles. There were three of them. One fastened flat against the slab of cheekbone. One went over her nose. The third was hanging down under her neck.

"Not too tight," Ellie said. "She's got to breathe."

He saw a worn mark on the strap, which he guessed indicated the usual length.

"Now loop the reins up over the horn."

There was a long strap coming off of the ends of the bit in a loop. He guessed that was the rein. And he guessed the horn was the upright thing at the front end of the saddle. Like a handle, for holding on with. Ellie was busy pulling the stirrups down into place, walking right under the mare's belly from one side to the other.

"Now lift me up," she said. "I need to check everything."

He held her under the arms and lifted her into the saddle. She felt tiny and weighed nothing at all. The horse was way too wide for her, and her legs came out more or less straight on each side. She lay down forward and stretched her arms out and checked all the buckles. Redid some of them. Tucked the loose ends away. Pulled the mane hair out neatly from under the straps. Gripped the saddle between her legs and jerked herself from side to side, checking for loose movement.

"It's O.K.," she said. "You did very good."

She put her arms out to him and he lifted her down. She was hot and damp.

"Now just lead her out," she said. "Hold her at the side of her mouth. If she won't come, give her a yank."

"Thanks a million, kid," he said. "Now go hide again, O.K.?"

She scrambled back up the stack of hay bales and he tugged at a strap coming off a metal ring at the side of the mouth. The mare didn't move. He clicked his tongue and pulled again. The mare lurched forward. He jumped ahead and she got herself into some kind of a rhythm behind him. Clop, clop, clop. He led her out of the stall and pulled her around the corner and headed for the door. Let her come ahead to his shoulder and stepped with her into the yard. She walked easily. He adjusted to her pace. His arm was neatly bent at the elbow and her head was rocking up and down a little and her shoulder was brushing gently against his. He walked her across the yard like he'd done it every day of his life. Roy Rogers, eat your damn heart out.

Bobby Greer was back on the porch steps, waiting. The mare walked right up to him and stopped. Reacher held the little leather strap while Bobby checked all of the same things Ellie had. He nodded.

"Not bad," he said.

Reacher said nothing.

"But you took longer than I expected."

Reacher shrugged. "I'm new to them. I always find it's better to go slow, the first time. Until they're familiar with me."

Bobby nodded again. "You surprise me. I would have bet the farm the nearest you'd ever gotten to a horse was watching the Preakness on cable."

"The what?"

"The Preakness. It's a horse race."

"I know it is. I was kidding."

"So maybe it's a double surprise," Bobby said. "Maybe my sister-in-law was actually telling the truth for once."

Reacher glanced at him. "Why wouldn't she be?"

"I don't know why. But she hardly ever does. You need to bear that in mind."

Reacher said nothing. Just waited.

"You can go now," Bobby said. "I'll put her away when I'm through."

Reacher nodded and walked away. He heard a crunch of leather behind him, which he assumed was Bobby getting up into the saddle. But he didn't look back. He just walked through the yard, down past the barn, past the corrals, and around the corner of the bunkhouse to the foot of the stairway. He intended to go straight up and take a long shower to get rid of the terrible animal smell that was clinging to him. But when he got up to the second story, he found Carmen sitting on his bed with a set of folded sheets on her knees. She was still in her cotton dress, and the sheets glowed white against the skin of her bare legs.

"I got you these," she said. "From the linen closet in the bathroom. You're going to need them. I didn't know if you would realize where they were."

He stopped at the head of the stairs, one foot inside the room, the other foot still on the last tread.

"Carmen, this is crazy," he said. "You should get out, right now. They're going to realize I'm a phony. I'm not going to last a day. I might not even be here on Monday."

"I've been thinking," she said. "All the way through supper."

"About what?"

"About Al Eugene. Suppose it's about whoever Sloop is going to rat out? Suppose they woke up and took some action? Suppose they grabbed Al to stop the deal?"

"Can't be. Why would they wait? They'd have done it a month ago."

"Yes, but suppose everybody thought it was."

He stepped all the way into the room.

"I don't follow," he said, although he did.

"Suppose you made Sloop disappear," she said. "The exact same way somebody made Al disappear. They'd think it was all connected somehow. They wouldn't suspect you. You'd be totally in the clear."

He shook his head. "We've been through this. I'm not an assassin."

She went quiet. Looked down at the sheets in her lap and began picking at a seam. The sheets were frayed and old. Cast-offs from the big house, Reacher thought. Maybe Rusty and her dead husband had slept under those same sheets. Maybe Bobby had. Maybe Sloop had. Maybe Sloop and Carmen, together.

"You should just get out, right now," he said again.

"I can't."

"You should stay somewhere inside of Texas, just temporarily. Fight it, legally. You'd get custody, in the circumstances."

"I don't have any money. It could cost a hundred thousand dollars."

"Carmen, you have to do something."

She nodded.

"I know what I'm going to do," she said. "I'm going to take a beating, Monday night. Then Tuesday morning, I'm going to come find you, wherever you are. Then you'll see, and maybe you'll change your mind."

He said nothing. She angled her face up into the fading light from the high windows. Her hair tumbled back on her shoulders.

"Take a good look," she said. "Come close."

He stepped nearer.

"I'll be all bruised," she said. "Maybe my nose will be broken. Maybe my lips will be split. Maybe I'll have teeth missing."

He said nothing.

"Touch my skin," she said. "Feel it."

He put the back of his forefinger on her cheek. Her skin was soft and smooth, like warm silk. He traced the wide arch of her cheekbone.

"Remember this," she said. "Compare it to what you feel Tuesday morning. Maybe it'll change your mind."

He took his finger away. Maybe it would change his mind. That was what she was counting on, and that was what he was afraid of. The difference between cold blood and hot blood. It was a big difference. For him, a crucial difference.

"Hold me," she said. "I can't remember how it feels to be held." He sat down next to her and took her in his arms. She slid hers around his waist and buried her head in his chest. "I'm scared," she said.

They sat like that for twenty minutes. Maybe thirty. Reacher lost all track of time. She was warm and fragrant, breathing steadily. Then she pulled away and stood up, with a bleak expression on her face.

"I have to go find Ellie," she said. "It's her bedtime."

"She's in the barn. She showed me how to put all that crap on the horse."

She nodded. "She's a good kid."

"That's for sure," he said. "Saved my bacon."

She handed the sheets to him.

"You want to come riding tomorrow?" she asked.

"I don't know how."

"I'll teach you."

"Could be a long process."

"It can't be. We have to get up on the mesa."

"Why?"

She looked away.

"Something you have to teach me," she said. "In case Tuesday doesn't change your mind. I need to know how to work my gun properly."

He said nothing.

"You can't deny me the right to defend myself," she said. He said nothing. She went quietly down the stairs, leaving him sitting on the bed holding the folded sheets on his knees, exactly like he had found her.

He made up his bed. The old sheets were thin and worn, which he figured was O.K., in the circumstances. The temperature was still somewhere in the high nineties. Middle of the night, it might cool off to eighty-five. He wasn't going to be looking for a lot of warmth.

He went back down the stairs and stepped outside. Looking east, there was a black horizon. He stepped around the bunkhouse corner and faced the sunset in the west. It flamed against the red buildings. He stood still and watched it happen. This far south, the sun would drop away pretty quickly. Like a giant red ball. It flared briefly against the rim of the mesa and then disappeared and the sky lit up red above it.

He heard the sound of footsteps in the dust ahead of him. Squinted into the sunset glare and saw Ellie walking down toward him. Little short steps, stiff arms, the blue halter dress specked with pieces of straw. Her hair was lit from behind and glowed red and gold like an angel.

"I came to say good night," she said.

He remembered times in the past, being entertained in family quarters on a base somewhere, the melancholy notes of taps sounding faintly in the distance, polite army kids saying a formal farewell to their fathers' brother officers. He remembered it well. You shook their little hands, and off they went. He smiled at her.

"O.K., good night, Ellie," he said.

"I like you," she said.

"Well, I like you, too," he said.

"Are you hot?"

"Very."

"There'll be a storm soon."

"Everybody tells me that."

"I'm glad you're my mommy's friend."

He said nothing. Just put out his hand. She looked at it.

"You're supposed to give me a good-night kiss," she said.

"Am I?"

"Of course you are."

"O.K.," he said.

Her face was about level with his thigh. He started to bend down.

"No, pick me up," she said.

She held up her arms, more or less vertical. He paused a beat and then swung her in the air and settled her in the crook of his elbow. Kissed her cheek, gently.

"Good night," he said again.

"Carry me," she said. "I'm tired."

He carried her past the corrals, past the horse barn, across the yard to the house. Carmen was waiting on the porch, leaning on a column, watching them approach.

"There you are," she said.

"Mommy, I want Mr. Reacher to come in and say good night," Ellie said.

"Well, I don't know if he can."

"I only work here," Reacher said. "I don't live here."

"Nobody will know," Ellie said. "Come in through the kitchen. There's only the maid in there. She works here, too. And she's allowed in the house."

Carmen stood there, unsure.

"Mommy, please," Ellie said.

"Maybe if we all go in together," Carmen said.

"Through the kitchen," Ellie said. Then she changed her voice to a fierce whisper that was probably louder than talking. "We don't want the Greers to see us."

Then she giggled, and rocked in Reacher's arms, and ducked her face down into his neck. Carmen glanced at him, a question in her face. He shrugged back. What's the worst thing can happen? He lowered Ellie to the ground and she took her mother's hand. They walked together to the kitchen door and Carmen pushed it open.

Sunset, the boy wrote, and noted the time. The two men crawled backward from the lip of the gulch and raised themselves up on their knees and stretched. Off duty, the boy wrote, and noted the time. Then they all three scrabbled around on their knees and pulled the rocks off the corners of the tarp hiding their pick-up. Folded it as neatly as they could without standing up and stowed it in the load bed. Repacked the cooler and collapsed the telescopes and climbed three-in-a-row into the cab. Drove out of the far side of the gulch and headed due west across the hardpan toward the red horizon.

Inside the kitchen the maid was loading a huge dishwashing machine. It was made of green enamel and had probably been the very latest thing around the time man first walked on the moon. She looked up and said nothing. Just kept on stacking plates. Reacher saw the three bowls he had brought her. They were rinsed and ready.

"This way," Ellie whispered.

She led them through a door that led to a back hallway. There was no window, and the air was suffocating. There were plain wooden stairs on one side, painted red, worn back to the wood in crescent shapes on each tread. She led them upward. The stairs creaked under Reacher's weight.

They finished inside a kind of closet on the second floor. Ellie pushed the door open and crossed a hallway and made a right into a narrow corridor. Everything was wooden, the walls, the floor, the ceiling. Everything was painted red. Ellie's room was at the end of the corridor. It was maybe twelve feet square, and red. And very hot. It faced south and must have been baking in the sun all afternoon. The drapes were closed, and had been all day, Reacher guessed, offering some meager protection from the heat.

"We'll go get washed up," Carmen said. "Mr. Reacher will wait here, O.K.?"

Ellie watched until she was sure he was staying. He sat down on the end of the bed to confirm it. To help her reach her conclusion. She turned slowly and followed her mother out to the bathroom.

The bed was narrow, maybe thirty inches wide. And short, appropriate for a kid. It had cotton sheets printed with small colored animals of uncertain genus. There was a night table, and a bookcase, and a small armoire. This furniture looked reasonably new. It was made of blond wood, first bleached and then hand-painted with cheerful designs. It looked nice. Probably bought in a cute little boutique and hauled over from Austin, he thought. Or maybe all the way from Santa Fe. Some of the bookshelves held books, and the others held stuffed animals all jumbled together and crammed into the spaces.

He could hear the old air conditioner running. It thumped and rattled, patiently. It was louder here. Must be mounted in the attic, he thought. It made a soothing sound. But it didn't do much about cooling the house. Up there in the trapped air of the second floor, it felt like a hundred and twenty degrees.

Ellie and Carmen came back into the room. Ellie was suddenly quiet and bashful, maybe because she was in her pajamas. They looked like regular cotton shorts and a T-shirt, but they were printed with little things that might have been rabbits. Her hair was damp and her skin was pink. The back of one hand was wedged in her mouth. She climbed onto the bed and curled up near the pillow, using about half the available length of the mattress, close to him but careful not to touch him.

"O.K., good night, kid," he said. "Sleep well."

"Kiss me," she said.

He paused a second, and then he bent down and kissed her forehead. It was warm and damp and smelled of soap. She curled up more and snuggled down into the pillow.

"Thank you for being our friend," she said.

He stood up and stepped toward the door. Glanced at Carmen. Did you tell her to say that? Or is it for real?

"Can you find your way back down?" Carmen asked him.

He nodded.

"I'll see you tomorrow," she said.

She stayed in Ellie's bedroom and he found the closet with the back stairs in it. He went down to the inside hallway and through the kitchen. The maid was gone. The old dishwasher was humming away to itself. He stepped out into the night and paused in the darkness and silence of the yard. It was hotter than ever. He stepped toward the gate. Ahead of him the sunset had gone. The horizon was black. There was pressure in the air. A hundred miles away to the southwest he could see heat lightning flickering. Faint sheets and bolts of dry electricity discharging randomly, like a gigantic celestial camera taking pictures. He looked straight up. No rain. No clouds. He turned around and caught gleams of white in the darkness off to his right. A T-shirt. A face. A semicircle of forehead showing through the back of a ball cap. Bobby Greer, again.

"Bobby," he said. "Enjoy your ride?"

Bobby ignored the inquiry. "I was waiting for you."

"Why?"

"Just making sure you came back out again."

"Why wouldn't I?"

"You tell me. Why would you go in there at all? In the first place? All three of you, like a little family."

"You saw us?"

Bobby nodded. "I see everything."

"Everything?" Reacher repeated.

"Everything I need to."

Reacher shrugged.

"I kissed the kid good night," he said. "You got a problem with that?"

Bobby was quiet for a beat.

"Let me walk you back to the bunkhouse," he said. "I need to talk to you."

He didn't talk any on the way down through the yard. He just walked. Reacher kept pace and looked ahead at the night sky in the east. It was vast and black and filled with stars. Apart from dim windows in some of the Greer buildings there was absolute pitch darkness everywhere. It threw the stars into vivid relief, impossibly tiny and numerous points of light dusting backward through billions of cubic miles of space. Reacher liked peering out into the universe. He liked thinking about it. He used it for perspective. He was just a tiny insignificant speck briefly sparked to life in the middle of nowhere. So what really mattered? Maybe nothing at all. So maybe he should just go ahead and bust Sloop Greer's head and have done with it. Why not? In the context of the whole universe, how was that so very different from not busting it at all?

"My brother had a problem," Bobby said, awkwardly. "I guess you know that."

"I heard he cheated on his taxes," Reacher said.

Bobby nodded in the dark. "IRS snoops are everywhere."

"Is that how they found him? Snooping?"

"Well, how else would they?" Bobby asked.

He went quiet. Walked ahead a couple of paces.

"Anyway, Sloop went to jail," he said.

Reacher nodded. "Getting out Monday, I heard."

"That's right. So he's not going to be too happy finding you here, kissing his kid, getting friendly with his wife."

Reacher shrugged as he walked. "I'm just here to work."

"Right, as a wrangler. Not as a nursemaid."

"I get time off, right?"

"But you need to be careful how you spend it."

Reacher smiled. "You mean I need to know my place?"

"Right," Bobby said. "And your place ain't alongside my brother's wife, or getting cozy with his kid."

"A man can't choose his friends?"

"Sloop ain't going to be happy, he gets home and finds some outsider has chosen his wife and kid for his friends."

Reacher stopped walking. Stood still in the dark. "Thing is, Bobby, why would I give a rat's ass what makes your brother happy?"

Bobby stopped, too. "Because we're a family. Things get talked about. You need to get that through your head. Or you won't work here too long. You could get run right out of here."

"You think?"

"Yeah, I think."

Reacher smiled again. "Who you going to call? The sheriff with the secondhand car? Guy like that could get a heart attack, just thinking about it."

Bobby shook his head. "West Texas, we look after things personally. It's a tradition. Never had too big of a law enforcement thing around here, so we kind of accustomed ourselves."

Reacher took a step closer.

"So you going to do it?" he said. "You want to do it now?"

Bobby said nothing. Reacher nodded.

"Maybe you'd prefer to set the maid on me," he said. "Maybe she'll come after me with a skillet."

"Josh and Billy will do what they're told."

"The little guys? The maid might be better. Or you, even."

"Josh and Billy get in the ring with bulls that weigh a ton and a half. They ain't going to be too worried about you."

Reacher started walking again. "Whatever, Bobby. I only said good night to the kid. No reason to start World War Three over it. She's starved for company. So is her mother. What can I do about it?"

"You can get smart about it, is what," Bobby said. "I told you before, she lies about everything. So whatever big story she's been telling you, chances are it's bullshit. So don't go making a fool out of yourself, falling for it. You wouldn't be the first."

They turned the corner beyond the corrals and headed for the bunkhouse door.

"What does that mean?" Reacher asked.

"How dumb do you think I am? She's gone all day every day for the best part of a month, gone all night as often as she can get away with it, leaving the kid here for us to tend to. And she's gone where? Some motel up in Pecos, is where, screwing the brains out of whatever new guy she can get to believe her bullshit stories about how her husband doesn't understand her. Which is entirely her business, but it's my business if she thinks she can go ahead and bring the guy back here. Two days before her husband gets home? Passing you off as some stranger looking for ranch work? What kind of crap is that?"

"What did you mean, I wouldn't be the first?"

"Exactly what I said. Talk to Josh and Billy about it. They ran him off."

Reacher said nothing. Bobby smiled at him.

"Don't believe her," he said. "There are things she doesn't tell you, and what she does tell you is mostly lies."

"Why doesn't she have a key to the door?"

"She had a key to the damn door. She lost it, is all. It's never locked, anyway. Why the hell would it be locked? We're sixty miles from the nearest crossroads."

"So why does she have to knock?"

"She doesn't have to knock. She could walk right in. But she puts on a big thing about how we exclude her. But it's all bullshit. Like, how do we exclude her? Sloop married her, didn't he?"

Reacher said nothing.

"So you work if you want to," Bobby said. "But stay away from her and the kid. And I'm saying that for your sake, O.K.?"

"Can I ask you something?" Reacher said.

"What?"

"Did you know your hat is on backward?"

"My what?"

"Your cap," Reacher said. "It's on backward. I wondered if you knew that. Or if maybe it just kind of slipped around, accidentally."

Bobby stared at him.

"I like it this way," he said.

Reacher nodded again.

"Well, I guess it keeps the sun off of your neck," he said. "Keeps it from getting any redder."

"You watch your mouth," Bobby said. "You stay away from my brother's family, and watch your damn mouth."

Then he turned in the dark and headed back up to the house. Reacher stood and watched him walk away. Beyond him the lightning still danced on the far southwest horizon. Then he disappeared behind the barn and Reacher listened to the sound his boots made in the dust, until it faded away to nothing.