Just make sure everything that belonged to Royce and Joe Bob and Bill Dancey was out of here. Make double sure of that. Then wait. No matter what he did, he would be waiting and listening for the sound of horses.

But there was nothing he could do about that. Don’t worry about anything you can’t do something about. When it’s like that it just happens. It’s like an act of God. Though don’t blame God for sending Vern Kidston. Blame Vern himself for coming. If you can hate him it will be easier to fight him.

And there’s always someone to fight, isn’t there?

Ten years ago he had come here from Sudan, Texas-a nineteen-year-old boy seeking his future, working at the time for a freight company that hauled between Hidalgo and Tucson-and one night when they stopped at Denaman’s Store he talked to John Denaman.

They sat on the loading platform with their legs hanging over the side, drinking coffee and now and then whiskey, drinking both from the same cups, looking north into the vast darkness of the valley. John Denaman told him about the river and the good meadow land and the timber-ponderosa pine and aspen and willows, working timber and pretty-to-look-

at timber. A man starting here young and working hard would have himself something in no time at all, Denaman had said.

But a man had to have money to buy stock with, Cable said. Something to build with.

No, Denaman said, not necessarily. He told about his man Acaso who’d died the winter before, leaving his two kids, Manuel and Luz, here and leaving the few cattle Denaman owned scattered through the hills. You’re welcome to gather and work the cattle, Denaman said. Not more than a hundred head; but something to build on and you won’t have to put up money till you market them and take your share.