“I suppose he was in the war,” Martha said.

“Probably.” Cable nodded thoughtfully. “But which side?” That’s something, Cable said to himself. You don’t trust him. Any man seen from a distance you dislike and distrust. It’s good to be careful, but you could be carrying it too far.

Briefly he thought of John Denaman, the man who had given him his start ten years before and talked him into settling in the Saber River valley. It would be good to see John again. And it would be good to see Luz, to talk to her, and Manuel. His good friend Manuel. Luz and Manuel’s father had worked for Denaman until a sudden illness took his life. After that, John raised both of them as if they were his own children.

“Now he’s going inside,” Martha said.

Cable waited. After a moment he turned, pushing himself up, and saw his daughter standing only a few feet away. Clare was six, their oldest child: a quiet little girl with her mother’s dark hair and eyes and showing signs of developing her mother’s clean-lined, easily remembered features; resembling her mother just as the boys favored their father. She stood uncertainly with her hands clutched to her chest.

“Sister, you round up the boys.”

“Are we going now?”

“In a minute.”

He watched her run back into the trees and in a moment he heard a boy’s shrill voice. That would be Davis, five years old. Sandy, not yet four, would be close behind his brother, following every move Davis made; almost every move.

Cable brought his sorrel gelding out of the trees and stepped into the saddle. “He’ll come out again when he hears me,” Cable said. “But wait till you see us talking before you come down. All right?”

Martha nodded. She smiled faintly, saying, “He’ll probably turn out to be an old friend of John Denaman’s.”