The Complete Western Stories of Elmore Leonard - Elmore Leonard [219]
“I think so,” Ofelio said, looking at him quickly, then back to the rumps of the mules.
“All morning?”
“I was not here all morning.” Ofelio waited, but John Stam said no more. This was the first time Ofelio had been questioned about Mrs. Stam. Perhaps he overheard talk in Mesilla, he thought.
IN THE YARD John Stam climbed off the wagon and went into the house. Ofelio headed the team for the barn and stopped before the wide door to unhitch. The yard was quiet; he glanced at the house, which seemed deserted, though he knew John Stam was inside. Suddenly Mrs. Stam’s voice was coming from the house, high pitched, excited, the words not clear. The sound stopped abruptly and it was quiet again. A few minutes later the screen door slammed and John Stam was coming across the yard, his great gnarled hands hanging empty, threateningly, at his sides.
He stopped before Ofelio and said bluntly, “I’m asking you if you’ve ever taken any of my whiskey.”
“I have never tasted whiskey,” Ofelio said and felt a strange guilt come over him in this man’s gaze. He tried to smile. “But in the past I’ve tasted enough mescal to make up for it.”
John Stam’s gaze held. “That wasn’t what I asked you.”
“All right,” Ofelio said. “I have never taken any.”
“I’ll ask you once more,” John Stam said.
Ofelio was bewildered. “What would you have me say?”
For a long moment John Stam stared. His eyes were hard though there was a weariness in them. He said, “I don’t need you around here, you know.”
“I have told the truth,” Ofelio said simply.
The rancher continued to stare, a muscle in his cheek tightening and untightening. He turned abruptly and went back to the house.
The old man thought of the times he had seen Joe Slidell and the woman together and the times he had seen Joe Slidell drinking the whiskey she brought to him. Ofelio thought: He wasn’t asking about whiskey, he was asking about his wife. But he could not come out with it. He knows something is going on behind his back, or else he suspicions it strongly, and he sees a relation between it and the whiskey that’s being taken. I think I feel sorry for him; he hasn’t learned to keep his woman and he doesn’t know what to do.
Before supper Joe Slidell came down out of the woods trail on the bay stallion. He dismounted at the back porch and he and John Stam talked for a few minutes looking over the horse. When Joe Slidell left, John Stam, holding the bridle, watched him disappear into the woods and for a long time after, he stood there staring at the trail that went up through the woods.
Just before dark John Stam rode out of the yard on the bay stallion. Later—it was full dark then—Ofelio heard the screen door again. He rose from his bunk in the end barn stall and opened the big door an inch, in time to see Marion Stam’s dim form pass into the trees.
He has left, Ofelio thought, so she goes to the jinete. He shook his head thinking: This is none of your business. But it remained in his mind and later, with his blanket over his shoulder, he went into the hills where he could think of these things more clearly.
He moved through the woods hearing the night sounds which seemed far away and his own footsteps in the leaves that were close, but did not seem to belong to him; then he was on the pine slope and high up he felt the breeze. For a time he listened to the soft sound of it in the jack pines. Tomorrow there will be rain, he thought. Sometime in the afternoon.
He stretched out on the ground, rolling the blanket behind his head, and looked up at the dim stars thinking: More and more every day, viejo, you must realize you are no longer of any value. The horsebreaker is not afraid of you, the men at the station laugh and take nothing you say seriously, and finally Señor Stam, he made it very clear when he said, “I don’t need you around here.”
Then why does he keep me—months now since I have been dismounted—except out of charity? He is a strange man. I suppose I