The kid spat into the fire and bent to his work.
I aint heard no voice, he said.
When it stops, said Tobin, you'll know you've heard it all your life.
Is that right?
Aye.
The kid turned the leather in his lap. The expriest watched him.
At night, said Tobin, when the horses are grazing and the company is asleep, who hears them grazing?
Dont nobody hear them if they're asleep.
Aye. And if they cease their grazing who is it that wakes?
Every man.
Aye, said the expriest. Every man.
The kid looked up. And the judge? Does the voice speak to him?
The judge, said Tobin. He didn't answer.
I seen him before, said the kid. In Nacogdoches.
Tobin smiled. Every man in the company claims to have encountered that sootysouled rascal in some other place.
Tobin rubbed his beard on the back of his hand. He saved us all, I have to give him that. We come down off the Little Colorado we didnt have a pound of powder in the company. Pound. We'd not a dram hardly. There he set on a rock in the middle of the greatest desert you'd ever want to see. Just perched on this rock like a man waitin for a coach. Brown thought him a mirage. Might have shot him for one if he'd had aught to shoot him with.
How come you to have no powder?
Shot it up all at the savages. Holed up nine days in a cave, lost most of the horses. We were thirty-eight men when we left Chihuahua City and we were fourteen when the judge found us. Mortally whipped, on the run. Every man jack of us knew that in that godforsook land somewhere was a draw or a cul-desac or perhaps just a pile of rocks and there we'd be driven to a stand with those empty guns. The judge. Give the devil his due.
The kid held the tack in one hand, the awl in the other. He watched the expriest.
We'd been on the plain all night and well up into the next day. The Delawares kept callin halts and droppin to the ground to give a listen. There was no place to run and no place to hide. I dont know what they wanted to hear. We knew the bloody niggers was out there and speakin for myself that was already an abundance of information, I didnt need more. That sunrise we'd looked to be our last. We were all watchin the backtrack, I dont know how far you could see. Fifteen, twenty miles.
Then about the meridian of that day we come upon the judge on his rock there in that wilderness by his single self. Aye and there was no rock, just the one. Irving said he'd brung it with him. I said that it was a merestone for to mark him out of nothing at all. He had with him that selfsame rifle you see with him now, all mounted in german silver and the name that he'd give it set with silver wire under the checkpiece in latin: Et In Arcadia Ego. A reference to the lethal in it. Common enough for a man to name his gun. I've heard Sweetlips and Hark From The Tombs and every sort of lady's name. His is the first and only ever I seen with an inscription from the classics.
And there he set. No horse. Just him and his legs crossed, smilin as we rode up. Like he'd been expectin us. He'd an old canvas kitbag and an old woolen benjamin over the one shoulder. In the bag was a brace of pistols and a good assortment of specie, gold and silver. He didnt even have a canteen. It was like... You couldnt tell where he'd come from. Said he'd been with a wagon company and fell out to go it alone.
Davy wanted to leave him there. Didnt set well with his honor and it dont to this day. Glanton just studied him. It was a day's work to even guess what he made of that figure on that ground. I dont know to this day. They've a secret commerce. Some terrible covenant. You mind. You'll see I'm right. He called for the last of two packanimals we had and he cut the straps and left the wallets to lay where they fell and the judge mounted up and he and Glanton rode side by side and soon they was conversin like brothers. The judge sat that animal bareback like an indian and rode with his grip and his rifle perched on the withers and he looked about him with the greatest satisfaction in the world, as if everything had turned out just as he planned and the day could not have been finer.
We'd not rode far before he struck us a new course about nine points to the east. He pointed out a range of mountains maybe thirty mile distant and we pulled for those mountains and none of us asked what for. By then Glanton had give him the particulars of the situation in which he'd installed himself but if bein naked of arms in that wilderness and half of all Apacheria in pursuit worried him at all he kept it to himself entire.
The expriest had paused to rekindle his pipe, reaching into the raw fire for a coal as did the red scouts and then setting it back among the flames as if it had a proper place there.
Now what do you reckon it was in them mountains that we set out for? And how did he come to know of it? How to find it? How to put it to use?
Tobin seemed to frame these questions to himself. He was regarding the fire and pulling on his pipe. How indeed, he said. We reached the foothills in the early evenin and rode up a dry arroyo and pushed on I guess till midnight and made camp with neither wood nor water. Come mornin we could see them on the plain to the north maybe ten mile out. They were ridin four and six abreast and there was no short supply of them and they were in no hurry.