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He shook his head then. “Sooner or later I’d be caught. Going to prison is one thing. Perhaps I could take a year or so of it to get out of this mess. But I’d also be killing my career.”
“Your career!” Liza
“You didn’t think that way a year ago,” Willis said.
“I’m talking about now!”
“When you married me,” Willis said, “you were sure I had a future. Or else you wouldn’t have considered it.”
“With a clean collar on,” Liza
Willis was silent, studying the bottle again. Liza
“How do you know, unless you try it?”
He shook his head. “I’d be hiding out the rest of my life.”
“I wouldn’t,” Liza
He looked at her as if to answer, but his gaze dropped and he pushed himself up from the table. Liza
“I’m sorry, Liza
“For me, Willis…or for yourself?”
“I think for both of us.” He stepped outside, closing the door behind him.
Liza
So he’s out, Liza
No, she thought then. You made the mistake yourself. And you’ll live with it the rest of your life unless you do something. You should have been more patient. There were others. But you guessed wrong and picked Willis-who was then what he is now. So you can’t really blame Willis.
They had met in Washington less than a year before. Three weeks later they were married. Liza
Now she looked out across the yard again to the stable and she thought of Bowen-remembering how she had compared her husband to him the day he was placed in the punishment cell; remembering now how she had catalogued him in her mind: a man who would do anything to escape.
She thought of him calmly, impersonally now, feeling that there had been something almost instinctive in choosing him from among all the convicts. As if-since Willis would do nothing-Bowen was the next logical choice to help her.
But how?
In some way that would benefit him. That, she realized already. A way that would help him escape. But, she thought now, talk to him first. He isn’t on Renda’s side. But neither is he necessarily on yours.
Before leaving the window to change into her riding suit, she saw her husband ride out of the gate. Less than ten minutes later, she walked across the yard and into the wide opening of the stable. She saw Pryde immediately, at the far end sweeping the aisle between the stalls-then Bowen. He was in the first stall on the right side, curry-combing Renda’s big chestnut mare. She walked toward him.
“Frank didn’t waste time putting you back to work, did he?”
Bowen looked up. “No, ma’am.” He watched her move toward him. She came almost into the stall, stopping to lean against the end of the partition that separated this stall from the next one. This was the first time she had even spoken to him and her relaxed, almost familiar ma
“Will you saddle my horse?”
“All right.” He looked back, over the partition. “Which one?”
“The sorrel, on the other side.”
Bowen turned, taking a step as he did, then stopped abruptly. Liza
“I’m in no hurry,” she said. “Finish what you’re doing.”
“I’ve got all day to do this,” Bowen said.
Liza
“Not so good,” Bowen said. Her eyes made him conscious of his three weeks’ growth of beard, his ragged, sweat-stained appearance.
“I saw what Renda did to to you,” Liza
Bowen nodded. “I noticed.”
“It’s too bad your hands were tied.”
“Maybe it was good. I might have killed him.”
“Do you mean that?”
Her question surprised him. “I mean I was mad enough at the time.”
Liza
“That’s right.”
“And Yuma before that,” Liza
“How do you know all that?” Bowen asked. He was reminded of Karla Demery. Now a second woman who seemed to know all about him.
“I looked up your record,” Liza
“For a reason?”
“Perhaps.”
“What were you looking for?”
Liza
Bowen shook his head. “Not in a convict camp. With a husband.”
“My husband doesn’t know everything I do.”
“But Renda does. He has to know what everybody’s doing. Even you.”
“You sound very sure of yourself.”
“What’s going on here,” Bowen said, “is black and white and you know it as well as anyone else. Renda gets seventy cents a day for each convict-thirty of us-for food, clothes and shelter. But he doesn’t spend two bits a man on his best day. He buys cheap flour, full of worms. The coffee goes twice as far as it should. The Mimbres shoot most of his meat which costs him only for bullets. We sleep on straw mats you wouldn’t put a dog on. Since I’ve been here three men have died on those mats. Not one of them had a doctor, though Renda’s supposed to provide medical care. He makes money on the road contract and he’s keeping it going as long as he can, for every day he can stretch it he makes that much more money off the convicts. Anybody who’s been here longer than one day knows it. So it comes down to this-living here you’re either his friend or his prisoner and either way he knows what you’re doing.”
Liza
“I’ve had the time.”
“Which do you think my husband is, friend or prisoner?”
“Maybe both. But he drinks so he won’t have to admit to being either.”
“And I?” Liza
“Until a while ago, I would’ve thought you and Renda got along fine.”
Liza
“Now I’d say you want out.”
“You just thought of that,” Liza
Bowen moved his hand slowly over the smooth back of the chestnut. “I’ll guess something else.”
“I’m listening.”
“You’re looking for somebody angry enough to help you.”
For a moment there was no sound in the stable. They were aware then of the faint sound of Pryde sweeping at the far end, but that was all. Their eyes held, neither of them moving until Liza