He went to the spare room. Bid'zi was already up, dressed, sitting on the edge of the cot. Tobias held up five fingers. Cage on the road, one going around back. She stood.
North track out of the barn puts you in the open immediately. He kept his voice flat and low. But the loft window looks straight down the road. Cage will come from the front. She held his eyes, that thorough measuring look.
He went to the mantel and took down Marta's pistol. He unwrapped the leather, checked the load, closed the cylinder, held it out. She took it, checked it herself, cylinder, action, sights, with the clean efficiency of someone who handles firearms from practical need rather than show. Then she looked at him once more, and whatever she found in his face resolved the last part of the calculation and she was out the kitchen door and across the yard and through the barn side entrance low and fast well before the riders cleared the rise. Tobias took the Winchester and stood on the porch.
He had prepared nothing to say. He stood with his hands loose and his weight easy and watched Cage come over the rise with four men spreading behind him. And when they reached the fence line, he raised one hand the way you raise a hand at a neighbor's approach. Unhurried nothing urgent. Cage pulled up at the fence.
He did not dismount this time. The pleasant expression was entirely gone from his face. And what was underneath it was narrow and certain. Tobias, step down from that porch and walk to me. Why?
Presidio County deputy, Tobias stepped off the porch and walked through the gate and stopped 10 ft from the horse. Before we go further Tobias held Cage's eyes. The threatening movement on the Lajitas road the one you described at the inquest the one that made you fire, what was it? Cage's jaw went still. That was answered at the inquest, not to me.
Something moved behind Cage's eyes. A decision arriving. The hand that had been resting on the saddle horn began to drop toward the hip, the weight shifting forward in the saddle. The shot from the barn loft window was a single clean crack in the cold March air. Cage went sideways off the grulla.