The two flanking riders wheeled and drew and one of them fired toward the barn. Wide, panic-driven, hitting the high wood above the loft window. And Tobias brought the Winchester up and put two rounds into the dirt directly in front of the flanking horses. Not at the men. At the ground, which was enough.
Both horses bolted sideways and their riders went immediately into the consuming work of staying mounted. The rider who had gone around back came around the corner of the barn at a canter and pulled up hard when he saw what the road held. He took in Cage on the ground, the barn loft window, Tobias standing in the open with the Winchester, and the arithmetic of it resolved in his face in a clear direction. He turned his horse and rode. The two flanking men, horses steadied, looked at each other, then at what was in the road, then at Tobias.
Then they followed. The road went quiet in the particular way that follows a violent conclusion. The birds absent, even the wind seeming to pause for a moment. Tobias walked to where Cage had fallen. The shot had been clean, center mass, the deputy's own pistol half drawn in his right hand at the moment of reaching.
Tobias stood over him for a while. He thought about Marta on the Lajitas road and the level shot the tax collector had described to someone who had described it to someone who had eventually described it to Tobias. He thought about 9 minutes and a paper knife and a man named Purvis who was never called to give evidence. He thought about 3 years of patient waiting that had produced nothing except more of itself. What he felt was not satisfaction.
That word was too simple and too clean. What he felt was something resolving, the way a clock sounds when you finally fix the broken gear and it starts keeping the right time again. Not silence, the right sound. The loft ladder creaked inside the barn. Bitsy came through the barn door and crossed the yard and stood beside him.
She looked at Cage in the road without speaking. She still held Marta's pistol at her side. They stood there together in the cold morning air for a long moment. I'll bury him on the property. Tobias looked at the road.
The men who rode off will report to someone. There'll be questions. You have answers. I do. He came armed and without a warrant and reached for his weapon when confronted.