He said to Abe, “Well, I’ll be going over to the bunkhouse.”

“Come inside and take a glass of whisky,” Abe said. His voice was bleak. One of the dogs sprawled away in front of him, yelping. They mounted the slanting steps to the porch, and Abe jerked on the latch-string and shouldered the door open. “What the hell are you doing out here, Daddy?” he said.

Following him in, Curley saw the old man on his pallet on the floor. He was raised on one elbow, his skinny neck corded with strain. There was a Winchester across his legs, a jug and lamp on the floor beside him. His beard was thick, pure-white wool in the lamplight, and his mouth was round and pink as a kitten’s button.

“Didn’t stay long, did you?” Dad McQuown said. “Think I’m going to stay in that bedroom and burn?”

“Burn?” Abe said. He picked up the lamp and set it atop the potbelly stove. With the lamplight on it the stovepipe looked red. “You’re not dead yet. Burn?”

“Burn is what I said,” the old man said. “Don Ignacio is going to hear some time you have left me all alone. You think he won’t send some of his dirty, murdering greasers up here to burn me in my bed?”

It was strange, Curley thought, that those Mexicans, killed six months ago in Rattlesnake Canyon, had turned almost every man of them into a greaser-hater — afterward. It was a strange thing.

“There’s three men out in the bunkhouse,” Abe said. He picked up the jug, hooked it to his mouth, and took a long draught. He handed it to Curley and went to sit on the old buggy-seat sofa against the wall.

“Burn them too,” the old man said. “Sneakier than Paches. Those sons of bitches out in the bunkhouse’d sleep through a stampede coming over them anyhow.” His eyes glittered at Curley. “What happened up there?”

From the buggy seat Curley heard a clack and metallic singing. He turned to see Abe bend to pull his bowie knife loose, where it was stuck in the floor. Abe spun it down again, the blade shining fiery in the light.

“Let me tell you,” Curley said to the old man. “Bold as brass I went in there against him. In the Glass Slipper, that was packed with guns to back the bastard up. ‘Let’s see the color of your belly, Marshal!’ I said to him.”

The old man said, “Son, how come you let Curley—”

“Hush now, Dad McQuown. I am telling this. How come he let me? Why, he knows I am the coolest head in San Pablo, and that saloon stacked hard against us.” Feeling a fool, he bent his knees into a crouch and heard Abe spin the knife into the floor again. The old man stared as Curley jerked out his Colt and took a bead on the potbelly stove. “I don’t mind saying that was the fastest draw human eye ever did see,” he said. “Fast, and—” He stopped, straightened, sighed, and holstered his Colt.

“Kill him clean off?” the old man demanded.

“He was way ahead of me,” he said, and glanced toward the buggy seat. He had hoped for a laugh from Abe, to clear things a little; he knew what Abe was going to have to take from the old man. But Abe only flung the knife down again. This time the point didn’t stick and it clattered across the floor and rang against a leg of the stove. Abe made no move to retrieve it.

“Run you out of town,” the old man breathed.

“He surely did.”

The old man lay back on his pallet, and sucked noisily at his teeth. “Son of mine running,” he said.

“Yep,” Abe said, tightly.

“That all you can say?” the old man yelled.

“Yep,” Abe said.

“Go in myself,” the old man said. “See anybody run me out.”

“Walk in,” Abe said.

“I will drag in, by God!” Dad McQuown said, straining his head up again. “See anybody run me out. I have been through Warlock when it wasn’t but a place in the road where me and Blaikie and old man Gannon used to meet and go into Bright’s together. Went together because of Paches in the Bucksaws, thick as fleas. Many’s the time we fought them off, too, before Peach was ever heard of. Took my son with me sometimes that I thought was going to amount to something, and not get run out of—”

“Say, now, speaking of Gannons,” Curley broke in. “Bud’s come back from Rincon. We saw him in town.”

“Bud Gannon,” the old man said, lying back again, “never was worth nothing at all. Billy, now; there is a boy any man’d be glad for a son. Proud.”

“Well, Dad McQuown, he run with the rest of us. Maybe not so fast as me, but he run all right.”

“How fast did my boy run?” the old man whispered, and Abe cursed him.

Curley took a long pull on the jug, watching the old man’s fingers plucking at the Winchester while Abe cursed him, harshly and at length.

“You will answer to the Lord for that cussing some day, boy,” Dad McQuown said, at last. “Cussing your daddy when he is crippled so he can’t beat your teeth down your throat for it. Well, it is sire and dam in a man like a horse, and no way to get yourself a boy without there is half woman in him.”

“One way,” Abe said, in a dead, strained voice. “Breed one mule on another like did for you.”

“Cuss your father, and his ma and pa before him, do you? You will answer for that, too.”

“Not to you,” Abe said.

“You will answer to another Father than me.”

“I’ll answer maybe for killing a pack of greasers for what they did to you. I won’t answer for calling you what every man knows you are, and the Lord too.”

Standing there listening to them, trying to grin as though they were just joking each other, it came on Curley strongly that he had to move on. He had been here too long now; he had seen the beginning, which he had not even known was the beginning, and he did not want to see the end. Abe was a man he had respected and loved as he had no other man, and did still, but lately he could not bear to see where Abe was heading. Or maybe he had to stay, and watch, he thought, and felt a kind of panic.

The dogs set up another clamor outside, and hoofbeats came in through the yard. The old man said, “They didn’t run so fast as you.”

“That is some greasers of Don Ignacio’s come up to burn you in your bed,” Abe said savagely. “By God, how you would burn and stink!”

The hoofbeats and the barking and yelping diminished, going down toward the horse corral. “Well, I will be getting over to the bunkhouse,” Curley said, pretending to yawn. “Good night, Dad McQuown. Abe.”

“We’ll be going down tomorrow after supper,” Abe said.

“Down where?” the old man demanded. “What you going to do now?”

Abe ignored him. “That will put us through Rattlesnake Canyon after dark,” he said. “Tell the boys.”

Curley tipped his hat back and scratched his fingers through his hair, grimacing. “Hacienda Puerto?” he said. “I thought you figured we ought to lay off that awhile, Abe. They followed us a good way last time and we didn’t make off with hardly enough head to count. It is getting tight.”

“We will take more people this time.”

“Well, there is talk Don Ignacio’s got himself an army down there now, Abe. They are going to be waiting for us, one of these times. If they catch us—”

Abe swung toward him. “God damn it, there will be nothing happen because I will be along! You only get caught when I am not there. One shot through and another one dead, and then run home to me to back them off you!”

Curley had brought the old man back that time, leaving Hank Miller dead; and he had refused to go back with Abe and the rest to the ambush in Rattlesnake Canyon. Abe had not forgiven him that, and had not forgiven Bud Gannon, who had left San Pablo afterward. And Abe had not, he thought, forgiven himself either. Rattlesnake Canyon still ate at them all.

“All right, I’ll tell them, Abe,” he said, and went outside and closed the door behind him. He stood on the porch looking up at the stars past the old chimney. He should go, he thought; he should get out now. As he walked tiredly down the steps and over toward the bunkhouse, he took out his mouth organ and began to blow into it. The music he made was sad in the night.