“I ain’t going to speak, Ed. Now it’s up to you.”
Joan caught her breath and held it in a sob.
Hostetter looked at Len, his feet set wide apart, his big shoulders hunched, his face as grim and dark as iron under his broad hat. Now it was Len’s turn to wait.
If I die as Soames died, it will not matter except to me. This is important only because I am I, and Hostetter is Hostetter, and Joan is Joan, and we’re people and can’t help it. But for today, yesterday, tomorrow, it is not important. Time goes on without any of us. Only a belief, a state of mind, endures, and even that changes constantly, but underneath there are two kinds—the one that says, Here you must stop knowing, and the other which says, Learn.
Right or wrong, the fruit was eaten, and there can’t ever be a going back.
I have made my choice.
“What are you waiting for, Ed? If you’re going to do it, go on.”
Some of the tightness went out of the line of Hostetter’s shoulders. He said, “I guess neither one of us was built for murder.”
He bent his head, scowling, and then he lifted it again and gave Len a hard and blazing look.
“Well?”
The people cried and shouted and fell on their knees and sobbed.
“I still think,” said Len slowly, “that maybe it was the Devil let loose on the world a hundred years ago. And I still think maybe that’s one of Satan’s own limbs you’ve got there behind that wall.”
The preacher tossed his arms to the sky and writhed in an ecstasy of salvation.
“But I guess you’re right,” said Len. “I guess it makes better sense to try and chain the devil up than to try keeping the whole land tied down in the hopes he won’t notice it again.”
He looked at Hostetter. “You didn’t get me killed, so I guess you’ll have to let me come back.”
“The choice wasn’t entirely mine,” said Hostetter. He turned and walked away toward the wagons. Len followed him, with Joan stumbling at his side. And two men came out of the shadows to join them. Men that Len did not know, with deer rifles held in the crooks of their arms.
“I had to do more than talk for you this time,” said Hostetter.
“If you had denounced me, these boys might not have been able to save me from the crowd, but you wouldn’t have grown five minutes older.”
“I see,” said Len slowly. “You waited till now, till the preaching.”
“Yes.”
“And when you threatened me, you didn’t mean it. It was part of the test.”
Hostetter nodded. The men looked hard at Len, clicking the safeties back on their guns.
“I guess you were right, Ed,” one of them said. “But I sure wouldn’t have banked on it.”
“I’ve known him a long time,” said Hostetter. “I was a little worried, but not much.”
“Well,” said the man, “he’s all yours.” He did not sound as though he thought Hostetter had any prize. He nodded to the other man and they went away, Sherman’s executioners vanishing quietly into the night.
“Why did you bother, Ed?” asked Len. He hung his head, ashamed for all that he had done to this man. “I never made you anything but trouble.”
“I told you,” said Hostetter. “I always felt kind of responsible for the time you ran away.”
“I’ll pay you back,” said Len earnestly. Hostetter said, “You just did.” They climbed up onto the high seat of the wagon. “And you,” Hostetter said to Joan. “Are you ready to come home?” She was beginning to cry, in short fierce sobs. She looked at the torchlight and the people and the dust. “It’s a hideous world,” she said. “I hate it.”
“No,” said Hostetter, “not hideous, just imperfect. But that’s nothing new.”
He shook out the reins and clucked to the big horses. The wagon moved out across the dark prairie.
“When we get a ways out of town,” said Hostetter, “I’ll radio Sherman and tell him we’ve started back.”
