“No lights, but you’ve got television,” Elijah says.

“A concession to my wife,” Moore says. “She claimed she was bored out here. Oh, George, I’m so bored.” He mimics her voice. “Now she stares at the damn thing so long and so hard, it’s a wonder she’s not blind.”

“Is she your cow too?” Antonia says.

“What a question,” Moore says.

“Just wondering how you get by. You said you never leave.”

“I feed off her, yes. I have an arrangement with her family. They’re aware of my needs and sympathetic to them. Lupita is my fifth Sanchez wife. The man who fetched you here, he’s a Sanchez too. They’ve been in Texas two hundred years and have worked for my family most of that time.”

“Must be nice having people who are so understanding,” Elijah says.

“I pay them well,” Moore says. “I wouldn’t be suited to the life most of our ilk live, always on the move, always on the hunt. I’d be worn out in no time. Luckily, I have the means for a more settled existence.”

A clock chimes softly on the mantel. Antonia blows a smoke ring at the ceiling. She’s tired of the chitchat. “Monsieur Beaumont told us you had a job that needed doing,” she says.

Moore shoots a glare at her, peeved at being hurried. “Perhaps the rules of interacting with hired help have changed too,” he says. “I was taught it was polite to engage in a bit of small talk before issuing my marching orders, in order to avoid appearing imperious.”

“You’re not talking to your ranch hands,” Antonia says. “Spit it out.”

Moore purses his lips, then turns slightly, enough so Antonia will notice, to address Elijah only. “I want you to kill a man for me,” he says.

“All right,” Elijah says.

“Not just any man. He’s one of us. Do you have a problem with that?”

“Not if the money’s right.”

“You’ll be amply compensated.”

“Where would we find him?”

“Right now he’s in Phoenix. The man I have tailing him says he’ll be there for another three days. Can you make it by then?”

“We can.”

“And have time to do the job?”

“That part doesn’t take long.”

“Why not have your man dust him?” Antonia says.

“He’s afraid of our kind,” Moore says. “Believes all those campfire tales.” He reaches into a drawer and pulls out a stack of money. “I’ll give you twenty-five thousand now,” he says, “and twenty-five when McMullin is dead.”

“That’s not enough,” Antonia says. “A rover’s harder to sneak up on than your average sonofabitch. And there’s the travel.”

“I wasn’t finished,” Moore says. He gestures to the man, Sanchez, who came for Antonia and Elijah at the roadhouse. He’s been standing at the door to the library but now leaves the room.