CHAPTER 16
The Investigator Arrives
Goldpine
Diego Marquez arrived in Goldpine some three weeks after Elena's warning letter, considerably sooner than Callie had allowed herself to hope for a reprieve, and made his presence known first at the Goldpine mercantile, where his careful, probing questions regarding a young woman of Mexican-American heritage, recently arrived from the south, drew the immediate and wary attention of Mrs. Petty, who had long since learned, through Ruth's careful cultivation of the town's protective instincts, to be rather guarded with strangers asking pointed questions about any of Goldpine's recent arrivals.
“I couldn't rightly say I've noticed any such person,” Mrs. Petty informed him, with the particular bland unhelpfulness of a woman who had decided, on principle, to offer a stranger considerably less assistance than her actual knowledge would permit.
“Goldpine sees a good many new arrivals, mining town that it is.
You'd best ask at the church, perhaps, if you're wanting to track a specific person's whereabouts.”
This deliberately unhelpful counsel, offered with an innocent expression that gave away nothing of its calculated evasiveness, sent Marquez toward the church, where Josiah Larson, having been thoroughly briefed on the situation by his sister some days prior, received the investigator's inquiries with the particular pastoral blandness of a man well practiced at revealing considerably less than his actual knowledge encompassed.
“I minister to a good many souls in this territory, Mr. Marquez, and I couldn't in good conscience discuss any particular congregant's personal circumstances with a stranger, whatever the nature of your business.
If you'd care to leave your card, I'd be glad to pass along word that you're seeking to make contact, should such a person exist among my congregation, though I'll not promise anything beyond that.”
Marquez, a man of evident professional competence who had clearly encountered such careful deflection before in the course of his work, pressed rather further than Josiah's polite stonewalling generally permitted, eventually producing, with the particular satisfaction of a man playing his strongest card, a photograph of Callie taken some years past at a family occasion in Santa Fe.
“This young woman,” he said, “was last seen boarding a northbound train from the Denver rail terminus, and I have reason to believe she may have continued on into this territory, possibly seeking employment under an assumed circumstance.
Her father is most anxious for word of her safety, Reverend, and I would remind you that withholding information regarding a young woman's whereabouts from her rightful family carries its own moral weight, whatever pastoral discretion you believe the situation warrants.”
Josiah studied the photograph with a carefully composed expression that revealed nothing of his actual recognition, and found himself navigating a genuine moral quandary of his own — the tension between his considerable sympathy for Callie's plight and his own professional conscience regarding outright deception, a tension he resolved, after some internal deliberation, by choosing his words with the particular careful precision of a man determined to speak truthfully while revealing as little as truthfulness strictly required.
“I cannot in good conscience confirm or deny the presence of any specific individual in my congregation, Mr. Marquez, this being a matter of considerable pastoral confidence I take very seriously indeed. I will say this much, however — if the young woman in question has indeed found her way to this territory, and if she has done so fleeing an arrangement she found genuinely unwelcome, I would counsel her family, through whatever channel this message reaches them, that a woman of full age is entitled, under both civil law and the plain dictates of Christian conscience, to determine the course of her own life, and that any family genuinely concerned for her welfare might do rather better to examine why she felt compelled to flee at all, rather than simply redoubling their efforts to compel her return.”
This response, delivered with the particular unyielding gentleness Josiah reserved for matters of genuine moral conviction, left Marquez rather less satisfied than his professional instincts generally preferred, and he departed the church with his investigation no further advanced than his arrival, though considerably more convinced, by Josiah's careful non-denial, that his quarry had indeed found her way to Goldpine specifically.
Word of the investigator's presence and questioning reached the Cross Ranch within hours, carried by a breathless Nettie Thorne who had overheard her own parents discussing the matter and had run the considerable distance to deliver the warning with the particular self-important urgency of a child entrusted with genuinely important news.
“There's a man in town asking after you,” she informed Callie, arriving at the ranch out of breath and evidently proud of her own initiative in delivering the warning personally.
“Papa says he's got a photograph and everything, and Reverend Larson wouldn't tell him anything, but he's bound to keep looking, on account of that's what investigators do.”
Callie felt the cold dread she had been holding at bay these past three weeks settle fully over her at last, understanding that whatever grace period she had been granted had now, definitively, come to its end.
“Thank you for coming to tell me yourself, Nettie,” she managed, kneeling down to the child's level despite her own considerable distress. “That was very brave and very kind of you.”
“Mama says you're one of us now,” Nettie said, with the particular fierce loyalty children sometimes display toward adults they've decided deserve their protection, “and that means we all look out for each other, same as everybody looked out for the Cross Ranch when the barn burned.
I wasn't going to let you get caught by surprise, not if I could help it.”
Callie felt tears rise at the child's simple, generous conviction, understanding that whatever fear the coming confrontation held, she was facing it now as part of a genuine community rather than the isolated flight she had originally undertaken, and found some measure of courage in that understanding to carry her through the difficult hours that followed, as she waited for Nathaniel to return from the fields and help her properly consider what the investigator's presence would mean for the careful life they had begun building together.
Mrs. Petty and Bess Beal arrived within the hour as well, having heard the news through the mercantile's efficient grapevine, bringing with them a determination to help that manifested itself, in the practical manner of frontier women accustomed to meeting crisis with immediate action, as a flurry of suggestions regarding how best to protect Callie's continued anonymity should the investigator prove more persistent than Josiah's careful deflection had managed to discourage.
“We could say you'd gone to visit relations in Cheyenne, should he come asking directly at the ranch,” Bess suggested, settling at the kitchen table with the brisk efficiency of a woman planning a considerable operation.
“Otis could drive you into town for a few days, keep you out of sight till the fellow gives up and moves along.”
“I don't know that I want to hide, Bess, however kindly the suggestion. I've done enough running these past months. I think, if he does find his way here, I'd rather face him directly than spend further weeks looking over my shoulder.”
Mrs. Petty studied her with evident approval.
“That's the right spirit, dear, whatever fear it costs you to hold to it.
I've found, in my own considerable experience, that facing a thing directly generally proves less exhausting in the long run than the endless vigilance required to keep avoiding it.”
The women's practical support, offered without hesitation despite their relatively brief acquaintance with Callie's full circumstances, settled something in her resolve that she carried with her through the following days of anxious waiting, understanding that whatever the investigator's eventual arrival brought, she would not face it as an isolated stranger but as a woman this whole community had already, in every meaningful sense, claimed as one of its own.
Nettie, having delivered her breathless warning, remained at the ranch through the supper hour, her mother having sent word that she would collect her later once the immediate crisis of information-sharing had properly concluded, and used the intervening time to offer Callie her own particular brand of eight-year-old comfort, describing at considerable length the various strategies she and Sam had already devised, quite independently of any adult input, for dealing with any investigator foolish enough to actually appear at the ranch gate.
“We could put Duke on him,” Nettie suggested, with the particular relish children bring to imagining dramatic confrontations they will likely never actually witness. “Duke doesn't like strangers much, and he's got a fearsome bark, even if Sam says he's mostly harmless once you know him.”
“I don't think we'll need to set the dog on anyone, Nettie, however creative the strategy. I mean to face this particular difficulty with words rather than teeth, if it comes to that.”
“That's probably wiser,” Nettie conceded, with evident reluctance at abandoning her more dramatic proposed solution. “But if words don't work, you let us know, and we'll see about the dog after all.”
Callie found herself laughing despite her considerable anxiety, grateful for this small, fierce champion who had appointed herself to Callie's defense with such earnest, uncomplicated loyalty, and felt, watching Nettie's evident determination, that whatever difficulty lay ahead, she had gathered around herself, in these short months, an army of allies rather more formidable than her father's hired investigator likely anticipated encountering.
Nettie's mother arrived shortly after to collect her, and Amelia herself lingered a moment at the door, offering Callie a final word of quiet encouragement before departing.
“I know something of what you're facing, having weathered my own version of this particular fear,” she said.
“I'll tell you what steadied me most, through my own difficult reckoning — remembering that whatever the outcome, I had already proven myself capable of building a genuine life here, regardless of what any letter from my past might yet demand of me.
You've proven the very same thing these past months, Callie.
Whatever comes, that proof doesn't simply vanish because of one difficult confrontation.”
“Thank you, Amelia. That's precisely the reminder I needed to hear tonight.”
“Then my work here is done,” Amelia said, with a small, warm smile, and departed with Nettie in tow, leaving Callie considerably more settled in her resolve than the day's anxious developments had initially left her to feel.