Chapter 2
Rufus Barclay was halfway through his second cup of coffee when the dog set up his sheriff bark, and Rufus put the cup down and stood up before the sound at the gate had even finished crossing the yard.
He went out onto the porch in his shirtsleeves. The morning smelled of damp sage and yesterday's wood smoke. Sheriff Abraham Tench was already off his horse and looping the reins over the rail. Behind him a deputy Rufus didn't know stayed in the saddle, one hand on the butt of his gun.
"Abe," Rufus said. “Dog knew you were coming.”
“He always does." Tench was a long man with a gray mustache and a slow way of speaking. Rufus had once admired that slowness. Now he braced for it. "I need to talk to your boy."
"Which boy?"
"You know which boy."
The morning's coffee went sour in him.
Rufus did not answer. He came down off the porch and crossed the yard and stopped a polite distance from the rail. The dog at the bunkhouse corner hadn't stopped his low note, and Rufus said his name without turning his head, and the dog stopped.
"What's the trouble?"
"Trouble enough. Last night somebody fired two shots in front of Sippy Wardell's store. Lock-box in the back was pried open. Half this town keeps wages and accounts in that box, Rufus. About four hundred dollars gone."
Rufus took that in.
"And?" he said.
"And four people in this town, separately, in the moments after those shots, saw a boy running out of Fox Hollow toward the west road. Shea Wardell saw him. Mrs. Lacey from the bakery saw him. Pete Inglis up over the saddlery saw him. Annie Boyd saw him. They named your boy."
Rufus glanced at the kitchen door. Boone would be inside still, finishing the eggs Mrs. Letts had set out. Rufus considered, for one heartbeat, telling Tench to ride on. He set the thought aside.
"Come up to the kitchen," he said.
He turned and went back up the steps. Tench followed, and the deputy swung down from his horse and fell in behind.
Boone was at the table with a fork halfway to his mouth and he stopped.
Guilt on grown men, surprise on children.
Rufus knew both faces. The one across the kitchen sat in between: guilt starting to harden into stubbornness.
"Sheriff's here, son. He wants a word."
Boone set the fork down. He pushed back from the table and turned toward the doorway, and Rufus came and stood beside him. The sheriff and the deputy were in the doorway. Mrs. Letts stood at the stove with her arms folded across her apron and her mouth a flat line.
"Sit down, Boone," Tench said.
Boone sat at the kitchen table. He put his hands palm-down on the wood as though he had been told to, though no one had told him.
"Where were you last night?"
"In my bed, sir."
"All night?"
A pause. Half a heartbeat. Rufus kept his face flat. The half-heartbeat stayed with him.
"You were seen in town between midnight and one o'clock, running out toward this road, after two pistol shots were fired at Sippy Wardell's general store."
"I wasn't running from a robbery, sir."
The boy's voice held level. Rufus marked it.
Tench set both hands on the chair back. "Is that an admission you were running?"
"No, sir."
Tench leaned his weight forward on the back of the chair across from Boone.
"Son. Listen to me. Sippy Wardell's lock-box was forced open.
About four hundred dollars in town money is gone.
People saw you. You can tell me right now where you were, and we can clear it up over this coffee.
Or you can come with me into Fox Hollow and we can clear it up there. "
Boone looked at the table. He didn't look at Rufus.
"I didn't take any money from Mr. Wardell's store."
"Then where were you?"
Boone shook his head. He kept his eyes on the table.
Tench straightened. He did not look surprised. He looked tired. Twenty years behind that badge, and it showed. He looked at Rufus and said, "Gonna need to take him in."
"No."
The word came out of Rufus before he had given it permission.
He stepped between the sheriff and the table without quite meaning to.
He had spent his whole life standing aside for the law, and now the law was a hand reaching toward a fifteen-year-old at his own kitchen table, and the hand was going to have to come through him first.
"Rufus."
"If the boy says he didn't do it, he didn't do it. He works for me. He sleeps under my roof. He's been on this ranch fourteen months and I haven't had so much as a pencil go missing. You will not take him today, Abe."
"I can ride back here with four men."
Rufus's pulse went hard once at the base of his throat. He kept his hands easy at his sides.
"You can. You can also take my word for it that he won't run.
He stays put. You investigate. You find your robber.
When you do, I'll buy you a drink. If your investigation puts the finger on this boy with something more than a frightened baker pointing through her shutters, you bring it to me and I will hand him over personally. Until then, he stays."
Tench studied him for a long second.
"He runs, that's on you."
"He won't."
The sheriff put his hat back on. They mounted up and turned the horses and rode back down the lane toward town, and Mrs. Letts let out the breath she had been holding and went back to the stove without a word.
Rufus shut the door. He turned around. Boone was still sitting at the table with his hands flat on the wood, and his shoulders had begun to shake.
"Look at me," Rufus said.
Boone looked up. His eyes were dry, which was almost worse.
"Did you take Sippy's money?"
"No, sir."
"Why were you in town?"
Boone opened his mouth. He closed it.
"I can't say, sir."
Rufus stood there a long beat. Then he went to the stove and poured himself a fresh cup of coffee and drank half of it standing up.
"All right," he said. "All right. You stay on the place. You don't go past the gate. You don't take a horse. You sit on this porch until I tell you you can stand off it. Are we clear, son?"
"Yes, sir."
"Eat your eggs."
Boone ate his eggs. Rufus watched him do it.
The coffee in his own cup had gone cold.
He left it there and looked out the window at the lane, empty and dust-quiet under the morning sun.
In three days a woman from back East was supposed to come up that lane.
He had a boy with a secret at his table and a stranger on her way to it.
He wasn't sure which gave him more to think about.