Chapter 10
Cordelia woke before the sun in a strange bed in a strange cottage, lay still under a strange quilt, and listened for the sound of the country.
A meadowlark first. Then a horse stamping in a pasture down the hill.
The country said good morning by going about its own business.
She rose, dressed by lamplight, and washed her face at the basin.
A knock came at the door and Mrs. Letts called through it to ask whether she would come down for breakfast at the ranch house. Cordelia said she would.
The walk down the hill took ten minutes, the lane still cool and the dew not yet off the grass.
Breakfast at the ranch house was unlike any she had eaten before.
Mrs. Letts had laid the long table with biscuits and eggs and a great heavy iron pot of beans.
Four men were at it already when she came in, three older hands and Boone, and they stood as she entered.
Rufus introduced them. She did not retain the names.
She retained their nods, the nod country men give toward a woman in a kitchen they have decided to respect on her first morning.
“Good morning, Miss King."
“And to you, Mr. Barclay."
He held a chair for her. His hand rested a moment on the chair back, an inch from her shoulder, and that inch kept her company through the whole first cup of coffee.
She sat. The men sat. Mrs. Letts put a plate in front of her and the biscuits broke open steaming and the beans tasted of wood smoke and salt pork, and she ate with what attention she could spare from the windows.
Boone was at the far end of the table with his fork in his hand and his eyes on the plate.
He hadn't eaten much. The men talked, low, about a fence on the south line and a cow that had calved too thin, and the hay.
They did not talk about the lock-box. They were being good men in front of a guest. Cordelia could grow to like four men who were trying that hard at a breakfast table.
Then Mrs. Letts came in from the front room with her apron in her hands.
"Mr. Barclay. Riders at the gate."
Rufus stood up before the chair had finished its scrape.
"How many?"
"Eight that I can count. Some more behind."
The men were on their feet. They went out by the front door, not by the kitchen. Rufus paused only to look at Cordelia. His look held a worry he hadn't yet phrased. It pulled tight under her stays. She was on her feet before he had finished looking.
"Stay inside."
"I will not."
Her heart was going hard, but her feet had already decided.
“This isn’t the time to be wilful."
“I'll come no further than the porch."
He didn’t have time to argue. She went with him as far as the porch and stopped at the rail beside Mrs. Letts, and Boone came out with the men and stood among them.
The men of the ranch settled into a loose half-circle at the front of the yard between Boone and the gate.
Rufus stood at the front of them with his hat brim level, and her eyes kept finding the set of his shoulders when she meant to be counting riders.
The riders came up. Sippy Wardell was at the front, on a grey mule.
Beside him a heavy man with a hard face Cordelia recognized from the platform.
Drew. Behind them, seven others. They stopped, tight and polite, at the edge of the home pasture, and Sippy took his hat off and held it against his chest, and Cordelia thought, against her own will, that he looked like a man who would rather not be here.
"Barclay." Sippy's voice came out tired. "I said I wouldn't ride. It is my box." He held the hat against his chest a moment longer. “We've come to ask after our money."
"Your money’s not on this ranch, Sippy."
From the rail, Rufus's voice stayed level. The level had a price under it; she was learning to hear that.
“We've come to ask the boy."
"You may ask him from where you stand. He won’t be coming any closer to that gate."
Drew leaned forward in his saddle.
"Barclay—"
"Albert. I will speak to Sippy. Sippy. Ask him."
Sippy did not ask anything at first. He looked down the half-circle of men until he found Boone in it, and Boone lifted his chin and looked at him back.
"Boone Keaton. Did you take the money out of my box?"
"No, sir, Mr. Wardell. I did not."
"Were you in town that night?"
"Yes, sir."
A small sound went down the line of riders, leather and breath. Cordelia's nails found the rail.
"For what?"
Boone did not answer.
"For what, Boone?"
"I can't say, Mr. Wardell."
"There it is," Drew said. "Sippy. There it is. The boy was there. The boy was running. He hasn't given a one of us a reason."
The riders began to murmur. The murmur changed. It had a low, building pressure, like wind before it sharpens and breaks. Her hand tightened on the porch rail.
Drew handed his reins to the man beside him without looking and stepped down from his saddle. He took two steps toward the gate.
She thought of Alma, of the cell, of the deputy with his ledger and nobody asking the right question. She thought, very clearly, that this was the moment a town tipped from being a town into being a mob, and that she hadn't crossed two thousand miles to stand on a porch and let it tip.
She put both hands on the rail and let her voice carry.
"Mr. Wardell."
The riders looked at her. Rufus looked at her, fast. She had just changed the shape of it.
"Mr. Wardell, my name is Cordelia King. I arrived yesterday on the train.
I am to be Mr. Barclay's wife. I told Mr. Drew at the platform I was a stranger here, and I am still a stranger here.
But I will not stand at this rail and watch a boy be judged by men who do not yet have the facts.
If Boone Keaton is to be proved innocent, we cannot have him proved by Mr. Barclay alone, and we cannot have him proved by his own silence.
We must find out what really happened. I would ride into town with you now, Mr. Wardell, and Mr. Barclay, and the sheriff, and we will sit down together. That is what I propose."
Sippy looked at her. He looked at Rufus.
“Barclay? She speak for you?”
Rufus took a slow breath. He looked at Cordelia in surprise. He looked at his men. He looked at Boone.
"All right, Sippy. We will come into town. Now. To the sheriff. The boy with us. You and I, and the lady, and the boy."
Drew did not like it. He said so. He was here for something a little more satisfying than words.
He was overruled by Sippy's hat going back on his head and his grey mule turning, and after a moment, by ones and twos, the riders turned with him and started back down the lane.
Rufus came up to Cordelia on the porch. He was closer than she expected, and she hadn't until that moment taken stock of the set of his shoulders, or how the tension along his jaw hadn't yet eased. He did not speak. He looked at her with a face she hadn't seen on him yet, closer to recognition than approval. Her chest pulled tight. She did not look away. He nodded, once, and she thought she saw the whisper of a smile on his face. At this moment, she had no idea if she’d done the right thing or the wrong thing by him. She’d stuck to what she believed was the best moral path, but it remained to be seen whether she’d done so at the cost of her engagement.
The faint smile she’d seen? It could easily have been her imagination.
Rufus went to fetch the buggy.