Chapter 12
Rufus held the reins to the brown mare with a grip that was harder than he meant it to be, and the mare felt it and laid one ear back, and Rufus made his hand loosen and apologized to her under his breath.
Boone had ridden the saddle horse home ahead of them.
He had wanted to. He had wanted to be away from the buggy and from the lady in it, and Rufus had let him go without an argument, because Rufus too had wanted, in his own private way, to have a quarter hour with his bride that was not in a sheriff's office.
It turned out he was not going to get that ride.
"Mr. Barclay. How well do you know the sheriff?”
Rufus turned his head a fraction. Cordelia was looking at him with her gloved hands folded in her lap and her face composed, which he had begun to read, in the day and a half he had known her, as the face she put on when she was setting down a question she didn't intend to drop.
He did not answer right away. The mare took the road home at her own pace. The flat opened. A hawk went up off a fencepost and circled.
“Since before he started in the job," he said at last.
"Have you ever seen him do the job in front of a town that wanted the job done its own way?"
He didn't answer that, at first, because he didn't, on examination, have an example.
"He's handled drunks, and a knife or two, and a brand dispute and a fire. He's handled the ordinary trouble."
“He's not handled four hundred dollars of his neighbors' money out of a box."
"No."
The no cost him a little. The next ones would cost more… he could feel them lining up.
"And the town that lost the money’s at his door."
“Yes. But…”
"The men at his door are not patient. One of them is Albert Drew. One of them is the son of the man who lost the money."
"Yes."
Each yes was a fence post going in.
"Mr. Barclay. If your sheriff is under pressure of that size from people he's known sixteen years, what makes you certain he'll go on doing this job the way he's done the ordinary kind?"
Rufus did not answer.
The road went on. A cottonwood came up on the right, and the same cottonwood went past on the same side. The morning in the sheriff's office was already replaying itself, the places where Abe Tench had not asked a question he might have asked.
Tench hadn't pressed Boone on what he could say. He hadn't sent a deputy down the alley behind the laundress's to see whose boot prints lay along it. He had taken Sippy's statement once, and not pressed him either.
He had taken Boone's silence as his answer.
Rufus didn't say any of this out loud.
"You're quiet, Mr. Barclay."
“I'm thinking."
"All right."
He thought another minute. The mare turned at the bend by the post. All his life he had stood aside and trusted a process to finish itself.
He had let weather run and cattle run. He had let his older brother run the place, when his older brother had been alive, and had not sat down in that chair until after the fall.
He had let Abe Tench run the sheriff's office.
This morning he had let an angry town run as far as his own gate.
He had let every one of them run. The reins bit into his palm and he did not loosen his grip.
Cordelia was looking out at the country. She hadn't turned back to him. He worked through the question without being watched, which he was grateful for.
"Miss King."
"Yes, Mr. Barclay."
“You're right."
She did turn then. He had a moment of her face full toward him, a thoughtful face, an intelligent one, before she spoke.
"About what part?"
"About the sheriff. Not that he’s dishonest. I won’t say that. About the pressure on him. I hadn't considered that a man with sixteen years of friendship in a room can be pushed by the friendship. I’d taken it for a steadying weight. It can be the other kind."
“I think in this case it can."
The response came gentle, and he was grateful for that.
"He didn't ask the boy enough questions this morning.”
He said it resignedly.
"He did not,” she agreed.
"He didn't, this whole week, walk the alley behind the laundress's."
The reins moved in his hands, a small useless adjustment. She didn’t say anything. She just waited for him to speak again.
"I haven't asked him to. I haven't done it myself. I’ve left it to him."
"You trust him, Mr. Barclay?”
"I trust him to be honest. I'm beginning to wonder whether honest is enough in a town that has hold of the wrong boy's name."
Cordelia did not say anything. She looked out at the country again.
The mare's hooves fell soft in the road dust, a dry shuffle, and the sage along the fence carried its smell into the still air.
Rufus turned the brim of his hat with his free hand and did not put it back on his head.
He let the mare walk the last half mile, slower than she wanted to go, and told himself it was to spare her legs.
"I'll go in tomorrow," he said. "Without Boone. Without you. I'll speak to Tench again, and to Sippy at his counter, not at my gate. I’ll ask the questions I haven't asked because I haven't been the one to ask them.”
“Without me?”
"Yes."
“Why?”
“Because as sharp as your insight is, your presentation of it will only inflame the matter. You’re new here.
You’re a woman. I can see the rightness in what you’re saying, but those men in the town won’t, and they’ve got a lot of excuses they can make before they start needing to ask themselves why they won’t. ”
She looked at him then. The composed face had cleared. He couldn't have said what replaced it, only that it was quieter, and that it was hers and not arranged for his benefit. He looked another second, then turned back to the road.
They came down off the open country and into the lane, and the mare found the ranch gate by habit and slowed. Rufus climbed down and went around to hand Cordelia out.
She didn't need help from the step, but she set her hand in his, and he held it the length of the step down, and one breath past that.
He didn’t say anything. Neither did she.