Chapter 14
Cordelia wrote half a letter to Alma at the cottage table and could not finish it.
Rufus had ridden toward Fox Hollow before the dew was off the grass and come back an hour later without a word.
She went to the rail above the home pasture while he and his hands moved cattle through a gate, and her eyes kept going to the road, more than she meant them to.
She was restless, and she was waiting, and she was not very good at either.
Boone was at the woodpile when she came down. He had a maul in his hand and a heap of splits at his feet and his face had been wiped clean by an hour of work. He set the maul down when he saw her coming and pushed his hair off his forehead with the back of his wrist.
It struck her, not for the first time, that Rufus was everything she had hoped, and probably more. Were it not for the situation she had found herself in the middle of, she would have walked into an arrangement that suited her almost perfectly.
She only hoped this problem wouldn’t test their love while it was in its fragile early stages.
It felt like it was up to her to resolve it, but not in the heavy-handed or complacent way the men were trying to.
For the sake of her burgeoning romance, and for the sake of the situation itself, she needed to approach it with a lighter touch.
"Ma'am."
"Mr. Keaton."
"Mrs. Letts said you might be down. I brought a stool out for you. I didn't know if you wanted to sit."
The stool was at the corner of the woodpile, in the shade of the bunkhouse wall. He had set it on level ground and put a folded burlap on the seat. Cordelia sat. She thanked him. He went back to the maul. He worked, and the steady thunk of the splitting filled the yard. She thought about Alma.
Alma had helped a man she knew was guilty.
Rufus was helping a boy who was not. His face had turned toward a girl across the street the day before with an expression that did not belong to any boy who had pried open a box.
He was hiding a secret he had thought worth taking a thrashing for.
Perhaps he didn’t know the consequences could be worse than a thrashing if it was left in the hands of angry men.
Perhaps he did know that.
Either way, he wore it silently.
He was not hiding a robbery. The Boone-shaped half of the worry she had carried off the train had finally lifted. The Rufus-shaped half was still sitting.
"Mr. Keaton. You like Mr. Barclay's place?”
"Yes, ma'am."
"Will you sit with me a minute?"
He looked surprised. He came across and sat on a section of upended log a polite distance from her stool.
She did not look at him. She looked at the road.
"The girl across the street yesterday."
He went rigid.
"Ma'am—"
“I'm not going to ask you to tell me. I’m telling you that I saw."
"Thank you, ma'am."
The thanks came out rough at the edges. Cordelia kept her eyes on the road below the pasture, to give the rough a place to live unobserved.
"I don't have her name."
"No, ma'am."
"And you will not give it to me, Mr. Keaton, today or any day soon. I know that and I am not asking. I am telling you what I have understood about you, so that when I sit in a room with Mr. Barclay tonight and we go over the day, you may know what I have understood and what I have not said."
Boone looked down at his hands.
"Yes, ma'am."
"Eat your supper tonight, Mr. Keaton."
"Yes, ma'am."
She got up. She set her hand for an instant on his shoulder, the lightest touch. He did not lean into it and he did not flinch. He held very still under her palm.
She went back up the hill.
She was halfway to the cottage when a horse came up the lane.
She turned. A boy on a chestnut came at the run, not a full gallop, paid to be fast and not reckless.
He pulled up at the gate. Mrs. Letts came down off the porch and met him there.
The boy said a few words. He turned the chestnut and went off back down the lane.
Mrs. Letts came up the hill at her age's best speed.
"Miss King. They're coming."
"Who is?"
"All of them. With guns this time. The boy at the gate was sent up by Mr. Vale. Mr. Vale went to the sheriff first, but the sheriff is out past the Drews' on another matter and won't be back before noon. The ride is gathering at the edge of the home pasture. They're coming this hour."
Cordelia took the news in. She had been waiting for it.
"Tell Mr. Barclay."
"He's on his way already."
Cordelia's mind went very clear and very narrow. Fear would have to wait its turn.
"Then I will come down."
"Miss King?—"
"I will come down. Bring me Boone."
Mrs. Letts looked at her one second. Then she went.
Cordelia stood at the rail above the home pasture and looked down at the line of pale dust at the bend in the road, the same line she had watched from the porch on her first morning.
She did not see Rufus come up the hill. She heard him.
A boot on the stone of the path, then a second, and his breath when he came up beside her, not winded but quicker than it usually was.
"Cordelia."
He had not called her by her given name before. She kept her eyes on the road below and did not let her voice change when she answered.
"Mr. Barclay."
"Mrs. Letts sent word."
"She did."
He set a hand on the top board of the rail and looked down at the dust. His hat was in his other hand. The hair at his temple was damp.
"They're at the bend."
"Yes."
She stood an arm's length from him and looked at the dust. Her chest was tight with more than fear of what was riding toward them.
"I want you in the cottage."
She turned her head and looked at him. His jaw was set in a line she had learned to read at the platform on her first hour off the train. It was not a line of asking.
"No," she said.
"Cordelia."
"No, Rufus. I will not sit at a cottage window and listen for the noise. I came down to the woodpile this morning because there's a boy at the bottom of this who hasn't stolen anything. I will not go up again because there are now fourteen horses at the bend."
He looked at her another second. Boone had come up behind him and was standing two strides off with his hat in his hands and his face the color of paper. Rufus did not turn to the boy. He kept his eyes on her.
"Stand behind me, then."
"I will stand behind you. I will not stand inside a door."
"That's what I'm asking."
Some of the iron had gone out of his voice on the asking. That was what decided her.
"Then yes."
He set his hat back on his head.