Chapter 15
Shea sat on his horse at the edge of Mr. Barclay's home pasture and looked at the fourteen men who had ridden out with him, at the rifles across their saddles, and at the line of dust that was still settling along the lane behind them.
For one second, a mean, private feeling ran through him. He had got what he'd asked for.
"Boys."
They turned toward him. Shea nudged his horse a length forward and turned in the saddle to face the line. Not Drew. Drew was at the front by the gate, on his own horse, with his own hat in his own hand. Shea spoke around him.
"Boys. We’re here for our money. We’re not here for blood. We’ll only ask for one if we’re denied the other."
“We’ll ask in front of the sheriff," McAfee said.
One dissenter, early. Shea had expected McAfee. It was manageable.
"The sheriff is not here, Mr. McAfee. The sheriff is in town, with his hat on his peg. We’re here. The boy is fifty yards from where you’re sitting. The money is somewhere behind him."
"Shea." Foster Fairchild's voice, from his left. "Watch what you do."
"Yes, sir."
He looked across at the porch. Rufus Barclay was on it.
His men were down in the yard in front of him in a loose row, hats on, no rifles yet, hands at their sides.
Boone was behind Mr. Barclay. The lady, the new one, the eastern one, was behind Mr. Barclay too, on the steps.
Shea had not expected to see her. He looked at her another second. She was looking back at him.
He turned his face back to the men.
"You see how it is. Mr. Barclay has his men out. He has the boy behind his shoulder. He has the new lady on the steps to look at us across his porch. He’s set us up to look small."
A murmur.
“I'm not asking you to ride onto his land. I’m not asking you to lift a rifle off your knee. I’m asking you to sit here, where you are, until the man on that porch hands a fifteen-year-old runaway over for an hour of the sheriff's time. That’s all. An hour."
Another murmur. The murmur shifted. The angle of the men's bodies changed in the saddles. A horse on his right eased a step forward. He let it. Being here like this was a gamble. It could go a number of ways, but he was counting on the tide of anger to take the matter where he needed it to go.
A man at his left set his rifle across the front of his saddle. A second did the same. No one stepped onto Mr. Barclay's land, not yet. They sat. They waited. They were waiting for the one of them brave enough to go first.
He stayed in his saddle. He kept his face. His eyes stayed on the porch.
* * *
Rufus had always been a man who let things run, and now the run was at his fence.
He stood on his porch and looked down at the line of fourteen men at the edge of his home pasture. He had been wrong about how long it had been safe to leave matters to the sheriff, wrong yesterday and the day before, by some honest fraction every day of the week.
The rifles were not pointed. They were across saddles. That was the only fact that was on his side.
He spoke to Boone without turning his head.
"Boone."
“Sir?"
"Stay behind me. Inside the porch rail. Do not run. Do not say a word."
"Yes, sir."
The boy shifted, so that Rufus was between him and the men. Rufus heard the porch boards take him, two steps, then still.
"Miss King."
"Yes, Mr. Barclay."
"Same."
"Mr. Barclay?—"
"Cordelia. Please. Behind me. Inside the rail."
She did not argue. He felt her move. He did not turn his head to watch.
He looked down at his men in the yard.
"Hands. Steady. Not a hand on a gun yet. Do not give them the cause."
His men did not move. They were good men.
He looked across the home pasture at the line.
He found Shea Wardell with his eyes. The boy was speaking.
His mouth was moving in the clean shapes of a young man who had been over this before.
Beside him Drew. Behind him Foster Fairchild.
McAfee on the far flank. The Lacey brothers. Inglis. Calder. Fourteen.
He had let this gather too long. He had told himself the sheriff would do the work, and he had thought a different private version of the same thought, which was that he himself did not want to.
He did not want to be the man who said to a sheriff, you have not done enough.
He had been raised in a house where the law was a fence and a man stood inside it.
The fence was at his pasture now, and it was made of fourteen men.
"If anyone steps onto this grass, I am going down to meet him at the rail. I will not raise my hands. I will speak. I will keep speaking. I do not know yet what I am going to say."
"Mr. Barclay. Speak the truth. Speak what you know. Speak slowly. The men out there are not yet what they have begun to become. Speak to the men they were this morning."
He did not look back at her. He did not have to. He nodded once.
He stepped to the porch rail. He set both hands on it. He did not lift his voice. He let the wind take it across the home pasture.
"Boys," he said. "I will speak to Sippy's son. I will speak to Albert. I will speak to Foster Fairchild. Step down off your horses and come up to my rail. Not past it. To it. I will not have it said that I made you yell across grass at a man on his porch."
The line did not move at first.
Then Shea Wardell, who had wanted them to come here, swung down out of his saddle.