Chapter 18
Cordelia sat at the long table in the Barclay ranch house at supper and listened to Mr. Barclay tell her the end of a story she had begun on a train.
Only the stove ticked as it cooled. Mrs. Letts had set out beef and biscuits and a bowl of stewed apple, and had gone to her own room and closed the door.
The ranch hands had eaten in the bunkhouse.
Boone sat at his usual place, hands folded on the wood in front of his plate, eating in slow bites and not speaking.
Rufus cut a piece of beef.
"They took him back to town," he said. "Mr. Vale and Foster Fairchild between them. They walked him to Tench's office. The half-circle of men at the rail went with them."
"And the sheriff?”
Cordelia broke a biscuit she didn't eat.
"Abe was there. He had been at his desk all afternoon. He set the boy down on the bench at the back. He sent for Sippy. He sent for me. Shea sat on that bench and put his head in his hands. He said three words before he said the rest. He said, I am sorry."
"To whom?"
"To everyone, was the way he said it. To his father most. He said it again to him when Sippy came in."
"Sippy." The picture of it pressed on her chest, the father on the bench beside the son who had ruined him.
"He took it hard, Cordelia. He hadn't let himself suspect it, and that made it harder."
Cordelia set her fork down.
"He told the sheriff."
"He told it all. He borrowed money because of the gambling. The two men were collecting, and the deadline fell on Boone's walking night. Every piece we guessed at the rail, and the parts we hadn't had."
"So he invented a robbery."
Said plain at a supper table, it sounded like what it was.
"He made it seem real. He fired the shots himself, gave the money to the men at the station before dawn, and was behind his counter the next morning to tell the sheriff he had seen a boy with a bag."
Boone's spoon had stopped over the stewed apple.
"Oh." She had not meant to say it. The sound came up out of her by itself.
“That's the story, Cordelia. Tench has him on the bench tonight. Sippy is with him."
"What will become of him?"
She asked it for Sippy's sake more than Shea's, and knew Rufus would hear it that way.
"A territorial judge will come. The two men at the station are gone. The money is gone. Sippy will sell what he can. The town will pay itself back over years. Shea will not be the one to pay it back, he’ll pay another way, in another place."
"And Boone?”
"Boone is at this table eating his stewed apple. He’s not the boy who stole from Sippy Wardell, he’s the boy who walked the wrong way past a window at the wrong hour."
Boone, at the table, set down his spoon. He set his hands flat on the table. He swallowed once and looked up at Rufus, then at Cordelia, and then back down at his plate. After a moment he picked his spoon up again.
"Mr. Keaton?”
“Ma'am?"
"Eat. We'll speak more tomorrow."
"Yes, ma'am."
He ate. She counted that as the day's last small victory.
After supper Rufus walked her up the hill to the cottage. He had his hat in one hand and a tin lantern in the other and they did not speak for the first ten paces.
"Cordelia."
"Yes."
He stopped on the path, and the lantern light steadied around their feet.
"I owe you an apology."
"For what?"
"For the morning at the platform. For the breakfast that became a half-circle of horsemen on my grass. For the question I didn’t ask the sheriff in time.
For not seeing sooner the part of you that does the work.
For the private way I had begun, by yesterday morning, to think that perhaps a wife on a porch was a wife who ought to stay on it. I underestimated you.”
Her eyes had begun to sting somewhere around the half-circle of horsemen. She let them.
"You are forgiven. I came in with my own idea of what this situation was. I have a friend who protected a man she shouldn’t have done, and it made trouble for her.”
He set the lantern on the porch rail of the cottage. He took his hat off. He looked at her as he had on the platform, except now there was nothing held back at all.
"Miss King. Cordelia."
"Yes, Rufus."
Neither of them moved first, or both of them did.
His jaw was rough against her cheek. His breath was warm against her mouth.
She found the sleeve of his coat with one hand.
Her other hand opened against the line of his jaw and her fingers learned, in the second she had, that he had shaved that afternoon and missed a place at the corner of his mouth.