Chapter 6
Hudson Ferris had woken in worse places.
There was a slatted floor under his cheek, the smell of gun oil over him, a band of sun across his trousers.
His head was a kettle left on the stove too long.
His mouth tasted of pennies. The slats were a bench, the bench was inside a cell, and the cell door stood open.
Somebody had laid him there to sleep it off.
He didn't like that detail.
He sat up. The room rotated, then went back the way it came.
The front office of the Listwood sheriff's station.
Stove in the corner, desk under the window, rifle rack on the wall with the chain left unlocked.
Behind the desk sat a man with a tin star Hudson had been introduced to two evenings ago at the bar.
"Mornin', Mr. Ferris."
"Sheriff."
"Take your time."
Hudson took his time. He stood up. He put one hand on the cell door for steadying. He stepped out of the cell, which was a thing he wanted on the record, and he walked the four short steps to the chair in front of the sheriff's desk and sat down.
"Water," he said.
"Cup behind you."
He drank the water. It tasted of the tin. He drank a second cup. His skull throbbed once and then began, slowly, to clear.
"Last night," he said. "How much?”
The sheriff put his elbows on the desk and laced his fingers and watched him a moment in a perfectly friendly way. Sheriff Overn was a thin man with the long jaw of a horse and the eyes of a person who had practiced not having any. He smiled.
"You don't remember?"
"Bits."
He pulled out a drawer, and from the drawer he pulled a folded paper, and he laid the paper down on the desk in front of Hudson with the gentle care of a man laying a tablecloth.
"I asked you to come up here this morning," he said, "so we could keep this neighborly. As it turned out, you ended up here anyhow. You signed an agreement last night. With Mr. Bates and Mr. Holloway, both of whom you'll recall. This is your name at the bottom."
Hudson looked. It was his name. His own loop at the H, the dragged tail of the s, the slight tremble in the i where he had had a fifth whiskey. The date was right. His signature, however shaky, was his.
He had not yet read what he had put it under.
"Take your time," said the sheriff.
He read. He read it twice.
His stomach dropped. He set the second cup of water down on the desk because his hand had begun to shake, and he didn't want the sheriff to see his hand shake, but the cup met the wood and tipped and a thin trickle of water ran across the page and softened one corner of his signature.
The sheriff lifted the page with two fingers and dabbed at it with the corner of a handkerchief, in the same friendly way.
"My share of the ranch," Hudson said.
"That's what it says."
"My brother's ranch."
"Your share."
"I don't have a share."
"You signed otherwise."
"I don't have a share to sign over. That's not how the ranch is held. My brother and I — there's a paper at home. There's a paper. I bought in. It's not a share. It's a—" He could hear his voice rising, and he stopped, because rising was a thing the sheriff was waiting for.
The sheriff smiled again. He pushed a second page across.
"Mr. Colt is a lawyer here in Listwood. He'll be paying your brother a visit.
He'll bring the original, and he'll have a copy made for your brother's records, and your brother will be given a week to make good in cash.
If he does, you walk out of here a free man with a brother who's not pleased with you.
If he doesn't, the share transfers, and we'll go from there. "
"What happens to me."
"You can take this to court. You can engage a lawyer in Phoenix, who'll engage another lawyer here, and you'll be a guest of the territory for the time it takes, because last night you also got yourself into a small fracas at the bar that I happened to witness, and that I'd be obliged to remember if you decided to fight us.
Or you can sign the side paper that says you don't fight us.
And then you walk out of here, and you go and tell your brother yourself, like a man, what's been done. "
Hudson didn't speak.
He looked at the side paper. He looked at the pen. He looked at the rifle in the rack, which had been left unchained, and at the pistol, which was holstered on the sheriff's right hip with the strap unsnapped. The sheriff had not stood up. He was still seated, easy, with his fingers laced.
He picked up the pen. He signed the side paper.
"There," said the sheriff.
"There," said Hudson.
It was done. For better or for worse.
He didn’t stand. He sat with the pen in his fingers and looked again at the rifle on the wall.
He thought about his brother. He thought about Lydia.
He thought about the paper that had a copy made of it, and the copy that would be carried to Prosperity in a leather satchel by a man named Colt, and his brother's face when the satchel was opened on the table.
He set the pen down, and pretended to brush ash from his trouser. Then he stood. He could stop this before it began.
Hudson lunged for the pistol.
His fingers closed on the grip, hard and sure, and for one wild instant he thought he had been quick enough. The chair scraped. The sheriff’s hand came down on his wrist.
“Don’t,” the sheriff said.
Hudson twisted. The room lurched sideways; desk, window, rifle rack, the white square of paper with his name drying at the bottom.
Then the pistol cracked. The sound filled the office.
Somewhere outside, a horse startled against its rail.
The paper slid from the edge of the desk and settled face-down on the floor.