Chapter 16
Beau Ferris rode back into his own dooryard just after four with Lydia on the seat beside him and a hard knot under his breastbone that had not loosened since breakfast.
Florence was not in the kitchen. But the kitchen was clean. The boards were dark with water. The pantry door stood open and a row of jars stood freshly aligned. A loaf cooled on a cloth on the windowsill.
"Florence?" Lydia called.
"Out here." Her voice came from the back yard.
She was at the chopping block, splitting wood Quint had left in a pile.
Her sleeves were pushed up. She held the axe wrong.
She had gotten through more wood than he would have credited a woman with in the time she had been at it.
A line of sweat sat at her hairline. She did not stop when his shadow came across the block.
"Florence."
"Beau."
“That's not your work."
"I needed to be moving."
He took the axe from her gently and set it against the block. She wiped her hands on her apron and didn't look at him.
"Lydia is back," he said. "I'd be grateful if you'd let her walk you through the upstairs and the linens. There's a system Mrs. Letts uses. Lyddie knows it. She'll teach you."
"Yes."
"If you've thought, since this morning. If you've thought, in any honest way, that you've made a mistake by coming. Now is the time you may say so. I'll have a man drive you to the station tomorrow. I'll cover the ticket east. No question asked."
She did look up at that. She looked at him a long moment.
He could not read her face. He could read that the line of her mouth was steady.
He could read that her eyes had gone very dark, in the way eyes did when a person was deciding whether to be angry.
But he couldn’t put it all together into one meaning.
A failing on his part, perhaps. Or perhaps there were just things going on that he didn’t know about.
"No," she said.
"All right."
"Have you decided for me?”
He looked at her.
"No," he said.
He took his hat off. He put it on. He took it off again. There was nothing he could say in the dooryard that was the right size for the dooryard, and so he said only, "I'm into town."
"At dark?”
"At dark."
He left her at the chopping block and went around to the rail. He swung up onto the bay and rode out the gate without looking back, because he did not want to see whether she was watching him go, and he did not want to admit to himself how badly he wished she would be.
The hotel in Prosperity had two rooms upstairs and a small parlor downstairs that the proprietor let out as a meeting place for a coin.
Mr. Colt and Mr. Saville were sitting in the parlor in two armchairs that had once been red and were now a color closer to dried meat.
They both rose as he came in. They both sat when he sat.
Mr. Colt put a paper on the small table between them.
"Mr. Ferris."
"Colt."
"We have three options for your consideration."
"Go on."
"The first is that you make good in cash by Saturday next, and the share returns to you. The figure is on this paper. I would not insult you by repeating it aloud."
He looked at the figure. It was the same figure as yesterday.
"The second?"
"The second is the share transfers. The new holder will lease his interest back to you on terms. Otherwise you can continue as a partner, but our client will expect a say in staffing and all matters of business.”
"The third?”
"The third is you sell, entire, to a buyer Mr. Saville knows. Papers ready inside the week. The figure is lower than the ranch is worth, but you would clear the debt and walk away.”
“I could find my own buyer?”
“Inside a week?”
Heat sat in the parlor like a fourth man. Through the wall, the proprietor swept. Outside the window, a cart went by.
"Those are all bad offers, Mr. Colt."
"They are not offers, Mr. Ferris. They’re simply options.”
"You ride out to my house. You sit two days in my brother's grave, and you bring me three offers that all of them end with another man on my land. You're thieves in a coat, the both of you."
"Mr. Ferris?—"
"Thieves in a coat. The state of Arizona ought to be ashamed of itself for the kind of paper it lets a man write."
He stood. He pushed his chair back so hard it tipped. He walked out, remembered his hat at the door, came back for it. On the porch he breathed through his nose until the heat in his face dropped.
Then he crossed the street to the small office above the dry-goods store, where the only lawyer Prosperity had hung his name on a piece of tin by his door, and he climbed the narrow stair and knocked.
Mr. Henson was a quiet old man with spectacles. He read the paper Beau put on his desk. He read it again. He took his spectacles off and rubbed the bridge of his nose with finger and thumb.
"I can take it to the territorial court for you. I can keep them in motions a year. The land may have to sit untouched while it runs."
"And in the end?”
"In the end, Mr. Ferris, this paper is what it is. Your brother signed it. He signed the waiver beside it. The men who took it were within the law as the law is currently written. I am sorry. I am very sorry. But the paper holds."
He had known.
He had ridden in knowing. He had wanted, all the same, somebody to say it to his face. He stood up. He shook Mr. Henson's hand. He went out.
On the boards in the failing light, he stood a moment with his hat in his hand. He thought about a woman at a chopping block with sweat at her hairline, who had said no to him without looking away.
He set his hat on his head and went to fetch his horse.