Chapter 20
He had sat the night in the parlor. The lamp had burned down to a thumbprint of flame and died sometime before dawn. He had not got up to relight it. He had only watched the gray come up in the window. A week's tiredness lay under the night's; both of them had weight.
He heard Lydia on the stairs before he saw her.
She came down in her day dress. She came across to him and stood in front of him with her hands clasped in front of her and her braid uneven again, and she didn't say good morning.
She didn't lean against him. She kept a foot of air between them, which she had never done in twelve years.
"I went to see her last night."
He drew a breath. He didn't have it in him this morning to be angry with his daughter. He had nothing left to be angry with anybody, really, except a paper and a man named Colt.
"And?"
"She said she'd give it thought. She wouldn't promise."
"Right."
"That's all I'll say. I won't ask you again to keep her. I've asked you. I won't ask again. I'm only telling you what she said because you wouldn't have known otherwise."
He nodded. He could not look at her. He looked at the window. The window had a square of yellow morning in it, and the cottonwoods, and a piece of fence.
A horse came up the lane.
He heard it. Lydia heard it. They both turned their heads.
Two horses came up, in fact.
He stood and set his jaw, then went to the parlor door, because Quint was coming. Quint shook his head once when he caught Beau's eye, which was Quint's way of telling him that yes, it was the two of them.
He opened the front door.
Mr. Colt stood on the porch with his hat already off. Mr. Saville stood at his shoulder with his hat on.
"Mr. Ferris."
"Colt."
"You insulted us yesterday afternoon."
"I don’t regret it."
“That's your right, but there are consequences.
We've come back because we're not in the business of being insulted twice.
We are not waiting until Saturday. The buyer Mr. Saville knows will be in this yard with a wagon by the end of the day.
You may meet him as the seller, or as a man removed from his own front room. The choice is yours."
He looked at the two men on his porch in the cold morning.
He was not afraid. Not now. Anger blew through him, clean as cold wind.
"Get into the parlor," he said. "Both of you. Sit and wait. I'll be with you in five minutes."
"Mr. Ferris?—"
"Five minutes. Or you leave, and the buyer comes, and I’ll meet you all with a shotgun. The agreement is sound, but I’m legally still three-quarter owner of this property, and even if you can money me, you can’t muscle me.”
Mr. Colt looked at him. After a count he stepped past Beau into the hall. Mr. Saville came behind him. Beau pointed to the parlor door. They went. Beau closed it on them. He turned to find Lydia at the foot of the stairs and a figure in the open back doorway behind her.
It was Florence.
She was in her gray traveling dress. She had her travel case in her hand. Her hat was on. She had come up from the cottage in the gray morning and she had come, very plainly, to leave.
“Beau. I came up to tell you. I wouldn't leave without telling you."
He looked at her in the open back doorway. He looked at his daughter at the foot of the stairs. He looked at the parlor door, behind which two men sat on a settee that had been his wife's. He had spent a week being a man who was decided. Being decided was no longer available to him.
"Florence."
"Beau, I will not stand here while?—"
"Come into the kitchen with me. Set down your case. Sit at the table. I have something I have to say to you, and I have something I'm going to ask you, and if at the end of it you walk out the back door I will not stop you. Five minutes."
She did not move.
He looked at her. He did not, this time, look away.
“Please?" he said.
Her eyes went to Lydia, then to the parlor door, then back to him.
"Five minutes," she said.
"Yes."
She set the travel case down on the boards of the hall.
He turned to Lydia. "Lyddie. Stand at the parlor door. If they open it, tell them to sit down. If they won't, come and tell me.”
“Where’s your rabbit gun? I’ll?—”
“I think telling them will be enough.”
She went. She stood in front of the parlor door with her arms folded, and the door didn't open. Beau took Florence by the hand. The hand was cold and dry. It did not pull away.
He led her into the kitchen and shut the door.
"Sit," he said.
"Sit, Florence."
She sat. He poured a cup of water from the jug into a tin cup and set it in front of her, and he sat across the table.
"I'm going to tell you everything," he said. "About my brother, the men in the parlor, the paper they hold, the ranch. All of it.”
She looked at him a long count.
"Tell me, Beau."