CHAPTER 6 #2
Two ten by the tack-room clock. I had been cleaning tack that did not need cleaning for the last hour.
I took the Remington 870 down off the rack in the utility hall and carried it out to the barn workbench. Not because it needed the work. Because the ritual of taking a shotgun apart and putting it back together is what I do to keep myself from doing another thing.
Four No. 4 buckshot in the tube. Chamber empty. Safety on. I broke it, ran a bore snake, pin-checked the action, seated four fresh shells, checked the safety twice, laid it flat on the bench.
Snap-on wrench set next to it. Chrome. Ordered pre-Wilder Capital, in a life where a wrench set was a hobbyist's set. The finance-CEO artifact I did not give up. My hand moved toward it. Stopped.
I set my hand flat on the workbench next to the shotgun and said the word in the flat interior voice.
Mine.
The word is not about the shotgun.
The word is about the woman upstairs who has set her paperback on my nightstand and does not yet know what she has walked into.
She took the top porch step at a quarter past six with the pencil in her twist catching first light.
She left the combination alone. She had never been vertical outdoors at this hour for anything except a plane, yet she refilled my coffee without asking where the pot lived.
I turned the ring once on my pinky. I put the shotgun back in the rack.
The pump lesson could wait. I wanted her to want to ask.
Vance ranch truck coming up the drive at four ten. Ford diesel — needs a fuel filter — and I was off the barn wall by the time it cleared the switchback.
Rae Vance was out of the cab before the engine died.
Sun-blonde braid, Vance-brand cap, freckled fair skin, faded blue chore coat.
She hauled a fence stretcher over her shoulder like it weighed nothing.
Twenty-seven and the operational side of a fourteen-hundred-head ranch, and she has not wasted a movement since twelve.
Celia was on the porch by the time Rae's boots hit the gravel. Rae raised a hand and pulled the cap off in the same motion.
“Rae Vance, meet Celia Ortega,” I said.
“Ma'am,” Rae said.
Celia had the face of someone called ma'am once in Denver and disliked it. She kept it still. “Celia.”
Rae grinned. “Celia. Sorry about your grandfather. My dad sends his sympathies. Warren was a good neighbor.”
“Thank you.”
Rae unloaded the stretcher into the tack room and came back out with the empty in her hand. “Brought this back. Your barn foreman borrowed it in April. Which means it came home in June, which is early for a Vance loan.”
“Tell your dad I said thanks. And I owe him one.”
“Already told him. He said tell you.” She hesitated on the top step.
“One other thing. Not a thing yet. Somebody put tracks across our north pasture last week.
Not fence-cut. Just tire tracks in and out.
Half a mile of it, right along the line.
My dad thinks poachers. I told him poachers don't drive a matched set.”
“What tread did they run.”
“Truck. Not a bike. Something with a load in the back.”
“What time.”
“Between three and five, per the dew line.”
“Appreciate the heads-up. I owe you two now.”
“I wanted you to know.”
“You did the right thing telling me first.”
Rae nodded once, put the cap back on. “That coffee still hot?”
“It is,” Celia said.
“Rain check. Two more stops before dark.”
She was back in the truck and turning around in the drive in three minutes. Twelve on-site total. Two fingers off the wheel as she passed. Celia raised hers back. Then Rae was gone down the switchback.
Celia and I traded one look across the drive — the look two people who both heard the same bad number in a crowded room trade when the room clears.
“That's not nothing,” she said.
“No. That is exactly not nothing.”
“Are we writing it down.”
“I put it in the log already this morning.”
She nodded. She was not surprised, and I was not surprised she was not surprised, and a small part of me that had been afraid all day we would have to negotiate a language for this discovered we did not.
She went back inside. I stood in the drive a full minute with my hand on the Kimber before I followed.
Half past ten at night. Kerosene lamp on the porch railing because the mood of the day wanted the porch lit and the moon was not enough.
Chimney soot on my thumb. Moth already at the glass.
I left it alone. The Bulleit sat in a tin cup because a real glass felt wrong.
The whiskey went untouched. I had poured it because pouring something at the end of a day like this was what a man did when he was trying not to count the paces from the couch to a door.
Celia came out in a long-sleeved shirt over her T-shirt because at eight thousand five hundred feet even a ninety-degree day cools at dusk. She sat in the other rocker. Marta's soap on her, faint. Her boots were off. Her feet were bare on the porch boards, and this is a fact I do not look at.
“The bike tracks,” she said.
“Yeah — the fresh ones.”
“Where.”
“Two hundred yards northwest. Game trail off the aspen slope. One rider. Up.”
“How often does that happen.”
“Less than you'd think.”
“How less.”
“Two, three times a year the last four years. Once this week.”
She took this in. She did not ask if I had called the sheriff. She did not ask if she should be afraid. She sat with the not-asking the way somebody trained to run a difficult meeting sits with a person she has not yet decided how to categorize.
“That was Rae's meaning.”
“That was her meaning.”
“Poachers, she said.”
“Rae doesn't think poachers.”
“No.”
She rocked once. The chair creaked. The moth moved to the underside of the chimney.
“What are you not saying,” she said.
“I am not saying anything I have not already said.”
“That is a formal answer.”
“It's the answer I have tonight.”
She sat with that.
Then she said, “Okay. I trust you tonight.”
I turned my head. She was looking at the ridge.
“That's a big word for four days.”
“It's not for four days. It's for tonight.”
“That's fair enough, then.”
She sat the length of one lamp trim. I trimmed the wick. The flame steadied. Yellow to blue at the base. She stood.
“I'm going to bed.”
“Sleep well up there.”
She stopped in the doorway with her hand on the jamb. Did not turn.
“Luke.”
“Yeah. That's the shape.”
I did not know if that answered what she was going to ask. She went inside without saying the rest of it.
Eleven at night. Winchester across the pommel. Copper walking. Moon one day past full, ridge trail silver where the shale reflected and black where the pine took it in.
At ten to midnight the fence corner east of the game trail threw a shadow that was not the shadow it should be. I stopped Copper. My hand went to the Winchester grip. Counted to twenty.
It was the fence post. I set it four years ago and I have made this same mistake with it three times.
I lowered the hand. Copper flicked an ear. We rode on.
Home just after midnight. Copper cool, brushed, watered, in the stall. Saddle on the rack. Winchester back into the utility hall. Kimber Warrior off the porch table into the holster on my belt.
The interior line, flat and quiet: I told her she did that well.
I meant the paperwork.
I meant everything except the paperwork.
I put the Kimber on the floor by the couch. Wool blanket folded off my chest so my rifle hand was free. Right boot off this time. Left boot off. Both by the couch, in order.
A quarter past one in the morning. Cabin quiet. Lamp out on the porch. The moth gone.
I counted the paces from the couch to Celia's bedroom door.
Sixteen.
I counted them again.
Sixteen.
I let the distance stand.