CHAPTER 28
Beck
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I had been at the assay shed since sundown and the lamp on the workbench was the only light in the basin that was mine.
The agreement with Tate had been plain. The lamp lit at five. The lamp out at five-thirty was the close-on-me signal.
I had lit the lamp at five.
I had watched the small flat brass of the wick draw and the line of yellow it laid down across the scarred left palm flat on the wood. I had scratched the scar once with the right thumbnail. At five-thirty I cupped the chimney and blew the wick out.
The basin went black at the shed.
Then I heard him.
Boots in the wet dry-grass on the upper road, just past the corral.
Then the small iron tick of something hard against a stone — the iron tip of an eastern walking-stick the man had not bothered to put a rubber over for the country.
I had been listening for the tick since Sheriff Mahon came up-pass to say Cyril Mosely has left the boarding house and is on the upper road with a hired hand.
Two sets of boots. Mosely's stick. A third sound under both — the soft trail-leather of a man walking light because he was holding a holster open with his elbow.
I scratched the scar a second time.
I stepped to the assay-shed door with the carbine across my hip and the Colt in my hand and I waited.
The blackness at the upper road went grayer and then it went pale. First thin light came up over the cottonwood stand, the gray-blue of cold tin, and the man came up the road into it.
Cyril Mosely was in a dark wool coat, the rain of the past two days soaked through. The silver-headed walking stick was in his right hand. The iron tip was at the dust. His pale hair was oiled flat to the skull even after the long wet ride.
The hired man was a half-pace behind on his left. Long-jawed under the brim of a black slicker. The single-action pocket Colt was on his right hip with the keeper unsnapped. He had the lean watchful eye of a man who had drawn for money before.
Mosely saw me at the shed door. He smiled.
He said, polite, eastern, "Mr. Carrow. I am sorry to disturb at this hour. I have brought a writ to ascertain the residency of the cabin and to remand the disputed claim to a proper —"
I did not let him finish.
I said, "Stop where you are, Mr. Mosely."
He stopped. The smile held. The iron tip of the stick rested at his right boot. The hired man's right hand moved one inch toward the keeper of his holster.
I had the Colt up. There was a small dry sound behind the hired man — the soft brush of a rifle's wood-stock against a denim sleeve, ten paces back at the cabin path. Tate had come up silent. The Spencer was already at his shoulder.
The hired man cleared leather because adrenaline was faster than sense. The single-action came up half-cocked.
Tate fired high — once, over the man's hat, the round taking a chip of bark off the lodgepole at the corral corner.
The hired man flinched. Tate fired the second round at the revolver-hand.
The pearl grip of Mosely's lent Colt blew sideways out of the man's fingers; the bullet had struck the grip, not the hand; the revolver flew six feet into the dust and lay there.
The wrist held its bones. Tate had shot the gun.
Tate said, low, "Down on your knees. Both hands. Or I shoot lower."
The hired man went down. Both hands at the back of his neck. His knees pressed into the wet road-grass.
I stepped to Mosely.
I said, "Drop the stick, sir."
He looked at me a half-second too long. The eastern register adjusted itself behind the pale flat eyes. He dropped the stick. The silver knob hit the wet dust with the small unimpressive sound of a small unimpressive thing.
I patted him down. No pocket Colt; Mosely was a man who paid for hands that drew so that his would not have to.
Tate had thrown me the spare freight chain from his coat pocket. I cuffed Mosely's wrists behind him in the chain. I went to the hired man and cuffed him the same.
Levi came up from the lower pasture at a hard gallop on Ardent, the English shotgun across his thighs.
He drew rein at the corral gate. He looked at the two men cuffed in the road.
He looked at me. He laughed once, low, into his own collar — the brother's laugh; the laugh of a man who had ridden up afraid and had found the work already done.
He said, "By the horse, Beck. By the horse."
Christ Almighty, I thought, in the back of my own head. The basin was ours and the country had held.
I scratched the scar a third time.
First light at the assay shed. I sat Mosely on the bench inside; the hired man on the plank floor at his feet. Tate stayed at the upper road. Levi rode Ardent down to tell Willa.
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We walked Mosely and the hired man down-pass at six-thirty.
Eight miles. The road was wet from the three days of rain.
I had the rope at Mosely's chained wrists; Tate had the rope at the hired man.
The wagon had stayed up at the cabin; Levi had stayed with Willa.
The Two-Stone Switchback at mile two; the Burned Snag at mile three; Crow's Bend at mile four; the Big Spruce at mile six; the Last Switchback at mile seven took us down to the creek-ford.
Mosely tried language at mile three. He said, "Mr. Carrow. I would propose, in the interest of efficient settlement —"
I did not answer.
He tried language again at mile five. He said, "Mr. Carrow. The matter is a misunderstanding which a reasonable man might —"
I answered then. I said, "Sir. Save it for the Marshal."
He did not try language again.
My right shin ached at the old mule-break the way it ached on any cold-road morning. I scratched the scar a fourth time at the Big Spruce.
We came into Larkspur Bend a little past ten.
Mahon was at the door of his office with his coat on and his coffee in his fist. He took one look at Mosely in the chain and the hired hand behind him and he set the cup on the porch rail and opened the door.
He said, "Beckett."
I said, "Owen."
He took Mosely by the elbow and walked him to the back addition where the two iron-barred cells stood side by side. He took the hired man by the other elbow and walked him into the second cell. He locked both. He came back to the front room.
He said, "The marshal is two hours out. He has ridden up from Granite Forks since Tate's letter. He will be here by noon."
I sat on the bench by the door. Tate sat beside me with his hat in his hand. The carbine was across his knee. He had not spoken six words on the down-pass.
I took the pocket-watch out of my vest.
The brass case opened to my thumbnail. The hands were at four-eleven.
The small painted ivory of my mother inside the case-lid was the same it had been the morning of December fourth, 1865 — pale hair pulled back, the small chapel-collar at her throat, the gray-green eyes I had got from her.
I held the watch open in my palm for the length of two slow breaths.
I thought, Mother. We are at the office. It is taking the shape of an ending.
I closed the watch and put it back. I did not wind it. The day for winding was not this day.
I scratched the scar a fifth time, low, and I let my hands rest.
Hattie Doss came across the street at a quarter past twelve with a covered basket.
She set it on Mahon's desk. She said, "Beck.
Tate. Bread. Bacon. Tea. " She looked at me a beat too long.
"The marshal has come. " She inclined her head across Bear Fork Street to the freight stable. "Dismounting now."
I stood.
Marshal Quint Lawler was at the long-trough at the stable, slack-reining a sorrel gelding dust-streaked from a three-day ride.
A lean man in his early fifties. Brown eyes gone watery with twenty winters.
The mustache iron-gray. The coat federal land-office cut with the small brass button at the lapel.
He took the notebook from his breast pocket and walked across the street.
He came into Mahon's office. He set hat and notebook on the desk. He looked at me, then at Tate, then at the back addition.
He said, "Mr. Carrow. Mr. Halloran. I am Marshal Quint Lawler of the federal land office. I have ridden from Granite Forks at the sheriff's letter."
I said, "Marshal. We are obliged."
Mahon showed him Mosely in the first cell. Lawler stood at the bars and looked Mosely up and down for a long breath and did not speak. Mahon showed him the hired man in the second cell.
Mahon brought the portfolio from the iron-banded box under the clerk's window.
He laid the eastern-bonded paper on Lawler's notebook.
The forged deed. The Crane and Sons of Dalton, Massachusetts watermark, the crown above the C, the cream rag-paper Hattie had carried under her writing-box lid for two days.
Lawler took the deed to the south window where the rain-darkened light fell sideways onto the desk. He held the paper up against the glass. He turned it. He held it edgewise. He bent low and looked across the paper at a shallow angle.
He said, "Crane and Sons of Dalton, Massachusetts."
He said, "The watermark with the small crown above the C."
He said, "The deed is dated June first, eighteen-seventy-seven."
He said, slow, "The watermark is the eighteen-seventy-eight design."
He looked up at me.
He said, "Who saw this?"
I said, "My wife. Mrs. Carrow. She is the daughter of a tailor in Saint Louis. She has been weighing eastern paper since she was eleven."
He nodded again. He said, "I will have her testimony."
I rode the old bay gelding up-pass at a steady trot and brought Willa down by two o'clock.
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She came into the office in her dark blue Sunday wool, the bone pin hard at the nape and her father's small steel-rimmed pocket-glass in her right palm. She did not look at Mosely. She looked at Lawler.
She said, "Marshal. I am Mrs. Carrow."
He stood. He said, "Ma'am."