CHAPTER 28 #2
She laid the forged deed in front of him at Mahon's plank desk. She laid the pocket-glass beside it. She laid the second sheet — an un-watermarked 1877 invoice Hattie had given over from a saved drawer at the post office — beside the deed.
She walked Lawler through it.
The watermark first — the difference between Crane and Sons' 1875 plate, which had not carried the small crown, and the 1878 plate, which had added the crown above the C at the federal printing office's January recommendation.
The crown an eighth of an inch lower than the 1875 line because the new die had been cut deeper.
The paper weight next — eastern-bonded paper of 1878 was three pounds heavier per ream than the 1875 stock; Crane had added cotton at the same recommendation.
She put the deed in his hand on the right and the un-watermarked 1877 invoice in his hand on the left, and Lawler felt the difference at the heel of his own palm.
The fold-creases last — folded four times, twice horizontally and twice vertically, in a pattern only an eastern broker used, not a Colorado territorial clerk.
The vertical creases came in at the inside thirds — broker's-fold for a pigeonhole; a county clerk would have folded once, lengthwise, for the bound register.
Lawler did not interrupt. He turned the deed in his hands at each point she made. When she finished he laid the deed flat on the desk and looked at her for a long quiet beat.
He said, "Mrs. Carrow, you have done my work for me."
He took a set of small steel cuffs out of his coat pocket — federal cuffs, heavier than freight chain. He went into the back addition and unlocked the first cell and brought Mosely out and cuffed his hands behind him at the federal lock.
He laid a folded arrest-warrant in Mahon's open palm.
He said, "Forgery of a federal land-office document.
Fraudulent claim. Impersonation of a deed-holder.
Remanded to the federal district at Granite Forks for the next sitting.
The hired hand to the same. The territorial circuit hears Mosely at the basin's next session, two months out, for the lesser local charge. "
That was all of it.
I scratched the scar one more time at the door of the office and we went home.
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We walked up-pass slow.
I did not let go of Willa's hand from the cottonwood stand at mile six up to the basin's lower gate. Her hand was small and warm and the gold band was cold against the side of my thumb until it warmed to my skin. The country had given us the long quiet of a long road home.
At the lower gate the rain began again, a light steady fall. I took my coat off and laid it across her shoulders.
I said, "Sweetheart. We are at the gate."
She said, "I know."
We crossed the dooryard at mid-afternoon. Ardent was at the rail watching the cabin's lamp burn in the kitchen window.
Levi and Tate were at the kitchen table. Both stood when we came in. The Spencer carbine was across the bench by the door. The English shotgun was leaned against the wall. The cast-iron kettle was on the warming shelf, not on the heat.
Willa walked past Tate. She walked past Levi. She walked to me. She put both hands flat against the front of my shirt.
Tate said, low, "We will be outside, brothers."
Levi said, "Aye. We will be on the porch."
They went. Tate took the Spencer with him from courtesy more than need; Levi rolled an unlit cigarette in his fingers as he went out. The porch boards creaked once and settled.
The cabin was ours.
I took my coat off Willa's shoulders. I laid it across the chair-back at the head of the scrubbed plank table — the same chair, the same plank table, four months after the storm of the Fourth of July.
I did not lay the coat under her hips this time.
The husband's form was the bare wood under her bare back and her body warm and his hands honest and slow.
I lifted her onto the table. The gray eyes were on mine.
I said, low, "Now, sweetheart. As my wife."
She said, "I have been your wife all summer."
I unbuttoned my trousers. She lifted her skirt. I laid my cock at her cunt; she was wet already, had been wet since the dooryard, the slick already at the inside of her thigh by lamp-warm light through the kitchen window. I looked at her face.
I said, "I am asking once."
She said, "Yes."
I filled her whole, and she asked for the rest.
The thought ran in the back of my head as I went in — I filled her whole, and she asked for the rest — the same bookend as the spring, distilled now to the working form.
The spring had been by inches. Tonight was the seat in one slow full stroke.
She gasped once at the give of her own body around me, the small bright shock of it; her back was on the scrubbed plank table, bare under her, no coat between, the table's grain blood-warm against her spine from the afternoon sun through the south window that had only just gone gray.
She said, "More."
I moved.
I came inside her with a low groan into the angle of her shoulder.
I said, against her skin, "Sweetheart. Christ Almighty."
I held inside her. She held around me. The cabin smelled of rain and pine and the warm iron of the range. The table's grain was blood-warm under her spine and her left hand was at the back of my neck and her right hand was loose against the wood beside her own hip. We breathed.
I withdrew slow. By inches the way I had not gone in.
I carried her to the wash-basin in the lean-to. I rinsed her with warm water from the kettle I lit only then, to do this; and she rinsed me in turn with the second cloth. Her hands at my hips were as careful as her father's at a coat-seam.
She dressed in the green-and-cream travel dress — the dress she had stepped down from the wagon in on June tenth. She pinned the bone pin back into her braid at the nape.
I called the brothers in.
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We sat down to supper.
Tate took the chair across from Willa; Levi took the chair beside her; I took the chair at the head of the table where my coat had been an hour ago.
The supper was cold ham and yesterday's bread and the last of the dried apple and coffee.
Willa had put a clean cloth on the table over the place where she had been; she did it without comment.
I held her hand under the table at her left knee.
She ate a little. She drank her coffee. Tate watched her over the lamp without staring; Levi grinned, the ash-cracked still in his beard from the fire ten days back.
I waited until she had finished her bread.
I said, low, "We will be remarried before the Reverend. All three of us. Properly. With Hattie Doss as witness."
Tate said, "Aye."
Willa put her thumb to the cleft of her own eyebrows. She did not weep. She counted three at the inside of her own wrist with the fingers of her free hand. She counted three at the line of her own throat. Her eyes were wet but they did not spill. She nodded once.
The lamp burned low and steady. We held.