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Hosea Matthews announced his retirement at breakfast, which was how Arthur knew he had been up to something.
The old man had made a picture of it. He sat beneath the sycamores with a red blanket laid over his knees and a book open upon one leg, though his eyes had not moved down the page in ten minutes. A cup of coffee steamed at his elbow. His hat was tipped forward against the morning sun, and from a distance he might have been taken for a gentleman of leisure who had got lost on the way to some broad veranda and accepted the wilderness with uncommon grace.
Up close, there was clay on both heels of his boots. His right cuff had been torn and pinned neatly from within. A new brass key showed whenever he turned a page.
“I am done with all that scrambling,” Hosea said. “A man reaches a certain age, he ought to cultivate quieter habits.”
Arthur sat opposite him and worked a whetstone along his hunting knife. “That so?”
“It is.”
“When'd this happen?”
“Some time in the night. I woke a changed man.”
“You woke at four, stole Dutch's good coat, an' rode into Valentine.”
Hosea looked over the top of his book. “That is an uncharitable way of describing a private errand.”
“Dutch is lookin' for his coat.”
“Then he has found an occupation for the morning.”
Arthur turned the knife and began upon the other side. Across camp, Pearson was beating flour from a sack. Uncle lay under a wagon with his hat over his face, engaged in a kind of labor known only to himself. Dutch stood before his tent in shirtsleeves, asking anyone unfortunate enough to pass whether civilization itself did not rest upon a man's right to his own property.
Hosea lowered the book. “How many doors behind Bell's office?”
“Two.”
“Windows?”
“Three upstairs. One in back sticks when you open it.”
“The alley?”
“Narrow. Livery boy cuts through around noon. Deputy does after dark, when he don't want folks seeing where he's headed.”
“And when does the county clerk take his dinner?”
“Half past twelve, most days.” Arthur stopped the stone. “Goddammit.”
Hosea smiled at his book.
“You been askin' me questions all week.”
“You are an observant man, Arthur. I value that.”
“You been usin' me to case a building.”
“Such an ugly expression.”
Arthur pointed the knife at the brass key. “What's that open?”
“A door.”
“Hosea.”
“Arthur.”
The old man's voice remained pleasant, but the light had altered in his eyes. Arthur knew the alteration. Hosea could roar when he chose, and had done so often enough that Bill fled the sound of his own name, but his worst temper commonly came on quiet. His features would go still. His voice would lose its music. There had been men who mistook that stillness for weakness, but not for very long.
Arthur put away the stone. “Dutch know?”
“Dutch has enough plans.”
“That ain't what I asked.”
The book snapped shut. “If I wanted Dutch involved, I would arrange for a balcony and sell tickets. I am pursuing a small, quiet profession suited to my years. You may assist me, or you may sit there abusing that knife until no blade remains.”
From the other side of camp, Dutch shouted, “Hosea!”
Hosea settled farther beneath his blanket.
Arthur looked at the torn cuff, the mud and the key. “How quiet?”
“Practically silent.”
“How many guns?”
“One each.”
“How much money?”
“Possibly several thousand dollars.”
“An' how many people already want to kill you?”
Hosea considered. “One with conviction. Three or four in a general way.”
Arthur sighed.
“Excellent,” Hosea said. “We leave in an hour.”
They did not leave for two, because Hosea disliked Arthur's coat.
The blue one made him resemble a hired gun, the black one made him resemble an undertaker, and his ordinary buckskin coat, according to Hosea, made him resemble himself. This last objection appeared to Arthur the least reasonable, but Hosea considered it decisive. He selected a brown town coat from Strauss's wagon and brushed it himself, complaining all the while that nobody in camp understood the preservation of decent clothes.
“You're wearin' Dutch's,” Arthur said.
“Temporarily.”
“That's what stealing is.”
“Only to persons without imagination.”
Hosea gave him a clean collar, rejected his hat, restored it after rejecting two others, and made him wash a dark stain from his left boot.
“That ain't blood,” Arthur said.
“Then its removal ought not grieve you.”
“Ain't nobody looking at my damn boots.”
“Everybody looks. Few people see. Our livelihood rests upon knowing the distinction.”
The words were delivered in Hosea's old teaching voice. Arthur had heard it while learning how to tell a sheriff from a deputy by the wear upon his coat, how to find the servants' entrance to a fine house, and how to read newspaper advertisements for what the seller feared rather than what he claimed. At fourteen Arthur had resented that voice, chiefly because it presumed he could learn whatever Hosea placed before him. At thirty-six he resented it because some part of him still straightened beneath it.
Hosea inspected the cleaned boot. “Passable.”
“You gonna tell me the job?”
“On the road.”
“Means you ain't told nobody.”
“I told you.”
“By accident.”
“The best truths generally emerge that way.”
Silver Dollar was saddled beside Arthur's mare. Hosea climbed up before Arthur could offer a hand and gave him a severe look for having thought of it. The performance might have worked better if he had not paused halfway to catch his breath.
Arthur looked away. This was the courtesy Hosea preferred. When he looked back, the old man had settled in the saddle and was arranging his gloves.
“Well?” Hosea said. “You planning to grow roots?”
They rode east beneath a sky scrubbed pale by rain. Spring had put green along the lower country, though the wagon ruts still held black mud and the shaded ground kept winter's chill. Hosea let Silver Dollar choose an easy pace and pretended it was because haste excited suspicion.
The man they were going to rob was named Silas Bell.
Bell called himself a land and loan agent. He lent modest sums to men with immodest troubles, secured the loans against farms and small ranches, and found, with remarkable consistency, that his borrowers had failed some condition written small enough to discourage inspection. Sometimes a payment reached his office one day and entered his ledger the next, after a penalty had attached itself. Sometimes a fee appeared between one month and another. Men who could not read signed with a cross; men who could read discovered that understanding words did not mean understanding what words could be trained to do.
“He owns maybe eight properties now,” Hosea said. “Holds paper on fifteen more. Some he came by honest.”
“That bother you?”
“Honesty?”
“That he only cheated some of 'em.”
“Complicates the bookkeeping.”
Arthur watched him. “We rob folks.”
“I had noticed.”
“We took that stage last month, weren't exactly a charitable collection.”
“No.”
“So what's different?”
Hosea's jaw moved once. “You trying to improve your mind, or irritate me?”
“Can do two things.”
“A recent accomplishment.”
The trail narrowed. Hosea went ahead beneath the budding branches. He did not answer until they reached open ground again.
“A confidence man takes a man's greed and lets it lead him,” he said. “Bell takes their hunger, their sick children, their bad harvest. Calls it the same trade because that lets him admire himself.”
“An' we don't?”
“I did not say we were good men, Arthur.” Hosea turned in the saddle. “I said I have standards.”
The woman lived in two rooms behind a cooper's yard south of Valentine. Once, Hosea said, she had owned a house, a barn and eighty acres of stony pasture three miles west. Now she kept the cooper's accounts and slept in a room which smelled of oak shavings and boiled glue.
Ada Mercer opened the door before they knocked. She was perhaps forty-five, though work and grief had put another ten years into her face. Her dress was plain and clean. A pencil rested behind one ear.
Hosea removed his hat and became someone else.
The change was neither large nor showy. His shoulders rounded by an inch. His breath shortened. When he spoke, he became Horace A. Matthews, a confidential representative of a company whose name Arthur had forgotten despite having heard it twice.
Mrs. Mercer listened until Hosea had explained an imaginary inquiry into disputed holdings along a proposed railroad branch.
“You're no railroad man,” she said.
Hosea smiled mildly. “Madam, I assure you.”
“Your boots cost more than your coat, your coat don't fit, and you been watching the window behind me since I opened the door. That one with you has looked at my face twice and every roofline six times. You're thieves.”
Arthur glanced at Hosea.
Hosea straightened. The years fell away from him, though not the tiredness.
“Would you prefer Bell keep your farm?” he asked.
For the first time, Mrs. Mercer looked interested.
She let them inside.
Her husband had borrowed three hundred dollars after a winter sickness took six cattle and left him unable to work. He died the following autumn. She and her sons had continued the payments. Bell accepted every one. Then he produced a charge for legal expenses, another for inspection, and interest upon both. By the time she understood, the county had recorded the foreclosure.
She brought Hosea a folded receipt.
Arthur stood by the door while Hosea examined it beneath the window. The old man looked at the date, the amount and the signature. Then he turned it over and held it to the light.
“This number was written later,” he said.
“I know.”
“Different ink.”
“I know that too.”
Hosea glanced up, irritated at having his discoveries already discovered.
Then he examined the receipt again. The paper crackled between his fingers. Arthur saw the old man’s thumb press into Bell’s added figure until the nail went white, and for a moment Hosea seemed less interested in proving the alteration than in driving his thumb through it.
“Careful,” Mrs. Mercer said. “That’s the only one I got.”
Hosea released the paper at once and smoothed it against his knee. “Yes, ma’am.”
The mildness of his answer did not fool Arthur. He had heard that same quiet just before Hosea struck men who had mistaken age for surrender.
Mrs. Mercer folded her arms. “Knowing ain't the trouble.”
“No,” Hosea said. “Being believed is.”
Her expression eased by a degree.
Hosea asked for names, dates, witnesses and the location of every paper she still possessed. He asked the questions without comfort or apology, and Mrs. Mercer answered in the same fashion. Arthur saw them begin to respect one another precisely where charm had failed.
“What do you get?” she asked when it was done.
“Mr. Bell has money.”
“Almost honest.”
“It is the best I can offer before dinner.”
Outside, Hosea put on his hat too hard.
Arthur mounted. “She remind you of someone?”
“At my age everybody reminds me of someone.”
“Bessie?”
Hosea pulled Silver Dollar around so sharply the horse tossed his head.
“You have been invited on a job,” he said. “Not into my private recollections.”
“All right.”
“And do not use that tone.”
“What tone?”
“That damned patient one.”
Arthur had not known he possessed a patient tone. The discovery did not please him.
They ought to have ridden back to camp. Instead Hosea turned west at the road and said he wished to see the property.
“Thought this was quiet work,” Arthur said.
“Looking at a field has rarely caused a public disturbance.”
“Depends who’s looking.”
The Mercer place stood beyond a low ridge where the soil thinned and limestone pushed through the grass. It was no rich man’s property. The house wanted paint, the barn roof sagged, and most of the pasture carried more stone than feed. But the fences ran straight, the kitchen garden had been turned for spring, and six young apple trees stood white with bloom behind the house. Somebody had cared for every poor acre of it.
A boy of nineteen or twenty was resetting posts beside the road. His face resembled Ada Mercer’s, though he had his father’s width through the shoulders. He stopped working when they approached.
“You Ezra?” Hosea asked.
The boy’s grip tightened upon the post maul. “Who wants him?”
Hosea gave his false name and railroad business. Ezra listened without any of his mother’s quick suspicion. What he possessed instead was a young man’s exhausted readiness to be insulted.
“Mr. Bell owns it,” he said. “Talk to him.”
“And you work for the present tenant?”
“Work for whoever pays.”
“On your mother’s land.”
Ezra’s face closed. “Ain’t hers.”
The words were spoken too quickly and too often rehearsed. Arthur knew that sort of answer. A man could repeat what hurt him until it sounded like something he had chosen.
Hosea dismounted. He walked to the nearest apple tree and examined a branch as though railway business depended upon blossom.
“Your father plant these?” he asked.
“Ma did. He dug.”
“They bear yet?”
“Two did last year.”
Hosea touched one flower with the back of a finger. His hand was gentle. His mouth was not.
“Bell ever come out here?”
“His man does.”
“Cobb?”
The boy looked at him.
Hoofbeats sounded beyond the barn. A broad man rode into view on a bay horse, a short club hanging from his saddle and a shotgun beneath one leg. He wore no badge. He had the easy seat of someone accustomed to arriving where he was feared.
“Ezra,” he called. “Fence won’t mend itself.”
Then he saw the strangers.
Hosea became old Mr. Matthews again before the man reached them. His shoulders bowed and his hand settled upon his cane.
“Railroad,” Hosea said, smiling. “A preliminary examination only.”
Cobb looked him over and dismissed him. He spent longer upon Arthur.
“Bell ain’t selling.”
“Every man’s selling,” Hosea said. “The privilege lies in pretending otherwise until the price improves.”
Cobb did not understand the sentence and disliked him for it. He turned to Ezra.
“I told you north fence first.”
“Creek post was down.”
“Then you should have got up earlier.”
Cobb swung the little club against Ezra’s thigh, not hard enough to cripple and not lightly enough to be mistaken for play.
Arthur felt Hosea go still beside him.
Ezra’s face reddened, but he picked up the maul.
“We have seen what we require,” Hosea said.
His old man’s voice had vanished.
Cobb glanced back. Whatever he saw caused his hand to settle nearer the shotgun.
Arthur moved his coat clear of his holster. “Feller said you was done here.”
For a breath it might have become bloody. Then Cobb spat beside Hosea’s boot and rode toward the barn.
Hosea watched until he disappeared.
“You didn’t do nothing,” Ezra said. The accusation seemed to surprise him as much as it did Arthur.
“No,” Hosea replied. “Not yet.”
They mounted and rode away. At the ridge Arthur looked back. Ezra had resumed setting the post. Cobb sat his horse in the barnyard, watching him work.
“That the man from the office?” Arthur asked.
“Likely.”
“You were gonna hit him.”
“I considered it.”
“You keep considering things like that, this plan ain’t making supper.”
Hosea’s eyes remained upon the road. “Then we had better improve the plan.”
The scheme occupied Hosea for four days and everyone else within forty feet of him for three.
He took over the small table near his bed. Maps arrived from the railway station, the county office and sources Hosea declined to name. He drew a proposed branch line north of the Dakota River, rejected it, drew another, and aged the paper with coffee and wood ash. Trelawny supplied the names of two genuine eastern investors. Strauss explained mortgage releases until Hosea told him his voice was injuring the enterprise. Mary-Beth copied a page in a narrow clerkly hand and asked no questions. Arthur rode the country Bell had acquired and returned with the distances, watercourses and grades.
Dutch watched all this with increasing offense.
“There is a curious distinction,” he said one evening, leaning against Hosea's wagon, “between a private undertaking and an undertaking concealed from one's oldest friend.”
“There is,” Hosea said, without looking up. “Privacy is peaceful.”
“You doubt me.”
“Constantly. It is how I keep the friendship interesting.”
Dutch waited for the smile that generally followed such remarks. Hosea did not supply it.
Arthur stood nearby oiling a saddle strap. He could feel the space between the two men fill with everything they had not said since Blackwater.
At last Dutch laughed. “Well. If you need me.”
“I know where you perform.”
After he had gone, Arthur said, “You enjoy that too much.”
“What?”
“Poking him.”
“One must maintain old customs.”
Hosea dipped his pen, missed the ink bottle, and struck the rim. A black line crossed his cuff. He cursed with surprising force.
Arthur reached for the blotting paper.
“Leave it.”
“You're getting ink everywhere.”
“I can see that.”
His hand had begun to tremble. It happened sometimes after a long day or a bad cough, a fine rapid movement he could conceal by clasping his hands. Hosea saw Arthur see it.
“Cold,” he said.
The evening was warm.
Arthur picked up the map instead. “Creek's wrong.”
“It is fictional.”
“Still wrong. Runs east here.”
Hosea bent over the page. For a moment his shoulder rested against Arthur's arm. “Then correct it.”
Arthur took the pen.
He had known a few letters before he came to Dutch and Hosea, though not enough to make much use of them. Between them, the two men had taught him the rest. Hosea set newspaper pages before him and demanded he find everything of use: rewards, auctions, bank openings, land sales, deaths of rich men and marriages of their richer daughters. Later he made Arthur copy names until his hand ceased to look like a wounded animal had dragged itself through ink.
“Not like that,” Hosea said. “Your line is too heavy.”
“It's a creek.”
“It is a confidence. Try to respect it.”
Arthur made the correction.
Hosea studied it, then nodded. “Good.”
The word went through Arthur with the old, unwelcome force.
Bell's office occupied the upper floor of a brick building at the northern end of Valentine. Beneath it, a dealer sold harness, tools and patent medicines. A painted hand beside the stairs pointed upward to SILAS BELL, LAND, LOANS & TITLE.
Hosea paused at the bottom and settled himself into his part. His back bent. His lower lip loosened. He allowed a faint tremor into the hand holding his cane.
Arthur disliked the tremor.
“You know,” Hosea murmured, “a convincing employee does not stare at his employer as though expecting him to die.”
“A convincing old fool knows when to stop climbing stairs.”
“Fortunately, I am neither old nor a fool.”
“One outta two.”
Hosea mounted the steps faster than he had mounted his horse. At the top he was obliged to pretend interest in a framed lithograph while his breathing recovered.
Bell received them behind a broad walnut desk. He was a narrow man, clean-shaven except for a moustache clipped to two exact points. His collar was white, his cuffs whiter, and his fingernails shone. A small revolver lay in an open drawer at his right hand, placed so that a visitor might see it without being able to accuse Bell of a threat.
Hosea saw it. Arthur saw Hosea see it.
“Mr. Matthews,” Bell said. “Your letter was mysterious.”
“Railroads reward discretion.”
“Railroads reward their directors. Everybody else receives promises.”
Hosea smiled. “Then you understand business.”
He laid out a portion of the map, never enough for Bell to view the whole. A branch line was being considered. Freight yards required level land and water. Certain parcels might be acquired quietly before public announcement. The company needed a local gentleman capable of assembling clean title without exciting speculation.
Bell listened like a man listening to rain upon his own roof. He asked indifferent questions, then precise ones. Hosea answered the first and evaded the second. Each evasion made Bell more eager.
At length Bell turned to Arthur. “And what is your position, Mr. Morgan?”
“I ride the ground.”
“A surveyor?”
“No.”
“Engineer?”
“No.”
Bell smiled. “Then what useful information do you obtain by riding it?”
Arthur looked at the man's polished nails. “Know where the north field floods. Know your wagons can't take the ridge road loaded. Know the creek's moved enough in five years that two deeds in your county book describe land that ain't there no more.”
The smile disappeared.
Hosea tapped the map with his cane. “Mr. Morgan lacks refinement. It has left room for observation.”
By the time they departed, Bell had agreed to bring his portfolio to a private supper two nights later. Hosea descended the stairs with majestic slowness until they turned the corner. Then he seized Arthur by both shoulders and laughed.
“Land that isn't there!”
“Creek washed it out.”
“You magnificent, gloomy bastard.”
Hosea walked too quickly down the street, his cane tucked beneath one arm now that nobody important was observing him. His face had colored. Words crowded out of him: Bell's greed, Bell's drawer, where the papers would be, how quickly the substitution might be made. Arthur followed and watched the color deepen.
At the hitching rail Hosea stopped. The laugh became a cough.
He turned away, pressing a handkerchief to his mouth. The fit bent him. Arthur stood between him and the street, pretending to adjust Silver Dollar's bridle.
When Hosea straightened, his eyes watered and his face had gone pale.
“Nearly finished,” he said.
“Sure.”
“Do not humour me.”
“Wasn't.”
“You were. Badly.”
He mounted without assistance and almost lost the stirrup. Arthur did not move to help. That appeared to anger Hosea more.
Back at camp, Hosea went directly to his bed and announced that he required an hour without fools. Since this excluded nearly everybody he knew, Arthur assumed it was not meant literally. He followed ten minutes later and found the old man sitting on the edge of his cot with his shirt open at the throat, breathing through his mouth.
“Get out,” Hosea said.
Arthur put a cup of coffee on the table.
“I did not ask for that.”
“Pearson made it.”
“Then it is not coffee. It is a threat.”
Arthur leaned against the wagon. On the crate beside Hosea lay a photograph of Bessie, partly covered by the false map. Hosea followed his gaze and turned the picture face down.
“You got two guns,” Arthur said.
“I beg your pardon?”
Arthur nodded toward the pillow. The butt of a second revolver showed beneath it.
“One each, you said.”
“One each upon our persons. That weapon is resting.”
“Like you?”
Hosea’s eyes narrowed. “Do not start.”
“You nearly drew on him?”
“Bell?”
“Cobb.”
“I have never seen the man before today.”
“That ain’t what I asked.”
For a little while the only sound was the camp going on around them. Pearson struck a pot with a spoon. Javier tested two notes on his guitar. Somewhere near the horses, Bill swore at a buckle and the buckle received the blame for every disappointment of his life.
Hosea buttoned his shirt. “Men like Cobb mistake obedience for proof they are feared. Men like Bell pay them to make that mistake useful.”
“An’ men like us?”
“We invent prettier explanations.”
Arthur looked at the overturned photograph. “You ain't gotta do this one.”
The cup stopped halfway to Hosea’s mouth.
“There it is,” he said.
“What?”
“That look. That careful voice. As though I have wandered from my bed and require leading back before I injure myself.”
“You were near falling off your horse.”
“I missed a stirrup.”
“You couldn't breathe.”
“I am breathing now.”
Arthur pushed away from the wagon. “Fine.”
“Arthur.”
“What?”
Hosea appeared ready to say something. Instead he drank the coffee, grimaced, and said, “Your collar is filthy again.”
Arthur went to clean it. This was how Hosea won arguments when winning them required nothing more than remaining impossible longer than the other man could remain angry.
That evening Hosea came to Arthur’s bed carrying the second revolver. He set it down beside Arthur’s gun belt.
“Since apparently I cannot be trusted to count,” he said.
Arthur looked at him.
“One each,” Hosea added. “As promised.”
It was not an apology, and Arthur knew better than to insult him by accepting it as one.
The private supper took place in Bell's office because Bell trusted his own locks more than he trusted any hotel room. A hired boy brought beef, potatoes and whiskey at eight. At half past, Bell dismissed him and turned the key.
Bell had brought everything.
The leather portfolio stood beside his desk, fat with folded notes, deeds, receipts and releases. A bound ledger lay separately beneath his hand. Arthur could not look at either too often. He stood by the map with a ruler, measuring a route Hosea had invented.
Hosea poured whiskey and encouraged Bell to talk.
It was an old art, and Arthur had never seen anybody perform it better. Hosea offered small confessions which invited larger ones. He admitted the railroad meant to deceive local sellers, and Bell replied with examples of sellers he had deceived. Hosea laughed at a mild cruelty, and Bell hurried to produce a worse one. Within an hour Bell had ceased regarding him as an elderly agent and begun regarding him as a fellow professional.
“Sentiment,” Bell said, cutting his beef, “is the farmer's chief affliction. A man thinks because his father died on a piece of dirt, the dirt loves him back.”
“Land is notably cold in its affections,” Hosea said.
“As are banks. As is the law. Yet they come to my office expecting mercy.”
Hosea drank. “You supply education.”
“At a fair rate.”
Arthur moved behind Bell on the pretext of comparing two parcel numbers. The portfolio buckle had a simple tongue. He opened it beneath the sound of Bell's voice.
Ada Mercer's receipt lay in the third division, pinned to a note bearing another sum. Arthur slid both beneath the map. There were other names Hosea had given him. Dwyer. Cole. Amos Reed. He found two and no more.
Bell turned a page in the ledger.
“This woman,” he said, tapping an entry, “paid me every month for a year. Walked six miles in rain once, carrying nine dollars in a flour sack.”
Hosea's glass stopped halfway to his mouth.
“And you took the farm?”
“Naturally. Nine dollars is not ten.”
“You accepted it.”
“Against her balance.”
“Then added a late fee.”
Bell looked pleased. “You understand.”
Arthur saw the change in Hosea. It was no more than stillness. The amusement left his eyes while the smile remained upon his mouth.
Arthur let a pencil roll from the table.
It was their signal to leave.
Hosea ignored it.
“Mrs. Mercer claims she paid the balance,” he said.
Bell's gaze sharpened. “You have spoken with Ada Mercer?”
“I speak with everybody.”
Bell looked from Hosea to Arthur, then to the edge of the receipt showing beneath the map.
For several seconds nobody moved.
Bell began to laugh.
“Well,” he said. “I confess I had you wrong.”
His hand descended toward the open drawer.
Arthur drew first.
Bell froze with two fingers touching the revolver's grip.
“Move 'em back,” Arthur said.
The door behind Arthur opened.
He had seen only two exits and three windows. He had not seen that the bookcase concealed a narrow connecting door. A broad man came through it with a shotgun. Arthur struck the barrel aside as it fired. Plaster burst from the ceiling. He drove his shoulder into the man, caught the shotgun between them and put his forehead into the fellow's nose.
Another man rushed from the same door.
Hosea overturned the table into his knees.
By the time the first man reached the floor, Arthur had the shotgun. The second lay beneath the table with Hosea's boot against his wrist. Bell stood against the wall, hands raised and bloodless with fury.
The room smelled of powder, beef and lamp oil.
“A connecting office,” Hosea said. “That was careless of us.”
“Us?” Arthur said.
“Later.”
Hosea took a packet of prepared releases from inside Dutch's coat and placed them upon the desk. Each bore a completed acknowledgment and the impressed seal of a notary public who, according to Hosea, had once lost heavily at cards and thereafter become generous with his official stamp. Only Bell’s signatures remained blank.
“Sign these.”
Bell looked at them. “You think paper signed at gunpoint will survive a courthouse?”
“I think your ledger contains enough arithmetic to make you dislike a courthouse.”
“You want money, take money.”
“I intend to.”
“We could do business.” Bell's eyes moved toward Arthur. “You have muscle and a little local knowledge. Your old man has imagination. I have legitimate standing. There is no reason for this vulgar display.”
Hosea's face did not change at *old man*. Arthur almost admired that.
Bell continued. “You cannot return land by stealing a mortgage. Half those parcels have new owners.”
“I know.”
“Then what is this?”
“An inconvenience.”
“For whom?”
“You.”
Hosea cocked his revolver.
Bell signed the first release. On the second his pen stopped.
“Mercer's boys are still on the place,” he said. “One works for the new owner. The other ran off after threatening me. If she had raised them to understand obligation, she might have kept more than her pride.”
Hosea struck him.
It was not a gentleman's blow and not part of any performance. The revolver remained in his fist. Its barrel cut Bell's cheek and sent him against the wall.
Arthur said, “Hosea.”
Bell touched the blood. “There. That's honest.”
Hosea hit him again.
The second blow dropped him. Hosea followed, seized his collar and dragged him partly upright.
“Hosea.”
“A woman without a husband,” Bell gasped, smiling through red teeth, “has no more business holding land than a child holding a banknote. Someone will take it. If not me, another.”
Hosea became very quiet.
He let Bell fall. Then he lifted the lamp from the desk and tipped it until oil ran across the scattered papers.
Arthur smelled it before he understood.
“You know,” Hosea said, “a respectable office burns just as quick as a thief's camp.”
Bell stopped smiling.
“Put that down,” Arthur said.
Hosea took a match from his pocket.
Arthur caught his wrist.
Hosea wheeled. The revolver came up between them.
For one instant the black mouth of it pointed beneath Arthur's eye.
Arthur did not release him.
“It's me.”
Recognition returned, followed so swiftly by rage that another man might have mistaken the two for one emotion.
The barrel dropped. Hosea turned it toward the floor, though Arthur continued holding his wrist.
“Take your hand off me.”
“Put down the match.”
“I said take it off.”
The man beneath the table found a pocket pistol.
He fired through the wood. Hosea jerked aside. Arthur shot once, and the man collapsed with the table across his legs. The first hired fellow crawled toward the connecting door.
Bell shouted for help.
Arthur kicked the lamp upright, swept the signed papers and ledger into the portfolio and threw it at Hosea.
“Window.”
The back window stuck exactly as it had when Arthur tested it. He struck the frame with the shotgun stock. It flew open. Below lay the sloping roof of a shed, then an alley already filling with men drawn by the shots.
Hosea went first.
He crossed the roof lightly enough, but the drainpipe tore free beneath him. He fell the final eight feet and struck a stack of crates. Arthur heard the breath leave him.
Then Arthur was down beside him, hauling him upright while somebody fired from the window.
“Can you ride?”
Hosea's face had turned gray. “Don't be insulting.”
They reached the horses under fire.
The escape would later appear to Arthur as a collection of pieces without a proper joining. A wagon blocked the main street. Silver Dollar shied at a shot. Hosea fired backwards and knocked a hat from a man's head, whether by intention or mercy Arthur never knew. They cut behind the stockyard, crossed the railway tracks and took the northern trail with three riders following.
Hosea chose the wooded path.
“Road's faster,” Arthur called.
“Road's watched.”
“They ain't got the law yet.”
“They will.”
Hosea bent low over Silver Dollar's neck. Every stride jarred him. Arthur saw his left arm pressed tight against his ribs.
The trees thickened. Spring branches whipped at their coats. A mile from the road Hosea raised one hand and turned downhill toward a creek.
“Too steep,” Arthur said.
“For you, perhaps.”
Silver Dollar slid upon the wet bank. Hosea stayed seated by stubbornness and habit. At the bottom he dismounted, slapped the horse's rump and sent him splashing upstream.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Giving them two trails.”
Arthur sent his mare downstream, though he hated every step she took away. They crossed on foot and doubled back beneath the bank.
Hosea stumbled climbing out.
Arthur caught him around the waist.
“Get off.”
“Hold still.”
“I am not an invalid.”
“Invalids got more sense.”
Hosea struck his arm away and almost fell again. The anger holding him upright was so pure Arthur could have warmed his hands at it.
They walked north. Behind them, the riders reached the creek and divided. Voices carried through the timber.
Hosea's breath rasped. He tried to suppress a cough and failed. The sound seemed loud enough to shake birds from every tree in New Hanover.
“You keep that up,” Arthur murmured, “they ain't gonna need tracks.”
“I will schedule my lungs more conveniently.”
The abandoned meetinghouse stood in a clearing half a mile farther on. Its bell was gone, its windows boarded and its little graveyard swallowed by weeds. Arthur broke the side-door latch with his shoulder and pulled Hosea inside.
Dust and old damp filled the place. Three pews remained. A rusted stove leaned in one corner. Somebody had used the pulpit for firewood.
Arthur barred the door, checked both windows and counted ammunition. Only when those matters were settled did he turn.
Hosea sat upon a pew with the portfolio between his boots. His eyes were shut.
“Coat off.”
“Buy me dinner.”
“Had dinner.”
“Then your manners are beyond excuse.”
Arthur knelt and opened Dutch's coat. Hosea slapped his hand away.
“I can undress myself.”
“Seen you do it. Ain't impressed.”
The shirt beneath was dark with sweat. Bruising had begun along the left ribs, broad and ugly. Arthur pressed carefully. Hosea hissed and called him something inventive.
“Broken?” Hosea asked.
“Maybe.”
“An excellent diagnosis.”
“Want a doctor, walk outside an' ask them fellers.”
Arthur had clean cloth in his saddlebag, which was currently attached to a horse traveling in another direction. He tore a strip from the least filthy curtain, boiled what water remained in Hosea's canteen over a small smokeless fire, and washed the cut at his temple. He bound the ribs because it seemed better than doing nothing, though not so tight as to worsen the old man's breathing.
Hosea criticised the knot.
“You taught me that knot.”
“Then you have managed to corrupt a fine education.”
Arthur snugged the knot by another fraction.
“Vindictive,” Hosea wheezed.
“Cold,” Arthur said.
For a time rain worked upon the roof. Water found a hole above the aisle and fell with a soft regular tap. Hosea sat propped against the wall with Dutch's stolen coat folded behind him. Arthur occupied the next pew with the shotgun across his knees.
“Stop that,” Hosea said.
“What?”
“Watching me breathe.”
“Ain't.”
“You count on your lips.”
Arthur looked toward the boarded window.
Hosea drank from the canteen. “I have bruised ribs. I am not dying.”
“Good.”
“Though your nursing may finish what the fall began.”
Arthur kept his eyes upon the boarded window.
“You have always enjoyed an opportunity to order me about.”
Still Arthur gave him nothing.
Hosea shifted and regretted it. “It was a moment, Arthur.”
Arthur's hand tightened upon the shotgun.
“I knew it was you.”
“After.”
“I was not going to fire.”
“Gun was cocked.”
“That proves nothing.”
Arthur looked at him then. “You pointed it at me.”
Hosea opened his mouth and shut it.
“I know you didn't mean to shoot,” Arthur said. “Meaning don't do much after a bullet.”
The rain tapped overhead.
Hosea leaned his head against the wall. Without his coat, hat and tricks, he looked older than he permitted himself to look in daylight. His face was narrow beneath the cheekbones. Damp gray hair clung to his forehead. His clever hands lay still because stillness was the only way to hide their trembling.
“I lost my temper,” he said.
“You tried to burn a man alive.”
“The lamp was upright.”
“After I put it there.”
“Bell was unlikely to remain tied while the building burned.”
“That your defense?”
“At present it is all I have.”
Arthur rose and went to the window. Through a split in the board he could see wet grass, grave markers and no men.
Behind him Hosea said, “You have begun looking at me as though I might break.”
“You just fell off a building.”
“That drainpipe failed.”
“You keep testing everything to see if you're stronger than it.”
“I do not.”
“Horse. Stairs. Men half your age. Goddamn bear.”
“The bear was an error in scale.”
Arthur turned. “You taught me better'n that.”
Hosea's expression changed.
“Always watch the room,” Arthur said. “Always keep a way out. Don't let being mad choose your next move. Don't pull a gun less'n you're ready to fire.”
“Sound advice.”
“Then how come you ain't ever listened to it?”
Hosea looked down at his hands. “Teaching you was not the same as describing myself.”
“No. Guess not.”
“Arthur.”
“What?”
“I was trying to make something better.”
The words struck wrong. Arthur laughed once without humour. “Well, you didn't.”
“That is not what I meant.”
“Sure.”
“Sit down.”
“Don't order me.”
“Then stand there being stupid at a distance. It changes nothing.”
Arthur remained at the window.
“You remember a place outside Kearney?” Hosea asked.
Arthur did. He had been fourteen or perhaps fifteen. Seasons from those years had run together, but he remembered the house, a square white place belonging to a merchant who sold army cloth. He remembered a pantry window and Hosea telling him the room beyond was empty.
It had not been empty.
“You sent me through,” Arthur said.
“Yes.”
“Man had a shotgun.”
“An elderly man with one eye and very little courage.”
“Still a shotgun.”
“I did not know he was there.” Hosea paused. “You went through that window before I finished speaking.”
Arthur shrugged.
“You did not ask what was inside. You did not ask how you were getting out. I told you to go and you went.”
“We got the money.”
“That is what Dutch said.”
“Was true.”
“I lay awake all night wanting to beat him for saying it. Then I wanted to beat myself because I had been pleased before I was frightened.”
Arthur did not remember Hosea being frightened. He remembered the old man furious, shaking him by both shoulders after they escaped, demanding to know what kind of idiot entered a room without checking it. Arthur had believed the anger meant he had failed.
“I thought you was mad I got seen.”
“I was mad because you didn't care whether you came out.”
Arthur looked through the board again. There was still nobody in the graveyard.
“Boy like that is useful,” Hosea said. “Dutch knew it. I knew it too. We fed you, taught you, gave you a place. Then every time you proved what that place was worth to you, we sent you somewhere worse.”
“Don't.”
“You wanted honesty.”
“Didn't ask for this.”
“You rarely ask for what you need.”
Arthur faced him. “Don't make this some noble confession. You ain't sorry enough to stop.”
Hosea's eyes flashed. “And you think you are?”
“No.”
That answer checked him.
Arthur came back to the pew and crouched to examine the bandage. It had shifted. He retied it while Hosea watched the top of his head.
“I wanted you alive,” Hosea said. “I just wasn't always particular about what for.”
Arthur finished the knot.
“Drink,” he said.
Hosea drank.
Later, while Hosea slept in short, uneasy stretches, Arthur copied the useful entries from Bell's ledger onto the backs of the false railroad memoranda. His handwriting remained heavy and square despite all Hosea's instruction. He made two copies of each name and figure, reading every sum three times before moving to the next. Hosea woke once, watched him without speaking, and went back to sleep with the faintest suggestion of satisfaction upon his face.
Near dawn they heard horses.
Arthur killed the little fire with dirt and moved to the window. Three riders entered the clearing. One was the broad man from Bell's office, his broken nose black beneath his eyes. Another Arthur did not know. The third was Bell himself, cheek bandaged, carrying a carbine.
“Persistent,” Hosea whispered.
“You hit him a lot.”
“I begin to regret stopping.”
“You didn't. I stopped you.”
Hosea eased his revolver free.
“What are you doing?” Arthur asked.
“You take the ledger out back. Creek lies north. I'll give them reason to look south.”
“No.”
“You are faster.”
“No.”
“Those papers matter.”
Arthur took the false railroad map from the portfolio and fed one corner into the remaining coals. Flame ran along the paper, consuming the patient black line of the imaginary route.
Hosea stared. “Have you lost your mind?”
“Papers don't matter more'n you.”
“Do not be sentimental.”
“Ain't.”
“You don't decide what my life is worth.”
Arthur looked at him. “Funny. You been deciding mine since I was fourteen.”
Outside, Bell called, “Matthews!”
Hosea's mouth tightened.
Arthur opened the ledger. During the night he had read more than Bell would have liked. Payments to the broad hired man appeared under the name Cobb. Beside two were notes concerning false affidavits, a barn fire and a witness paid to leave the county. Another payment matched the week a borrower had drowned in water shallow enough to stand in. The book did not prove murder by itself, but it proved enough lesser crimes to make a prosecutor curious about the rest. Bell had not ridden after them for his mortgages. He had ridden after them because the ledger could put a rope around somebody’s neck, and Bell did not intend that neck to be his.
“Cobb,” Arthur whispered. “Bell paid him separate. Hid it as inspection fees.”
Hosea's attention sharpened. Pain, age and anger withdrew behind the con man.
“And?”
“Last page. Bell wrote county inquiry. Says if it goes bad, Cobb altered the receipts.”
Hosea read the line. A smile touched his face.
“You really are observant.”
“Save it.”
Hosea adjusted his shirt, stood with care and instantly became more wounded than he was. The transformation offended Arthur despite knowing its purpose.
“Mr. Bell,” Hosea called weakly. “I should like to negotiate.”
Bell laughed outside.
Hosea stepped into the doorway before Arthur could object. One hand pressed his ribs. The other hung empty.
“I have your ledger,” he said. “Mr. Cobb, I have also found the pages upon which your employer proposes to hang you.”
The broad man looked at Bell.
“He's lying,” Bell said.
“Certainly,” Hosea agreed. “But not about page eighty-seven.”
Bell's carbine shifted toward Cobb before he caught himself.
That was enough.
Cobb turned his pistol upon Bell. The third man shouted. Arthur fired through the side window into the earth beneath the nearest horse's forefeet. The animal reared, scattering the three. Hosea dropped flat with a curse. Arthur came through the doorway, caught him beneath the arm and dragged him toward the graveyard wall while shots broke boards behind them.
They reached the trees during the argument over who had betrayed whom.
Silver Dollar stood half a mile upstream exactly where Hosea had trained him to wait after a whistle. Arthur's mare had wandered farther but answered his call. Hosea mounted slowly. This time, when Arthur steadied his elbow, he did not object.
They rode west by a long route and spoke very little. Arthur kept his mare at a walk on the rough ground and a gentle trot where the road levelled. Hosea noticed the pace. He said nothing.
At noon they found Ada Mercer behind the cooper's yard. Hosea remained on his horse, which told Arthur more than any complaint would have.
Arthur handed her the signed releases, her receipt and copied pages from Bell's ledger.
“This won't give you the house,” he said. “Not by itself.”
She examined the papers. “No.”
“Might give a lawyer reason to listen. Bell may decide it ain't worth fighting.”
“Or he may burn them.”
“Got copies.”
Mrs. Mercer looked past him at Hosea, pale beneath his hat and pretending interest in the street.
“He raise you?” she asked.
Arthur almost laughed. “Something like that.”
He regretted the answer before it was finished.
Hosea heard it. Of course he did. He heard whispers through walls when they concerned him and cannon fire only when it suited.
He did not look at Arthur until they had ridden a mile.
“Something like that?” he said.
“Shut up.”
“A moving tribute.”
“I'll leave you beside the road.”
“After your declaration of filial devotion? People would talk.”
Arthur urged his mare ahead. Behind him, Hosea laughed until the laughter became a cough. Arthur slowed without turning.
They reached Horseshoe Overlook near sundown.
Dutch came out to meet them wearing another coat and an expression of cultivated injury.
“How did retirement treat you?”
“Splendidly,” Hosea said.
“Office caught fire,” Arthur said.
“A lamp was employed instructively.”
“Three men shot at us.”
“Poorly.”
“He fell off a building.”
“The staircase ended unexpectedly.”
“Then we got surrounded in a church.”
“We had undesirable neighbors.”
By then half the camp had gathered. Sean laughed. Bill asked whether the other men were dead. Miss Grimshaw demanded to know whose blood marked Dutch's coat. Hosea dismounted, took one step and began coughing.
The fit would not stop.
Silence spread through camp. Arthur saw fear upon faces that ordinarily knew better than to show it.
Hosea saw it too.
When he could speak, he said, “Have none of you got anything useful to do?”
“Hosea,” Dutch began.
“Don't.”
The word cracked across camp. Jack stopped near Abigail's skirts. Bill looked down. Even Dutch's concern hardened beneath the rebuke.
Hosea gathered the remains of his dignity and walked toward his bed.
Arthur went beside him, looking down at Bell's ledger as though its figures required his whole attention. He did not touch Hosea. He merely walked slowly enough that the old man never fell behind.
The following morning Hosea sat under the sycamores with the red blanket across his knees, a book open upon one leg and coffee beside him. If his face was grayer than before, nobody mentioned it. If the blanket concealed fresh bandages, that was his business.
Two revolvers lay upon a cloth on the table.
Arthur sat opposite him and picked up the second.
“Thought you was slowing down.”
“I am.”
“You're loading two guns.”
“I used to carry three.”
Arthur took out the cylinder and began cleaning it.
“Not like that,” Hosea said.
“Ain't doing nothing.”
“You are applying too much oil.”
“Twenty years, an' you still think I can't clean a gun.”
“Twenty years, and you continue proving it.”
“Shut up.”
Hosea moved his coffee so Arthur could reach the rag beneath it. After a moment he shifted the ammunition closer too.
Their hands worked over the dark metal. Arthur's were broad, scarred and steady. Hosea's were narrow and spotted with age, the fingers clever as ever, though a small tremor visited them whenever he hurried.
Arthur cleaned more slowly.
Hosea did not thank him. Arthur slowed his hands until the old man no longer had to hurry to keep pace.