Chapter 14
The Land Agent
Harlan Pruitt came up the pass road at midmorning in a buckboard too clean for the country, wearing a smile that had been practiced on mirrors and widows.
Elias saw him first from the corral and knew him by Maren's description before the man spoke: the good coat, the soft hat, the ledger case beside him like a second passenger. Pruitt took in the ranch in one appraising sweep — the garden, the barn, the south fence standing new and straight where for months it had sagged — and last, and longest, Elias himself, with a wrench in his hand.
Something in the smile had to be rearranged. Elias watched him do it.
"Miss Ellery!" Pruitt called, stepping down with his case. "And Miss Willa. What a picture of industry. I declare, the place is transformed."
Maren came out onto the porch with her hands empty, which Elias had learned was her most deliberate posture. She did not bring the rifle to greet a man with papers. She brought something colder.
"Mr. Pruitt."
"I've brought the company's revised offer," he said, patting the case, "and I think you'll find the figure generous — more generous, I'll be frank, than the land's present circumstances might strictly—"
"My circumstances are mine," Maren said. "State your figure on the porch, where you've stated the others. Willa, put the coffee on."
It was a small cruelty of courtesy and Elias admired it enormously. Pruitt would be given coffee and a chair. He would not be given one inch of anything else.
Over coffee, the paper came out. Figures were read aloud in a voice that made them sound like favors. The offer was higher than the last — enough higher to tell Elias that someone behind Pruitt had grown impatient. Then, when Maren had let the silence stretch to its proper length, the other part began, delivered with sighs and the air of a friend forced to carry unwelcome news.
The taxes, he feared, were further in arrears than the sisters realized, and the territory was not gentle with arrears. The title, he feared — here he turned a page he did not show them — had irregularities a court might look at unkindly. And the country itself was growing rough. Fences cut. Stock straying. A lonely place, two women alone. Accidents happened, to fences, to stock. To houses, sometimes, in dry seasons, with no malice in it at all — just the times.
"Are you threatening my house, Mr. Pruitt?" Maren asked, pleasantly.
"Miss Ellery. I am counseling prudence."
"Then hear mine. This land is paid for in work I can show you in my hands. The taxes will be met, as they were met last year. My father's title was good enough for the territory to take his money. And accidents—" She set her cup down without a sound. "Accidents have a way of finding the men who predict them. We are not selling. Not at your figure, not at another, not this year. Write that in your ledger, so you needn't make the ride again on my account."
Pruitt's smile thinned then. It did not vanish — a man like Pruitt kept his smile the way Elias kept his Colt, oiled and within reach — but underneath it something plainer showed, a calculation being revised downward.
His gaze went past her, to the corral. To Elias.
"And the help," he said. "A drifter, I believe. The valley's full of talk — the sisters Ellery have taken in a wandering man." The smile aimed itself at Elias like a pointing finger. "Work's hard to keep honest, in a drifter. Here today—"
"He mends fence straighter than your company keeps its word," Maren said, "and his arrangements are with me."
Elias said nothing. A quiet man at a gate, watching, gave a man like Pruitt more arithmetic to do than any answer. He put the wrench down, wiped his hands slow, and let the silence do its own threatening, which was cleaner than Pruitt's kind.
"I'll leave the paper," Pruitt said at last, rising, "against a change of heart. Hearts change, Miss Ellery. Circumstances change them." He set it on the porch rail, weighted with a stone from Maren's own garden, a small theft of familiarity that made Willa's eyes flash. "Good day to you both."
The buckboard rattled down the road at a pace slightly too fast for dignity. On the porch, Maren picked up the paper, read nothing of it, carried it inside, and fed it — Elias saw through the doorway, and so did Willa, who made no attempt to hide her grin — directly into the stove.
"Well," Willa said into the silence, "he didn't like the fence."
"No," Elias said, looking down the road where the dust was settling. "He liked it least of everything he saw. A fallen fence can be argued with. A standing one just says no."
Maren came back out with her father's rifle, not from fear but from habit resumed, and stood looking at the south line and the water that made all of it worth a smiling man's threats.
"They'll come again," she said. "Not with paper."