The boy wept then, quietly, the knife heavy at his belt. Deya reached across the fire and put her hand on his wrist β not to take the knife, only to hold it still. "I have killed men in war," she said quietly, "and I have carried every one of them since. That is the price the knife charges. Remember that when you tell the marshal, and tell him all of it."
"Tomorrow," Kanoa said. And the fire burned down, and the camp slept uneasily, with the second wound open and bleeding clean.
Chapter 18
The Long Table
Nate had the hands build the table from cottonwood planks, twelve feet long, sanded smooth with river stone, set square in the ranch yard where the well stood within sight of every seat. He said a table that long left no room for anyone to sit at the head of it, and that was the point. Deya, watching from the porch with her arm in its sling, said it was the first piece of furniture she had ever seen built for a negotiation instead of a meal, and Nate laughed and said maybe it would serve for both before the day was out.
They came at noon. Elder Kanoa arrived first, walking with the deliberate pace of a man whose dignity required no hurry, and took his place at the table's middle, where he could see the well and the tree both. Father Ignacio Ruiz came next, carrying his small wooden cross and a leather satchel of papers, and sat at Kanoa's right hand. Hollis Farr came on horseback, dust on his coat, a neighboring rancher with water rights of his own and a temper everyone hoped would stay leashed. Nate took the bench opposite Kanoa. And last came Magnus Thorne, late fifties, owner of the CB&L, with Marshal Orson Bell at his shoulder and two deputies behind, because Thorne was under marshal guard and would remain so until the courts were done with him.
The torn map was laid on the table first. Gideon Pryce had brought it β the surveyor who had confessed his part in the company's deceit β and he smoothed its two halves together with hands that shook. The tear ran through the middle of the basin like a scar. One half showed the springs, marked in Wray's hand with the diversion lines penciled in. The other showed the well and the creek, the ranchers' claims, the camp. Put together, it was the first true picture anyone had seen of how the water actually moved through Stone Creek Basin.
Beside the map, Nate set the blue book. The ledger lay open to the summer's pages, the columns of measurements in his careful hand β dates, depths, flow rates, names of who drew what and when. It was not a beautiful object, but it was an honest one, and several men at the table looked at it the way men look at a witness.
And beside the ledger, Father Ruiz set his prayer book, open to nothing in particular, its pages worn soft at the corners by fifty years of thumbs. "So that we remember," he said, when Thorne glanced at it, "that we are making an agreement before God as well as before the law. Water is not made by men. We are only deciding how to share what we are given."
Thorne cleared his throat. He was a big man gone soft, with the look of someone accustomed to buying his way out of rooms. "Gentlemen," he said, and nodded to Kanoa with an effort at respect, "and elder. I won't waste your time. The CB&L has acted β badly. I won't defend Wray; he's run, and good riddance. But the company has resources, and I propose we settle this plainly. Name a figure. Compensation for the camps, for the ranch, for the β disturbances. A generous figure. Paid at once. And we put all this behind us."
The silence that followed had weight. Farr shifted on the bench. Nate kept his hands flat on the table.
Kanoa spoke at last. "Mr. Thorne," he said, "you offer to buy the water of this basin the way you would buy a horse. But a horse, once bought, is yours. Water is not yours. It was here before your company, before this ranch, before my grandfather's grandfather. It runs, and it will run after every man at this table is dust." He rested his old hands on the planks. "Money is spent. A compact is kept. I propose we make a compact β a shared-water agreement, written down, binding on all of us. The company takes its share by schedule, not by force. The ranch takes its share. The camps take theirs. No monopoly. No diversions in the night. We measure together, and we hold each other to the measure."
Thorne's face worked. "You want me to sign away the company's advantage."
"I want you to sign away the company's theft," Kanoa said, not unkindly. "What is fairly shared cannot be stolen. That protects you as much as us, Mr. Thorne. Your riders will not be shot at by boys with knives if the water is fairly shared."