The land office smelled of dust, lamp oil, and other men's paper. Etta stood at the long counter with her hat in her hands and asked the clerk — a thin young man named Pruitt who was not Walter Goss, whatever else he might be — to see the filing on the old Marlowe claim, section fourteen, Cedar Valley. He brought the folder the way a man brings something that might bite him, and laid it open, and she read what eight years had paid clerks to write: sold, transferred, extinguished. She had read it all before, in three territories, in copies she kept folded in her saddlebags. She asked the price of recording an affidavit anyway.
"There's no live claim to attach it to, ma'am," Pruitt said. "Not since seventy-seven."
"Then attach it to the folder," Etta said. "Paper keeps. That's the one thing I've learned about it."
Dan Whitaker stood by the window with his arms folded, saying nothing, watching the street. He had ridden in with her without being asked, which she had noticed, and without offering a reason, which she had noticed more.
The door opened on a wash of noon light and Colonel Avery Stanton came in with two Association men at his back, and took off his hat to the room like a man entering church.
"Miss Marlow," he said. "The very person I hoped to find. The Lord arranges these things better than we do."
"Colonel." She did not offer her hand. "You'll forgive me if I keep to my business."
"Business is precisely my errand." He set his hat on the counter and smiled at the clerk, at Dan, at the two homesteaders waiting by the stove with a deed in an envelope between them — witnesses, though no one had called them that. "I will be plain, since plainness is a courtesy. That roan mare of yours. I wish to buy her."
"She's not for sale."
"Everything in this valley is for sale, Miss Marlow. It is only a matter of a man finding the number." He drew a folded paper from his coat and laid it flat, smoothing it with two fingers. "Five hundred dollars for the mare. Gold. And because I am not a hard man, and because a woman alone deserves a stake in this world, another five hundred for your trouble and your travel — to break horses somewhere the winters are kinder. A thousand dollars, and a letter from my office commending your skill to any outfit between here and Cheyenne."
The room had gone the kind of quiet that has ears in it. Pruitt's pen had stopped. The homesteader by the stove held his deed envelope with both hands.
Etta looked at the paper a moment, so that later no man could say she hadn't considered it. Then she looked at Stanton, and when she spoke she spoke the way her father had taught her to speak in a branding pen — loud enough for the far rail, and only once.
"No."
"Think, Miss Marlow."
"I have thought. For eight years." She let that sit. "The mare's not for sale, Colonel. Not to you, and not at any price you'll ever write on paper. And I'll tell you why in front of these gentlemen, since we're being plain." She took one step, no more. "That mare carries your Flying S on her left hip — and under it, burned there first, she carries a Rocking M. She was Marlowe stock before she was ever yours, and I aim to see the day book and the brand inspector's record say so in daylight. That's the whole of my business in this office and every other."
Stanton's smile did not leave his face. It only left his eyes. "You are making an accusation, madam."
"I'm making a statement of fact. The accusation will keep till the marshal's handy."
"Then hear mine." He folded the paper away with great care. "A stranger rides into a settled valley with an old name and an old horse and starts a fire under every fence in it. The Association has been patient. Patience is not the same as surrender." He picked up his hat. "Break horses somewhere else, Miss Marlow. That is the offer, whether or not you take the money with it."
"Etta Marlowe," she said. "If you're going to threaten me before witnesses, Colonel, use the whole name. It saves confusion later."
For the first time, something moved in his face that was not arranged there. He set his hat on, precisely, and went out into the light with his men behind him, and the door swung a long time on its hinge.
Dan let out a breath. "Well," he said. "That's done, then."
"It was done at the fair," Etta said, and turned back to the counter, and her hands were steady on the affidavit as she signed it. "But now it's done where people can repeat it."
At the door the homesteader with the deed envelope stopped her — a rawboned man with a sunburned neck, his wife close behind him holding his sleeve.
"Ma'am," he said. "Name's Albie Sorren. That's my place they're stringing the wire across, up on Willow Creek — two miles of it, and my water on the far side." He jerked his chin back toward the counter, and the empty room, and the street where Stanton's dust was still settling. "I just wanted you to know there's them that heard it. Word for word, the way you said it. My wife's got a memory like a brand book."
"Then I'm obliged to her," Etta said.
"You get that mare of yours in front of the right eyes, Miss Marlowe," Sorren said, "and you'll not stand in front of them alone. Not anymore." He put his hat on and went out, and Dan, watching him go, shook his head.
"You've been in this valley six weeks," he said, "and you've raised more army than Jasper's raised in thirty years."