The wire crew was at the Herrera lane on a bright cold morning three days later, and Etta saw the trouble from the saddle before Dan did, because trouble at a fence line has a posture she had learned young: men's backs all turned the same way, and one man's turned against them.
She and Dan had ridden out to bring down a bunch of Lazy J steers that had drifted to the creek bottoms. The lane to the water ran between the Herrera place and the open bench — a worn track through the cottonwoods that every hoof in the valley had used since there were hoofs in the valley. The Herreras' deed, everybody knew, carried the water right, older than the town. Ben Herrera stood in the middle of the lane with his hat in his hand and his cattle bunched and thirsty behind a half-finished fence of new post and bright wire that the Association crew was stringing straight across the track, post by post, as calmly as if they were hanging laundry.
There were six of them, with a wagon of wire and a foreman mounted off to the side like a man at a chess board. Dan reined in at the edge of it and Etta stopped Petra a half-length behind his shoulder, where a hired hand belonged, and kept her face still and her eyes moving.
"Morning, Ben," Dan said. "Morning, gentlemen. Somebody want to tell me what this is?"
The foreman answered without dismounting, pleasant as weather. "Association fence, Whitaker. This bench goes to Association range under the county survey, and the lane's closed."
"The lane's a deeded water road," Ben Herrera said. He was a young man, dark-faced, with a baby coming and eighty acres and a voice that shook as he kept it level. "My deed says the creek. My father watered stock on this track. There's a paper at the courthouse says this lane is mine till the river dries."
"Then I'd go read it again, friend. Papers change." The foreman smiled. "Colonel Stanton's had the surveyors out. When the maverick ordinance passes — and it'll pass — all this bench is Association to manage, and you'll thank us for the order of it." He looked past Ben, at the cattle shifting and bawling at the smell of water. "In the meantime, there's the river ford two miles down. Long walk for a cow, but cows ain't in a hurry."
Dan's horse shifted under him; Dan's voice stayed mild, which Etta was learning was his dangerous register. "You've strung wire across a deeded lane on another man's paper, and you'll have it down by sundown, or you'll have the sheriff out here explaining to the Colonel why his crew works in a jail yard. The Lazy J herds use that water too. Take it up with the courthouse, not with a fence."
"Stanton don't take instruction at second hand." The foreman's pleasantness thinned, and his eyes traveled — to the hands still working, to Ben, and last and longest to Etta, sitting her roan mare quiet behind Dan's shoulder. Something in her stillness seemed to annoy him. "Nor from hired women."
It was then — not at the insult, but at the name, spoken for the third time that morning like the name of the weather or the name of God — that Etta's temper showed through her calm for exactly one second.
It went through her like a wire going taut. Petra felt it and sidestepped once, hard, and Etta's hands, quiet all week, quiet eight years, closed on the reins with an aching grip. Her voice, when it came, was not loud. It was flat and cold as creek water in January.
"Wire across water has a way of getting men killed, friend. It got men killed before you were born, in this very valley. I'd think on that before I stretched another yard of it."
The foreman stared at her. The crew had stopped working without being told. Ben Herrera was looking at her like a man hearing a bell from under the ground. And Dan — Dan was looking at her too, and in his face she could read the sum he was doing, and she cursed herself, eight years of patience for one second of truth, and let her hands open and her voice come back to the mild register of a hired breaker who had spoken out of turn.
"That's all I know about wire," she said, mild as milk. "It rusts."
Dan stepped into the silence the way he'd have stepped between two bulls — smoothly, and before it charged. "You heard my offer, gentlemen. Sundown. After that it's the sheriff's conversation, and I don't think the Colonel pays you enough to enjoy it."
The crew took the wire down. Not gladly, and not completely — they left the posts standing in the lane like a threat in a language of wood — but they coiled the bright strands onto the wagon while Ben Herrera's cattle pushed past them to the water, and the sound of drinking filled the cottonwoods. The foreman mounted last. He did not look at Etta again, but she had the feeling he'd remember her, and she did not care for the feeling at all.
On the ride home Dan let a quarter mile of silence go by before he spoke. "You got history with Stanton?"
"I got history with wire," Etta said, and looked at the rim, where the new fences caught the afternoon light in long bright lines, dividing a valley that had never needed dividing. "Wire and men who hide behind it. It's the same history all over this territory, Whitaker. It ain't personal."
"It sounded personal."