Chapter 3
: A Lease on Water
They did not have to go and ask. The company men had been watching Caleb's arrival, and asking was a ceremony they preferred to conduct themselves, on their own ground. The foreman came out first, a broad man in a clean shirt, with a paper folded in his breast pocket like a badge. Four riders followed him, not close enough to threaten outright, not far enough to be anything else. They took their places by the barrier gate as if they had rehearsed it.
Tasin walked beside Caleb down to the basin mouth, unhurried, his hands empty and visible, two of his men a respectful distance behind β near enough to witness, far enough to give the talk its chance. That restraint cost the chief something. Caleb could see it in the set of his jaw, and kept his own hands just as empty.
"Morning," the foreman said, pleasant as a drummer selling tonic. "Name's Pruitt, foreman for the Voss Consolidated Water and Land Company. You're on company ground now, and company water. State your business and we'll see if we can't accommodate it peaceable."
"My business is standing in your rope corral," Caleb said. "Three horses. A mare called Dulcie, a mare called Pet, a gelding called Rooster. Taken from the Wren ranch on Coyote Creek in the night. I'd like them back, and I'd like the names of the men who fetched them."
Pruitt smiled with his mouth only. "Strays," he said. "Found wandering loose on company range and penned for their own protection. Company'll release claimed stock on proof of ownership and payment of a keeping fee. As for names, company men don't give names to every rider who asks hard." Behind him, one rider shifted to let his coat fall clear of his holster, a movement meant to be noticed.
Tasin spoke then, his voice carrying the way still water carries sound. "And the gate across the spring, Mr. Pruitt. State its business, since you ask for ours. My people have drunk at Ojo Azul since long before your company. By what right does your wood stand in the water's path?"
Pruitt took the folded paper from his pocket with the air of a man producing an answer he had waited all week to give. He unfolded it once, and no more; he did not offer it to Tasin's hands or to Caleb's, only held it where the territorial seal could catch the sun. "By right of lease," he said. "Territorial lease, duly granted to Harlan Voss and the Voss Consolidated, covering this spring and the grazing of San Rey Valley entire. It's all wrote down and filed proper in Paloma. The water is Mr. Voss's to manage now. His to lease, his to fence, his to sell, same as any property."
"A spring is not a store," Tasin said. "It cannot be sold by the cup to the thirsty."
"Law says otherwise," Pruitt said, "and the law's the law, Chief. Company regrets the inconvenience. Company is prepared to be generous β water for your people at a fair rate through the month, time to make arrangements, and no charge at all for today, in token of goodwill." He said it as if the generosity were his own invention.
Caleb thought of Tess barring the door on Coyote Creek, of his father walking this basin with a surveyor's chain in a year when this man's company had no name. He kept his voice level. "A lease that gives away water other men have used free for twenty years wants a close reading, Mr. Pruitt. I'd like to see that paper in full. Every line."
"You'd like a deal of things," Pruitt said, and folded the lease away again. For the first time the pleasantness went entirely out of his face. "Here's the shape of it, both of you. The camp clears this valley by dawn tomorrow. The people go quiet, the lodges come down, the stock moves out β Mr. Voss will even overlook the grazing owed. At dawn the company returns with twenty gunmen, warranted and lawful, to clear the valley of any trespass remaining. Twenty. That's not my temper talking, that's my orders wrote down. Any man standing at this barrier at dawn resisting a lawful lease will be removed. The company hopes it won't come to sorrow. The company generally gets what it hopes."
Silence settled over the basin. Somewhere behind the lodges a child laughed, and an Apache woman called him in, quick and low.
Tasin looked at the barrier, at the water moving bright behind the raw new wood, and then at Caleb. "Tell Mr. Voss," he said at last, "that Tasin heard his words under a fair sky, so there is no cloud on the hearing. Tell him also that my people will be here at dawn. Where else would the thirsty be, Mr. Pruitt, when the water is here?" He turned and walked back toward his camp with his head high, and Caleb, after one long look at his three horses in another man's rope, went with him, because the next move was not a gun. It was paper. And paper, Caleb thought, was a country his father had known better than any man in San Rey Valley.