"Well," Josiah said, and looked once more at the pasture gate, standing wide in the morning sun, telling its lie to the whole valley. "Somebody cut that fence with nippers and then apologized to it. And somebody rode a shod horse through the middle of his own raid. Ben's out there following a story, Frank — and the man who wrote it is counting on him not kneeling down."
Chapter 6
: The Colonel's Offer
The dust announced them before the sound did, a pale plume rising off the east trail in the late morning heat. Josiah Merritt stood in the shade of his porch with a tin cup in his hand and watched it come. Two riders, unhurried. He knew the gray horse in front and the straight back of the man upon it. He set the cup down and waited with his hands empty and visible, as a man does when he does not intend trouble and does not intend to be mistaken.
Colonel Harlan Voss reined in at the hitching post and sat a moment surveying the place. The yard was swept bare. The corral rails wanted mending. Beyond the house the windmill turned slow and complained at every revolution, drawing up what water the earth still allowed. Rance Killion, behind him, did not dismount. His hat shadowed his eyes and his carbine lay easy across his saddle, and the ease of it was its own statement.
"Mr. Merritt," Voss said, and swung down with the care of a man whose knees remembered campaigns. He was tall still, white-mustached, his coat brushed clean despite the drought. "I hope I do not intrude."
"You are welcome to water, Colonel," Josiah said. "Horses and yourselves."
"That is your reputation, and it does you credit." Voss took off his hat and held it in both hands like a caller at a parlor door. "It is also, if you will permit an old soldier his plainness, the subject of my visit. For the fifth time, I believe. I keep count because I admire persistence."
Josiah gestured toward the porch and Voss climbed the steps and settled into Miriam's old chair without being asked, though not without a glance that acknowledged whose it had been. Josiah remained standing until Voss waved at the other chair, and then he sat. Killion watered the horses at the trough, a dipper at a time, and did not pretend not to listen.
"I will not waste your morning," Voss said. "The territory is drying to the root. The river is a chain of warm pools. My stock east of the Cienega are drinking mud by August if this holds, and every small holder is in the same case. One deep well, properly managed, properly priced, could carry this valley through. Not managed at all, it is a gift poured into sand." He smiled. "You give it away, Mr. Merritt. To anyone. Apache included, I am told."
"I give water to anyone who asks," Josiah said. "A man dying of thirst does not first show me his papers."
"A noble sentiment. It buried more than one command." Voss folded his hands. "My offer stands improved. Four thousand dollars for the well parcel and the water right, the house and the north forty yours to keep, and my note for the arrears on your taxes, settled in full. You could mend your rails. You could hire help. You could be a rancher again instead of a charitable institution with a mortgage."
The sum was more money than Josiah had held in his life altogether. He turned it over the way a man turns a stone. Four thousand dollars, and the well fenced. A gate. A price chalked for every bucket, and men turned away in a dry year for want of coin. He thought of a woman in the summer of 1875 crawling toward his trough on her knees, and of what he would have been if there had been a lock on it that day.
"The well was here before my deed was," he said. "I dug it deeper, that is all. I do not hold with selling what keeps other men alive as if it were a horse I raised."
"I thought you might say something of the kind." Voss did not sound disappointed. He sounded like a man whose arithmetic had included this answer. "Then hear the other half of plainness. Water given free makes enemies of all who must pay elsewhere. The town talks. The Rawlins herd is gone, and men are asking why the one settler the Apache will not touch is the one whose water they drink. I do not ask these questions myself. I merely report that they are asked."
Josiah felt the heat come up low, behind his ribs. "If a man has a question for me, he knows where my door is."
"Doors," Voss said gently, "have a way of being barred in this country. From the outside." He let that sit until the windmill had complained through two full turns. Then he rose, put on his hat, and the courtesy returned to him whole, like a coat taken up again. "Think on my offer. A well is a fine thing, until the day everyone within thirty miles decides it would be finer shared out by men with rifles. I should hate to see you learn the price of water all at once."