Boots sounded outside. Eliot Redhorn stood in the shed doorway without entering until she nodded. Peter Ironbow waited farther back in the dark, a silhouette against starlight. Samuel was with the horses.
"You should eat," Eliot said. He held out a cloth-wrapped piece of bread and dried meat. Tess took it because hunger was a practical enemy and she needed her hands steady in the morning.
"Thank you for coming," she said.
"We came for the record," Eliot said. "And for Cinder's foal. Your father kept his side of the grass lease when others would have crowded us off. We do not forget that. We also do not let a clerk rewrite a foaling with a stolen blank."
Tess chewed, swallowed. "You knew the tag number before you rode in."
"I knew it the way you know a creek after rain." Eliot leaned a shoulder against the doorframe. "Silas Crowe stamped many tags. He liked to remind people he had a neat hand. When he left your place angry, he talked in town about being cheated. Some men believed him. Some did not. I believed the books."
"Did he ever try to claim other stock?"
"Once. A yearling colt at the south market. The brand was wrong and the seller laughed him out. He has grown careful since. A bill of sale with borrowed witnesses is careful. Coming here while you are alone is careful in a different way."
Tess's jaw set. "I am not alone tonight."
"No," Eliot agreed. "You are not."
Tess asked, after a silence, whether Eliot had ever doubted the mare's belonging.
"I doubted men," he said. "Not the number."