"I didn't know," he said. His voice sounded thin and far away. "Eli, I swear to God I didn't know."
"I know you didn't," Eli said. "If you'd known, you'd have quit. You'd have punched Pike in the mouth and quit, and then you'd have got yourself shot, because you never in your life learned to think before you swing." He coughed, and the cough hurt him, and Rides Far's hand tightened on his shoulder. "I figured it out because I can read and write and Strikes Twice can't, not in English, and he asked me to keep the count for the band. Every head we were promised and every head we got. Every brand, every earmark, every one that looked sick or poor. It's in a book. A ledger. I wrote down that crooked-horn brindle five times, Wes. Five issue days in a row."
"Where's the book?"
Rides Far reached behind the robes and drew out a parfleche no bigger than a family Bible, painted in blue and red triangles. She untied it and took from it a cheap clothbound account book, the kind sold at any trading post, its edges water-stained, its spine broken.
"Six days ago," she said, "Eli went to the agency pasture at night, with my cousin, to see if the cattle were still there. They were not. They saw Tasker and two riders driving them out through the gap in the south fence. Tasker saw Eli's hair in the moonlight. It is a very yellow hair. He knew who it was. He fired. My cousin brought Eli home across his saddle." She looked down at the book. "Two days ago Dorran sent word to my father by his police. He said that a white renegade, a horse thief wanted in Dakota, was hiding in the camp of Strikes Twice. He said that if this man was not given up, he would write to the soldiers at Fort Custer and tell them this band was harboring criminals and had grown hostile. He knows what the soldiers do to bands that are called hostile. So do we."
The fire ticked. Somewhere outside a horse blew through its nose.
"He wants Eli dead," Wes said, "before anybody believes him."
"Yes."
"And if I take that book to Fort Custer myself—"
"Then you are a cowboy who rode for Pike, who drove the strays, who has a brother the agent calls a horse thief." Rides Far's voice was level. "Who do you think the soldiers will believe? You? Or the agent of the United States government, who writes very good letters?"
* * *