He nodded. For a moment neither spoke. Then Nora said, "You should know I will not be grateful in the way men like gratitude. You stopped a crime. That does not make you our keeper."
"I am not asking to keep anyone," Drake said. The words came rough, honest. "I am asking how we finish what that paper started. Crowe will not quit because a banker pointed. He will find another room, another crowd, another day the sheriff is slow."
Ada rose from the bench. "Then we stay together. If one of us runs alone, Crowe only has to catch one. If we move as three, and you and the sheriff and Mr. Pike stay in the story, he has to fight a town that has finally looked at him."
It was the most Ada had said since the crate. Bess reached for her hand and held it.
Yates joined them with a folded note from Ruth Haver. "Line to Bridger is up. Clerk Meachem is 'indisposed.' Examiner wires he will send a man in four days. Four days is a long time in this town."
"Then we use four days," Nora said. "We gather every scrap that shows my father's hand. We put Ada and Bess under protection that is not only a locked boardinghouse. And we find who paid Meachem."
Drake looked west, toward the land he might already have lost, then back at the three women who refused to be livestock. "I can ride to Bridger faster than their man can ride here. If Meachem is hiding, he is hiding with paper. Paper burns. People talk."
Yates frowned. "You leave and Crowe claims you fled with stolen auction gold."
"The gold is under your seal," Drake said. "I leave with an empty duster and a letter from you saying why."
Nora met his eyes. "If you go, you go as witness for us, not as savior. We write the letter together. We say what we saw. We say the signature is false. We say the ordinance is being used for fraud. And when you come back, you come back to the same street—not ahead of us, not behind us. Beside."
Drake almost smiled. It did not quite reach. "Beside, then."