And conflating them is exactly what they want you to do. If you close back down because of this, you're doing their work for them. He looked at her. Roy is sending a wire to a land agent in Billings, she said. A man named Croft to check the status of the Northeast filings.
He was very still. You know about the Northeast section. Roy told me, I asked him, "Was that wrong? " He looked at the desk for a moment. Something crossed his face that she couldn't entirely read gratitude maybe and something more complicated underneath it. No, he said it wasn't wrong.
Good. She picked up her water glass. Then tell me what's in those ledgers. He looked at her for a long moment. Then he opened the top drawer of his desk.
They spent 2 hours going through documents. William was methodical and careful the way he was about everything. He pulled records named dates explained the original homestead filings in terms that Clara, who had no background in land law but a good mind for how documents worked, could follow. She asked questions. He answered them twice.
She caught something he'd glossed over a date discrepancy, a signature that looked slightly different from the ones around it. And when she pointed them out, his expression tightened in a way that told her she had found something real. This one, she said, holding a transfer document from 1871. The registration number doesn't match the series. Look, every other document from this period uses a five-digit number starting with four.
This one has six digits starting with seven. William took the paper. He looked at it for a long moment. I've had these documents for 8 years, he said. I know.
I've looked at them a dozen times. You were looking for content, she said. I was looking at form. It's what teachers do. We notice when things don't follow the pattern.
He set the document down very carefully. If this is forged, he said, then the 1871 transfer is invalid, which means the claim on the northeast parcel could be challenged by someone who had filed an alternate claim, she said quietly in a territorial office somewhere. He looked at her. "How much of this did Margaret see? " Clara asked. "More than I knew," he said.
"The room was very quiet. " "William," she said. He looked up. It was the first time she had used his name directly to his face in a room that was just the two of them, and it landed differently than it had in the schoolhouse. She saw him register it. "This isn't your fault," she said.
You didn't forge that document. Someone did. And finding it now, that's the thing that matters. He was looking at her with an expression she had not seen on him before. Open in a way he usually wasn't unguarded in a way that seemed to cost him.
I owe you an apology, he said. You've apologized. Not for this, not for He stopped. I brought you into something. You came here for a new beginning and instead you've spent 3 weeks managing a problem I created.
I came here for a life. She said lives have problems in them. That's not a revelation. Clara. She stood up.
Don't make this smaller than it is by apologizing for it. Deal with the problem. That's what I'd like you to do. He stood as well. They were closer than they usually stood.
She had stepped back from the desk and he had leaned toward it and the resulting geometry had brought them within arms reach of each other which was near enough that she was aware of it in a way she was not usually aware of space. I'm going to ride to Billings tomorrow. He said talk to Croft myself. Good. I'd like he stopped.
What? I'd like you to stay in Cedar Falls until I'm back. Not go anywhere alone. She raised an eyebrow. I've been going places alone since I was 11 years old.
I know that. His voice was very even. I'm asking you anyway. She looked at him for a moment. I have a school to run, she said.
I'm not going to stop doing that. I'm not asking you to stop. I'm asking you not to. A breath. If Gerald Alcott comes near you again, send for Roy.
All right, she said. He nodded. He picked up his hat from the desk. I'll walk you back, he said. It's a long walk.
I know how long it is. She let him walk her back. They were halfway to Cedar Falls when it happened. A rider came fast from the north. One of the ranch hands, a young man named Cole, who pulled up his horse hard enough to throw dust and said breathless, "Mr.
Carter, there's a woman at the gate. She says she's she says you'll know who she is. She says her name is Margaret. The air between them changed. Clara felt it before she saw a shift in William beside her.
Something that went from warmth to stone in the space of a breath. He didn't look at Clara. Tell Hayes to hold her at the gate, he said. I'll be back within the hour. Cole rode off.
William stood still for a moment. Then he looked at Clara. She looked back at him. You don't have to explain, she said. I know I don't.
He was watching her face with great attention. I want to then explain later. Go handle it. Clara, go. She said, I know the road back.
I'll be fine. He held her gaze for one more moment. Something moved in his eyes. Something urgent and unfinished. Then he turned and went.
She watched him ride back toward the ranch. She stood on the trail for a moment in the long evening light. She thought, "I am not afraid. " She was almost surprised to find it was true. And Margaret Alcott was smaller than Clara had imagined her. She found this out because she did not go back to Cedar Falls.
She told herself she was going to. She walked 30 yards down the trail and then she stopped because she was not when pressed. A woman who walked away from things she needed to see. She turned around. She came back to the ranch gate in time to see the woman standing inside it.
Small was the word, slender, dark-haired, a face that was genuinely beautiful in the composed, arranged way of women who have learned to use beauty as an instrument. She was dressed for an impression traveling clothes, but good ones recently pressed. She had the look of a woman who had planned this arrival. William was standing 10 ft away with Hayes and Roy flanking him, and his face was a closed door. Margaret was speaking.