"So it would be a day late."
"A day late is better than wrong." He leaned forward, wincing. "Mrs. Tolliver. Listen to me. You go home. You keep your door barred. You don't go near that ceremony, and you don't say a word about any of this to anybody, and on Sunday Frank Ruiz will walk into that bank and do it right. You understand me? You've done your part. You've done more than your part."
She set down the tin cup on the edge of the bed.
"Does he leave the territory, Marshal? Whitcomb?"
Sherwin was quiet a moment.
"Why do you ask?"
"Because he told half the plaza on Thursday that he's taking the cars from Las Vegas to Denver on the twenty-fourth to see the mine directors. And his wife is going east to her people in Cincinnati for the winter, with four trunks." She looked at him. "I don't suppose he packs his own trunks. But I suppose he could."
Sherwin swore again, softly.
"I won't be brave," Nora said. "I don't know how to be brave. I only know how to finish things. Eli started this, and I sewed him into it, and I'm going to see it finished. I'd rather do it with your help."
He looked at her a long time from the pillows. Then he took a sheet of paper from the pile, and his pen, and the ink bottle from the chair, and he began to write. He wrote for some time. He blotted it and read it over and signed it and folded it and wrote on the outside, To Sheriff C. Bedell, Cuervo Springs, and gave it to her, and then he took the leather-bound book and tore out the two pages of tens and twenties and folded those too and gave them to her.
"That letter tells Bedell who Eli was and what I'll stand to before any judge in the Territory," he said. "If Bedell's honest it'll be enough. If he isn't, it'll be nothing." He hesitated. "Has he got the star? Eli. Was it on him?"