She had understood exactly how it would look. That was the whole trouble.
Tomás dug. The ground was hard for a foot and then turned to red clay that came up on the blade in slabs. Nora did not watch the fence. She watched the old man's back, and the mule, and a raven tipping on the wind over the arroyo, until her eyes had no room left for anything else.
When the hole was deep enough, Tomás climbed out and wiped his face. He looked at the box and then at her, and then, without a word, he went to the fence.
"Señor Ostrander," he said, quite politely. "It is heavy. For two men it is heavy."
Hiram Ostrander looked at his boots. Nobody moved. Out on the plaza a dog barked twice and stopped.
"I'll take the foot of it," Nora said.
"Señora, no."
"I carried him in my arms when he was alive and fevered and weighed more than this," she said. "I'll take the foot of it."
So they did it together, the old Mexican and the outlaw's widow, with ropes looped under the box, and they let him down crooked because her arms were not strong enough and the rope burned through her gloves, and the box struck the bottom with a sound she would hear afterward at strange hours for the rest of her life. Then she stood at the edge of the hole with her palms stinging, and she looked at the fence.
Ambrose Whitcomb took off his hat. It was a courteous gesture and it was the cruelest thing anyone did that day, because it was done for the others to see.
"Mrs. Tolliver," he said, in that warm, unhurried voice he used for widows and depositors. "The Lord sorts the wheat from the tares. Not us. I hope you will remember that you have friends in this town who do not hold a woman to account for her husband's choices."
There was a murmur along the fence, approving.