"Get out," he said. "Please."
She laid the letter on the corner of his desk, under the edge of the feed company calendar, where he would have to see it every time he looked up.
"You'll want to read it before Saturday," she said. "But that's your lookout."
She went out. She did not look back to see whether he picked it up.
From the jail she walked across the plaza to the bank. It was cool and dim behind the iron shutters, with a walnut counter and brass grilles and a big Hall's safe open at the back like a black iron mouth. Dell Harlan was at the first window, a thin, neat man with pomaded hair who looked at you over his spectacles as though you had brought something in on your shoe. He was to get the biggest share of the reward, people said, for having fired the fatal shot.
"Mrs. Tolliver," he said.
"I'd like to close my account."
He looked at her over the spectacles. Then he went and got the ledger and ran his finger down it and came back.
"Sixty-four dollars and twenty cents."
"I'll take it in paper, please, Mr. Harlan. Gold's heavy in a reticule."
He counted it out: a twenty, three tens, two fives, four silver dollars, two dimes. The paper was new and stiff and slid against itself with a dry sound like leaves. She did not look at it. She folded it into her reticule and signed the ledger in a steady hand and thanked him and went out.