He dropped the rock and ran.
She was untying the mule when a voice said, "Mrs. Tolliver. A moment of your time."
Ambrose Whitcomb came down the steps of his bank with the light behind him. He was a tall man, soft at the middle, with pale gray eyes and a short beard trimmed to a point, and he moved as though the ground had been told he was coming. He had come out from Ohio in 1876 with eleven thousand dollars and a letter from a senator, and in five years had made himself the second most important fact in Cuervo Springs, after the mine. He held the paper on half the stores in the plaza and on the church, and he had paid for the bell and the schoolhouse and the band's instruments and the new iron cells in Cal Bedell's jail.
"I couldn't help overhearing," he said, in a lowered voice, as if they were conspirators together. "Pearl Ostrander has a good heart but no head. I'll speak to Hiram. You'll have your flour by tomorrow, I promise you, delivered."
"That's kind."
"It's nothing. It's what we owe each other." He glanced around the plaza and then back at her, and his gray eyes were full of sympathy, and she thought, he has practiced that in a glass. "I've been worried about you out there, alone. It isn't safe. A woman with no man on the place, and—forgive me—with the kind of men your husband knew still loose in those hills. They may think he left something behind. Money. Papers. They may come looking."
"Did he leave something behind, Mr. Whitcomb?"
"I'm sure I wouldn't know." He smiled. "But I would like to help you. The bank would be willing to take your place off your hands. The Archuleta parcel. Water rights and all. I could give you eight hundred dollars for it, which is more than it's worth, and a ticket on the cars from Las Vegas to wherever you have people. You could put all this behind you. Start fresh, among folks who don't know."
Eight hundred dollars was very nearly twice what the place was worth. She thought about that.
"I'll think on it," she said.
"Do. Don't think too long. Winter's coming." He touched his hat. "And Mrs. Tolliver—if you find anything among his things. Letters. A tally book. Anything with names in it. I'd urge you to bring it straight to me, and not to Sheriff Bedell, who is a good man but loose-mouthed. If there are names, there are dangerous men attached to them. I'd keep you clear of it."
"You're very thoughtful."