"No," Butch agreed. "But he might believe an out-of-sequence deed book, an expired notary commission, and a cousin nobody in this county quite trusts. We don't need him to believe us. We need him to look."
Friday came gray and cold, the first true edge of autumn settling over Cottonwood Flat. By 9:00 in the morning, a crowd had gathered outside the sheriff's office, drawn less by the eviction itself than by the rumor that had spread through town overnight that the Wild Bunch intended to be there when it happened.
Sheriff Purdy stood on the boardwalk, hand resting near his belt, flanked by two deputies who looked far less certain of their morning than he did. Wren arrived by buggy, the same gray coat, the same stiff bearing, though something in his face had shifted since Ben's conversation on the porch steps.
Butch rode in at the head of the other four, unhurried, hands visible, hat tipped back enough that anyone in the crowd could see his face plainly. It was, Sundance thought, exactly the entrance a man made when he wanted to be recognized rather than feared into silence.
"Mr. Wren," Butch said, dismounting. "We'd like a word in front of the town before this business goes any further."
"You have no standing here," Purdy said.
"I've got a deed recorded 5 months after its own date, slipped into the county book out of its proper order, notarized by a man whose commission had lapsed before he ever swore to it," Butch said, loud enough for the boardwalk and the street both to hear. "That's more standing than most men bring to a sheriff's office, Sheriff."
Murmurs moved through the crowd. Carver produced Halloran's account of the deed book, written out and signed the night before, and Ruth's letter alongside it, and handed both to Wren directly rather than to the sheriff. A small choice, deliberate, putting the decision in the hands of the man who could still choose to look honestly at it.
Wren read them in silence. Whatever pride had kept him steady through four days of a stranger's questions seemed for a moment to leave him entirely.