"Then Wren's not the one who forged it," Butch said. "He's just the one enforcing it. Somebody above him or beside him did the actual thieving and left Wren to carry the shame of it into every yard he rides into."
"Don't make Wren innocent," Ben said.
"No," Butch agreed. "It makes him useful, though, if we can show him the truth before he shows us the inside of a jail cell."
They made camp that night with more purpose than before. The job in Cottonwood Flats, the payroll, the quiet scouting, the plan they'd written into this county to execute had quietly become a second concern, trailing behind a larger one none of them had chosen, but all of them, in their own way, had agreed to carry.
Word travels faster on the outlaw trail than most lawmen like to admit. And by the third day, Cottonwood Flats knew that five armed strangers had been asking questions about the Anglo-Wyoming Cattle Company's land dealings. Some in town whispered the name Wild Bunch. Others were more specific and less accurate, claiming to have recognized Butch Cassidy himself buying coffee at the general store, which was true, though the woman telling it added details about his manner that owed more to newspaper serials than to the man himself.
Cyrus Wren felt the change first. His hired hands grew nervous. Sheriff Purdy, a heavy-set man who answered to a court order more readily than to rumor, saw no reason yet to reopen a matter already settled by a judge's writ.
"Order's an order," he told Ruth, not unkindly, but not moved either. "You've got until Friday to vacate peaceable, or I'll be obliged to make it otherwise."
Ruth said nothing. She had learned in three days that arguing with a paper accomplished less than arguing with weather.
That evening, Wren rode to the Hargrove ranch alone, which surprised everyone who later heard of it. He found Ben Kilpatrick sitting on the porch steps, of all places, examining a fence post with a knife.