He was a man of fifty with a square gray beard and a good black coat and the courtly manners of somebody who had learned them later in life and was proud of them. He told her she was even more charming than Lyle had said, and she wondered when Lyle had said it. He sat on Amos's horsehair sofa with his hat on his knee and talked for half an hour about the beauty of the country and the hardness of the winters and the shame it was, the shame, that a lady should be left in such a position.
"I offered Amos eleven thousand dollars for the place in April," he said. "Cattle and range and buildings. He was thinking it over. I'll make you that same offer, Mrs. Hale, out of respect for him, though I'll tell you frankly the market's soft and I'd be within my rights to say ten. I could have the money in your hand inside of two weeks."
"That's very generous."
"It's neighborly." He smiled. "We're all neighbors out here, ma'am, or we don't last."
"How many head did you buy the Seven B with, Mr. Crane? When you came into the country?"
He blinked. "Why, about four hundred. Two years ago spring. Brought 'em up from the Platte."
"And how many do you run now?"
"Oh—" He laughed, and spread his hands. "A man doesn't like to count his cows out loud, Mrs. Hale. Bad luck. Like counting your children."
"I've been reading Amos's tally books," she said. "He was a careful man with a pencil. He counted every calf branded on this place for nineteen years. Six hundred and some calves the spring of 'eighty-two, and six hundred and forty in 'eighty-three. Four hundred and ten in 'eighty-five. Three hundred and eighty this spring. On the same cows. On the same grass. It was a good spring, Ab tells me. Rain in May."
"Wolves," said Crane, after a moment. "Winterkill. Rustlers, God knows. They're a curse on this whole country, Mrs. Hale. That's the very thing I'm telling you. A woman alone can't—"
"I'm not alone. I have five men and a cook." She stood, and he had to stand too. "Thank you for the chocolates, Mr. Crane. I'll think on your offer. I expect I'll be thinking on it about as long as Amos did."