Aug. 17. Rode up through Crane's pasture by Whiskey Gap in the night. 7 of my cows in Crane's pen in the box canyon, P run into a B with a running iron. Fresh. Still scabbing. My earmark under the crop he put on top—overslope left, under-bit right—you can see it if you look. L.B. is the only man knew those cows were on the upper springs. Will ride to Ferris Friday & get Truesdale to come witness, & then to Rawlins to the Association. Have told L.B. I go to Rawlins for the bank. Do not want him to know. God forgive me if I'm wrong about him. I have known him 6 years.
There was nothing after that.
Josephine closed the book. Her hands had begun to shake now, finally, and she let them.
"Seven," she said. "That's what seven meant."
* * *
Toby rode to Ferris Crossing in the dark on a borrowed horse, by the back way, the one through the breaks that didn't pass the Elkhorn's front windows. He had orders to go to the back door of Truesdale's forge, and say nothing to anybody else, and if he saw Lyle Bannock, to turn around and come home.
Eli was in the yard of the Seven P a little before midnight. He came on a big Percheron-cross mare, not the mule, and he came fast.
She showed him by lantern light. He looked at the nail a long time without touching it. Then he took a little brass glass out of his vest pocket, the kind a jeweler might use, and bent close.
"Ausable," he said. "Out of New York. You can tell by the head, how it's swaged. I don't use 'em. I shoe with Putnams, always have, and Amos wouldn't have nothing else on his horses. But there's a keg of Ausable sixes in the back of Keogh's store in Ferris. He gets maybe one customer a year for 'em." He straightened up. "Keogh writes down everything. He's a Scotsman."
"Would he have written down who bought them?"
"He writes down who buys a penny's worth of horehound." Eli put the glass away. His face in the lantern light had gone very still, the way it had when the sorrel colt went up on its hind legs. "I'll see Keogh at first light. And there's a telegraph at the stage station. I'll wire the Association in Cheyenne and the sheriff in Rawlins both. Sheriff Dunmore's a hard man but he's not Crane's man. If he rides tonight he could be here by—" He calculated. "By tomorrow sundown. Not noon."