"Then he'll be late," said Josephine.
Eli looked at her.
"Deputy Pratt is going to come out here at noon tomorrow and shoot my horse," she said. "With a paper signed by six men who are all, I'd venture, either Silas Crane or in debt to him. And Lyle Bannock is going to stand there and watch it done, and be sorry about it, and then go on doing whatever he's been doing on my upper range. And there is nothing on God's earth that stops it except what's on this rack." She put her hand on the saddle. "So tomorrow at noon I'm going to show it to them. All of them. In front of everybody. Before Mr. Tillery puts his foot in that stirrup."
"Lyle will say you done it yourself."
"I expect he will."
"He'll say a widow woman hard up for money cooked up a lie to hold onto a ranch she can't run. Pratt'll believe him because Pratt wants to. Some of the others will too." He said it without any heat, as a man reckons the weight of a load. "And then he'll know you know. And there'll be nothing between you and him but a deputy who's bought and paid for and an old man with one arm."
"And you," she said.
He was quiet. The wind moved the lantern flame. In the round corral, Gideon came up to the rail and put his head over it, and blew softly at the two of them, and Eli put out his scarred hand without looking and the horse laid his muzzle in it.
"And me," Eli said.
* * *
At first light she rode him.