"That's a damned lie," said Bannock.
He said it quietly, and he did not come any closer to the saddle. He stood ten feet off, with his hands loose at his sides, and the faces turned to him. "She done that herself," he said. "Last night. That's why the rig was gone off my wall. She sent the boy for it while we was in town, and she drove a nail in it, and smeared it with blood out of a beef she had Ab kill, and here she is." He spread his hands to the crowd, reasonable, sorry. "Look at it from her side, boys. She comes out here with nothing, from God knows where, and finds a ranch she can't run and a horse she's took a shine to, and a fair offer on the table she don't want to take. Who's going to say it wasn't her?"
There was a murmur. She heard it go through them and knew Eli had been right; she watched it go through Pratt's red face and settle there with relief.
"I'll say it," said Toby Rusk.
He had come out from the barn door. His voice cracked on the first word and he swallowed and said it again. "I'll say it. I seen him sew that seat. August the thirteenth, a Friday. He was on his bunk with the old man's saddle and an awl and a ball of waxed thread, and he told me not to say nothing to Mr. Pruett. And I didn't." He was crying now and did not seem to know it. "I didn't, and Mr. Pruett went and got killed."
"The boy's sweet on her," said Bannock. "Look at him."
"Then look at this," said Eli Truesdale.
He had got down from the buckboard. He took the ledger off Keogh's knee, gently, as if Keogh were too stunned to object, and opened it on the fence rail beside the saddle. "Mr. Keogh's day book," he said. "August second. One pound Ausable number six horseshoe nails. Charged to the Seven P account. Signed for, L. Bannock. There's not a horse on this place shod with Ausable nails, and never has been. I shoe 'em. Every one." He put his blunt finger on the nail head in the saddle. "That's an Ausable six."
"I bought nails," said Bannock. "So I bought nails. A ranch needs nails."
"Not those," said Eli.
Bannock looked at him. Something had come into his face at last, something she could take hold of. It was not fear. It was a kind of pale, astonished annoyance, as if a tool had turned in his hand.