The hands came in to supper with their hair wet down and their eyes everywhere but on her. There was Corley with his arm strapped up in a flour-sack sling. There was a heavy, slow, pink-faced German they called Dutch. There was a boy of fifteen or so named Toby Rusk, all wrists and Adam's apple, who said "Ma'am" every time he passed her anything and turned red to the ears. And there was Bannock, who sat at the head of the table where she supposed Amos had sat, and then, after a moment's thought, got up and moved down one place and left the chair empty.
She noted it. She noted, too, that the others watched him do it.
"I'll tell you plain how it stands, Mrs. Hale," he said, after Ab had put down the pie, "because I think you're a woman would rather have it plain. This is a good little outfit. Water's the best thing about it. Sage Creek runs all year and there's three springs on the upper place never go dry. Good grass. But it's eleven hundred head on a range that wants two men more than it's got, and winter's coming, and you're—" He stopped and looked at her hands. They were not soft hands, but he did not know that yet. "You're from Missouri," he finished.
"Boonville," she said. "Cooper County."
"Well, this ain't Cooper County."
"I'd noticed."
Toby laughed, and choked on it, and Bannock let it go by. "Point is, there's a man up the creek, Silas Crane, runs the Seven B. He's been wanting this water since he come into the country. He made Amos an offer last spring and Amos was thinking on it. I expect he'd make you the same one, and it's a fair one. You could go back home with money in a bank and not have to spend one winter out here learning what forty below does to a body."
"That's kind of you to think of," Josephine said. "Amos didn't mention Mr. Crane's offer in his letter."
There was a small quiet. "Letter?" said Bannock.
"He wrote me in July. After Mr. Haskell told him Will had died." She folded her napkin. "It was a kind letter. He said there was a home here if I wanted it. He said it would all come to me by and by, and he'd rather it came to someone who'd care for it than to the first fellow with a checkbook. Those were his words. I don't think he was thinking of selling to anybody."
"Old men change their minds."