Chapter 3

Tacy did not step back from the word.

"Then somebody lied to one of us," she said. "I mean to learn which."

Alva slid the ring into her apron pocket.

She did not tell the crew to put the stranger out.

By noon the wind had dropped to a long, flat push.

By the middle of the afternoon the foreman had Tacy down at the corral.

They ran the young stock through the chute one at a time.

Tacy stood at the rail and read each hide as it came by.

"D-Bar," she said. "D-Bar. D-Bar."

Then a rangy calf shouldered through and she put her hand up.

"Hold that one."

Shay dropped the gate behind it.

Tacy climbed in and ran her thumb across its flank.

"This one's yours too," she said. "Was."

"The bar's been filed down and burned over. Same as the hide this morning."

Shay crouched beside her in the muck.

He found the new scar sitting on the old one, a shade lighter.

"How many like this?" he said.

They worked the chute until the light went blue.

Nine D-Bar calves wearing a clumsy, crowded B.

Shay stood in the churned snow and said it out loud.

"He didn't drive these off to sell."

"He re-marked them right here and left them in our own herd."

"Count day comes, they're not ours anymore. On paper they're his."

"A man would need a hot fire and a quiet hour for that."

Tacy looked past him at the low building beside the barn.

"You've got a forge."

Shay didn't answer that.

He looked at the forge a long second, then away.

"Get inside," he said. "You've gone gray at the mouth."

Tacy went in through the kitchen door.

The cook pointed her down a back hall to hang her wet coat.

The hall ran narrow, and colder than the rest of the house.

A draft slid out from under the last door.

That door was shut, and a square of gray cloth was tacked over it, corner to corner.

Tacy stopped in front of it.

She laid her hand flat against the wood.

The cold came through it like an open window.

Something in her wanted to try the latch.

"That door stays shut."

Alva stood at the mouth of the hall with a lamp.

"What's in there?" Tacy said.

"Nothing that's yours to read."

Alva came down the hall slow.

She did not pull Tacy back.

She stepped past her and set one hand flat on the cold knob.

She did not turn it.

She bent her head to the wood and went still.

Like a woman listening for a sound from a cradle.