Chapter 7

"Emmeline," she said.

Tacy didn't move.

Nobody had called her anything but Tacy in twenty-four years.

Alva's hand stayed light against her cheek, as if she were testing whether it was warm.

Then it closed, and she pulled Tacy up off the boards.

"Get some sleep," she said. "We ride at first light."

The freeze held the road hard by first light.

Alva drove the wagon into Long Fork before the bell struck eleven.

Tacy sat beside her with the letter folded in her coat.

The courthouse steps were already crowded with men come to buy.

A pine table stood on the top step.

The bank's man sat behind it with the note and an inkpot.

The auctioneer waited beside him, a list in his hand.

The district judge stood in the courthouse doorway to see the sale done lawful.

Nailed to the door was the bill: the D-Bar - land, water, and stock - at noon.

Shay waited at the foot of the steps with the wrapped iron under his arm.

"Train's in," he said low. "She's coming up the street. Slow as church."

Alva looked once down the street, then climbed the steps.

The courthouse bell struck twelve.

The auctioneer read the bill aloud.

"The D-Bar Ranch, by order of the court, for the debt owed the bank."

"We'll open with the land and the water right."

Alva raised her hand before any man could bid.

"Before you sell it, hear what was done to it."

She nodded, and Shay came up the steps.

He set the iron on the pine table and pulled back the grain sack.

"This is a D-Bar iron," he said. "Filed down and cut into a B."

"Somebody's burned the ranch's own calves with it for a year."

The recorder had come out of his office with the brand book.

"There's no B filed in this county," he said. "I checked it Thursday myself."

"That's a thief's mark. Not a lawful brand."

A low murmur ran through the men on the steps.

The bank's man set down his pen.

"That's work for the sheriff," he said. "Not for this table."

"The note's still owed. The ranch still failed to pay it."

"The sale goes on."

Alva put both palms flat on the pine table.

"Then count the stock before you sell it."

"A year of D-Bar calves carried that B and stayed in our own pasture."

"Your bill prices this ranch against a herd a thief has been thinning since last fall."

The recorder set the brand book down beside the iron.

"Every critter wearing that mark was D-Bar born and D-Bar fed," he said.

"Your bill's short a year of calves."

The men on the steps had stopped talking.

The bank's man looked at the judge.

The judge came down one step into the cold.

"The stock's off this sale," he said. "I'll not sell cattle on a count that's been robbed."

"The land and the water right stand as posted."

Alva stepped back from the table.

The auctioneer cleared his throat and lifted his list again.

"The land and water right of the D-Bar," he called. "Who'll open?"

A man in a town coat lifted two fingers.

"Four thousand," the auctioneer said. "I have four. Who'll give me five?"

Tacy's hands were fists in her coat pockets.

The town man raised his hand again.

"Five," the auctioneer said. "I have five, right here."

Then a thin voice carried up from the street.

"Stop selling that land."

The men on the steps turned.

A tiny woman in a black shawl stood at the bottom.

White hair, a carpetbag, hands like paper.

Shay came up behind her and carried the bag.

She took the first step, then the next, holding the rail.

Alva went down two steps and took her arm the rest of the way.

The small woman reached the top and faced the bank's man.

"My name's Dollie Frain," she said. "Of Ranlow."

"I was the midwife at the D-Bar in the winter of sixty-two."

She set one hand flat on the pine table beside the iron.

"The county book says a Deighton child died in my hands that winter."

She drew a breath that shook.

"She didn't."

The auctioneer lowered his list.