CHAPTER 1 — AT THE DAVIS PLACE
He woke before light.
The room was cold and the woman beside him was breathing slow. He lay a while watching the dark above him before he turned his head to look at her. Her hair lay across the pillow and the pillow had the smell of her hair in it. He did not touch her. He listened to the house. The wind that had pulled at the eaves all night had gone down sometime before he woke and the silence after it was the silence of a house that had been still for longer than he had been awake.
He rose without sound and dressed in the dark. His clothes were laid out on the chair the way she had set them and he put them on in the order a man does when he has done a thing many times. Shirt. Trousers. The wool socks she had darned at the heel last week. He carried his boots to the kitchen and set them by the door and built up the fire in the stove and put the coffee on.
When he went outside the sky in the east had started to gray.
* * *
The horse was in the small paddock behind the house. He carried the saddle out across the yard and the horse came to the rail and put his head over and Walker rubbed the place between his eyes and stood with him a minute before he opened the gate. He brushed him down and saddled him and led him into the yard and tied him to the post by the kitchen door.
Mason came up from the barn at the back of the place.
"Walker."
"Mason."
"It is early."
"I am riding."
"Yeah."
Mason had been on the place since the day Walker had come west with the wagon and Anna and the girl six months pregnant in another town. Mason had been there before Walker bought the place. Walker had bought the place with Mason on it. The arrangement had been understood from the first morning and had not been spoken of in the eight years since.
"Three days out," Walker said. "Three back. Some part of a week on the other end."
"All right."
"You hold the place."
"I will hold it."
"Anna will tell you what she needs."
"She will."
"All right then."
Mason did not move toward the kitchen. He stood at the post and laid his hand on the horse's neck and looked at the country south of the place where the wagon road bent away from the gate.
"Marshal."
"Yeah."
"You ride careful."
"I will."
* * *
He went back into the house. He cleaned the rifle at the table.
He had cleaned it the night before and he cleaned it again. He laid the parts out on a piece of muslin and did the work without thinking about it. The light from the stove caught in the oil. When he was done he put the rifle in its scabbard and he set the scabbard by the door with the boots.
The warrant was folded in his coat pocket. He had not taken it out since the rider had given it to him.
That had been yesterday in the early afternoon. The rider had come up the wagon road from the south and Anna had seen him pass from the kitchen window. The rider had handed Walker a sealed envelope and waited while Walker read it and then taken his receipt and ridden back the way he had come without dismounting. The whole business had lasted less time than it took Anna to walk out from the house. By the time she got to the barn Walker was already checking the bridle.
She had asked him only one thing.
"How long."
"Three days out," he had said. "Three back. Some part of a week on the other end."
She had nodded and gone in to start the bread.
* * *
He was at the table with his coffee when she came down.
She wore the dress she taught school in and her hair was pinned the way she pinned it for the children. She did not look at him for a moment. She went to the stove and laid her hand on it the way she always did and then she took down the skillet and broke three eggs into it and stood with her back to him while they cooked.
"Rose is up."
"I heard."
"She wanted to come down before you went."
"Let her."
Anna turned the eggs and slid them onto the plate and brought the plate to the table and set it in front of him. She put her hand on his shoulder for the length of a breath and then she took it away and went back to the stove for her own coffee.
Rose came down the stairs in her nightdress with her hair loose. She was six. She stopped at the foot of the stairs and looked at her father and her father looked at her.
"You are leaving."
"I am."
"For how long."
"A while."
She came across the floor to him in her bare feet and stood by his chair. He set down his fork and lifted her up onto his knee. She put her hand flat against his chest and felt for what he carried there the way she had seen her mother do and finding it she looked up at him.
"You will come back."
"Yes."
She studied him a moment longer and then she put her head against his shoulder and stayed there. He held her with one arm and ate one-handed and Anna stood by the stove and watched them and did not speak.
After a while Rose lifted her head.
"Father."
"Yeah."
"What is the work."
"It is not work to talk about."
"All right."
She did not ask again. She had asked it the way a child asks a thing she has been told once that she will be told again. He held her until he had finished his coffee and then he set her down and she went to her mother and Anna gave her a piece of bread with butter on it and she sat at the bench by the window and ate it slow.
* * *
He saddled up in the gray light of the yard.
She came out onto the porch with Rose holding to her dress. She had put a wool coat over her shoulders. She did not come down the steps.
He led the horse out into the open and turned and looked back at her. The light was coming up behind the house and her face was in shadow and he could not see what she was thinking. He knew what she was thinking.
"Walker."
"Yeah."
She held his eyes a moment.
"Three days out."
"Yeah."
"Three back."
"Yeah."
"Do not make it longer."
"I will not."
She nodded once and that was all. He swung up into the saddle and the horse turned under him and he held it a moment looking at her and at the girl and at the house behind them. Rose lifted her hand. He touched the brim of his hat. Then he turned the horse and rode out across the yard and through the gate and onto the wagon road that ran south toward Marble.
He did not look back.
* * *
He rode an hour before the sun cleared the rim of the country and when it did he was already down in the long grass beyond the rise and the house was no longer in sight behind him. Mason would be at the gate.
Mason would stay at the gate until the sound of the horse had gone out of the country. Mason had done that the morning Walker had ridden out with the wagon to fetch the seed and the morning Walker had ridden out to fetch the lumber for the new corral and the morning two springs ago that Walker had ridden out to chase a man into the country east who had taken three of the cattle. Mason did it when he had nothing else to do that the country would let him do at that hour.
Walker thought about Mason at the gate. He thought about Anna at the porch. He thought about Rose at her mother's dress.
The warrant was in his coat. The badge was in his pocket beside it.
He had carried neither of them before.