"In fact," Eleanor continued, raising her voice just enough for every man on the boardwalk to hear, "I have been spending the last two days examining the interest accounts on certain promissory notes held against the Crowley estate. It is remarkable what a woman can learn when she knows how to subtract twelve from twenty-four, Mr. Rourke."
Silas Rourke’s smirk vanished instantly. His hand, holding the cup of cider, tightened until his knuckles went white.
Abigail gasped, looking between Eleanor and her brother. "What... what insolence! How dare you—"
"I dare," Eleanor said, stepping past Abigail without giving her another glance, "because my children eat bread bought with my own labor, Mrs. Rourke. Which is more than can be said for those who live on the blood of this valley."
She walked toward the livery stable without looking back.
Behind her, the boardwalk was dead silent. Silas Rourke did not say a word. He stood by the door of his store, his small hazel eyes narrowed into two slits of pale, murderous calculation, watching Eleanor Pierce disappear into the shadowed interior of Higgins’s barn.
When Eleanor returned to the ranch that afternoon, she found Nathan in the kitchen, stripping the grease from the cylinder of his Colt with a rag soaked in kerosene.
Martha was kneading bread at the table, while Henry sat by the hearth with a slate on his knees, practicing his long division. Little Samuel was nowhere to be seen; Henry reported that one of the hands had taken him down to the lower barn to watch the roan filly learn how to nurse from a bucket.
Eleanor set her packages of ink and paper on the table, took off her coat, and walked straight into the study.
Nathan followed her. He stood in the doorway, a piece of oily cloth still in his fingers.
"Zeb told me what happened outside Rourke's," he said.
Eleanor didn't look up. She sat in the walnut chair and began uncorking the fresh ink.
"Zeb talks too much."
"He said you told half the town that Silas was a thief."
"I told them I knew how to subtract," she corrected him. "If Silas Rourke took that as an accusation of theft, his own conscience must have supplied the definition."
Nathan let out a low, gravelly sound that was half-chuckle, half-growl. "You're playing with a timber rattlesnake, Eleanor. Silas has held this county by the throat for twenty years. He owns the sheriff, he owns the judge in Rawlins, and he holds the mortgages on three-quarters of the outfits between here and the Wind River canyon."
"Then why hasn't he taken you?" she asked, turning her chair to face him. "You owe him twenty thousand dollars. The deadline is tomorrow at noon. If he has the law in his pocket, why hasn't he brought the sheriff out here to nail a notice to your gate?"
Nathan’s jaw tightened. "Because he wants me to sign it over quietly. If he forecloses through the court in Rawlins, the land has to go to a public auction. It has to be advertised in the territorial gazette. Other cattlemen might bid on it. The railway might take an interest. But if I sign a voluntary quitclaim deed to settle the note, the land goes straight to Silas without a single word being printed in the papers."
Eleanor leaned back in the chair. Her eyes were bright with a fierce, analytical light.
"He wants the North Pasture," she whispered. "He doesn't want the auction because he doesn't want anyone looking at the rocks. He needs you broke, he needs you panicked, and he needs you to believe that giving him those five hundred acres is the only way you keep your cattle."
Nathan walked to the desk, resting his palms on the wood, leaning down until his face was barely two feet from hers.
"So what do we do?" he asked. "The money is due tomorrow at twelve o'clock. I have four thousand dollars in the safe. I could sell five hundred steers to the reservation agent, but the snow is five feet deep in the pass; they'd die before they reached the railhead. I can't raise twenty thousand dollars by noon tomorrow, Eleanor. Not unless I rob a train."
"You don't need twenty thousand dollars," she said, her voice dropping into a thrilling, conspiratorial whisper.
Nathan frowned. "What are you talking about?"
"A man who is hunting deer doesn't shoot until the deer stands still," she said, her hands smoothing the green felt of the desk pad. "Silas thinks you are desperate. He thinks I am your mistress, that you are spending your last dollars keeping me warm, and that your pride is hanging by a single thread. He is expecting you to ride into town tomorrow with your head down, ready to sign whatever paper he shoves across the counter."
"I'd rather die," Nathan growled.
"Exactly!" she said, her eyes flashing. "And that is what will destroy you! If you fight him like a bull, he will use the law to break your neck. You must fight him like a fox, Nathan."