Crowe's agent did not come sneaking into the camp at night, as Elias half expected. He came in the open, in the middle of a bright morning, riding a clean, well-fed horse and wearing a town coat that had never seen a day's honest work in the canyon, and he carried himself with the easy confidence of a man who believes that every person has a price and that his only task is to discover it. Behind him rode two company men, quiet and watchful, and in his saddlebag he carried a folded sheet of paper and a small leather pouch that clinked softly when he moved, as if coins were shifting against each other like secrets.
Iron Elk received him at the council fire ground, as courtesy required, and the camp gathered at a respectful distance, watching without crowding, the way people watch when they know that what happens next will matter for a long time. Ayasha stood beside Elias, her hand resting lightly on Night's bridle, her face calm. Nash stood a little behind them, his arms crossed, his eyes never leaving the agent's hands. Elder Hakan sat on a flat stone, his expression that of a man settling in to hear a story he already suspected he would not enjoy.
The agent dismounted, smiled a smile that did not reach his eyes, and spoke as if he were offering a favour rather than making a bargain. He said that the Lark Spur Land Company understood that Elias was a reasonable man, a man who had married into a difficult position, and that the company wished to make his position easier. All Elias need do was sign a simple form, acknowledging the company's interest in the canyon water and agreeing to act as its agent on the ground, and in return he would receive a share of the company's profits, enough money to build a fine house, to buy cattle, to live as a gentleman rather than as a labourer mending fences in a camp that was not, strictly speaking, his own town. The pouch, the agent said, tapping it lightly, contained the first payment, in good coin, ready to be counted here and now, before witnesses, so that there could be no doubt of the company's good faith.
For a moment there was silence, and Elias felt the full weight of the offer settle on him.
The two company men behind the agent shifted in their saddles, and one of them looked away toward the red peaks, as if even he did not enjoy watching a man's conscience being weighed in public. The pouch clinked again when the agent set it on a flat stone, deliberately, where everyone could see its size, and Elias understood that the display was part of the offer: money made visible, so that its absence afterward would feel like a loss. He kept his eyes on the agent's face instead, and on Ayasha's steady gaze beside him, and he let the silence stretch until it belonged to him rather than to the company. It was not a small sum. He could see, in his mind's eye, the house it would build, the ease it would buy, the end it would put to years of riding with dust in his shirt and a wound in his ribs and nothing to his name but a stopped watch and a horse. He thought of Missouri, of the discharge tent, of the hollow spring of 1865, and of how long he had wanted land that no one could take from him. The company was offering him land, after a fashion, and money, and a way out of the hard road he had chosen. All he had to do was sign.
And then he thought of Ayasha walking the creek with him, step by step, teaching him the springs and the seeps and the pools, and of Nash calling him brother before the whole camp, and of Little Elk's small hand holding his fingers on the bank, and of Iron Elk's council, which had debated his fate honestly and had still permitted him to ride to town with his wife beside him. He thought of the spring-house stone, cool under his palm, and of the old droughts, and of what would happen to the water if a company owned it and sold it by the measure to whoever could pay. He thought of his father, Thomas Whitlock, who had ridden west with a compass and a notebook and had vanished, and he wondered, with a sudden sharp ache, whether his father had ever been offered a price like this, and what answer he had given.
Elias stepped forward, and he took the paper from the agent's hand, and he held it up so that the council could see it. It was a blank company form, printed with the company's name and with lines for a signature and a date, and nothing else. It was not a deed. It was not, in itself, a forgery. It was a trap made of blankness, waiting for a man's name to give it power. Elias looked at it for a long moment, and then he looked at the agent, and then he looked at Ayasha, and her steady dark eyes told him everything he needed to know, though she said nothing at all.