The morning after Deke Marlow rode out, June Ellison saddled her mare before the sun had cleared the eastern hill, and she did it quietly, the way a person does a thing she knows she should not do and has already decided to do anyway. Mara was in the garden with her back turned, pulling the last of the beans before the heat, and Elias was down at the far fence line with his tools, walking the ground Deke had learned too well. June told herself she was only going to look. She told herself she was only going to ride as far as the ridge where a person could see the Bar K roofs, and that looking was not the same as going. But the mare knew the road east, and June's anger knew it better, and by the time the cabin was out of sight behind her, looking had become going, and going had become a straight, hard ride toward the place where Royce Kline kept his men and his lies.
She had not slept. Deke had eaten at their table and carried a charcoal drawing of Elias's fence plan out of their barn like a thief carries silver. June could still see the scrap in Elias's hand, the handwriting half-finished, and hear Mara's voice understanding what it meant: Kline now knew where the fence was weakest, where the creek pasture dipped, where a man could come through in the dark. June had wanted, all night, to put her fury somewhere it could be answered. The fence could not answer. Kline could.
The trail east ran through dry grass and scattered oak, and the morning light came slanting through it in long gold bars. The mare's hooves kicked up dust that smelled of sage and hot stone. June rode with her jaw set and her light brown hair coming loose from its braid, and she rehearsed what she would say to Kline until the words felt sharp enough to cut. She would tell him that the Ellisons were not frightened girls to be driven off their father's land. She would tell him that Deke's spying had failed, that they knew, that the sheriff would know. She would tell him to leave them alone, and she imagined saying it standing straight in his yard, with his men watching, so that he could not pretend afterward that no one had spoken plainly to him. It was a good speech. It was the kind of speech a person makes when she is twenty-four and furious and has not yet learned that some men do not listen to speeches, and that a yard full of armed men is not a courtroom.
The Bar K gate came into view sooner than she expected, or perhaps she had ridden faster than she meant to. It was a heavy gate of rough timber between two posts, and beyond it the ranch yard lay flat and dusty, with the long bunkhouse and the main house and the corrals where cattle shifted and lowed. A man stood at the gate before she reached it, as if he had been waiting for someone, and June knew him at once from Mara's description and from the night the gate at home had been smashed. Jeb Carver was broad and loud even in stillness, his hat tipped back, a rifle held loose across his body in a way that was meant to look casual and did not. He stepped into the middle of the trail and raised one hand.
That's far enough, girl, he said.
June pulled the mare up short. Dust settled around them. Her heart was beating so hard she could feel it in her throat, but she lifted her chin, because she had rehearsed this part too.
I've come to speak to Mr. Kline, she said. "Tell him June Ellison is here, and she has something to say to his face."
Jeb laughed, a short sound with no humor in it. "Mr. Kline don't take callers from the Ellison place. Especially not little sisters riding out alone to make speeches."
I am not little, June said, and her voice shook only a little. "And I am not afraid of you."
Then you're a fool, Jeb said, and he lifted the rifle, not quite aiming it, but bringing it up so that the barrel crossed her path and the threat in it was plain. "Turn that horse around. Ride home. Tell your sister Kline says the valley will be his by winter, one way or another, and tell your drifter that the next man who comes nosing around Bar K won't be turned back with words."
June stared at him. The speech she had rehearsed fell apart in her mouth. She saw, suddenly and clearly, what she had done: she had ridden alone, unarmed except for a small knife in her boot, into the yard of the man who had already sent men through her fence in the night, and she had given him exactly what he wanted, which was proof that the Ellison sisters could be frightened, or foolish, or both. Her hands were shaking on the reins. Her pride, which had carried her all the way here like a strong wind, went out of her all at once, and what was left underneath it was fear, cold and plain.
She turned the mare. She did not look back, though she felt Jeb's eyes on her back all the way to the bend in the trail, and she did not let herself cry until the Bar K gate was out of sight and the trail had narrowed again between the oaks. Then the tears came, hot and humiliating, and she rode with her face wet and her shoulders shaking, angry at Kline and at Jeb and most of all at herself, for having mistaken anger for courage and for having left Mara and Elias to worry.