June went pale under her freckles. Mara's face did not change, but her hand tightened on a fence post until her knuckles went white, and Elias saw the saw scar across her left palm stand out against her skin.
We know, Mara said quietly. "We heard them, two nights ago. The horses screaming, the rails breaking. We barred the door and waited with the rifle until morning. In the morning, this was what was left."
And you told no one? Elias asked.
Who would we tell? June said. "Cedar Hollow is fourteen miles south, and the sheriff has a whole county to ride. And what would we say? That someone broke our fence in the night? We have no proof of who."
You have proof enough for a man who reads sign, Elias said. "And you have a reason to be afraid of the next night they choose. Because men who break a fence once, to frighten, will break it again, to see if the fright took."
Mara studied him. "You talk like a man who has seen this kind of work before."
I have, Elias said. "Cattle men who want a valley will first make the people in it feel alone in it. A broken fence is cheaper than a fight, and it works almost as well. The horses get nervous. The women get tired. The garden gets trampled. One day the offer to buy comes again, and it sounds less like robbery and more like rest."
June stared at him. "How did you know about an offer to buy?"
I didn't, Elias said honestly. "I guessed. There's a pattern to it. Is there a neighbor to the east who wants this creek?"
Mara hesitated, and Elias saw the pride in her wrestle with the truth. Pride won for a moment, and then truth won, because Mara Ellison was not a woman who lied to herself for long.
Royce Kline, she said. "Bar K Ranch, six miles east. He offered to buy the homestead after our father died last winter. A pittance. I refused. He said the valley was too much for two women to hold. I told him we were holding it fine."
And then your fence broke, Elias said.
And then our fence broke, Mara agreed.
At the cabin door, Mara stopped. "You said you mend fences," she said. "What do you want for it? We have some money, not much. We have credit at the store in Cedar Hollow. We can pay in work or in kind, but we won't be beholden to a stranger."
Elias looked at the cabin, at the garden, at the two sisters standing side by side in the evening light, tired and proud and afraid in a way they would never admit, and he heard himself say something he had not planned to say. It came out plain and steady, the way true things sometimes do when a man has stopped thinking about how they will sound.
I'll fix your fence for free… But I have one condition: tonight, I'll sleep between the two of you.
The silence that followed was complete. Even June, who always had something to say, said nothing. A jay called from the pines, sharp and scolding, and the gate at the valley mouth creaked in the wind.
Mara's face went very still. June's mouth opened, and then closed, and then opened again.
Explain that, Mara said, and her voice was cold enough to cut. "Explain it before I tell you to ride out of this valley and not come back."
Elias held up one hand, palm open, and kept his voice level. He had expected this, and he deserved it, and he knew he had perhaps a minute to make himself understood before the door closed on him for good.
I mean it as protection, not as anything else, he said. "I found fresh sign at the fence, and fresh sign at the creek. Boot prints, from last night, not the night of the break. Whoever did this has come back to look. They will come again after dark, because dark is when fences get broken and people get frightened. If I sleep on the floor of your cabin, between your beds and the door, with my rifle in reach and the door barred, then any man who comes through that door in the night has to come through me first. That is the whole of it. I am offering you my body between you and the door. Nothing more. Nothing else."
June let out a breath she had plainly been holding. Mara did not relax, but the coldness in her eyes changed into something else: a hard, considering look, as if she were turning his words over to see if they had a false bottom.
That is a strange offer, she said.
It is, Elias admitted. "It is also the honest one. I could mend your fence by daylight and ride away, and sleep sound under the stars, and you would sleep here listening for hoofbeats. I don't care to do that. Not after seeing the sign."
And why should we trust you? Mara asked. "You are a stranger. You rode in today. For all we know, you could be one of Kline's men, come to look the place over."
For all you know, I could be, Elias said. "You have my word, and my horse, and my name, and nothing else. That is thin, I know. But you can keep my revolver by your bed tonight if it eases you, and I will sleep with only my rifle, and the door barred from the inside, by your hand, not mine."