I don't have land for sale, Gideon said. Didn't think you necessarily did. Just wanted to ask. The man, Croft, he was sure of it, smiled easily. The valley is beautiful country.
I can see why people settle here. It's cold country, Gideon said. Not everyone handles that. Oh, I don't mind the cold. The easy smile again.
I go where the work takes me. Gideon looked at him for one more moment, reading what he could, and then he turned back to his list and let Ben Aldrich fill the order. And he heard Croft say a pleasant goodbye to Ben and leave the store. And he stood at that counter with his list in his hand and thought carefully about what he'd just seen. Croft had made him.
That was clear. The land sale story was the cover he'd been carrying in case he ran into Gideon directly. It was a good cover, plausible, nothing you could call a lie to his face. He'd used it without hesitation, which meant he'd prepared it, which meant he'd known coming into this store that there was a reasonable chance Gideon would be here. He'd been watching the ranch, possibly for days through the storm.
Gideon finished his order, loaded the wagon, and drove home with the information sitting in his chest like a stone. He told Vivien that evening after Elsie was in bed. He told it plainly what Croft looked like, what he'd said, how he'd handled the encounter. He watched her face while he talked and saw her absorb it and saw the specific quality of her stillness that he now recognized as her processing something she'd already half expected. "He knows where we are," she said.
"He's known for a while the station, the letters to you. " He paused. He's been gathering information. Sims thinks he might be here to get the documents, not just report your location. Her eyes went to the door of her room where the trunk was. We need to move it, Gideon said.
Where? He thought about this on the ride home. The root cellar. There's a section at the back behind the shelving that Dale helped me build 3 years ago. He and I are the only two people who know about it.