I'd seen it when he sold our father's quarter horse for less than it was worth because a buyer had shown up on a day when Denton was restless. She looked up when I came in. Brown eyes steady, not particularly warm and not cold either, just level. She had dark hair pinned up in a gray dress that had been pressed before the journey and wasn't anymore. She was younger than I'd expected, maybe 26, 27, with fine bones and a jaw that was set just a little tighter than it needed to be.
She was holding herself together. That's the best way I can say it. Like she was holding something from spilling. Nora, Denton said, "This is my brother Caleb." I said hello, and she said hello, and that was that.
What happened next took about an hour, and I won't go through all of it. Denton found a reason to say he needed to speak to me outside, and outside he told me that she wasn't what he'd expected, that there was nothing wrong with her exactly, but that he couldn't see himself going through with it. That the arrangement had seemed more reasonable on paper. I stood there looking at the barn and listening and not saying anything for a while. Then I asked him what he planned to tell her.
He said he figured he'd give her the stagecoach back to Pueblo and $20 for her trouble and she could decide from there. I looked at him. He looked at me. He said, "Caleb, I know that face." I said, "What face?"
He said, "The one where you're about to say something slow and quiet that lands harder than if you just yelled." I didn't say anything slow or quiet. I said, "Go back in there and tell her straight. Don't make it soft. She doesn't strike me as a woman who needs soft."
He went back in. I stood out by the fence. I listened to the sound of nothing and the occasional creak of the house settling. After a while I heard the back door and her steps on the porch, not hurried, not stumbling, just steps. And she came and stood a little ways from me, not close, and looked out at the same nothing I was looking at.
We stood like that for a minute. Then she said, "The stagecoach back leaves at 7:00 in the morning." I said, "I know." She said, "Is there somewhere I can sleep tonight?" I said, "Yes."
Neither of us said anything after that for a little while. A nighthawk went over. You could hear the feathers in its wings, that particular soft rip of air. She put her hand on the top fence rail and just rested it there without gripping. And I noticed her knuckles weren't white and I thought, "There it is.
She's not afraid. Embarrassed, maybe. Tired, certainly, but not afraid." I showed her to the spare room and brought her a lamp and said the privy was out back and the well water was cold but clean. She thanked me the way you thank someone for a fair exchange, not over-warm, not short.