Three years ought to cover it, maybe four, depending on how quick he learns. "You'll not touch my son," Iris said, placing herself bodily between the man and Tom, who had gone white and silent behind her skirts, small fingers gripping fistfuls of her apron. "The law's on my side, ma'am. I've got the paper to prove it," signed proper by a judge in Denver. Iris's mind raced through every terrible option before landing on the only one that made any sense to a mother with nothing left to bargain but herself.
Take me instead. I'll sign myself into your service for the debt. Leave my boy be. He's done nothing to owe anybody anything. Reuben came around the barn corner in time to hear the last of it.
And something in him went cold and hard as January ground. Nobody signs themselves into anything on my land, he said, stepping between Iris and the creditor before another word could be spoken, his voice carrying the flat, dangerous calm of a man who had already decided how far he'd go. Not the boy, not his mother, not to you or anybody else, paper or no paper. This is a legal debt, Mr. Shaw.
I'd think twice before interfering with the law. Then it'll be paid in cash, not in people. Reuben said, "Come back in two weeks. You'll have your $60, every cent of it, and you'll never set foot on this ranch again after that understood plain." The creditor, weighing the certainty of eventual cash against the trouble of dragging a child through the courts, tipped his hat, and rode off, leaving Iris shaking against the porch rail with Tom clutched hard against her side. Why, Iris said when she could speak again.
Would you promise money you don't have? You'll ruin yourself. I'll find it, Reuben said, though he had no earthly idea yet how, only the certainty that he would. The spring sale came two weeks later, and Reuben sold every head of cattle he could spare. Then sold a few more he'd meant to keep back for breeding stock, and rode to the bank in town with every dollar the ranch had earned in a hard winter, and handed 60 of it straight to the creditor's lawyer, watching the debt paper burn in the stove himself to be certain of it, down to the last curling ash.