Eli was on his feet before the sound finished and she was right behind him. Colt was at the barn door pointing down the road where the mud and rain had not stopped Horace Dunmore's carriage, which was coming up the drive at an unhurried pace that carried in it the specific arrogance of a man who believed the weather was a lesser force than his paperwork. Behind Dunmore's carriage was a second wagon. Nora recognized the man on the seat before she could see him clearly, the way he held the reins, loose and proprietary, as if the land he was driving across were already his. His name was Marcus Priel, and he was the man her late husband had borrowed from last, the one debt she had not been able to account for because the terms had never been written down, and because Marcus Priel did not write things down on purpose.
She had not told Eli Callaway about Marcus Priel. She had not known he was connected to this ranch. She had not known until this moment that the reason Priel had pressured her husband's estate so fast and so hard was because he was already positioned to do the same thing here, two birds in one arrangement with a bank man who owed him favors. She understood it now, fully, in the space between one breath and the next. "Mr.
Callaway," she said, low and even. "The man in the second wagon knew my husband. He is not here for the bank. He is here because he has been buying up distressed notes and using the bank as cover. Dunmore is his man."
She kept her voice steady and her eyes on the approaching carriages. "I know what he does. I watched him do it to my husband's estate." She paused. "I'm sorry I did not know to tell you sooner."
Eli was very still beside her. "Then, what do you need?" She looked at him. He was looking at her, not at the carriages. "The counter notation," she said.
"That, and someone who can ride to the Harrow Creek solicitor before dark." "Wyatt can ride in this weather." "Then send him now, before those men reach the porch, and keep them talking." He turned to Wyatt who was already standing 3 ft away and had clearly heard enough. One look and Wyatt was moving for the horses, no performance, no delay.
She watched the boy go and thought that whatever Eli Callaway had done right or wrong in the years of his grief, he had raised that oldest boy correctly. Eli turned back to her. The carriages were close now, the horses slowing in the mud. "Nora," he said, her name. For the first time, plainly, without the formality of her surname, and the weight of it was quiet and absolute, the way a man speaks when he has decided something and does not yet have words for all of it.
"Stay close." She nodded once. They walked out together to meet Dunmore and Prewitt on the porch of the Callaway ranch in the driving rain. And the six boys ranged behind them on the steps without being asked, shoulder to shoulder in the gray morning light. And Eli Callaway stood at the front of everything he had built and said plainly to the two men climbing down from their carriages, "You'll want to come back tomorrow.