The man whose Christmas money had paid for my first good boots. He took off his hat to me, polite, like we were meeting on the street in Tucson. Boon Amos, you've been busy, son. I'm almost proud. You sent me out here to die.
I sent you out here to find five women. I hoped you'd do it like a sensible man. I should have known better. You were never sensible. That's why I liked you.
He settled his hands on the saddle horn. Bring down the hides and we'll talk about the rest of your life. There's no rest of my life. You put $1,000 on it. Paper.
Paper can be torn up. A man with friends can do almost anything with paper. He reached into his coat. Speaking of which, I've carried this a while. I think it's time you had it.
It was yours to begin with. He held up an envelope, old, water stained, torn open along the top. It came to the Tucson office in June, addressed to you by name, in care of the marshal. badly spelled. I'm sorry to say. The mission fathers must have helped him with it.
He unfolded the paper inside and read, his voice carrying clear across the evening air to the lawman Halleran who stood at the jail door in Msquite Flat. You kept me from the rope 10 summers past. I have not forgotten. Now men want our water. The sheriff, who was my brother, is one of them.
I ask you to help me take this to the big court of your government so it can be written down in your law that the water is ours. You are the only white man I trust. I am sending my daughter's name with this so you will know her if I cannot come. Tavana. The ruins went silent.
Even the horses. I looked down. Tavana was standing at the foot of the stairs staring up at me. Not at me. 10 summers passed. Boon Puit folded the letter.
An Apache in a cell in Mesquite Flat. A drunk crowd and a rope. A fool of a young deputy with an empty shotgun. You never asked his name, did you? You just stood in that door until the crowd went home and he never forgot it.
And when he decided to go to a federal court, he wrote to you and I read it first. My mouth was dry and you showed it to Ror. I had to. The old man was about to put our water in front of a federal judge. You understand?
I didn't order what happened after. Ror handled it. Ror only smiled. The letter, my name on it, 37 people. Because a man who' trusted me had written my name on a piece of paper and sent it to the one office in the territory where it would be read by the wrong eyes.
I had to put my hand on the tower wall below me. Tavana reached inside her collar, drew out the little leather pouch I'd watched her guard for 3 days, untied it with steady fingers, shook something out into her palm, and held it up to me in the last of the sunlight. A star tin five points one of them bent. The stamp on it worn nearly smooth. Deputy Mesquite Flat, my star, the one I'd pinned on that old man's shirt that night 10 years ago, and told him, "So long as you wear this, nobody touches you without going through me first.
I hadn't thought of it in years. I'd ordered a new one from the county and forgotten." He wore it until he died. Her voice was steady and very quiet. He gave it to me the night he sent the letter.
He told me if trouble came, a lawman would come. A man with a scar through his left eyebrow from a stone. Somebody threw at a jail house door. When you rode into the grove and I saw your face, I knew you came late. But you came.
I touched the old scar over my eye without meaning to. Touching. Puit put his hat back on now. The hides boon. I count to 50.
Then my men burn that tower with you in it and take the women alive. Your choice. I had perhaps 40 seconds. And in those seconds, I understood something with perfect cold clarity. As long as those hides existed, those women would be hunted by Puit, by whoever bought Puit, by whoever came after.
The maps were the reason for the tree, the reason for the fire at Cutter's Wells, the reason for 37 graves. The maps were the rope around their necks. I pulled the bundle out from under the bellbeam. I struck a match and lit the stub of Dashka's last candle and held the bundle over the flame where every man on that hill could see it. Puit.
They ride out, all of them. The women pickering north through the gap. Your men pull back and let them through. Or this burns. You wouldn't try me.
Silence. Then a thin cold laugh from Ror. He would Amos. He's that kind. Puit raised his arm.
The men on the north side drew back. Opening a lane. Go. Tavana didn't move. No.
Tavana. The ledger. Somebody has to take it to a judge who isn't bought. Somebody has to live. Go.
I will not leave you on a tower over a fire. You'll leave me because I'm asking, not as a law man. That stopped her. A man's promise. A man's asking.
She remembered. I watched her. Remember Kane had her arm. Dashka was bringing the horses. Isha was helping Wesley up behind Yon on the Grey Mare.
They rode out through the lane in Puit's line. North into the dusk. Tavana last turning in the saddle to look back at me the whole way until the dark took her. When they were gone past the gap, I looked down at Amos Puit. Thank you, Amos.
The hides, boon, here they come. And I put them in the flame. Old smoked deer skin burned slow. Then all at once, the paint bubbled. The blue signs curled and blackened.