We'll take it home tonight. She said we should start back. If we leave in the hour, we can make it to the midpoint camp before dark and be home by tomorrow evening. She was already thinking about the ride home, about Warren at the gate, about Milo with his careful eyes and his arm in its sling, about Hollis, who would ask the numbers question with the directness he reserved for mathematics. She was thinking about the kitchen table and the lamp and the ledger that was about to record something different than it had recorded for 4 years.
But something else happened before they left Mil Haven. They were returning to the holding pens to collect the remaining equipment when Tessa came around the corner of the auction building and found herself face to face with a group of three ranchers she didn't know. Standing with EMTT in the middle of what was clearly a conversation that had been going on for a few minutes. EMTT looked at her with a particular expression, not alarmed, not discomforted, but alert in the way he was alert when a situation had moved in a direction he hadn't expected. One of the ranchers, a heavy set man with a gray beard and the unhurried authority of someone accustomed to being the person who finishes sentences, was looking at her with frank curiosity.
"This is the wife," he said to Emmett. "Tessa Danner," Emmett said. "Yes, the man looked at her. Heard the split ear cleared 63 over market. " It did, she said. Heard you planned the auction entry.
It was a family decision, she said. I put together the proposal. Town woman, he said. It was not a compliment or an insult. It was a category.
What made you think those animals were auction ready? I looked at the records and I looked at the cattle, she said. The records showed the breeding quality. The cattle showed the condition. The auction showed what that combination was worth to serious buyers.
He looked at her for another moment. Dana Ranch hasn't entered this auction in 12 years, he said. Warren tried once and got humiliated. Hurt the family standing for a season. She hadn't known this.
She kept her face still. I'm sorry to hear that, she said. It didn't happen today. The heavy set man's expression shifted slightly, but it shifted. No, he said.
It didn't. He turned back to EMTT. Your father raised good stock. Glad to see it going the right direction. He and his companions moved off.