I'm full of things you need to hear, Martha said. It's not quite the same thing. They were halfway back to the cabin when they both heard it. Hoof beatats on the road coming fast. The particular rhythm of a horse being pushed harder than the grade was strictly comfortable for a rider came through the ranch gate.
Martha recognized him before he pulled up. She recognized the company colors on his jacket and the way he sat a horse like someone who'd learned it for show rather than use. And her stomach went tight the same way it always did when she saw anything connected to Walter Crane. The writer had a letter. He held it out toward Silas without looking at Martha, which told her he'd been briefed on who he was looking for and what to pretend about.
Silas took the letter and read it. His face told her nothing while he was reading, but when he looked up, his eyes went to her and she saw the question in them. He says, "The tool chest is his." Silas said, "Since you took it when you left his employment." Martha sat down her coffee cup on the porch railing very carefully. That tool chest was assembled piece by piece over 11 years. She said seven of those years were my husband's tools before they were mine.
Walter Crane's company paid me a wage. The tools I bought with it are mine. The writer shifted in his saddle. Mr. Crane says I know what Mr.
Crane says. Martha said Mr. Crane has been saying things about me for 4 months. He's very good at saying things. She looked at the rider steadily.
Has he told you why he fired me? The rider didn't answer. He fired me, Martha said. Because I asked why his company's freight wagons were failing. Because I kept records of which parts were being replaced and what they were being replaced with, and the numbers didn't add up.
And because when I brought those records to him and asked him to explain them, he told me I was a foolish woman who didn't understand business. And then the next morning, I didn't have a job anymore. The writer looked at Silas. Silas was looking at Martha. "That chest isn't leaving this property," Silas said to the writer with the flat absolute certainty of a man who had decided something and was not going to be moved on it.
The writer opened his mouth. "It isn't leaving this property," Silas said again the same way, and something in his voice made the second saying of it sound like a door closing. Martha felt something rise up in her chest that she'd learned to be careful about the warmth of someone else standing beside her. The particular comfort of it, the dangerous comfort of it. She'd loved Henry partly because Henry had always stood beside her.