I think like a woman who has spent 12 years dealing with other people's problems and having to solve them quietly, she said. When you don't have power, you learn to watch people who do. You learn how they move. Beckett nodded slowly. The escalation, he said.
You're right. What form do you think it takes? She'll want witnesses. Clara said she's too careful to do something that can't be seen the right way. She won't just damage property.
She'll do something that looks like it could be Ethan's own mismanagement. Something that makes people doubt him rather than doubt her. She looked at Ethan. Your reputation is the target. If people stop trusting you, you can't sell cattle at fair prices.
Can't get credit. Can't hold the co-op together. The ranch fails without her ever having to lift a finger. The kitchen was very quiet. "She's already started," Ethan said slowly.
"The story about Clara, the misrepresentation." "Yes," Clara said. "She's been working on your reputation since I arrived. I was the first tool." She said it without bitterness.
"I'm not the last." Beckett leaned forward. "What do you need from me?" "Documentation," Clara said. Everything you know about the other three ranchers, every detail.
And if there's any law in this territory that covers deliberate interference with a man's business. There is, Beckett said. It's not simple. It'll need evidence. "Then we get evidence," Clara said.
Ethan was looking at her in a way that she'd have to address later that focused, unguarded look, like he was seeing the full shape of something he'd only glimpsed before. Later was later. Right now there was work to do. The escalation came faster than any of them expected. It came on a Friday night when the valley was dark and the wind was high and it came in the form of fire.
Not the house, not the barn, the south haystack, the winter supply. And whoever had said it had timed it right, because by the time Clem smelled the smoke and came running, it had taken hold with the kind of commitment that fire has when it's been helped along. Everyone came, Ethan and Clem and Noah, who was out of bed and outside before anyone told him to be filling buckets and hauling water with the grim efficiency of a boy who knew that the hay burning was the winter's feed burning. Was the cattle surviving winter or not surviving was everything. Clara was beside him.
She worked through it without drama, without tears, without stopping. She hauled water until her arms screamed and her dress was soaked and her hands were blistered from the bucket handle. And she didn't stop because stopping was not a thing she was capable of when there was still something left to do. They saved the north stack. The south was gone.