The speed of her answer startled him.
“No?”
“No.”
“He killed my cattle.”
“Maybe.”
“He may take my ranch.”
“Maybe.”
“And you want me to do nothing?”
Clara stepped closer.
“I want you to stop behaving like the only choices available to men are surrender or murder.”
Tomás stared.
She continued.
“You kill Mercer without proof, who gets your ranch?”
He did not answer.
“The bank.”
Silence.
“Who buys it?”
“Mercer.”
“Then you would finish his work for him.”
Tomás hated how quickly that cooled his anger.
Clara looked toward the dead field.
“Evidence first.”
“You sound like a lawyer.”
“I sound like a woman who watched men in Chicago stab each other over five dollars and leave widows with nothing.”
Tomás looked at her.
“How much happened to you there?”
Her expression closed.
“Enough.”
He understood not to ask.
Not yet.
They spent the morning removing toxic plants.
By noon, the heat became unbearable.
Clara’s face was flushed.
Sweat darkened the back of her dress.
Tomás stopped.
“That’s enough.”
“There’s more.”
“You’re overheating.”
“So are you.”
“I’m accustomed.”
“So am I.”
“Chicago isn’t Wyoming.”
“No. Chicago smells worse.”
He laughed.
Then noticed her breathing.
Too heavy.
“Shade.”
“I’m fine.”
“Clara.”
She looked at him.
He pointed toward the cottonwood beside the house.
For once she obeyed.
They drank water.
Tomás sat beside her.
Not too close.
“Why did you answer my advertisement?”
She wiped sweat from her neck.
“You asked that in your third letter.”
“You didn’t answer.”
“I answered.”
“You said, ‘Because it seemed preferable to remaining in Chicago.’”
“That was an answer.”
“A bad one.”
She looked toward the mountains.
For a while he thought she would refuse.
Then she said, “My sister married.”
Tomás waited.
“My younger sister.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing.”
Clara looked at her hands.
“She married a clerk. Good man. They had two children.”
“That sounds good.”
“It was.”
“And?”
“The room we rented became theirs.”
Tomás understood slowly.
“You lived together?”
“Since our mother died.”
“How old were you?”
“Seventeen.”
“The year you started at the stockyards.”
“Yes.”
Tomás said nothing.
Clara continued.
“I paid most of the rent. Then she married. Her husband moved in. Babies came.”
“You became extra.”
Her eyes shifted toward him.
“Yes.”
The honesty hurt.
“Did they ask you to leave?”
“No.”
“That’s worse?”
“Sometimes.”
She smiled without humor.
“They loved me.”
Tomás waited.
“But love can still make a person feel like furniture if everyone assumes she will always be there.”
He thought of his own advertisement.
“What did you want?”
“A door I could close.”
Tomás looked at the cabin.
“One bedroom.”
She laughed.
“For now.”
He smiled.
Clara continued.
“I wanted work where I could see what my work built.”
Her gaze swept across the ranch.
“Stockyards never belonged to anyone who sweated in them.”
“And marriage?”
She looked at him.