“And now because the risk frightens you, you want to rewrite the choice.”
“Get out.”
“It’s my shop too.”
“No, it is not.”
“Then fire me.”
The cowboy stared.
The foreman stared back.
Neither moved.
Finally the cowboy said:
“I hate you.”
“Good.”
The foreman picked up the hammer.
“You’re listening.”
On the twenty-third day, the cowboy woke before dawn from a dream in which his mother was standing at the northern spring holding the missing deed and laughing at him.
He spent the morning repairing a gate that did not need repairing.
At noon he argued with a ranch hand over grain.
At two he rode the western fence.
At four he returned.
At five, someone knocked on the front door.
Nobody knocked at the ranch unless they were unfamiliar, selling something, or carrying bad news.
The cowboy crossed the main room.
Opened the door.
And forgot every angry sentence he had rehearsed.
The Apache woman stood on the porch.
Dust covered her boots.
One braid had partly loosened.
Her face was thinner.
Exhausted.
Her horse stood near the rail with dried sweat marking its neck.
The woman held the missing deed.
The cowboy did not breathe for several seconds.
She looked at him.
He looked at the paper.
Then at her.
Everything he had felt for twenty-three days collided inside him.
Relief.
Anger.
Fear.
Desire.
Humiliation.
Gratitude.
He chose anger because it was easiest.
“I thought you stole it.”
Her eyes changed.
Not surprise.
Hurt.
That made him feel worse.
Still, he continued.
“You disappear for three weeks with the only deed protecting the ranch, and the only report I get says you were meeting the man trying to take it.”
She held his gaze.
Then walked one step closer.
“I was.”
The cowboy froze.
She lifted the deed.
“I met him because he had the other half.”
“What other half?”
She extended the paper.
He did not take it.
She pressed it against his chest.
“Look at the back.”
He took it.
Turned it over.
At first he saw only old staining.
Then she showed him a seam along the lower edge.
The paper was actually two thin sheets pressed together.
Carefully separated now.
On the inner surface were two signatures.
His mother’s.
And another woman’s.
The cowboy stared.
“Who is this?”
The Apache woman’s eyes filled slightly.
“My mother.”
He looked up.
“What?”
She swallowed.