“Stop.”
“I was there.”
“Stop.”
“He was alive when I found him.”
The woman’s face lost color.
“You said you rode together.”
“I did.”
“Then where were you when he died?”
The cowboy looked away.
“That is the question I’ve asked myself every day since.”
She stepped closer.
“Answer me.”
“We were tracking men stealing land deeds from homesteaders.”
“What?”
“Not stealing paper alone.”
“Changing filings.”
“Buying debts.”
“Claiming abandoned land.”
“Your brother found a pattern.”
The woman shook her head.
“No.”
“He was working cattle.”
“He told you that.”
“He was working for a freight outfit.”
“Sometimes.”
“He—”
She stopped.
Memories began moving.
Her brother disappearing for days.
Returning exhausted.
A cut over his eyebrow he claimed came from a horse.
Whispered arguments with men outside the barn.
The week before his death, he had asked her strange questions about the original homestead filing.
Where their father kept the first survey copy.
Whether she remembered the northern spring boundary.
At the time she thought he was worried about taxes.
The cowboy watched realization.
“He found that a cattle syndicate had been moving boundary markers and buying fraudulent tax claims.”
“Who?”
He named no personal name; he described the territorial cattle company based near the valley.
The woman knew them.
Everyone did.
They owned more land every year.
Their foreman had once offered to buy her northern pasture for half its value.
She refused.
The cowboy continued.
“Your family’s spring is part of it.”
“What about the spring?”
“It feeds the only reliable water corridor between their southern grazing leases and the land they’ve been buying north of you.”
The woman stared.
“They want my water.”
“They want the entire corridor.”
“And my brother knew?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t he tell me?”
“Because he believed knowing would put you in danger.”
Her expression hardened.
“And he told you.”
The cowboy accepted the accusation.
“Yes.”
“Why you?”
“Because I was helping him.”
“Why?”
“Because the same men took land from my uncle.”
The woman looked at envelope.
“How long have you had this?”
“Two years.”
Her head snapped up.
“Two years?”
“Yes.”
“You had a letter from my dead brother for two years?”
The cowboy closed his eyes briefly.
“Yes.”
The woman slapped him.
The sound cracked through the cabin.
He did not move.
Her hand trembled.
She looked shocked at herself.
Then furious again.
“You had no right.”
“I know.”
“Do not say you know.”
“You don’t.”
“Every day for two years, I thought he rode carelessly.”
“I thought his death was some stupid accident.”
“I was angry at him.”
Her voice broke.
“I buried him angry.”
The cowboy’s eyes lowered.
“I’m sorry.”
“Why didn’t you come?”
“I tried.”
“When?”
“The spring after he died.”
“Where were you?”
“Fort Benton.”
“I was arrested.”
“For what?”
“Assault.”