She had held her daughter for only a few hours.
"I remember her crying," she whispered. "She was strong. She wanted milk. There was nothing wrong with her."
The widow sat down slowly.
The younger woman's hands began trembling.
"After they took her, I heard a wagon leaving before sunrise."
She swallowed.
"I went to the window. I saw a white blanket in the doctor's arms."
Her husband dragged her away from the glass.
Three days later, he told her the baby had been buried in a cemetery beyond the hills.
She asked to visit.
He refused.
Both women spent months grieving children they had been told were dead.
Then something changed.
The older woman discovered a small accounting book while cleaning her husband's office.
It contained dates, amounts of money, and initials she did not understand.
One entry was dated three days after her son's birth.
Another matched the week when the younger woman's daughter disappeared.
Both carried unusually large payments.
Neither was listed as cattle, feed, freight, or wages.
She copied the numbers onto a scrap of wrapping paper and hid it.
When her husband discovered what she had done, he beat her and accused her of stealing.
The younger woman tried to intervene.
He threatened both of them.
Shortly afterward, their husbands announced that the marriages were finished.
The women had failed to produce surviving children, they said.
They were barren.
Unfit.
A financial burden.
They demanded repayment of the money exchanged when the marriages had been arranged.
The women refused.
They asked to return to their relatives.
Instead, the men brought them to Cuervo Creek, where the deputy claimed they had committed fraud.
For two days, they were held in a storage room behind the freight office.
Then came the tree.
When the older woman finished, I sat without speaking.
The widow looked toward me.
Her face had gone pale.
Finally, I asked one question.
"Did you ever see the accounting book again?"
The older woman shook her head.
"He burned it."
"Are you certain?"
"I saw him put it into the stove."
I leaned forward.
"What about the paper you copied?"
For the first time, her expression changed.
She looked toward her clothing.
Then reached carefully beneath a seam near the hem of her buckskin skirt.
She pulled out a tiny folded scrap.
The paper had been handled so often that the edges were almost transparent.
She held it toward me.
I took it carefully.
There were two dates.
Two amounts.
And a set of initials beside each.
The numbers were written in an unsteady hand.
The first payment was for six hundred dollars.
The second was for seven hundred and fifty.