Then the wall returned.
“Yes,” he said. “More than enough.”
She immediately regretted the question.
“I am sorry.”
“Do not be. It was honest.”
He opened the spare-room door.
“You will have my answer at sunrise.”
Clara wanted to argue, but exhaustion had begun to weigh down her limbs. She entered the small room and found a narrow bed, a wooden chair, and a window facing the mountains.
As she closed the door, she heard Elias move around the kitchen.
He did not open the three envelopes.
Elias remained at the table long after the storm passed.
The house had been built for a family.
That fact became most noticeable at night.
The kitchen held six chairs, although five had not been used in years. The spare room had belonged to his brother Daniel. The second bedroom had been prepared for Daniel’s bride, who had returned east after his death and never answered Elias’s letters.
The three envelopes on the table were from the territorial marshal’s office.
Elias knew what they contained.
Requests to return.
Offers of work.
Reminders of a life he had abandoned after leading a posse into San Perdido Canyon seven years earlier.
They had been pursuing cattle thieves. The information had been wrong. Daniel had ridden beside him. Gunfire had broken out before Elias understood that the supposed thieves were displaced ranch hands protecting their camp.
Daniel died before sunset.
Two innocent men died beside him.
The actual thieves escaped.
Elias resigned and came home to the Broken Spur, where animals made no speeches about justice and silence could not accuse him of choosing the wrong trail.
Now Clara Wynn had ridden into that silence and asked him to enter another fight built from papers, influence, and men who believed the law belonged to whoever could afford it.
He should refuse.
Her plan endangered his ranch. Gideon Rusk owned the bank, the freight company, the largest cattle operation in the county, and enough of the local government to make elections resemble private appointments.
A false marriage might delay him.
It would also make Elias a target.
He looked toward the spare-room door.
Clara had not asked him to rescue her. She had brought evidence, a legal theory, and terms that protected them both. Even frightened and exhausted, she had not pretended helplessness.
She had selected him because she believed his name meant something.
Elias could not remember the last time he had believed that himself.
At sunrise, Clara entered the kitchen wearing yesterday’s dress and an expression prepared for disappointment.
Elias had already saddled both horses.
“You are taking me home.”
“Yes.”
“I understand.”
“We will stop at the chapel first.”
She stared at him.
“The chapel?”
“Reverend Cole opens it at six.”
Clara’s lips parted.
Elias lifted the marriage certificate form he had found in Daniel’s old desk.
“If you still intend to ask me, my answer is yes.”
For once, Clara Wynn had nothing to say.
Chapter Two
The Wedding Gideon Rusk Laughed At
Red Mesa learned of the marriage before Clara and Elias reached the chapel.
The baker’s daughter saw them on the east road. The daughter told the stable boy. The stable boy told the barber, who abandoned a customer with shaving cream across half his face and hurried outside.
By the time Reverend Cole opened the chapel doors, fourteen people had gathered across the street pretending to have business near the hitching rail.
Clara’s mother arrived wearing one buttoned boot and one unbuttoned boot.
Lenora Wynn climbed down from a borrowed wagon, marched toward Elias, and struck him in the chest with her closed fan.
“You married my daughter without speaking to me?”
“Not yet.”
She struck him again.
“You planned to marry my daughter without speaking to me?”
“Your daughter did most of the planning.”
Clara took her mother’s arm.
“I intended to tell you after I knew he would agree.”
“You left town in a dust storm.”
“I was in a hurry.”
“You returned with a husband.”
“Technically, he is still only a possibility.”
Lenora looked Elias up and down.
“Do you drink?”
“Coffee.”
“Gamble?”
“No.”
“Hit women?”
“No.”
“Expect obedience?”
“No.”
Clara glanced at him.
“That answer came suspiciously quickly.”
Elias ignored her.
Lenora lowered the fan.
“Have you ever been arrested?”
“Not successfully.”
Clara closed her eyes.
Her mother studied him for another moment.
“Good enough. Reverend!”
They married before seven in the morning.
Clara wore a dust-stained riding dress. Elias wore his work shirt. Juniper remained tied outside beside his gray gelding. Reverend Cole’s wife served as witness, Lenora cried into a flour sack someone had given her as a handkerchief, and the barber watched from the doorway with shaving cream still drying on his customer’s face.