Ninety-Nine Years

At five on Wednesday morning Nora sat down at the kitchen table with the feed-store notepad and wrote the sum out, because she did not trust one she had only done in her head.

The contract had lain there since Thursday night, and the carton had stood beside it since Friday. Billie’s black book was next to the lamp, with the ribbon at a line she now knew by heart. Billie’s tablet sheets lay on top of it. Nora had read them every day since Sunday, and each time her eyes had ended in the same place.

Her silence is all V.T. needs. He has priced it at $1,600,000.

She had thought on Friday night that keeping quiet was the one choice that left the thing hers alone. Billie had taken that from her in two lines. A secret that a man would pay a million six for belonged to him as soon as she kept it. There was no doing nothing. Whatever she did, she would be doing it to somebody.

So she wrote down what she knew, as she would have for a herd.

1. I gave the water in November for a dollar. I did it before I knew what I was, and I did it for Earl’s kind of reasons. Nothing I’ve learned since changes them.

2. Nine cows.

3. Owen’s leg. Sixty-two heifers. I want to be here for February.

4. My father meant to tell her and ran out of road. I’m not going to hold a true thing back for a better day.

5. Nobody on that ranch has come up this lane in three days.

She looked at the fifth for a while. Maeve had forbidden them, and they had obeyed. The truck at the mouth of the lane said good morning and nothing else. It would have been easy for them to send a child with a pie.

She did not write a sixth. There was a sixth, and it had stood on her porch on Sunday with its hat in its hands. She was not ready to put it on a list with cows.

On Tuesday she had sat in the office of the lawyer who closed her purchase and had him draw three pages. She had told him she would let him know. She had not signed them. She unfolded them now and read them again, and she found she did not want one word changed.

She put the contract in the stove. The cream paper was a good heavy stock, and it took a moment to catch.

The carton she carried out to the clinic. She packed the third calving kit into it, with the chains and handles, the lubricant, the iodine cups, the tube and the colostrum. It fit as if the box had been cut for it.
***
The Ravalli County courthouse opened at eight. The lawyer’s secretary notarized her signature at ten past, across the street, and Nora was at the Clerk and Recorder’s counter by half past.

The clerk was a woman of about fifty, with her reading glasses on a chain. She turned the pages over.

“Water lease. Lessor, Nora J. Pruett, a single woman. Lessee, Mulvaney Ranch.” She read on, and her eyebrows rose. “A term of ninety-nine years from the first of January, 2027. Annual rent of one dollar, with the first year acknowledged received.” She looked up over the glasses. “Is that a typing mistake, hon?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Are they family?”

“They’re neighbors. It’s customary on that creek.”

“It must be some creek.” The clerk counted pages. “Three pages, eight dollars a page. That’s twenty-four.”

Nora paid it in cash. The first year’s rent had ridden on her dashboard since the thirtieth of November, and it was folded in her shirt pocket now. She had thought of paying the fee with it and decided that the ranch’s dollar ought to stay a dollar.

The stamp came down three times. The clerk wrote the hour in the margin, 8:41, and initialed it, and slid a conformed copy across the counter.

“That’s of record,” she said. “Your grandchildren will be collecting on it.”

“Somebody’s will,” Nora said.

She stood on the courthouse steps in the cold with the copy inside her coat. It ran with the land. If she sold the forty tomorrow, or died, or lost it to the bank, the gate would stay open for ninety-nine years, and no law-keeper had been asked. She had signed it Nora Pruett, with her license number under her name. It was done before anyone on the Bench could call her by any other.

There was a mailbox at the foot of the steps. She took the envelope out of her other pocket. It was addressed to Miss Fay Dunmore at a box number in Dubois, Wyoming. It held two pages that had taken her most of Tuesday night, and a copy of the newspaper photograph, in case his sister did not have one. She dropped it through the slot before she could read it over again.

Then she took out her phone. She had copied the number off the back of Vaughn Tierney’s card, and she dialed it.

He answered on the second ring. “Tierney.”

“It’s Nora Pruett. I burned your contract this morning. I’m sorry about the paper. It was nice paper.”

He was silent for a second. “I can send another. I can also send a larger figure.”

“That’s why I’m calling, so you needn’t. The forty isn’t for sale at any price. I mean at one six, or at five, or at whatever you can think of on the drive over. I don’t want you spending two more days working out what the number is. There isn’t one.”

“Everyone has a number, Doctor. I’ve bought a great deal of land from people who told me otherwise.”

“I expect you have. I was thirty years finding one place nobody could ask me to leave, Mr. Tierney. I’m not going to turn around and be the one who asks.”

She heard him breathe. She could not hear his heart over a telephone, and she missed it.

“Then I’ll see you on the Bench,” he said. “You’ll have been told I asked that the holder be welcome.”

“I was told.”

“May I ask what you intend to say there?”

“You may ask.”

He laughed, shortly. There was no pleasure in it. “I did tell you I would rather buy than break.”

“You told me twice. I believed you both times. Good morning.”

She ended the call. Her hand was not quite steady when she put the phone away.
***
Owen had the lane at headquarters’ end that morning, which meant he was forking hay in the calving lot. He took his cap off when she drove in. He said, “Morning, Doctor,” and not one word more. His ears were scarlet from the strain of it.

“Good morning, Owen. How many?”

“A hundred and forty. I’m up to two-forty a day.”

“Stop at two hundred. That’s an order.”

She knocked at the log house. Billie opened the door with flour to the elbows and looked up at her without surprise.

“I’m forbidden to bake for you,” she said. “This is for the Doyles.”

“I didn’t come for pie. I came to ask the law-keeper what I am. I’ve had it from a man who wanted my land and from a man who sold me his. I’d like it from somebody who keeps the book.”

“Then wipe your feet and sit.”

The kitchen was as warm as it had been in November. Billie washed her arms at the sink and sat down across the table with her hands folded.

“I’ll tell you what it isn’t first, because that’s shorter. It isn’t a sickness, and it isn’t half of anything. You won’t change. You won’t at a full moon or in a fright, and you won’t at ninety. Don’t wait on it, and don’t let anybody tell you to grieve it. I’ve known wolves who’d trade the fur for your ears.”

“Mine are better?”

“They’re as good as mine were at forty, and you’ve no coat to muffle them.” She said it as a fact. “The scent’s the other part. The blood is in you, and nobody alive can find it by nose but the one. I shook your hand in this kitchen and would have sworn you human before both packs. I’ve kept the law fifty-one years, and I don’t enjoy saying so.”

“Why only him?”

“I don’t know. Nobody does. I can tell you what the law says, and it’s short on reasons.” Billie turned her wedding ring. “Now here’s what it is. You’re Calvin Dunmore’s daughter, and the law reads blood. It doesn’t ask if the blood can run on four feet. Where a law says wolf blood, it means you as much as it means me. That holds for every law we have, and this one is only the first.”

Nora took out the tablet sheets and laid them between them. “Then I want to go down your list. A holder who held it on claim night and holds it still. I did, and I do. I recorded a lease this morning, and the deed never left my name.”

“A lease is a giving. The holding stays with you.”

“Given by open word before both law-keepers.”

“You stand on the Bench and say it aloud.”

“What else?” Nora kept her finger on the page. “I want every bit of it. Do I swear to Maeve? Do I have to be of this pack to give to it? Does it count for anything that your grandson’s nose says what it says?”

Billie looked at her for a long moment. The grey-green eyes were hard to meet. They were his, set in an old woman’s face.

“Nothing else,” she said. “I’ve read that law more times than my Bible. It asks for blood, for holding, and for the word said openly. It doesn’t say the holder kneels to an alpha, or that she takes a mate. A pack is a thing you ask into and are asked into. You’ve done neither, and you can stand on that Bench and give your water as a neighbor from Nebraska, and go home after and bolt your door. As for the bond, I told him on my porch that it’s no law business until the two of you make it so. It stays out of my kitchen and off my hearthstone, and I’ll say so to Leona if she asks.”

“She’ll want proof of the blood.”

“She will. What have you got?”

“Your roll, with his line in it. His obituary. His buckle, with his initials cut in the back by his own knife. My birth date, five months after he died, and my mother’s word, which nobody on this creek is to ask her for.” Nora turned her hands over on the table. “And Tierney himself. He asked the Wind River alpha, and he told me so in my clinic. Will he say it again if Leona puts it to him?”

“Before a law-keeper? He’ll say it. Vaughn has never lied to Leona Stroud in his life. He only arranges not to be asked.” Billie’s mouth twitched. “You’ve done my work for me.”

“I count twice.”

“So I’m told.” The old woman got up to see to her dough. With her back turned she said, “I was hard on him Sunday, and I’ll be hard on him again. That’s my right. Yours is whatever you decide it is.”

“I know it.”

“Then that’s all the law I’ve got. Maeve’s in her office.”
***
Maeve was standing at the map. She turned when Nora came in. She looked as if she had told herself not to hope and had it under control.

Nora laid the conformed copy on Dermot Mulvaney’s desk.

“That was recorded at 8:41 this morning. It’s a ninety-nine-year lease of the 1889 right to the ranch, at a dollar a year. The first dollar is the one you gave me in Billie’s kitchen. It runs with the land, whoever owns the forty after me. The lawyer says it stands without your signature, but he left you a line.”

Maeve read all three pages. She took her time over the stamp.

“You said in November that we might talk about paper.”

“I did, and now we have.”

“Why paper, if you mean to...” Maeve stopped herself. She had forbidden the question to everyone else.

“I do mean to. I’ll answer the claim on Friday. I’ll stand where Billie puts me and say it by open word.” Nora kept her voice level. “The paper’s for me. I signed it as a vet who bought a place and liked her neighbors. On Friday I’ll be standing up as somebody’s daughter in front of forty strangers. I wanted the first one in ink before I was the second.”

Maeve set the pages down carefully.

“And I want no thanks for it,” Nora said. “I don’t want it from you or from anyone at that table at Christmas. I couldn’t tell which of us you were thanking, me or the headgate. I’d rather not have to wonder.”

“That’s a hard thing to ask of twenty-three people.”

“You kept them off my road for three days. It was on my list.”

Maeve picked up a pen and signed on the lessee’s line in her quick slant. She blotted it.

“Then you’ll get none,” she said. “You’ll get a dollar every Thanksgiving, and a bill for your half of the ditch cleaning in April. Amos always paid his half.”

“Amos never mentioned that either.”

“No.” For a second the lean face nearly smiled. “He wouldn’t have.”
***
The forge was lit in the shoeing shed, and the bay gelding stood tied to the ring with one hind foot bare. Rhys was at the anvil with a shoe in the tongs. He had heard her truck come in an hour ago. He set the shoe down on the horn when she came through the door.

He looked at the carton in her arms. She watched his face go careful and empty.

“It’s a calving kit,” she said. “The box cost a dollar ninety-eight, and I wasn’t going to waste it. It hangs where you can reach it in the dark.”

He let out his breath. He took the carton from her with his left arm and set it on the bench.

He was thinner, and he looked as if he had been sleeping the way he had on Christmas night. The shed was full of him, cedar and hot iron. Her shoulders came down and she let them. She had stopped arguing with her shoulders.

“I’ve been to the courthouse,” she said. “The water’s leased to the ranch for ninety-nine years. I’ve told Tierney there’s no price, and I’ve told Maeve I’ll answer the claim on Friday. You’re hearing it from me, and you’re the last to hear it. I did that on purpose.”

“I’d have put me last too.”

“I’m still angry, Rhys. I want that said before anything else. I’m not doing this to forgive you, and it doesn’t mean I have. I woke up angry this morning, and I expect I will tomorrow.”

“All right.”

“I’ll tell you the other thing, because it’s true and you gave me true things.” She folded her arms. “All my life somebody has held the rest of it back. My mother did, and Doc, and you. Every one of you had a kind reason. On Sunday you stood on my porch and handed me the roll and the law and the part that went against you. You even told me his check was good. Then you got off my porch. That was the first time anybody ever gave me everything and let me choose. I’ve thought about it for three days. It doesn’t cancel the seven weeks, and I’m not going to pretend it never happened.”

He did not move toward her. His heart was going hard, and he let her hear it.

“That’s more than I looked for,” he said.

“It’s what there is today. Shirt off. Billie took those out?”

“Monday. She said the edges lay flat. She looked at them for a quarter of an hour first.”

He sat on the anvil stand with his back to the forge light. The nine holes had closed to pink dots along a line two inches long, above the old white scar. She put her thumbs into the muscle beneath. The hard band was still there, but it had some give in it now, and it slid on the ribs where a month ago it had dragged.

“Somebody’s been working this.”

“Billie, with a rolling pin. She says she had to get some use out of it.”

Nora did not laugh. It was close.

“Arm out. Palm down.”

She counted. The tremor came at thirty seconds, and it had come at eleven before. She had him push against her hands, and the right arrived with the left, a little weaker. She had him lean on the anvil and turn right with all his weight. The muscle fired and held, and it held again. On the fourth turn she felt it shudder under her palm before it caught.

“How has it done under you? On four legs.”

“Tuesday and today. It held seven times out of eight.” He said it straight. “The eighth, I was tired, and Owen had me turned twice running. Immy called me back, and I dropped back, and she took him off me.”

“You dropped back when she said.”

“The second time she said it.”

She took her hands away and came around in front of him.

“Seventy percent,” she said. “I can’t make it better than that. It’ll take your weight fresh. It won’t take it tired, and it won’t take it with his teeth in it. If the claim’s answered, nobody fights, and none of this matters. I’ve been a vet too long to plan on things going the way they’re ruled. So here’s my ruling, and it’s as your doctor. You stand on Friday only with Immy beside you. I mean beside you, where she can reach you, and not somewhere behind. If Maeve has to pick one to go in alone, I’ll tell her to her face that it’s Immy.”

She watched it reach him.

He had been the one who went first for seven years. He had stood by himself under Pascoe’s mark and come down six miles of creek with his side open because of it. And he had stood in her clinic twelve days ago and said no to this very thing, in a voice like a shut gate. His jaw worked once. His left hand closed on his knee, and the knuckles went white. She could see the whole of it in his face, how much he wanted to tell her the shoulder was his own.

He looked at the forge for a moment. Then he looked back at her.

“Your call, Doc,” he said.

He did not argue. He did not add anything to it. It cost him about what the claim cost Maeve, and she saw that he paid it without asking her to notice.

She noticed. She picked his shirt off the bay’s withers and held it out to him.

“One more thing. I’m bringing the dart pistol on Friday. I’ve loaded two darts out of the ledger, at the dose that put you on your back in November, worked by weight. One’s for a hundred and eighty-five pounds and one’s for two-forty.”

“That’s a truce night, Nora.”

“I promised nobody a thing about needles. And I won’t be the first to break anything.” She buttoned her coat. “I guessed their weights across a room. I’d rather have them and not need them.”

“You said that about the threads.”

“I’ve still got the threads.”

She went out past the bay horse. At the door she looked back once. He was sitting on the anvil stand with his shirt in his hands, looking at the carton on the bench.
***