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They Gave the Widow Nothing but $43—Then She Found a Hidden Canyon Her Husband Had Prepared — Transcript

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0:00The dirt on the boots of the men who had
0:01carried her husband's coffin was still
0:03dark with the damp of the grave when her
0:05brother-in-law walked toward her across
0:06the parlor. His voice pitched low enough
0:09to sound like family. "You need to be
0:11out of that house before sundown."
0:13Wifred said nothing, tightening her hand
0:15around her six-year-old daughter pressed
0:17against her hip. By Wednesday, the
0:19walnut chest her husband had sanded and
0:21varnished across three Saturdays was
0:23carried out through the front door on
0:25the shoulders of a boy she did not know.
0:27By Saturday morning, she stood at the
0:29plank kitchen table with $43 a wool
0:32shawl and a folded square of paper
0:34bearing seven words in her husband's
0:35tight handwriting. Mosquite Canyon when
0:38all else fails. Her brother-in-law
0:41laughed from the porch as she turned
0:42toward the low ridges to the southeast.
0:44A small child's hand steady inside her
0:47own. Somewhere beyond the burning
0:49desert, her husband had been building
0:51something in silence for 4 years, and no
0:53one in that town yet understood what it
0:55was. The dirt on the boots of the men
0:57who had carried her husband's coffin was
0:59still dark with the damp of the grave.
1:01When Cornelius Ashcom spoke the words
1:03that would strip Wifford Howerin Ashcom
1:06of everything she had built in seven
1:08years of marriage, he did not wait for
1:10the wake to end. He did not wait for the
1:12neighbors of Copper Hollow to finish
1:14their casserles and their careful
1:16condolences and drift back to their own
1:18hearths. He walked to the corner of the
1:20parlor where she stood with her
1:22six-year-old daughter, Josephine,
1:24pressed against her hip. And he spoke in
1:26a voice pitched just low enough to sound
1:27like family and just loud enough to be
1:30heard by the men who mattered. "You need
1:32to be out of that house before sundown,
1:34Winnie. It's how these things are done."
1:36She looked at him and understood in the
1:38way a woman who has spent her life
1:40reading fevers and weather and the small
1:42tightenings around a man's mouth
1:43understands the things men mean before
1:45they say them that he had prepared this
1:47sentence during the burial. He had
1:49rehearsed it walking back from the
1:51cemetery with the rest of the pawbears.
1:53He had chosen the word Winnie because it
1:55made him sound like a brother-in-law and
1:57not the man he was becoming in that
1:59moment. She said nothing. She tightened
2:01her hand around Josephine's small
2:03fingers and let him wait for a reply
2:05that never came. And eventually he moved
2:07away toward the coffee, and the weight
2:09continued around her as if the walls of
2:11her life had not just been quietly
2:13measured for demolition. She had gone to
2:16that parlor already carrying three
2:18things, and she left it carrying only
2:20those same three things, and a fourth
2:22she did not yet understand. The three
2:25were the brown wool shaw her mother
2:27Bridget had made her the winter she
2:28turned 15. the tin canteen Thaddius had
2:31bought her the summer they moved to
2:33Mosquite Street and the memory of her
2:35husband's voice from three nights before
2:37when the fever had broken just long
2:39enough to let him see her clearly one
2:41last time. The fourth was a small square
2:43of folded paper Cornelius had not yet
2:45noticed tucked deep in the pocket of her
2:47apron where her fingers found it every
2:49few minutes without her deciding to
2:51check. Seven words written in the tight
2:54cramped hand she had watched hunched
2:56over survey maps for a decade. Mosquite
2:58Canyon when all else fails. Cornelius
3:02came for her at dawn the next morning
3:04with the practice patience of a man who
3:05has decided to be reasonable in the
3:07moments before he stops being reasonable
3:09at all. He brought his wife Hester with
3:11him, apron already tied at her waist, as
3:14if she had walked the 12 blocks from her
3:16own home, ready to begin cooking in a
3:18kitchen she had not yet claimed. He
3:20brought his son Ambrose, 16 years old,
3:22tall as a man, with the square ashcomb
3:25jaw and a habit of studying the corners
3:27of rooms as if calculating what they
3:29contained. Winifred opened the door
3:31before he could knock a second time. She
3:34had been awake since 3, sitting at the
3:36kitchen table with a cup of cold coffee
3:38and the folded paper flattened before
3:40her, reading those seven words the way
3:42her mother had taught her to read
3:44scripture slowly without hurry, waiting
3:46for the meaning underneath the meaning
3:47to surface. Cornelius stepped inside the
3:50way a man steps into a room he already
3:52owns. He removed his hat. He nodded at
3:55the walls as if greeting them for the
3:57first time in their new capacity.
3:59There's the practical matter of the
4:01house, Winnie. I don't want to rush you,
4:03but the practical matter doesn't wait.
4:06She watched Hester walk past her toward
4:08the kitchen without so much as a glance,
4:10watched her paws at the stove, and lay
4:13one flat hand on the iron top as if
4:15testing whether the fire was hers now.
4:18and she understood that the negotiation
4:20Cornelius intended to have with her was
4:22a formality intended to make the taking
4:24feel gentler than a taking. She poured
4:27him a cup of coffee because her mother
4:28had taught her that even the men who
4:30came to burn your barn deserve to be
4:32shown the manners of the house they were
4:34burning. And she asked him what he meant
4:36by the practical matter. and he told her
4:38the house was in Thaddius's name, the
4:41law of the territory of Arizona in the
4:43year of our Lord, 1889, in matters of
4:46interstate succession, where no adult
4:48son survived the deceased gave the
4:50property to the nearest male heir. He
4:53said the word law the way another man
4:55might say whether as if it were a thing
4:58that happened to people and could not be
4:59argued with. She asked him what would
5:01happen to Josephine. He said Josephine
5:04could stay if Winterfred agreed to
5:06reasonable terms. She asked him what
5:08reasonable meant. He said they could
5:10discuss it after she had time to think.
5:13By Wednesday, the walnut chest of
5:14drawers Thaddius had sanded and
5:16varnished across three consecutive
5:18Saturdays in the spring of their fourth
5:20year was gone. She watched it leave
5:22through the front door on the shoulders
5:24of Ambrose and a hired boy from the
5:26livery stable. And she watched Cornelius
5:28negotiate sale to a merchant on the
5:30plaza for $12. and she knew from the
5:33years she had spent buying goods at that
5:34same plaza that the chest was worth 40.
5:38She said nothing. She sat at the kitchen
5:40table where the walnut chest had stood
5:42for 4 years and she felt the empty space
5:44behind her the way a woman who has lost
5:46a tooth feels the empty space with her
5:48tongue without wanting to without being
5:51able to stop. On Thursday, Hester sold
5:53the dried herb bundles from the pantry
5:55to the apothecary on Franklin Street.
5:58Yo, Mullen, FeverFW, Valyrian, Arnica.
6:01Wifred had gathered them across three
6:03seasons of walks into the hills east of
6:06Copper Hollow. Hester received $1.80 for
6:09the lot. On Friday, Wifford walked the
6:1211 blocks to the office of Silus Ramden,
6:15the only attorney in Copper Hollow, and
6:17she sat in the leather chair across from
6:19his desk, and she asked him whether the
6:21law truly said what Cornelius said it
6:23said. Ramsden was a decent man. He had
6:26known Thaddius. He arranged the papers
6:29she had brought him with the slow,
6:30careful hands of a man who wished the
6:32arrangement would produce a different
6:34answer than the one he already knew. He
6:36told her the law said what Cornelius
6:38said it said. He told her that in the
6:40absence of a formal will, in the absence
6:42of any property registered in her name
6:45from before the marriage, in the absence
6:47of an adult son, she had the right to
6:50petition for support and nothing more.
6:52He told her he was sorry. She thanked
6:55him. She walked home the 11 blocks with
6:57her hands folded in front of her apron,
6:59the way her mother had walked home from
7:01a birth that had not gone well. Back
7:03straight, eyes forward thinking. On
7:04Saturday morning, Cornelius knocked
7:06twice on the door of the bedroom she had
7:08shared with Thaddius for 7 years, and he
7:10opened the door before she could answer.
7:12I need you out by sundown, Winnie.
7:15Ambrose will be taking this room. She
7:17was sitting on the edge of the bed with
7:19the folded paper in her hand. She looked
7:21at him and [clears throat] she thought
7:22about the coffee she had poured him 4
7:24days earlier. She thought about the man
7:26she had married. She thought about the
7:28difference between her husband and his
7:30brother and she thought about the
7:32strange fact that two men could grow
7:33from the same table and become such
7:36different animals. She said, "Where am I
7:38supposed to go?" He said, "There's a
7:40boarding house on Camino Street, $2 a
7:43week. Or your family in Prescott. That's
7:45your affair." She said, "I have $43." He
7:49said, "That's plenty for the boarding
7:51house. Enough time to figure things
7:53out." Hester appeared in the doorway
7:55behind him with the same apron she had
7:57worn on Tuesday. She said in a voice
7:59that was trying to sound kind, "I can
8:01give you a blanket and some cornbread
8:03for the road." Wifred looked at her
8:05sister-in-law and she looked at
8:07Cornelius and she felt something settle
8:09at the base of her stomach with the
8:11physical certainty of a stone dropping
8:13into a well. and she knew from that
8:15certainty that she would not be going to
8:17the boarding house on Camino Street or
8:19to her family in Prescat. She would be
8:21going to Mosquite Canyon. She had been
8:23born in 1860 on a small ranch 6 milesi
8:26south of Prescott, the fourth of seven
8:28children of Aean Howerin, a blacksmith
8:31whose Irish parents had come across the
8:33Atlantic during the potato blight and
8:35made their slow westward migration until
8:37they had reached the last territory
8:39where a man could still hammer his own
8:41life out of the raw metal of the land.
8:44Her father had large hands and a stammer
8:46he had inherited from his own father.
8:48And he spoke rarely, but he laid those
8:50hands on the tops of his children's
8:51heads at breakfast every morning of her
8:53childhood. And she had understood
8:55without being told that this daily
8:56benediction was the way he said the
8:59words he could not say. Her mother,
9:01Bridget Howerin, was a midwife who could
9:03not read music, but could read a fevered
9:05forehead with the accuracy of a
9:07physician. And Bridget had noticed when
9:09Wifred was seven years old and already
9:12reading the family Bible aloud with more
9:14fluency than her older brothers that her
9:16fourth child had been given a mind that
9:18was going to need to be fed. Bridget fed
9:21it with everything she had. She fed it
9:23with the Bible and with the letters that
9:25came twice a year from her brother in
9:27San Francisco describing the ships in
9:29the bay and the fog that rolled through
9:31the streets at dawn. She fed it with an
9:33old McGuffy reader she had traded a
9:35season of puses for, and with the
9:37arithmetic primer she borrowed from the
9:39school teacher two ranches over. She fed
9:42it with the herbs of the desert hills,
9:44and the names for each of them in
9:45English, and in the older tongues her
9:47neighbor Alma had taught her during the
9:49long summers, when the men were away
9:51with the survey crews. "A woman who can
9:54read is a woman no man can cheat with
9:56paper." Bridget told her daughter one
9:58afternoon when Wifred was 10, braiding
10:00her heavy black hair on the porch while
10:02a summers storm gathered over the
10:04mountains to the west. Wifred did not
10:06understand the sentence then, not fully,
10:08not in the way she would come to
10:09understand it later. She heard it the
10:12way a child hears a piece of weather as
10:14a fact about the world that would matter
10:16someday if she remembered it. She
10:18remembered it. She remembered it on the
10:20Friday afternoon in Silus Ramsen's
10:22office when he told her the law said
10:24what Cornelius said it said and she
10:26understood then at the age of 29 sitting
10:29in a leather chair in a lawyer's office
10:31in Copper Hollow with her hands folded
10:33in her lap the full weight of what her
10:35mother had been telling her while the
10:36rain came down over the mountains 20
10:38years before. She had grown up on that
10:40ranch until she was 17, learning to
10:42deliver a calf and stitch a wound and
10:45set a hair snare and grind cornmeal on
10:47the stonemill her grandmother had
10:48brought Wes from Missouri wrapped in an
10:50old army blanket. When her father's hand
10:53was crushed by a runaway forge hammer in
10:55the summer of her 14th year, and he
10:57could no longer swing iron the way he
10:59had for 25 years, the family did not
11:01fall apart the way families sometimes
11:03fell apart on the frontier when the man
11:06could no longer work. It bent. It
11:09reorganized itself around the smaller
11:11income that Bridget could bring in from
11:13her midwiffery and around the older
11:15brothers who took work at neighboring
11:16ranches and around Winterfred herself
11:19who at 14 was already earning small
11:21amounts in barter for the puses she
11:23prepared under her mother's supervision.
11:25She learned in that year the thing her
11:27mother had already known for a decade
11:29that a household that is careful and
11:31clever and refuses to be ashamed can
11:33survive nearly any collapse if the
11:35people inside it agree not to turn on
11:36each other. She would carry that
11:38knowledge with her for the rest of her
11:40life. She would carry it into the
11:42Mosquite Canyon. She had met Thaddius
11:44Ashcom in October of 1877 when she was
11:4817 and he was 22 on a rudded trail
11:50between two ranches on the far side of a
11:53low ridge that separated her family's
11:55land from the small mining settlements
11:57north of Prescott. He was sitting on a
11:59flat rock with a survey map unfolded
12:02across his knees and a pencil behind his
12:04ear, and his hat was pushed back on his
12:06head in the manner of a man who had been
12:08staring at the same problem long enough
12:10to forget where his hat was. She was
12:12walking home from a delivery that had
12:14gone easier than she had feared, and she
12:16was tired, but not weary. And she was in
12:18the kind of mood where a young woman
12:20notices a young man on a rock and
12:22decides without quite deciding to speak
12:24first, "Your map's wrong. that a royo
12:27doesn't run north. It bends northeast
12:29and it goes dry by August. He looked up.
12:32He looked at the map. He looked back at
12:34her and his eyes were the color of hazel
12:36shells open fresh. And he did not say
12:39what most men would have said to a
12:4117-year-old girl on a country trail. He
12:43said, "How do you know that?" She said,
12:45"Because I've been walking this country
12:47for 12 years with my mother." She
12:49started walking again. He caught up
12:51before she reached the first mosquite.
12:53They talked for two hours on that flat
12:55rock in the shade of a Palo Verde tree
12:57with the map between them and her
12:59finger, tracing corrections that the
13:01surveyor from Phoenix, a man who
13:03apparently never dismounted to check
13:05what he was drawing, had committed to
13:07paper, either through laziness or
13:08through the arrogance that men in cities
13:10sometimes brought with them when they
13:12came out into country they did not know.
13:15Thaddius listened. He listened the way
13:17she had never been listened to before,
13:18without interruption, without the small
13:20nervous male impulse to seize the reigns
13:22of the conversation and turn it toward
13:24himself. He made notes in the margins of
13:27the map with a pencil that was small
13:29enough to disappear in his palm when he
13:30wasn't using it. Before the sun touched
13:33the ridge, he asked whether he might
13:35come back and walk the Aoyos with her to
13:37verify her corrections in person. She
13:40said he could come with her mother and
13:42with her both of them. He said, "Of
13:44course." He said it not the way a man
13:47agrees to a condition, but the way a man
13:49understands why the condition exists and
13:51respects it completely. That more than
13:54the eyes or the pencil or the two hours
13:56of listening was the moment she began to
13:58consider him something other than
14:00another surveyor's assistant passing
14:02through. He came back the following
14:03Saturday and the Saturday after that.
14:05And by the fourth visit, her mother
14:07Bridget had invited him to supper and
14:09had studied him across the whole meal
14:11with the same attention she gave to the
14:13herbs of the hills, looking for what was
14:15not obvious at first glance. After
14:17Thaddius had gone, Bridget washed the
14:19dishes in silence for a long while, and
14:22then without turning to look at her
14:23daughter, she said the sentence that
14:24Wifred would remember for the rest of
14:26her life. That man thinks before he
14:29speaks. It is a difficult thing to find.
14:3216 months later they were married in the
14:34small stone church at Prescott and
14:36Cornelius Ashcom stood beside his
14:38younger brother at the altar with his
14:40wife Hester and their two small children
14:42Ambrose and Millisent and he embraced
14:44his brother with what Winterfred
14:46understood even in the moment was a
14:48genuine affection. He then leaned to
14:50kiss her cheek in welcome and his lips
14:52were cold. She noticed the coldness the
14:55way she had learned to notice small
14:56things without alarm filing it away in
14:59the same place she filed the movements
15:01of clouds and the changes of moon in
15:03case the information became useful
15:05later. It became useful. It would take
15:08her 10 years to understand how useful.
15:11The first years in Copper Hollow were
15:12the years of learning what a marriage
15:14was and what a household required.
15:16Thaddius took a position as a clerk in
15:18the territorial land office at $14 a
15:20month, a modest wage that placed them in
15:22the small ecosystem of Copper Hollow in
15:25the lower tier of respectability, above
15:27the day laborers and the drifters, but
15:29below the merchants and the ranchers and
15:31the two doctors. Winterfred supplemented
15:34the wage with the same herbal work she
15:35had done alongside her mother riding out
15:37to the surrounding ranches when a woman
15:39was in labor or a child was burning up,
15:42accepting payment in coin when coin was
15:44available and in dried beans and
15:46cornmeal and jars of preserves when it
15:48was not. They rented two rooms in a
15:50courtyard on Mosquet Street, and she
15:52planted cilantro and thyme and rosemary
15:54the first week because a garden was the
15:57first assertion a woman made that a
15:58rented house could still be made her
16:00own. Thaddius was quiet in the house,
16:02but restless in his mind. He spent
16:04evenings with maps spread across the
16:06kitchen table, not the official maps
16:08from the office, but his own, drawn by
16:11his own hand across long, careful hours,
16:13studying the geography of the territory
16:15with a dedication that exceeded anything
16:18his ordinary employment required. She
16:20brought him coffee and sat beside him
16:22and watched his finger move across
16:24contour lines and elevation marks. And
16:26sometimes he would explain what he was
16:28seeing. A rock formation that suggested
16:30underground water. A pattern of
16:32vegetation that indicated rich soil, a
16:35depression in the terrain that the
16:37government maps had marked as valless,
16:39but that Thaddius said the government
16:41maps were wrong about. The men who make
16:43these maps, he told her once, tapping a
16:45printed contour, have never walked the
16:47ground. They look from far away and they
16:50draw what they wish to see. She
16:52listened. She learned without meaning
16:54to. She began to see the desert of the
16:56territory through his eyes, not as a
16:58hostile, empty place, but as a
17:00complicated living system that gave up
17:03its secrets only to those who asked with
17:05patience. They had waited a long time
17:07for a child. She had come to understand
17:10in the third and fourth years of their
17:11marriage that the waiting itself was a
17:13kind of ache neither of them named.
17:15Thaddius never asked her about it. He
17:17never made her feel the failure. He
17:19simply continued to bring her coffee in
17:21the mornings and to touch her hand in
17:23the small ways that meant without words
17:25that his love was not conditional on the
17:27arrival of a child. When Josephine
17:30finally came in the summer of 1883 on a
17:33July morning when the whole valley
17:35smelled of creassote after a night of
17:36rain, she came strong. She came with a
17:39voice that filled every corner of the
17:40rented rooms on Mosquet Street and made
17:43Winfred laugh with a relief so pure it
17:45startled her. Thaddius held the baby
17:47with a care that was almost excessive,
17:49as though the small weight in his arms
17:51were a responsibility he was taking with
17:53the full seriousness of the world. He
17:56spoke to Josephine from the first day,
17:58describing the maps to her, pointing out
18:00the moon through the window, telling her
18:02in a low voice as if it were a secret
18:04the names of the stars over northern
18:05Arizona. Riel, Beetlejou, Polaris, the
18:11three sisters of Orion's belt. The child
18:14listened. Whether she understood or not,
18:16the child listened. In the spring of
18:181885, Thaddius was promoted to assistant
18:21clerk at $22 a month, and they bought
18:24the house on Mosquet Street from the
18:26previous owner for $180
18:28gathered across four years of careful
18:30economy, nights without lamp oil to save
18:33on the fuel, meet only three days a
18:35week, the herbal work done in the light
18:37before dawn and after supper. Wifred
18:40kept the ledger. She counted the coins
18:43into the tin box under the bed every
18:45Sunday evening. When the sum was enough,
18:47they bought the house and the deed went
18:48into Thaddius's name because the law
18:51required it and the custom required it.
18:53And it did not occur to her in 1885 that
18:56the deed being in his name would matter
18:58in the way it came to matter four years
19:00later. She was 25 and had a healthy
19:02child and a house of her own and a
19:04husband who thought before he spoke. She
19:07did not know to be afraid of the
19:08paperwork. That was the spring the
19:10Saturdays began. She noticed it the way
19:13she noticed everything without alarm, at
19:15first only with the attention she paid
19:17to any small variation in the pattern of
19:19her days. That would announce on Friday
19:21evening that he intended to ride out and
19:23inspect some parcels of terrain on his
19:25own account, something he had done
19:27occasionally since their marriage, and
19:29which had never seemed remarkable. Then
19:31it happened again the next week and the
19:33next. His boots came back caked with the
19:35reddish clay that did not appear in the
19:37immediate surroundings of Copper Hollow.
19:40His trousers carried the fine white dust
19:42of lime. Once she found scrapes on the
19:44backs of his hands, as if he had been
19:46shifting stones, he did not explain, and
19:49she did not ask because she had come to
19:51understand something about her husband
19:53in the years of their marriage that she
19:55could not quite put into words. His
19:57ideas needed silence to reach language.
19:59If you pressed him, the root closed. If
20:02you waited, the idea would flower on its
20:04own in its own season. So she waited.
20:07She noticed that he came back from those
20:09Saturdays not with the exhaustion of a
20:11man who had done something that weighed
20:13on him, but with the exhaustion of a man
20:15who had done something that filled him.
20:18He ate with real appetite. He slept
20:20deeply. He looked at Josephine as if the
20:23world made sense. One night in the
20:25second year of the Saturdays, lying
20:27awake in the deep silence of the desert,
20:29past midnight, she asked herself what
20:31her husband was doing. The first answer
20:34that came to her before the worries and
20:35the small feminine fears could rise was
20:38this something good. Something he does
20:41not want to explain yet because it is
20:43not ready to be explained. With that
20:46answer, she went to sleep. She did not
20:48know then that she was right in a way
20:50she could not yet imagine. There was a
20:52Christmas Eve she would carry with her
20:54afterward as a kind of touchstone, the
20:56way one carries a smooth stone from a
20:58river in a pocket to remind oneself that
21:01the river existed. It was 1887. Thaddius
21:05had come home from the market with a
21:06bottle of sweet wine that a merchant had
21:08brought up from California, an
21:10extravagance she pretended to scold him
21:12for and secretly loved. She had made the
21:14sugar and cinnamon fried doughuts her
21:16mother used to make, the ones that
21:18filled the house with the smell of
21:19caramelized brown sugar and hot oil. And
21:21Josephine, four years old, had eaten two
21:23of them and fallen asleep on the rag rug
21:26beside the stove with sugar on her chin.
21:28When the child was in bed, Wifred and
21:31Thaddius sat out on the small porch with
21:33the wine between them and the December
21:35sky over Copper Hollow so full of stars
21:38it seemed to press downward. He looked
21:40up at that sky for a long time and then
21:42without turning to her he said, "You
21:44know what I love most about you, Winnie?
21:46It's that you never feared the country.
21:49From the first day I saw you, I knew.
21:51You belong to this land not by being
21:53born to it, but by understanding it."
21:56She took a slow sip of the wine. She
21:59looked at him. She said, "You aren't
22:01like the men who draw without walking."
22:03He reached for her hand. They sat that
22:06way until the cold pushed them inside.
22:08The typhoid came in August of 1889,
22:11brought into Copper Hollow by a
22:13contaminated sistern at the boarding
22:15house on Camino Street and spread
22:17through half a dozen homes before the
22:19town council understood what was
22:21happening. She had seen typhoid before.
22:24She had watched her mother lose two
22:26patients to it in the summer of her 15th
22:28year, and she knew from the first day
22:29Thaddius came home with a low fever and
22:31the headache and the pale expression
22:33that she was in a fight she might not
22:35win. She fought it with everything she
22:37had. Yarrow tea and mullen leaves and
22:39cool cloths changed every half hour
22:41through the long hot nights. She slept
22:43in fragments. She did not eat properly.
22:46Josephine went to stay with Temperance
22:48Hollis, the 55-year-old widow who lived
22:51across the street and had loved
22:53Josephine since the day she was born and
22:55who now took the child in without a
22:57single question. Wifford was grateful
23:00for the woman's silence more than for
23:02any of her practical help. Some kinds of
23:04love do not need to explain themselves.
23:07Thaddius had moments of clarity. In one
23:09of them, on the Wednesday of the second
23:11week, when the fever dropped just far
23:13enough for his eyes to return to their
23:14proper place, behind his face, he took
23:16her hand and squeezed it hard enough
23:18that she almost pulled away out of
23:19surprise. Mosquite Canyon. When all else
23:22fails, you have to remember. She thought
23:25at first it was the fever talking the
23:27way patients sometimes spoke sentences
23:29that sounded important, but came from
23:31the disorder in the head.
23:33She stroked his hand and told him to
23:35rest. He held on harder. It's not
23:38delirium, Winnie. Listen to me. Mosquite
23:41Canyon. When all else fails, you will
23:44remember. I will remember.
23:483 days later, on the 1st of September
23:501889, Thaddius Ashcom died. I was 34
23:53years old. She sat on the edge of the
23:55bed for a long time afterward, watching
23:57the shape of him under the blanket.
24:00Understanding that the shape was already
24:01becoming something other than what it
24:03had been. Dr. Kingsley arrived from
24:06Tucson too late to do anything useful,
24:08but in time to sign the death
24:09certificate. He was a thin, distracted
24:11man with soft hands and a professional
24:14manner that did not manage quite to
24:16conceal his relief at not being the one
24:18whose bedside vigil had failed. He
24:20stayed less than 20 minutes. Cornelius
24:23arrived half an hour after the doctor
24:25left before Wifford had done anything
24:26more than sit at the kitchen table and
24:28stare at the floor. He arrived with
24:30Hester and with Ambrose. He arrived with
24:33the familiarity of a man who knew he had
24:35the right to enter, who had always had
24:37that right, who had never needed anyone
24:39to give it to him. We are so sorry,
24:41Winnie. He said it, and the sorrow in
24:44his voice was genuine. Cornelius did
24:46love his brother. That was the thing she
24:49would only later come to understand that
24:50the love and the taking could live in
24:52the same body without contradiction.
24:54Hester embraced her. It was a real
24:57embrace, warm, and Winterfred allowed
24:59herself to be held because in that
25:00moment, Hester was the closest thing
25:02available to hold on to. Ambrose stayed
25:04in the doorway with his hands in his
25:06pocket studying the furniture. The wake
25:08was in the house. That night the
25:10neighbors came, colleagues from the land
25:12office, some of the ranch women she had
25:15attended over the years. Temperance
25:16Hollis leading Josephine by the hand and
25:19remaining beside Winterfred through the
25:21entire evening without saying much and
25:23without letting go of her fingers.
25:25Cornelius received the visitors in the
25:27parlor as though the house were already
25:29his. He offered whiskey he had brought
25:32himself. He accepted the condolences
25:34with the grave voice of the family man
25:36in charge of the situation. Winterford
25:38watched him do it and said nothing. She
25:40was too exhausted to say anything. She
25:42had slept 14 hours in the previous 3
25:45weeks. Her body was a thing that
25:47functioned by habit rather than by will.
25:50The burial was the next morning at 10 in
25:52the cemetery at the edge of town.
25:54Josephine went with her. She would not
25:56leave the child with anyone. Reverend
25:58Weatherall, the old preacher with a thin
26:00voice who had known Thaddius for years,
26:02said a few words about the goodness of
26:04the deceased, and the words seemed true
26:06to Winfred, and that helped a little. It
26:08was on the walk back from the cemetery
26:10to the house that Cornelius drew
26:11alongside her, and began to speak of the
26:14practical matter. She sat on the edge of
26:16her bed that Saturday morning after he
26:17told her Ambrose would be taking the
26:19room, and she looked at the mark on the
26:21wall where the mirror had hung until
26:22Hester had taken it down two days
26:24earlier, and she took the folded paper
26:26from beneath the pillow. She had been
26:28sleeping with it there since the night
26:30of the wake, when she had gone through
26:32the small wooden box on his side of the
26:34dresser, looking for the pocket watch to
26:36give to Josephine as a keepsake, and had
26:38found instead the paper folded four
26:40times with the seven words in his
26:41handwriting. She had not understood it
26:44then. She had thought it was the
26:45fragment of a survey note or a reminder
26:48to himself about a parcel of terrain he
26:50had wanted to revisit. She had folded it
26:52back and placed it in her apron pocket
26:54and worn it for 6 days without thinking
26:57clearly about what it might mean. Now
26:59sitting on the bed with the Saturday sun
27:01coming through the window and
27:02Cornelius's footsteps audible in the
27:05next room. She read it again and this
27:07time [clears throat] she read it not as
27:08a note but as an instruction and she
27:11remembered his fingers tightening on her
27:13hand three weeks earlier. It's not
27:15delirium Winnie. Listen to me. You will
27:18remember. Temperance Hollis crossed the
27:20street when she saw the door open. She
27:23had been watching from her own window
27:24since Cornelius had gone in that morning
27:26and she came into the kitchen without
27:28knocking because there are moments when
27:30even the manners of the frontier give
27:32way to the older obligations. She had
27:34brought a canvas satchel over her
27:35shoulder, and she set it on the kitchen
27:37table without ceremony. Inside were
27:40three loaves of hard bread wrapped in
27:42cheesecloth, a small croc of lard, a
27:45strip of dried beef the length of a
27:48man's forearm, a wool blanket thick
27:50enough to sleep on a second canteen
27:52larger than the tin one, and a folded
27:54scrap of paper on which he had drawn
27:56from memory the rough trail to the ranch
27:58of a goat herder named Barnaby Quill,
28:00who lived a day's ride to the southeast.
28:02You can leave the child with me, Winnie,
28:05as long as you need. She would be safe
28:07here. I would love her like blood.
28:10Wifred put her hand on the older woman's
28:12shoulder. She said, "Thank you, but she
28:15comes with me, and I will keep her
28:17safe." Temperance nodded. She did not
28:20argue. She said, "Baraby knew your
28:22husband. He will help you." Wifred did
28:25not ask how Temperance knew that. There
28:27would be time for that later. She
28:29counted her $43 twice and divided them
28:32among three pockets sewn into three
28:34separate garments, so that if she was
28:36robbed on the trail, she would not lose
28:37everything at once. She dressed
28:39Josephine in the sturdy pinnor and the
28:41leather shoes and the widebrim straw hat
28:44that would keep the sun off the child's
28:45face across the miles ahead. She braided
28:48the child's hair tight against the wind.
28:50She rolled the wool blanket and tied it
28:52to the satchel. She filled both cantens
28:54at the pump in the courtyard, the tin
28:56one and the larger one Temperance had
28:58brought. When she came out of the
29:00bedroom for the last time with the
29:01satchel over her shoulder and
29:03Josephine's hand in hers, Cornelius was
29:06in the parlor examining something in a
29:08stack of papers. He looked up. He saw
29:11the satchel. He saw Josephine. He saw
29:14the direction she was taking, which was
29:15not toward the boarding house on Camino
29:17Street and not toward the road south
29:19toward Prescott, but toward the low
29:21ridges to the southeast. Where are you
29:23going? She answered without stopping.
29:26Mosquite Canyon? He laughed. It was a
29:29real laugh at first, the laugh of a man
29:31who has heard something absurd and
29:32cannot help himself. That's Scorpion
29:35Gulch, Winnie. Don't be foolish. That
29:38was one of Thaddius's ideas he never did
29:40anything with. Half of what your husband
29:42talked about at night was daydreams. She
29:44said nothing. She kept walking. She
29:47reached the gate. She heard him from the
29:49porch behind her and the laugh was gone
29:51from his voice now replaced by something
29:53sharper, more impatient. Be gone before
29:56sundown, Winnie. Do you hear me? Be gone
29:59before sundown.
30:01She did not turn. She did not answer.
30:04She took Josephine's hand more firmly
30:06and walked out of the house on Mosquet
30:08Street for the last time. They walked
30:10out of Copper Hollow with the morning
30:12still cool, the clean stretch of hour
30:14and a half between the dawn and the
30:16moment when the sun clears the eastern
30:18ridges and falls vertical across the
30:20country. She walked quickly at first
30:22first and Josephine kept up with a
30:24determination that would have made
30:25Bridget Howerin proud small legs pumping
30:28against the rhythm of the trail, hand
30:30steady inside her mother's hand. After
30:32the first mile, the pace settled.
30:34Winterfred had calculated from the maps
30:36Thaddius had described to her across so
30:38many nights of coffee and lamplight that
30:40Mosquite Canyon lay something over 40 mi
30:43to the southeast, two days for a woman
30:45on foot at a moderate pace. She did not
30:48mean to walk the whole distance.
30:49Temperance had told her Barnaby Quill's
30:52ranch stood roughly half the way, and
30:54Temperance had also told her quietly on
30:56the porch as she pressed the satchel
30:58into her hands that Barnaby would be
31:00waiting. Wifred did not ask how she knew
31:02that either. There were many things she
31:05was going to learn in the coming weeks
31:06about how much her husband had prepared
31:08and how many people already knew what
31:10she was only beginning to understand.
31:12Josephine walked in silence through most
31:14of that first morning. She was a child
31:16of the kind of a temperament that does
31:18not spend words unnecessarily the same
31:21temperament as her father. And when she
31:23spoke, it was because she had something
31:24concrete to say. A lizard crossing the
31:27trail, a blood red flower on the stalk
31:30of an Okato. a hawk carving perfect
31:33circles above a rising column of warm
31:35air. Winterfred gave her the names in a
31:38low voice as if naming were a way of
31:40keeping the world in the world. Mommy,
31:43did Papa come to the canyon a lot. A
31:46lot, Josie. Yes, he did. Josephine
31:49thought about this across several steps.
31:52Why didn't he take us? Winifred did not
31:55have the answer yet. Yet, I don't know
31:57yet. We are going to find out when we
31:59get there. That answer seemed to satisfy
32:01the child who nodded and kept walking.
32:04They stopped at midday in the shade of a
32:05stand of msquets growing around a
32:07shallow depression in the ground where
32:09the darker soil showed that water had
32:11pulled there sometime during the rainy
32:13season. Wifred took out a portion of the
32:15dried beef and a piece of the hardbread
32:17and divided them more for the child than
32:19for herself. She let Josephine drink
32:21from the tin canteen first and then took
32:24a small sip from the larger one. She had
32:26known deserts long enough to know that
32:28thirst was not the enemy on the first
32:29day. Thirst was the enemy on the third.
32:32What mattered on the first day was not
32:34thinking about the second. She thought
32:36about Thaddius during that midday rest.
32:38She thought about him with an intensity
32:40that hurt physically, a pain located
32:43precisely behind her breastbone in the
32:45place where physicians would put no
32:47name, but where any woman who has lost
32:49the man she loved knows that grief
32:51lives. She thought about his inkstained
32:54fingers. She thought about the voice he
32:56used when he explained contour lines to
32:58her softer and more passionate than his
33:01ordinary voice, as though speaking about
33:03the land made him briefly a more
33:05complete person. She thought about
33:06Mosquite Canyon when all else fails. She
33:10asked herself not for the first time
33:12what he had known that she had not
33:13known. They walked on through the
33:15afternoon and the country grew more
33:17difficult. The trail thinned in one long
33:20stretch. It disappeared entirely into
33:22the general emptiness, and she had to
33:24navigate by the angle of the light and
33:26the direction in which the cactus stalks
33:28leaned according to the prevailing wind,
33:30the way her mother had taught her to
33:31read the ridge line the summer she was
33:3312. Toward the end of the afternoon,
33:35they found water in a rock basin, a
33:38natural stone hollow, where rainwater
33:39collected and held for weeks in the
33:41shade of a gray granite face. Josephine
33:43drank cupping the water in both palms
33:45without manners the way the desert
33:47animals drank and Winterfred understood
33:49that this was exactly the correct way.
33:51They filled both cantens and moved on.
33:54That first night they slept beneath a
33:56stand of palo verdies on a slope that
33:58turned its back to the wind from the
34:00north. She spread the wool blanket on
34:02the ground and lay down with Josephine
34:04curled against her body the way the
34:06child had always slept in the cold
34:08nights of Copper Hollow. The stars over
34:10the desert that night seemed more
34:12numerous than she remembered stars ever
34:14being. Or perhaps they had always been
34:16that way. And what had changed was that
34:18at this point in her life, there was no
34:20roof and no city concerns to distract
34:22her from looking up. Josephine slept
34:25quickly. Wifred took longer. She had a
34:28moment of pure fear in that first
34:30darkness. The old fear that is older
34:32than reason and cannot be argued with by
34:34reason. the fear of being alone in a
34:36place with no one who knew her, with no
34:38direction of return worth taking with a
34:40small child and $43 in a piece of paper
34:44on which seven words had been written by
34:46a man who was now under the ground in
34:48the cemetery at Copper Hollow. The fear
34:50lasted for several minutes. She let it
34:52stay. She breathed through it. At some
34:55point, she could not identify precisely
34:57the fear passed. What remained was not
35:00courage exactly. It was something
35:02simpler. It was the determination that
35:04does not come from the head, but from
35:06the body, from the place where survival
35:08lives. She closed her eyes, she slept,
35:11and somewhere between the palo verde
35:13branches and the wide sky above them.
35:16She felt for the first time since her
35:18husband had died, the small, quiet
35:20beginning of an idea she could not yet
35:22name. That she was not walking away from
35:24something. She was walking towards
35:26something. And the man who had died in
35:29her arms 3 weeks earlier had known all
35:31along that this day would come. The dawn
35:33of the second day came without ceremony
35:35over the Palo Verde branches a slow
35:38lightning at the eastern horizon that
35:40woke Winterfred before it woke the
35:42child. She lay still for a few minutes
35:44with Josephine's small breath against
35:46her collarbone and used those minutes to
35:49count what she had physically in her
35:50possession and what she had less
35:52tangibly in the store of everything her
35:54mother had ever taught her. The larger
35:56canteen was still 3/4 full. The tin one
35:59was half. The dried beef would last
36:01another day and a half if she was
36:03disciplined. The hard bread would go
36:05faster than the beef because the child
36:07preferred it. She had the wool blanket,
36:09the shawl, the paper of seven words and
36:11$43 distributed across three pockets.
36:14What her mother had taught her would
36:16have to be counted differently. It was
36:18not something you could measure, only
36:20something you could trust yourself to
36:22remember when the moment required it.
36:24She woke Josephine gently and gave her a
36:26piece of the bread and a swallow from
36:28the tin canteen. The child ate without
36:30complaint. There was a seriousness to
36:33her that morning that Winterfred had not
36:34seen before. Not the seriousness of
36:36fear, but the seriousness of a small
36:39person adjusting to the fact that the
36:41rules of her life had changed and the
36:43adjustment was going to require her
36:45attention. They rolled the blanket. They
36:48set out. The country of the second day
36:50was harder than the country of the
36:51first. The trail had climbed steadily
36:54during the previous afternoon without
36:56her noticing it, and now they were
36:57descending into a series of low, rocky
36:59ridges, where the granite pushed through
37:02the surface and outcrops the color of
37:03dusty rose. Thaddius had told her once
37:06on a Sunday walk in their second year of
37:08marriage, that the darker basalt
37:10intrusions in this part of the territory
37:12meant the region had been a field of
37:14fire in some ancient time before any
37:15human being had walked it. She had
37:17thought at the time it was the kind of
37:19poetic thing men said to impress women.
37:21She understood now that it had been
37:23literal. Underfoot everywhere in this
37:25stretch of desert were the cooled
37:27remains of an old violence patient
37:29beneath the surface waiting. They found
37:31the goat herder's ranch a little past
37:33midm morning. Three small adobe rooms
37:35arranged around a swept dirt yard, a
37:38stone corral behind a lean two of
37:40cottonwood poles that served as shade
37:42for the animals during the worst of the
37:44summer heat. A thin line of blue smoke
37:46rose from a stove pipe. Before she could
37:49call out, an old man stepped from the
37:51doorway of the largest room and stood
37:53watching her come. He was 70 at least,
37:56thin as a piece of tanned rope with
37:58white hair cut short and hands that hung
38:00loose at his sides in the manner of a
38:02man who had spent a long life waiting
38:04for animals to do what animals were
38:06going to do. Barnaby Quill lifted his
38:08chin in greeting without speaking. She
38:10raised her free hand. She came forward
38:13the last hundred yards with Josephine's
38:15grip tightening a little against her
38:16palm. He did not ask her name at first.
38:19He looked at her and he looked at the
38:21child and he looked at the canvas
38:22satchel over her shoulder and something
38:24in his face reorganized itself. He said,
38:26"Come out of the sun." He said it not as
38:29an invitation but as an instruction, the
38:31way a man who has lived alone a long
38:33time speaks to living creatures when
38:36they arrive at his door. She followed
38:38him into the largest of the three rooms,
38:40which was cool with the specific
38:42coolness that thick adobe walls produce
38:44even in the hottest hours. and she
38:46watched him ladle a stew of beans and
38:48green chili from a heavy pot on the
38:50stove into two tin bowls without asking
38:52whether she was hungry. He set the bowls
38:54on a rough plank table. He set a plate
38:57of fresh cornbread beside them. He
38:59nodded at the chair. Josephine climbed
39:02onto the chair and began to eat with a
39:03hunger that shamed Wifford to see
39:05because it revealed that the rationing
39:07of the last day and a half had been felt
39:09more than the child had let on. Winifred
39:12ate too and slowly so that the child
39:14would slow her own eating. The old man
39:17stood at the stove watching them without
39:19pretending not to. He said when they
39:21were most of the way through the bowls,
39:22"Ashcomb." Her spoon paused. "Yes." He
39:26nodded once as if a small thing he had
39:29suspected had been confirmed. "That boy
39:31walked into my yard three years ago
39:33looking for water for his horse. I told
39:35him he was a damn fool for going into
39:37that gulch. Every man in the county
39:39knows what's in there. Scorpions,
39:41rattlesnakes, empty rock. He turned back
39:45to the stove and picked up an iron
39:46kettle. He laughed at me. He said,
39:48"Corpions didn't bother a man who didn't
39:51bother them." Then he sat down at this
39:53table right where you are sitting, and
39:55he ate my chili, and he told me the
39:57names of every plant growing in the wash
39:59behind my corral. He knew more than a
40:01man ought to know, unless he had been
40:03paying a peculiar kind of attention. Her
40:05throat closed once and released. That
40:08was my husband. Barnaby set the kettle
40:11back on the stove. He turned. He looked
40:14at her fully for the first time and his
40:16eyes were the pale wash blue of a man
40:18who had spent seven decades in strong
40:20light. He passed 10 days ago. He was
40:23silent for a long count. Then he said,
40:26"Your husband told me a thing when he
40:27was here the second time. He said, "If a
40:29woman with a small girl ever came down
40:32this trail with a canvas bag looking for
40:34the canyon, that woman was his wife, and
40:36I was to help her." The tin spoon in her
40:39hand shook once and still. He said that.
40:43He said that. Barnaby moved to a peg on
40:46the wall and lifted down a battered felt
40:48hat. I have a mule. She is old, but her
40:50feet know these stones. I will take you
40:52the rest of the way after your child has
40:54rested. He would not accept money, she
40:57offered. He waved the hand that had held
40:59the kettle in a small flat motion that
41:01ended the discussion. What he did accept
41:04was the promise she made without being
41:05asked to make it the promise that if he
41:08ever needed help, he would send word to
41:09the canyon and it would come. He nodded
41:12once at that and did not speak of it
41:14again. While Josephine napped for two
41:16hours on a straw pallet in the coolest
41:18corner of the largest room, Wifred sat
41:21on the packed dirt of the yard with her
41:23back against the shaded wall of the
41:24adobe and drank a second bowl of chili
41:26that Barnaby set beside her without
41:28comment. She watched the goats in their
41:30stone corral. She thought about the
41:32sentence he had spoken. He said, "If a
41:35woman with a small girl ever came down
41:37this trail, her husband had prepared
41:39this old man for her. He had prepared
41:42her arrival at a stranger's door two
41:44days into the desert. She began to
41:46understand, sitting there with the empty
41:48bowl, warming her fingers, that she had
41:50been walking not into wilderness, but
41:52into a shape her husband had drawn. They
41:54left Barnaby's ranch in the middle of
41:56the afternoon with Josephine on the back
41:58of the mule and Winterfred walking
42:00alongside. The child had the reins wound
42:03loose around one small hand in the way
42:05Barnaby had shown her and she was
42:06sitting with the straight back pride of
42:08a person who has been given a serious
42:10responsibility for the first time in her
42:11life. Barnaby walked ahead of them. He
42:14said almost nothing across the next 3
42:16hours. Once he stopped to point out the
42:18second dry wash, a stretch of white sand
42:21and smooth stones where water would move
42:23in the wet months and where in early
42:25September there was only heat and
42:26silence. He turned them southeast at
42:29that point. The trail thickened again.
42:31The vegetation shifted. Winifred began
42:34to notice without saying anything the
42:36small deliberate signs of use along the
42:38way. A branch snapped in a certain
42:40manner. A stone displaced from a
42:43position that gravity would not have
42:44chosen a mark carved shallow into the
42:46trunk of a saguarro that could have been
42:48accidental and that in the accumulated
42:50context was not. The wall of Moskei and
42:53Palo Fierro appeared without preamble.
42:56One moment they were walking through
42:57open desert with the sun on their left
42:59shoulders. The next moment there was a
43:01green density ahead of them, thick and
43:03closed, 10 ft tall in places and broken.
43:06Barnaby raised a hand and stopped the
43:08mule. He said, "This is where I leave
43:10you." He said it not as a farewell, but
43:12as a boundary he understood belonged to
43:15somebody else. The opening is to your
43:17right about 30 paces between two big
43:20mosquets. You'll smell the water when
43:22you get close. Winterfred looked at the
43:25wall of vegetation and she looked at the
43:27old man and something in her chest was
43:29doing the work of both gratitude and
43:31grief at the same time. How can I ever
43:34thank you? He handed her the reigns of
43:36the mule. He said, "That is not the kind
43:38of thing you pay back. That is the kind
43:41of thing you pass along." He touched the
43:44brim of his hat once to Josephine, who
43:46lifted her small hand in return with the
43:48gravity of a person acknowledging a
43:50treaty. And then he turned and began
43:52walking back the way they had come
43:54without looking back the way a man walks
43:56who is confident of his own direction
43:58and does not need to check whether
44:00anyone is watching him go. The opening
44:02was where he had said it would be. Two
44:05mosquets with trunks as thick as a man's
44:07chest, their roots buckling the ground
44:09on either side into what could only be
44:11described as a threshold. She stood
44:14before it for a long moment. Josephine
44:16looked down at her from the back of the
44:18mule. The child said, "Do we go in,
44:20mommy?" Winterford took a breath that
44:23reached deeper than any breath she had
44:24taken in seven days. She thought of the
44:27hazel eyes. She thought of the ink on
44:29the fingers. She thought of the seven
44:31words, "We go in." Beyond the threshold,
44:34the world changed, not with drama, not
44:37all at once, but the way things change
44:39when a person crosses from one climate
44:41into another. The canyon opened around
44:43them. The walls of stone rose 15 or 20 m
44:46on either side. gray granite streaked
44:49with quartz, and the space between them
44:51was wider than she had guessed from the
44:53outside, perhaps 130 feet at its
44:55broadest. The floor of the canyon was
44:58covered with vegetation that had no
44:59business existing in this country, reads
45:02along a bright thread of moving water,
45:04wild fig trees with their gray green
45:06leaves, a drooping willow whose branches
45:09touched the ground within a stone's
45:10throw of the entrance. The smell of
45:12water was strong here inside an
45:14undeniable presence. Birds spoke from
45:16the vegetation in a variety of voices
45:18she associated with places where shade
45:20and moisture were permanent. She helped
45:22Josephine down from the mule. The child
45:24took three steps forward on her own with
45:26her eyes very wide. She whispered
45:28without turning around, "Mommy, this is
45:31where Papa was when he wasn't with us."
45:34Wifred did not answer at once. The
45:36whisper had struck her in the place
45:38behind her breastbone that was still
45:40tender from the burial. "I think this is
45:42where he was building for us. She saw
45:44the house." Then it stood at the deepest
45:46curve of the canyon's widest section set
45:48against the northern wall to catch the
45:50summer shade and the winter sun, which
45:52was precisely the reasoning her husband
45:54would have used. Not a shack, not an
45:57isolated room, a house in the shape of
45:59an L with two clearly defined wings, a
46:02roof of mosquite beams and mud and reed,
46:05a heavy wooden front door with black row
46:07iron fittings that she could see from a
46:09100 paces was solid, well hung, well
46:12fitted. The walls were the same ochre as
46:14the canyon rock, and they seemed to grow
46:16out of it. Someone who did not know the
46:18house was there might walk past the
46:20mouth of the canyon and miss it
46:22entirely. She led the mule forward
46:25slowly. The details grew sharper as they
46:27approached. The roof beams extended past
46:29the walls and eaves long enough to shade
46:31a person standing directly against the
46:33adobe. The two front windows were sunk
46:36deep into the mass of the walls, the way
46:38windows are sunk when the walls are more
46:40than 2 ft thick. The front porch was
46:42flag stone, laid without mortar, but
46:44fitted with the tight precision of a man
46:46who had refused to move on to the next
46:48piece until the current piece was seated
46:50properly. To the right half, covered by
46:52a reed shelter that had clearly been
46:54built as a working roof, stood a
46:56wellhead of squared timber with a pulley
46:58mechanism in a metal bucket. To the
47:00left, following a line of stone that
47:02came down from the canyon wall, ran a
47:04stone channel sealed with lime and clay
47:06that carried a steady thread of water
47:08down from some seep in the rock face and
47:11distributed it in a network of smaller
47:13irrigation ditches to five rectangular
47:15plots of soil, leveled and edged empty
47:18in early September because no one had
47:20planted them, but darker [clears throat]
47:21and finer than the ordinary soil of the
47:23desert. prepared, waited on, ready. She
47:28stood a long moment in front of it all.
47:30Josephine stood beside her without
47:32speaking. Wifred touched the paper
47:34folded against her breast beneath her
47:36blouse, the way a woman in a church
47:38touches a rosary, and she understood in
47:40that quiet before entering that the
47:42sentence her husband had written in the
47:44tightest hand she had ever known him to
47:45use, had not been a whisper or a
47:47warning. It had been a deed. She reached
47:50her hand up beneath the collar of her
47:52dress and drew out the iron key she had
47:54been carrying without understanding why
47:56she had been carrying it since the night
47:57of the wake. It was a plain heavy key
48:00with a cross-shaped bow. She had found
48:02it in the small wooden box on Thaddius's
48:04side of the dresser the same night she
48:06had found the paper, and she had kept it
48:08because keeping small things her husband
48:10had touched felt important then. Now she
48:12stepped up onto the flagstone porch and
48:14slid the key into the padlock on the
48:16heavy wooden door. The lock turned with
48:18a clean, small click, the click of a
48:20mechanism that had been oiled recently,
48:22the click of a lock that had been
48:24maintained by someone who had wanted her
48:25to succeed at this exact moment. The
48:28door swung inward with the soft chirp of
48:30hinges that had been tended to. The air
48:32of the house met her adobe and old wood
48:35and a faint sweetness she could not
48:36immediately name, and she stepped
48:38inside. The main room was larger than
48:41the exterior had suggested. Whoever had
48:43planned this had used every inch of the
48:45interior with an efficiency that spoke
48:47of a mind that had drawn the floor plan
48:50more than once before committing it to
48:51the ground. A heavy table of rough
48:54huneed mosquite stood in the center of
48:55the room with two chairs waiting. An
48:57adobe cook stove filled the near corner
48:59with its chimney flu rising straight
49:01through the roof. And when she wrapped
49:03her knuckles against that flu, it
49:05answered with the deep muffled note of
49:07masonry that had been built to last a
49:09lifetime. Shelves lined the north wall.
49:12On the shelves in sackcloth and tin and
49:15small stone wear crocs sat provisions.
49:18Not the abandoned provisions of a place
49:20someone had left in a hurry. Arranged
49:22provisions. Placed provisions. Corn,
49:25beans, dried chilies, salt in a jar with
49:28a lid that fit. Brown sugar loaves
49:31wrapped in paper. Coffee ground and
49:33sealed in a waxmouthed leather pouch.
49:36Rice. a supply that had been calculated
49:38by a man who had considered how many
49:40people would be in this house and for
49:42how long and what they would need at the
49:44end of a hard journey to eat their first
49:46meal without walking back out into the
49:48country to hunt for it. Josephine had
49:50followed her inside. The child walked to
49:53the mosquite table and placed both her
49:55small palms flat against the wood and
49:57stood there feeling it. The child said
49:59without looking up, "Papa made this
50:01table." It was not a question. Wifred
50:04came and stood behind her and rested a
50:06hand on the top of her head. He did. He
50:09made it for us. She could not have added
50:12another sentence in that moment. She
50:14turned to the upper shelves and began
50:15with hands that were not quite steady to
50:17inventory the tools. A small hoe, a
50:21shovel, a hand mallet, a handsaw with
50:24the teeth still sharp. A carpenters's
50:27level, its bubble intact under its
50:29bright brass window. Coils of rope in
50:31three thicknesses. Nails sorted by size
50:34into small canvas pouches. On the lowest
50:37shelf, a hurricane lamp with its
50:38reservoir full a tin box of matches
50:41wrapped in wax cloth. A small stack of
50:43tallow candles. everything her husband
50:46had thought a woman would need to begin
50:48a life in this place with no man to hunt
50:51for her and no town to walk to. She
50:54explored the rest of the house before
50:55the light failed. The right wing of the
50:58L held what was clearly intended as a
51:00bedroom with two low platforms of adobe
51:02raised from the floor at the height a
51:04straw mattress would want to sit smooth
51:06and clean. The window of that room faced
51:09the well so that on a still night the
51:11water in its depth would be audible from
51:12the bed if the world outside was quiet
51:15enough. The left wing of the L was
51:17closed by a second door. This door was
51:19smaller. It was hung in the same walnut
51:22she had recognized in the front door,
51:23but it was thicker and it had a second
51:25padlock that did not match the first.
51:28The iron key she was carrying would not
51:30open it. She tried. The key was wrong.
51:33She stood before that door for a while
51:35and understood that the house had one
51:37more thing to give her and it would have
51:39to wait for another moment. They cooked
51:41beans that first evening on the adobe
51:43stove with wood from a stack outside the
51:46door that had been split and laid in a
51:48covered leanto enough drywood for weeks.
51:50She lit the hurricane lamp when the sun
51:52dropped below the western rim of the
51:54canyon and the interior went dim. She
51:57fed the child. She washed the two bowls
51:59at the well with water she drew for
52:01herself for the first time watching the
52:03metal bucket come up dark with cold
52:05clean water that tasted of granite and
52:07depth. She sat with Josephine on the
52:09flagstone porch when the child was full
52:12and the stars had begun their appearance
52:14in the strip of sky visible between the
52:16canyon walls. She thought that she had
52:18never seen stars framed like this cut on
52:20both sides by rock so that what remained
52:23above was a corridor of black and light.
52:26Josephine leaned her head against her
52:28mother's arm and was asleep within a
52:30quarter of an hour. Winterfred carried
52:32the child inside to one of the adobe
52:34platforms and laid her on the folded
52:36blanket. She covered her with the shawl.
52:38She went back out onto the porch. The
52:41lamp was low. The night in the canyon
52:43had a temperature of its own cooler than
52:45the country outside, kept honest by the
52:47water in the stone. The sound of the
52:50stone channel was constant and small, a
52:52threat of movement that would not stop
52:54as long as the seep in the wall did not
52:55fail. Somewhere higher in the canyon, an
52:58owl asked its question of the dark, and
53:00the dark did not answer. She stood at
53:02the edge of the porch. She looked up at
53:04the strip of stars, and Wifford Howerin
53:06Ashkcom cried for the first time since
53:08her husband had died. She had not cried
53:11at the wake. She had not cried at the
53:13burial. She had not cried during the six
53:16days of the taking. She cried now
53:18silently with her hand across her mouth
53:20so as not to wake the child because the
53:22shape her husband had drawn across four
53:24years of Saturdays had opened itself to
53:26her with such completeness that grief
53:28and gratitude could no longer be told
53:30apart. She cried for 10 or 12 minutes.
53:33She dried her face with the shawl. She
53:35went back inside. The third day at the
53:37canyon began the work of learning what a
53:39place taught a person who was going to
53:41live in it. She walked the water channel
53:43to its source and found the seep in the
53:46north wall about 7 m above the floor, a
53:48slow, constant thread from a crack in
53:50the granite that her husband had
53:52captured with a small housing of stone
53:54and clay and directed downward through
53:56the channel he had cut. She walked the
53:58five plots and studied the soil. She
54:01turned it in her hand and understood
54:02that the darkness of it was the result
54:04of years of enrichment, mule dung, and
54:07rivers and lime worked impatiently
54:09across the seasons. A man had been
54:11coming here on his Saturdays. She walked
54:13the wall of the northern face and found
54:16at knee height exactly where he had
54:18promised in the seven-word papers hidden
54:20logic, a small cross insized into the
54:22rock at the base of a band of stone that
54:25under the noon light took on an
54:26iridescent quality different from the
54:28darker basalt above and below it. She
54:30did not know rock the way her husband
54:32had learned to know rock. She knew
54:34though from the years of desert winters
54:37that a difference in color at the base
54:38of a wall was a difference in the story
54:41of that wall and she pressed her palm
54:43flat against the band of pale stone and
54:45felt only its ordinary coldness and she
54:48filed the observation away. The fourth
54:51day brought a visitor. Wifred was on her
54:53knees at the edge of the middle plot,
54:55harvesting a handful of wild bean pods
54:57that had come up on their own from seed
54:59carried by birds when she heard a low
55:01whistle from the direction of the
55:02mosquite gate. Not the whistle of a
55:05person calling out, the whistle of a
55:07person announcing herself so that she
55:09would not appear suddenly in another
55:11woman's ground. Wifred rose. Her hand
55:14went to the pocket of her apron where
55:16the kitchen knife rode. She waited. The
55:18woman who appeared at the threshold was
55:20small and stood upright in a way that
55:22made her age difficult to place. 65
55:24perhaps or 70. White hair braided in a
55:27thick rope down her back. A dark cotton
55:30skirt, a muslin blouse, leather work
55:33shoes, a woven palm basket over her left
55:36forearm covered with a cloth. She waited
55:38at the mites and did not step through.
55:41Good morning. The greeting had a
55:43courtesy in it that was also a form of
55:45asking permission. Winterfred left her
55:47hand where it was in the apron pocket.
55:49Good morning. My name is Prudence
55:52Whitlock. I live with my son and his
55:54wife at Dryfork an hour that way. Word
55:56came that someone had arrived in the
55:58canyon. How does word come? The smoke of
56:01the stove. Four years without smoke.
56:04Suddenly smoke in the desert one notices
56:06these things. Wifford studied her. She
56:09said, "Did you know my husband?" The old
56:12woman's eyes changed not in expression
56:14exactly, but in temperature. They
56:16warmed. Mr. Ashcom, yes, [clears throat]
56:18I knew him. He was a good man. He died
56:21two weeks ago. Prudence Whitlock lowered
56:24her head an inch and held it there. I
56:26know. Word reached me by the trail. That
56:29is why I came. She lifted the basket. I
56:32brought some things. Seed for the second
56:34planting and a little food for today.
56:37Wifred took her hand out of the apron
56:39pocket. She said, "Come in." Prudin
56:42stayed the afternoon and into the
56:44following morning. She was the sort of
56:46person whose knowledge did not announce
56:47itself, but appeared in the ordinary
56:49passage of conversation, the way water
56:52rises slowly in a well without notice,
56:54until one day the well is full. She knew
56:57the country the way Winifred knew it.
56:59She knew the medicinal plants with the
57:01intimacy of a woman who had walked the
57:03same hillsides for 50 years. She had
57:06first met Thaddius in the second summer
57:07of his coming to the canyon. He had
57:09ridden up to Dry Fork looking for water
57:11for his horse, and had stayed to eat
57:13because Prudence had insisted, and
57:15because Thaddius had been the sort of
57:17man who accepted the hospitality of
57:19strangers, without the awkwardness that
57:21some educated men brought to a rancher's
57:23kitchen. They had spoken that first
57:25night about land and about maps and
57:28about the canyon. And from that night
57:30forward, Prudence had been the only
57:32person in the county who knew what
57:33Thaddius was doing and for whom he was
57:35doing it. Not every detail, not the
57:38letter and not the locked room, but the
57:40existence of the house and the person it
57:43was being built for. He told me it was
57:46for you, Prudence said, seated in one of
57:48the two chairs at the mosquite table
57:49with a mug of coffee between her palms.
57:52He said if anything happened to him, you
57:53would need it. He said, my wife is a
57:56woman the country does not frighten. She
57:58will know what to do.
58:02Winterfred listened to this with her own
58:04coffee going cold in her hands. She
58:06asked what was in the locked room.
58:08Prudence shook her head. No, he told me
58:11that was between the two of you. A
58:13pause. Do you have the key? I have the
58:16key to the front padlock. I have not
58:18found the other one. Prudence drank her
58:21coffee. She looked at the far wall. She
58:23checked the central roof beam. She said
58:25in the central beam. Mr. Ashcom showed
58:28me once and did not say why. There is a
58:30groove cut in the underside of the beam
58:32over the table. Wifred sat down her
58:34coffee. She took up the hurricane lamp.
58:37She moved the table two feet to the
58:39side. She stood on one of the chairs and
58:41raised the lamp toward the mosquite beam
58:43that crossed the room from wall to wall.
58:45On the underside, precisely at the
58:47midpoint, was a rectangular notch about
58:492 in long and 1 in deep cut with a knife
58:52by a man who had known no one would look
58:53up unless they had been told to look up.
58:55She put her finger in. She touched
58:57something small, cold, wrapped in
58:59muslin. She drew out the second key. She
59:01held it in her palm for longer than it
59:03might have appeared from outside. It was
59:05a smaller key than the first, its bow,
59:07shaped like a cross forged specifically
59:09for a lock and not stamped in a shop. It
59:12had been oiled and wrapped and cared
59:14for, and it was warm inside her closed
59:16hand within seconds. Prudence Whitlock
59:19stood beside the table with her hands
59:21folded in front of her, the posture of a
59:23person who understood that what came
59:25next did not belong to her and would
59:27nevertheless be witnessed. Josephine sat
59:30on the floor near the front door,
59:32drawing with a bit of charcoal on the
59:34flagstones, the shape she saw in the
59:36walls of the canyon absorbed in a game
59:38she had invented for herself that
59:39morning, and that took all of her
59:41attention. Wifred said, "Would you like
59:44to wait outside?" Prudin said, "No,
59:46stay." She went to the smaller door. She
59:49had to duck slightly to fit her head
59:50under its lentil, which meant Thaddius,
59:53who had been more than 6 ft, would have
59:55had to bend further, and the thought of
59:56him bending under this doorway on some
59:58Saturday afternoon in the shade of this
1:00:00canyon, flooded her briefly, and passed.
1:00:03The wood was walnut the hardest and most
1:00:05enduring in the region. The woodman used
1:00:07for the doors of banks and courouses,
1:00:09because it did not yield to anything
1:00:11easily. The second padlock hung at the
1:00:13center of the door at chest height. It
1:00:15was of the same black iron as the first,
1:00:18but its keyway was the shape of the
1:00:19cross that matched the bow of the small
1:00:21key. She fitted the key, she turned, the
1:00:25lock opened, she pushed the door in, and
1:00:27the walnut swung inward with a movement
1:00:29so slow and quiet that the hinges of
1:00:31this second room had clearly been given
1:00:33more attention than any other hinges in
1:00:35the house. The room had no window. The
1:00:38darkness inside it was absolute until
1:00:40she raised the lamp. Its walls, when the
1:00:42light fell across them, were plastered
1:00:44with a coat of white lime that returned
1:00:46the flame multiplied around a small
1:00:48squared space, perhaps 12 ft on a side.
1:00:51In the center of the room stood a low
1:00:53table of mosquite smaller than the one
1:00:55in the kitchen. On that low table,
1:00:57arranged with a care that did not
1:00:59surprise her by then, sat a stack of
1:01:01survey maps, a ledger with a leather
1:01:03cover, a wooden chest with brass hasps,
1:01:06and laid on top of the chest, as if it
1:01:08had been placed last, when everything
1:01:10else was already in position, a thick
1:01:12folded packet of papers bound with a red
1:01:14cord on the outer face of which her
1:01:16husband had written, in the same tight,
1:01:18small hand she had first seen bent over
1:01:20a map on a flat rock outside Prescott.
1:01:23for Wifred. Read only when you are
1:01:25ready. She took up the papers first. She
1:01:29took the single chair that stood before
1:01:30the low table, a chair placed as if her
1:01:33husband had known there would be one
1:01:35person doing this reading, and no more.
1:01:37She untied the red cord. She unfolded
1:01:39the first sheet. The letter of Thaddius
1:01:41Ashcom to his wife had been written on
1:01:4338 pages of the finest and most durable
1:01:45paper, the Merkantile at Copper Hollow,
1:01:48sold the paper used for important
1:01:49documents in the small crowded hand she
1:01:52had watched bend over maps and ledgers
1:01:54for a decade. There were no
1:01:56strikethroughs. There were no visible
1:01:58corrections, which meant this was not
1:02:00the draft. This was the fair copy, which
1:02:02meant there had been an earlier version
1:02:04he had written and corrected and
1:02:05rewritten until he was satisfied.
1:02:08Wifred, my love, if you are reading
1:02:10this, it is because I could not protect
1:02:12you any other way. But I could. I did.
1:02:16And now I want to explain everything to
1:02:17you. Everything I did not tell you in
1:02:20life. Everything I kept silent about for
1:02:22reasons that seemed sufficient then and
1:02:25that seemed to me now writing this
1:02:26perhaps not sufficient at all. But they
1:02:29were the reasons I had, and I owe them
1:02:31to you complete. She read on. She read
1:02:34the whole of it without lifting her eyes
1:02:36from the pages at the pace her mother
1:02:37had taught her to read without skipping
1:02:39[clears throat] because what is written
1:02:40is written whole. She read that when
1:02:43Thaddius had worked with the surveyor in
1:02:45his 22nd year, he had learned to read
1:02:47the land in a way the surveyor never
1:02:49taught him, but that she in the desert
1:02:51had taught him instead. She read that
1:02:53the man who drew the official maps had
1:02:55instructions to mark the southeastern
1:02:57strip of the county as land without
1:02:59designation, land without value. Because
1:03:02a rancher named Ruben Blackwood, whose
1:03:04name appeared in every municipal minute
1:03:06for the last 20 years, had wanted the
1:03:08surrounding lands to remain unvalued so
1:03:11that he could buy them cheap when the
1:03:13moment came. She read that the canyon
1:03:15had water not from the seasonal wash,
1:03:17but from a deep aquifer, a subterranean
1:03:20formation that the authorities of the
1:03:22Northern Territory had not yet mapped
1:03:24whose existence Thaddius had inferred
1:03:26from indicators of vegetation and from
1:03:28the type of rock and from the drainage
1:03:30pattern of the country around it. She
1:03:32read that he had known this since the
1:03:34year he was 22. She read that he had
1:03:36kept the knowledge silent for the better
1:03:38part of a decade because he had not
1:03:40known what to do with it. He had no
1:03:41money to buy the land. he had no
1:03:43influence to defend it. She read that in
1:03:46the year of the fourth wedding
1:03:47anniversary, he had begun to research
1:03:49the title of that canyon in the archives
1:03:51of the territorial land office and had
1:03:53discovered something extraordinary. The
1:03:55canyon was registered as unclaimed since
1:03:581854. The last recorded owner, a man
1:04:00named Whitmore, had died without known
1:04:02heirs. The parcel had passed nominally
1:04:05to the territory, but had lingered in a
1:04:07bureaucratic limbo where no one had
1:04:09bothered to reclaim it because no one
1:04:11had understood it was worth reclaiming.
1:04:13She read that this made the canyon
1:04:15available under the doctrine of adverse
1:04:17possession, which meant that whoever
1:04:19lived on it worked it and could
1:04:21demonstrate continuous occupation and
1:04:23improvement over the required period
1:04:26could petition the court for legal
1:04:27title. She read that he had been
1:04:29preparing exactly that petition for 4
1:04:32years. She read that he had done three
1:04:34things. He had built the house. He had
1:04:36documented his possession in 46 recorded
1:04:39visits, each with date hour description
1:04:41of work and signature. He had collected
1:04:43the written testimonies of three
1:04:45witnesses who had seen him working the
1:04:47canyon and would be willing to testify
1:04:49to it. Barnaby Quill of the Goat Ranch
1:04:51on the trail, Prudence Whitlock of Dry
1:04:54Fork, a retired minor named Silus Redern
1:04:56in Tombstone, who had passed through the
1:04:59canyon on two separate occasions and had
1:05:01agreed to deposed to it. She read that
1:05:03Thaddius had further identified the
1:05:05right lawyer to bring the case. Not
1:05:07Silus Ramden of Copper Hollow, an honest
1:05:09man, a small one without the reach to
1:05:12withstand pressure from Blackwood. if
1:05:14Black would learn what was at stake. The
1:05:16lawyer she needed was Ezekiel Marberry
1:05:18of Tucson. He had trained at Yale. He
1:05:21had connections in the territorial
1:05:22Supreme Court. He had won three adverse
1:05:25possession cases in the region across
1:05:27the last 8 years. He had won a water
1:05:29rights case against Reuben Blackwood in
1:05:31the year 1888, and Blackwood had lost.
1:05:34Marbury's address was in the chest.
1:05:37Thaddius had written to him in 1888
1:05:39describing the situation in general
1:05:41terms without disclosing the canyon's
1:05:43location. And Marberry had responded
1:05:45that if the documents were solid, the
1:05:47case was viable. The documents were
1:05:49solid. Now, Winfred, my love, I need to
1:05:52tell you something that will hurt. And I
1:05:54am sorry. I know Cornelius will attempt
1:05:57to take the house on Mosquet Street. I
1:05:59know it because I know my brother and I
1:06:01love him. Yes, I love him. Though what
1:06:03he will do in the days after my death
1:06:05will be difficult to forgive, I know the
1:06:07law will side with him because the law
1:06:09of this territory in this year of 1889
1:06:12does not protect you as it should. This
1:06:15is why I never put anything in your
1:06:16name. Anything in your name, Cornelius
1:06:19or his allies at the courthouse would
1:06:22have found a way to attack. The canyon
1:06:24has no name on any map. It is not in any
1:06:26deed. It does not exist for the legal
1:06:29system, which means Cornelius cannot
1:06:31take it because he cannot take what does
1:06:34not exist. But you can make it exist.
1:06:37You with this documentation and with
1:06:39Marberry and with the time the process
1:06:41will require can turn this canyon into
1:06:44legal property in your name and in the
1:06:46name of Josephine. When you do, you will
1:06:49not have a small ranch in the hills. You
1:06:51will have control over the only access
1:06:53to a subterranean aquifer in this
1:06:55stretch of the county. What that is
1:06:57worth today is more than anyone in the
1:06:59county can calculate. What it will be
1:07:02worth in 20 years is more still because
1:07:04the Northern Territory is going to dry
1:07:06and water is going to become the most
1:07:08valuable thing there is. There is one
1:07:10more thing I need to tell you, one that
1:07:12is in no document. On the northern wall
1:07:14of the canyon about 80 m from the house,
1:07:17there is a rock formation that on the
1:07:19surface looks like ordinary basalt. But
1:07:21if you look at the base of that wall
1:07:23carefully and I marked it with a small
1:07:25cross cut into the stone at knee height,
1:07:28you will see that the rock has a
1:07:29different color in a band about 10 ft
1:07:31long. That is not basaltt. That is
1:07:34quartz pfery. In this region, in this
1:07:36specific geological formation, quartz
1:07:39pfery is an indicator of mineralization.
1:07:41I do not tell you there is silver. I am
1:07:44not a minor. I tell you that Silus
1:07:46Redern, who is a minor and who came into
1:07:48the canyon with me twice, said to me,
1:07:50Mr. asked him, "If that were my ground,
1:07:52the first thing I would do is drill core
1:07:54samples in that wall." His exact words
1:07:57were, "That deserves someone taking a
1:07:59close look. He knows how to do it." His
1:08:01address is also in the chest. Wifred, "I
1:08:04know these years of absent Saturdays
1:08:06weigh on you. I know there were moments
1:08:08when you wondered whether I was hiding
1:08:10something bad from you, whether there
1:08:12was another woman, whether there were
1:08:14debts, whether there was anything I
1:08:16ought to have been ashamed of. There was
1:08:18none of that. There was this. There was
1:08:20this house I built with my hands
1:08:23thinking of you in every brick. There
1:08:25was that. Well, I spent two months
1:08:27digging and the first time it gave clean
1:08:29water, I sat down on the floor of this
1:08:31canyon and cried the way I had not cried
1:08:33since my father lost the use of his hand
1:08:36because I knew I had done something with
1:08:37my own that no accident could take from
1:08:39us. There were these plots of prepared
1:08:42soil that you who know the country
1:08:43better than I do will know what to plant
1:08:46and when. I asked very little of you
1:08:48during our marriage. I let the law leave
1:08:50you with nothing because it was what the
1:08:52law did and because I could not change
1:08:54the law. What I could do is what you see
1:08:57here. Take care of Josephine. She has
1:09:00your eyes for reading the country and my
1:09:02head for the numbers. She is going to be
1:09:04an extraordinary woman. And Winnie, this
1:09:07is what I most want you to know. I never
1:09:10neglected you. I never forgot you. In
1:09:13every Saturday I was gone. In every
1:09:15night I spent with the map on the table,
1:09:18in every brick of that house you raised
1:09:20without knowing that someone else was
1:09:22also raising a house, I was thinking of
1:09:24you always. You first. You're Thaddius.
1:09:29Postcript. The river that runs behind
1:09:32the canyon, the one that comes out
1:09:34through the southern wall, does not
1:09:35appear on any map of the territory. I
1:09:38verified this four times, which means
1:09:40access to that river is tied to whoever
1:09:42owns the canyon. The river has water
1:09:45year round. The flat lands south of the
1:09:47canyon where the river opens out are 15
1:09:50acres of fertile ground no one has
1:09:51worked. I leave that for you to
1:09:53discover. Wifred read the letter through
1:09:56without stopping. 38 pages. When she
1:10:00reached the postcript about the river
1:10:01and the 15 acres, she lowered the papers
1:10:03into her lap and rested her head against
1:10:05the white plastered wall of the small
1:10:06room, and she wept in a way that was
1:10:09different from the way she had wept the
1:10:10second night on the porch. This weeping
1:10:13had many things inside it at once. Grief
1:10:15for Thaddius that she still had not
1:10:17finished processing. Rage at the six
1:10:20days of the taking on Mosquet Street.
1:10:23The physical relief of understanding
1:10:24that she was not alone in the way she
1:10:26had thought she was alone. The
1:10:28unbearable tenderness of imagining
1:10:30Thaddius sitting in this same chair
1:10:32writing in every brick you raised, "I
1:10:34was thinking of you." and the
1:10:35astonishment of understanding that the
1:10:37man she had loved for 10 years had spent
1:10:40four of those 10 years building a way
1:10:41out for her in silence without telling
1:10:43her because if he told her the fear or
1:10:45the hope might take it from him before
1:10:48it was ready. She wept for 12 minutes.
1:10:51Prudence Whitlock stood at the door of
1:10:52the small room the whole time present
1:10:55but discreet in the posture of a woman
1:10:56who knew how to keep company without
1:10:58intruding. When the weeping was done,
1:11:01Prudin stepped forward and placed one
1:11:02hand on Wifford's shoulder. A single
1:11:05hand, no words. Josephine entered this
1:11:07room at that moment. She had heard the
1:11:09crying, and she had come with the silent
1:11:11feet of children who learn to move
1:11:13through houses when something important
1:11:15is happening. She approached her mother,
1:11:17laid her head against Wifford's lap on
1:11:19top of the folded papers, and Wifford
1:11:21held her. The three women, the 29, the
1:11:246, the 68, remained in silence in that
1:11:26small white room for a while that no one
1:11:28measured. Then Wifred wiped her face
1:11:31with the shawl, folded the letterfully,
1:11:33and slipped it inside her blouse against
1:11:35her chest in the same place she had
1:11:37carried the paper of seven words across
1:11:39the whole journey. The chest opened
1:11:42without ceremony. It had no lock, only a
1:11:44brass lever hasp. She opened it herself.
1:11:48Inside were the 46 field notebooks, each
1:11:50recording a visit with date and hour and
1:11:53description and signature. 27 receipts
1:11:56from Merkantiles in copper hollow Tucson
1:11:59and Prescott for lumber adobe brick lime
1:12:01iron fittings dress stone and the wooden
1:12:04bucket for the well. Three sealed
1:12:06envelopes containing the witness
1:12:08testimonies of Quill Whitlock and Red
1:12:10Fern. And when Prudence saw her own name
1:12:12on one of the envelopes, she nodded once
1:12:14unsurprised because Thaddius had asked
1:12:16for that testimony in life and she had
1:12:18given it in life. There was a thicker
1:12:20envelope with the correspondence with
1:12:22Ezekiel Marberry, two letters from
1:12:24Thaddius, and one measured professional
1:12:26response confirming what her husband had
1:12:28already summarized in the long letter.
1:12:31At the bottom of the chest, wrapped in
1:12:32the same muslin cloth that had protected
1:12:34the second key, lay something Wifred had
1:12:37not been prepared for. $320 in banknotes
1:12:40of the Bank of Arizona territory folded
1:12:43and ordered with a small paper note in
1:12:44her husband's hand for the lawyer and
1:12:47for whatever else you may need. She
1:12:49counted the money twice, then a third
1:12:51time, not because she doubted the sum,
1:12:53but because her hands needed to do
1:12:55something concrete while her head
1:12:57processed the magnitude of what was
1:12:59happening. $320.
1:13:01She had walked out of the house on
1:13:03Mosquet Street with 43. She wrapped the
1:13:06money again and set it back in the
1:13:07chest. She turned to Prudence. Do you
1:13:10understand what I have here? I think I
1:13:12do. Prudence stood with her hands folded
1:13:15in the same posture in which she had
1:13:16waited during the reading of the letter,
1:13:18but her voice was quiet and direct in
1:13:20the manner of a woman who had watched a
1:13:21long life and had little patience for
1:13:24evasions. What you have here is what
1:13:26your husband would call a solid case. I
1:13:29would tell you it is more than that.
1:13:30Those 15 acres by the river, he
1:13:32mentions, I know that stretch. Water
1:13:35there 12 months of the year. better
1:13:37ground than anything Blackwood owns in
1:13:38the north of the county. Winterfred
1:13:40looked at her. You know Ruben Blackwood.
1:13:43Everyone who has lived 50 years in this
1:13:45territory knows Ruben Blackwood. The
1:13:47tone was neither fearful nor admiring,
1:13:49only exact. He has land. He has cattle.
1:13:53He has the sheriff. He has two judges of
1:13:56the district court. What he does not
1:13:58have is Ezekiel Marberry. Marberry beat
1:14:01him last year on a waterright suit and
1:14:03Blackwood lost. Your husband chose well.
1:14:06Wifred was silent a moment. My husband
1:14:09chose well in several things. Your
1:14:12husband, Prudence answered, and the
1:14:13sentence held more inside it than its
1:14:15length suggested, chose well in several
1:14:17things. That night, after Prudence had
1:14:20gone with a promise to return within the
1:14:22week, bringing more seed and news from
1:14:24Barnaby, Wifred sat alone on the porch
1:14:26with the lamp unlit to save the oil in
1:14:28the sky of the canyon over her.
1:14:30Josephine slept inside. She thought of
1:14:32Cornelius Ashkam. She thought of the
1:14:35house on Mosquet Street, which by now
1:14:37would have been completely reorganized
1:14:39to Hester's comfort with Thaddius's
1:14:41furniture replaced or sold in Winterfred
1:14:43Stonewear Crocs on Hester's shelf. She
1:14:46thought of the laugh Cornelius had let
1:14:48out when she announced Mosquite Canyon.
1:14:50She thought of the 15 acres of fertile
1:14:52ground that the unnamed river would
1:14:54water 12 months a year. She thought of
1:14:56the quartz pfery on the northern wall.
1:14:58She thought of the aquifer no government
1:15:00surveyor had mapped. She thought of
1:15:02Ezekiel Marberry in Tucson, who the year
1:15:05before had beaten the man who had the
1:15:07sheriff and two district judges in his
1:15:09pocket. And for the first time since her
1:15:11husband had begun to sicken, for the
1:15:13first time in weeks of fear and
1:15:15exhaustion and dispossession, Wifred
1:15:17felt something that was not exactly
1:15:19hope, because hope always has something
1:15:21fragile in it. It was another thing. It
1:15:24was the quiet certainty of solid ground
1:15:26beneath the feet. the certainty of a
1:15:28person who has walked two days through
1:15:30the desert with a small child in a
1:15:32canvas satchel and arrived where she
1:15:35needed to arrive. She looked up at the
1:15:37stars in the canyon corridor. She closed
1:15:39her eyes. She began to plan. The plan
1:15:42required three steps and she was clear
1:15:44about them by the time the lamp inside
1:15:46would have burned itself out if she had
1:15:48bothered to light it. The first step was
1:15:50to write to Ezekiel Marberry in Tucson
1:15:52and enclose enough of the $320 to pay
1:15:55for the messenger and the initial
1:15:57retainer he would require and to request
1:15:59a meeting at his earliest convenience.
1:16:01The second step was to walk to the
1:16:03northern wall and mark beside the small
1:16:05cross her husband had cut into the rock
1:16:07her own sign so that the mark of the two
1:16:09of them would sit together on the same
1:16:11stone. The third step was to prepare the
1:16:13plots for the small autumn planting
1:16:15chili and beans and squash because the
1:16:17first principle of survival in the
1:16:19country was that the ground did not wait
1:16:21for anyone to finish planting. The
1:16:23letter to Ezekiel Marbury left the
1:16:25canyon in Prudence Whitlock's hand on
1:16:28her second visit exactly a week after
1:16:30her first as she had promised. She had
1:16:32brought seed and news and she was
1:16:34willing to carry the letter as far as
1:16:36the trail station at Fort Leel where the
1:16:38weekly mailwriter passed on Thursdays
1:16:40for Tucson. Wifred gave her the letter
1:16:43and $40 from the chest to cover postage
1:16:45and to buy small things Prudence herself
1:16:47needed. Salt, soap, heavy thread for
1:16:51mending. The reply from Ezekiel Marberry
1:16:54arrived 5 weeks later. In those five
1:16:56weeks, she had planted the plots one by
1:16:58one, following the calendar Thaddius had
1:17:00noted in the back of one of the
1:17:02fieldbooks. She had learned that the
1:17:04east plots caught the morning sun and
1:17:06the afternoon shade and were ideal for
1:17:08chili and tomato, that the west plots,
1:17:11which reversed the pattern, were perfect
1:17:13for squash, that the central plot, where
1:17:15the water channel discharged with more
1:17:17volume, was for beans. She had repaired
1:17:20three roof beams of reed that had
1:17:21weakened with the July rains learning by
1:17:23trial with the tools her husband had
1:17:25left and celebrating the third and
1:17:27successful repair with a cup of hot
1:17:29coffee on the porch at 5 in the
1:17:31afternoon as the canyon walls turned
1:17:33orange under the light of the setting
1:17:34sun. The letter from Marberry when it
1:17:37came was written on two pages of thick
1:17:39paper with his name embossed on the
1:17:40upper corner. It confirmed in the
1:17:43professional idiom of a man whose words
1:17:45carried consequences that her case
1:17:47presented solid grounds for a proceeding
1:17:49under the adverse possession statutes of
1:17:51the territory. His fee would be $50
1:17:54retained now against the cost of
1:17:56registry investigation and travel and
1:17:58150 payable upon successful conclusion,
1:18:01$200 in total. The chest had 320. She
1:18:05read the final paragraph three times. If
1:18:08you can travel to Tucson or Phoenix in
1:18:10the coming weeks with the documentation
1:18:11you describe, we can commence the
1:18:13process without further delay. Time is a
1:18:16factor. She went to Prudence's ranch
1:18:18that afternoon and asked whether
1:18:20Josephine could remain there for a week
1:18:22while she rode to Tucson. Prudence said
1:18:24she had been expecting to be asked. The
1:18:26ride to Tucson took 4 days. Winterfred
1:18:29left the canyon before dawn on a Monday
1:18:31in the second week of November, mounted
1:18:33on a 9-year-old mayor that Prudence
1:18:35Whitlock son Jeremiah had lent her
1:18:37without a fuss and without a fee. A
1:18:39plain brown animal called Sadi with no
1:18:41ambition and a steady gate. The leather
1:18:44satchel with the documents rode against
1:18:46her hip on the same side her canteen had
1:18:48ridden during the walk from Copper
1:18:49Hollow. The $320 had been reduced to
1:18:53$280 by the letter she had sent in
1:18:55Prudence's hand 5 weeks earlier. and
1:18:57those 280 were divided among four
1:18:59separate places in her clothing, so that
1:19:02a single misfortune on the road could
1:19:03not undo her. Josephine had watched her
1:19:06mount up from the porch of the ranch at
1:19:08Dryfork, with an expression that was
1:19:10more curious than sad, a small hand
1:19:12raised in a wave, the older widow's arm
1:19:15steady around the child's shoulder. The
1:19:17mayor had taken the trail south at the
1:19:19deliberate walking pace of an animal
1:19:21that understood a long ride was in front
1:19:23of it, and did not need to be told to
1:19:25conserve. She crossed the wide dry
1:19:27country between the canyon and the Gila
1:19:29Valley on the first day. She slept the
1:19:32first night at a small way station run
1:19:34by a Mormon family who fed her salted
1:19:35pork and beans and would not accept
1:19:37payment for the meal only for the corn
1:19:39her ate at the trough. She spoke very
1:19:41little at that supper. She was not
1:19:44accustomed yet to strangers who did not
1:19:46want anything from her, and the kindness
1:19:48of the Mormon woman who set a hand on
1:19:50her shoulder in passing without a word,
1:19:52threatened for a moment to undo the
1:19:54composure she had cultivated across the
1:19:55last two months. She recovered it. She
1:19:58thanked the woman in the morning and
1:19:59rode on. On the second day, the country
1:20:02flattened and the mosquets thickened
1:20:04along the washes, and she began to see
1:20:06in the distance the smoke of the small
1:20:08settlements that clustered along the
1:20:09freight road to the south. She camped
1:20:12alone the second night in a mosquite
1:20:13bosque with the mayor hobbled a few feet
1:20:16from her blanket, and she slept the
1:20:18sleep of a person whose exhaustion had
1:20:19at last found permission to be honest
1:20:21with itself. On the third morning, she
1:20:24rode into a livery on the outskirts of a
1:20:26town called Florence, stabled Sadi for
1:20:28the $2 rate the osler charged, and
1:20:30continued the last miles into Tucson on
1:20:32the freight coach. Tucson in November of
1:20:351889 was larger than she had expected.
1:20:38Wagons crowded the main streets. New
1:20:40brick buildings shouldered up between
1:20:42the older adobe ones. Storefronts in
1:20:45English and in Spanish. A rail spur
1:20:47brought lumber down from the north. Men
1:20:50in the suits of the newer commerce moved
1:20:52among the men in the older canvas of the
1:20:53ranches, and the sound of a hammer
1:20:55somewhere at every hour of the day
1:20:57marked the fact that the town was still
1:20:59becoming itself. She found the office of
1:21:01Ezekiel Marberry on Congress Street on
1:21:04the second floor of a plastered stone
1:21:05building with a black lacquered door and
1:21:08his name in gold leaf on the pebbled
1:21:10glass. She climbed the stairs with a
1:21:12leather satchel across her body and a
1:21:14plainness in her dress that she chose
1:21:16deliberately because she did not want
1:21:18her clothing to speak before she did.
1:21:20She knocked. A young clerk showed her
1:21:23into an inner office. Ezekiel Marberry
1:21:26rose from his desk. He was 52 tall bald
1:21:29across the crown with a fringe of gray
1:21:31at his temples and a pair of steel rim
1:21:33spectacles that he removed to shake her
1:21:35hand and did not put back on for the
1:21:37rest of the meeting. He had the
1:21:39deliberateness of movement that she had
1:21:41noticed in a certain kind of educated
1:21:43man, a habit that spoke of a mind that
1:21:46considered the placement of each object
1:21:47before setting it down. He offered her
1:21:50coffee. He offered her the chair across
1:21:52from him. He asked how her ride had
1:21:54been. He did not open the satchel or ask
1:21:57her to open it until she had drunk the
1:21:59coffee halfway down and the small
1:22:01pleasantries had done their work. The
1:22:03meeting lasted 4 hours. He reviewed each
1:22:06of the 46 field books that Thaddius had
1:22:08left. He read the three witness
1:22:10testimonies. I examined the 27 receipts
1:22:12and asked her at three separate points
1:22:14to explain a specific date or the
1:22:16significance of a particular purchase.
1:22:18He measured the paper of one of the
1:22:20field notebooks between his thumb and
1:22:21forefinger and remarked on its quality.
1:22:24He set the whole of the record down at
1:22:26last and folded his hands on top of it.
1:22:29Your husband did an extraordinary piece
1:22:31of work. I have not seen a possession
1:22:33record this complete outside of the
1:22:35files of wealthy ranchers who hire
1:22:37lawyers to prepare it in advance. My
1:22:39husband was meticulous. Your husband
1:22:42knew exactly what he was doing and
1:22:43precisely why he was doing it. A pause.
1:22:46Does anyone else know the location of
1:22:48this canyon? Anyone influential?
1:22:51She said the name without hesitation.
1:22:53Ruben Blackwood.
1:22:55Marburur's hands did not move on top of
1:22:57the papers, his eyes lifted to hers and
1:23:00held for a longer beat. Does Blackwood
1:23:02know it has water? My husband writes in
1:23:05the letter that the official maps mark
1:23:07it as valless. Blackwood has the men who
1:23:09make the maps in his pocket. Then we
1:23:11must move quickly. If Blackwood
1:23:13discovers the value of the canyon before
1:23:15we have registered your possession, he
1:23:17will have the resources to complicate
1:23:19the process. not to defeat it if the
1:23:21documentation holds, but to stretch it
1:23:24to bleed it to make it expensive enough
1:23:26that you might consider settling. He
1:23:29stood, "You begin tomorrow at first
1:23:32light. We go to the land office." Tucson
1:23:34had a small hotel called the Palace on
1:23:36Meer Street, where a woman traveling
1:23:38without a husband could take a room
1:23:40without invitation to explain herself,
1:23:42and Winterfred took one there for $1 a
1:23:45night. She ate her supper alone in the
1:23:47dining room and studied without
1:23:49appearing to the men who passed through
1:23:50the lobby. She was learning to look at
1:23:53strangers now, not as strangers, but as
1:23:55possible instruments or possible
1:23:57obstacles, and the change in her own
1:23:59vision was a thing she noticed with a
1:24:01small private melancholy. It was a way
1:24:04of seeing that she had inherited whole
1:24:06from 6 days on Mosquet Street. She
1:24:08wondered whether the seeing would ever
1:24:10leave her again. She suspected it would
1:24:12not. The land office was in a squat
1:24:15brick building on Court Street, and the
1:24:17clerk who handled adverse possession
1:24:19filings was a thin man with ink on his
1:24:21cuffs who did not appear to have smiled
1:24:23since childhood. Marberry took her
1:24:25through the door at 8 in the morning of
1:24:27her fourth day in the city. The clerk
1:24:29who received the packet, listened to
1:24:30Marberry's summary, and set the whole of
1:24:32it in a wire basket at his elbow with
1:24:35the announcement that the case file of
1:24:36another party had been misplaced in the
1:24:39previous week and that its recovery was
1:24:41going to require the office's attention
1:24:43for perhaps 4 days. Marbury did not
1:24:45raise his voice. He did not press. He
1:24:48said, "We will return." He turned to
1:24:50Winterfred in the hallway, waiting as
1:24:52part of it, "Sit tight." She sat on a
1:24:55bench in the corridor across the four
1:24:56days that followed. She learned the
1:24:58faces of the people who waited with her.
1:25:00A woman from Yuma named Aurelia Cross
1:25:03who was pressing a claim against the
1:25:05town over a diverted aoyo that had cost
1:25:07her family two seasons of alalfa. An old
1:25:10man from Wikenberg whose grandfather's
1:25:12ranch title, three generations old, had
1:25:15been snarled in a probate dispute that
1:25:17had been running since 1874.
1:25:20a seamstress named Georgia Emmert, who
1:25:22was not there for a case of her own, but
1:25:24for [clears throat] her husband, and who
1:25:26spent an hour describing to Winifred the
1:25:28difference between the price of eggs in
1:25:30Tucson and the price of eggs in
1:25:31Prescott. The corridor had a light that
1:25:34came through a high, dusty window, and
1:25:36fell across the tile floor in a pale
1:25:38rectangle, and the rectangle moved
1:25:40across each morning at the same slow
1:25:41angle. She learned it. She began to mark
1:25:44her hours by it. It was on the afternoon
1:25:46of the third day when the light had
1:25:48crossed the tile to within a hand's
1:25:50breath of the far bench that the front
1:25:52door of the building opened and Ambrose
1:25:54Ashcom walked in. He was 16. He wore a
1:25:57coat that was new. He wore a hat that
1:25:59was new. He carried himself with the
1:26:02stiff formality of a young man who had
1:26:04been sent on an errand and who was not
1:26:06certain quite yet that he was equal to
1:26:08it. His eyes swept the corridor with the
1:26:11quickness of a person looking for
1:26:12someone and they found her and they
1:26:14stopped for a second longer than either
1:26:17of them intended. They looked at each
1:26:18other. Then Ambrose lowered his gaze. He
1:26:21turned. He walked back out the door. He
1:26:24did not speak. Wifred sat very still for
1:26:27the length of a slow breath. And then
1:26:29she rose and went to find Marbory. She
1:26:31did not run. She did not hurry. She had
1:26:34learned in the previous 3 months that
1:26:36the men who moved through the world with
1:26:37visible urgency were the men who lost
1:26:40and she was not going to lose. She
1:26:42entered his office and stood in front of
1:26:44his desk and said without preamble, "My
1:26:46husband's nephew was just in the land
1:26:48office building." "This is not a
1:26:50coincidence." Marberry set down his pen.
1:26:53He asked her whether Cornelius Ashcom
1:26:55had connections in Tucson. She said she
1:26:57did not know, but that Cornelius had
1:26:59traded cattle across half the territory
1:27:01for 20 years, and it was possible.
1:27:04Marberry was silent for two full seconds
1:27:06which was she had come to understand his
1:27:08method of thinking. He said then
1:27:10tomorrow we move first but there is a
1:27:12thing we can do today that does not
1:27:14require the land office. We can file a
1:27:16notarial deposition of your material
1:27:18possession and of the existing
1:27:20documentation before an independent
1:27:22notary of this district. That creates a
1:27:25parallel record that is more difficult
1:27:26to interfere with. It costs $15 extra.
1:27:30Do it. The notarial office of Josiah
1:27:33Witcom was two blocks west of Marber's
1:27:36on the second floor above a drugist.
1:27:38Witcom was a lean man with a shock of
1:27:40white hair and an expression that
1:27:42suggested he had been listening to lies
1:27:43for so long that [snorts] the truth when
1:27:45it walked in tended to surprise him. He
1:27:48read Marbury's summary. He examined the
1:27:50field books. He called in two clerks
1:27:52from his outer office to serve as
1:27:54witnesses. Winterfred signed each of the
1:27:57four copies of the deposition with the
1:27:59clear, even letters her mother had
1:28:00taught her, and the pen did not shake.
1:28:03Witcom pressed the wax seal onto each
1:28:05copy and stamped the register in his
1:28:06ledger. He handed her one copy, retained
1:28:09one, gave one to Marberry, and sent one
1:28:12by that afternoon's post to the office
1:28:13of the district clerk. The whole
1:28:15transaction took 40 minutes. When they
1:28:17walked back out onto Congress Street,
1:28:19Marberry paused on the boardwalk and
1:28:21looked at her with the smallest
1:28:22suggestion of a smile she had yet seen
1:28:24from him. "That was fast work, Mrs.
1:28:26Ashcom. Whoever is trying to interfere
1:28:29is now behind us by a full day in a
1:28:31public record." The land office clerk
1:28:34found the missing file the following
1:28:35morning. He stamped the adverse
1:28:37possession petition into the register at
1:28:409. He informed Marberry in the board
1:28:42voice of a man reciting a paragraph. He
1:28:45recited weekly that the process would
1:28:47enter a 90-day period of public notice
1:28:49during which any interested party could
1:28:51file opposition and that at the
1:28:53expiration of 90 days without
1:28:55wellfounded opposition, the presiding
1:28:58judge could issue a decision of
1:28:59possession. And if there is opposition,
1:29:02Wifford asked in the hallway outside,
1:29:04"Then we litigate it, and with this
1:29:06documentation, we win." She rode home to
1:29:09the canyon in six days, breaking the
1:29:11ride to sleep once at Florence and once
1:29:14at the Mormon way station and once again
1:29:16in a mosquite Bosque along the Gila
1:29:18where the November nights were cold
1:29:20enough to remind her that the year was
1:29:22turning. Josephine, when she rode into
1:29:24the yard at Dryfork, ran to the stirrup
1:29:26with a grip on Winterford's boot that
1:29:28lasted longer than the child's ordinary
1:29:30greetings had ever lasted. 9 days for a
1:29:32six-year-old was a significant portion
1:29:34of the known world. She had learned in
1:29:36that absence to milk Prudence's goat,
1:29:38Betsy. She had learned to sift beans for
1:29:41stones. She had learned the names of the
1:29:43two ravens that came each morning to the
1:29:45ranchard looking for scraps. She
1:29:47reported all of this in a rush of small
1:29:49sentences that did not stop until she
1:29:51had climbed into her mother's arms and
1:29:53put her face against her mother's
1:29:54throat. Wifred did not speak for a
1:29:57moment. She held the child and stood in
1:29:59the ranchard and understood that she had
1:30:01come back with the beginnings of
1:30:03something the men in Tucson could no
1:30:05longer take from her whatever happened
1:30:06next. The opposition arrived 12 days
1:30:09after her return. Marburber's letter
1:30:12reached Prudence at Dryfork by the trail
1:30:14rider and Prudence rode it up to the
1:30:16canyon herself in a light snow that had
1:30:18come down out of the ring cones and
1:30:20dusted the mosquite tops on the way.
1:30:23Cornelius had retained a lawyer named
1:30:25Hollister Grimes in Phoenix. Grimes had
1:30:27filed a formal opposition to the adverse
1:30:30possession petition on the ground that
1:30:32the canyon and its improvements might be
1:30:34considered marital property of the
1:30:35Ashkcomun and that the surviving brother
1:30:38of the deceased retained an interest
1:30:39that the court was obligated to
1:30:41consider. Marbury's letter was short.
1:30:43This is the fight we expected. We will
1:30:45win it. His argument depends on proving
1:30:48that your husband either purchased or
1:30:50claimed the land in a formal sense. He
1:30:53did not purchase it. He occupied it.
1:30:55Possession, not purchase, is the ground
1:30:57on which our case stands. Prepare
1:31:00yourself for the process to lengthen by
1:31:02three to five months. The result will
1:31:04not change. She read the letter twice at
1:31:07the Mosquite table. She folded it. She
1:31:10placed it in the chest with the other
1:31:11papers of the case. She did not weep and
1:31:14she did not curse. She had walked
1:31:16through the door on Mosquet Street with
1:31:18$43 and a child, and every day since had
1:31:21been an argument with men who thought a
1:31:23woman without a husband was a woman
1:31:24without recourse. She had come to expect
1:31:27the argument. It was not a novelty
1:31:29anymore. It was work. Silus Redford
1:31:32arrived at the canyon in the first week
1:31:34of October, a small dustcoled man in his
1:31:3760s, who rode a red mule and led a
1:31:40second mule behind him, laden with the
1:31:42picks and small chisels and canvas
1:31:43sample bags of his old trade. He had
1:31:46received her letter, and Silas had,
1:31:47being a man who did not stand on
1:31:49ceremony, sent no reply, and simply
1:31:51come. He tipped his hat to her at the
1:31:53Mosquite Gate. He asked to see the wall,
1:31:55she led him. He spent three days on the
1:31:58northern face, working at the base of
1:31:59the pfery band, driving small chisels
1:32:02into pockets of the paler rock and
1:32:04dropping fragments into his canvas bags.
1:32:06He hummed while he worked. He drank
1:32:09coffee that Wifred brought out to him at
1:32:11midm morning and mid-afternoon. He ate
1:32:13the beans and cornbread she said at the
1:32:15mosquite table without commentary. On
1:32:17the evening of the third day, he sat on
1:32:19the flagstone porch with his mug and
1:32:21said, "Mrs. Ashcom, I [clears throat] am
1:32:24not going to tell you this is a silver
1:32:25mine. There is no way to know that
1:32:28without deeper drilling and laboratory
1:32:30work that you may not have the money for
1:32:32at this moment. What I will tell you is
1:32:34this. I have seen a great deal of pfery
1:32:37across this territory. This one has the
1:32:39type of vein and the type of matrix that
1:32:41in three of the last five cases I have
1:32:43known personally has led to significant
1:32:46silver mineralization. Not certainty,
1:32:49real possibility.
1:32:51She set her own mug beside his. What
1:32:53would I need to know for certain? You
1:32:55would need a drilling rig and a
1:32:57geologist from a proper mining school.
1:32:59Or you would need to wait for someone
1:33:00with money to become interested and to
1:33:02pay for the exploration himself in
1:33:04exchange for a percentage. How much of a
1:33:06percentage? He turned his weathered eyes
1:33:08on her. Depends on who arrives first and
1:33:11on how much information you have on your
1:33:13side of the table. If they arrive when
1:33:16the land is already yours legally, and
1:33:18you have my written notes and the letter
1:33:19of your husband to prove he knew the
1:33:21ground, you negotiate from a much
1:33:23stronger place than if everything is
1:33:24still in the air. Winterfred looked out
1:33:26at the plots. She said, "Then we wait
1:33:29until the land is mine first. That would
1:33:31be my counsel, Mrs. Ashcom." He left the
1:33:34following morning with his samples and
1:33:36his mules and a promise that his notes
1:33:38would follow by post within 2 weeks. He
1:33:40also left without being asked the name
1:33:42and address of a mining engineer. He
1:33:44trusted at the Colorado School of Mines,
1:33:46Nathaniel Ashford, whose signature had
1:33:49appeared on three of the largest silver
1:33:50contracts in the Western Territory
1:33:52across the previous decade. "When you
1:33:55are ready," Silas said at the gate,
1:33:56"write to Ashford. He will come and he
1:33:58will not cheat you. He touched his hat
1:34:01and he rode out. Cornelius rode into the
1:34:03canyon on the last Tuesday of November.
1:34:06He came with Ambrose and with a
1:34:08broad-shouldered man. Winterfred did not
1:34:10recognize a man who wore the coat of
1:34:11someone who worked for a wage and not
1:34:13for himself. Josephine was at dry fork
1:34:16that morning practicing letters at the
1:34:18small pine table prudence had set aside
1:34:20for her, and Winterfred was on the porch
1:34:22shelling the last of the season's dried
1:34:24corn from a canvas sack into a shallow
1:34:26wooden bowl. The frost that had come
1:34:28down in the previous week had left a
1:34:30rhyme along the edges of the plots that
1:34:32had not yet melted by 10 in the morning.
1:34:35The air in the canyon smelled of wet
1:34:37earth and of the dried chilies that hung
1:34:39in bunches from the eaves of the porch.
1:34:41She saw them come through the mosquite
1:34:43gate. She stayed where she was. She kept
1:34:46her hands in the corn sack and let her
1:34:48eyes follow the three of them the length
1:34:50of the approach. Cornelius stopped three
1:34:52paces from the porch. He wore a new hat
1:34:55and a coat of city cut and boots that
1:34:57had been polished before he had set out
1:34:58that morning. His eyes moved over the
1:35:01house, the well, the water channel, the
1:35:02plots, the young winter greens already
1:35:04showing in the middle beds. They moved
1:35:07over Josephine's absence. They came back
1:35:09to Winterfred. I see you settled. I
1:35:12settled. What is all this? His voice
1:35:15held something that had not been in it
1:35:17in Copper Hollow. Not contempt, a
1:35:20recalibration.
1:35:21This is the ground your brother prepared
1:35:23for 4 years. I have an adverse
1:35:25possession proceeding open in the
1:35:27territorial land office in Tucson. The
1:35:30broad-shouldered man took a step
1:35:31forward. Cornelius stopped him with a
1:35:34small motion of his hand. He looked at
1:35:36the house again. A legal proceeding with
1:35:39Ezekiel Marberry of Tucson, the lawyer
1:35:41who won the water rights case against
1:35:43Reuben Blackwood last year, in case that
1:35:45piece of information interests you. A
1:35:48silence stretched long enough that a
1:35:49raven passed overhead calling once.
1:35:52Cornelius put his hands in his coat
1:35:54pockets. His voice lowered a register
1:35:56into the private tone of family. Winnie,
1:35:59Thaddius was my brother. This does not
1:36:01have to happen in courtrooms. It is not
1:36:04I who put it in a courtroom. Your
1:36:06attorney in Phoenix filed an opposition.
1:36:08That was you, Cornelius, not me. That
1:36:11was a misunderstanding. Lawyers do
1:36:13things. Lawyers do what their clients
1:36:15asked them to do. Cornelius turned his
1:36:18head and looked at the canyon walls and
1:36:20she watched him try to fit into his
1:36:22understanding of the world what he was
1:36:23seeing. Did Thaddius really do all this
1:36:26with his own hands for four years of
1:36:28Saturdays? There are 46 documented
1:36:31visits with date and hour and
1:36:32description of the work done. There are
1:36:35receipts for every material. There are
1:36:37three sworn testimonies from people who
1:36:39watched him work. Ambrose, who had said
1:36:41nothing until now, spoke without
1:36:43shifting his weight. What about the
1:36:45water? Winterfred looked at Ambrose, 16
1:36:48years old, the ashcomb jaw, the eyes
1:36:50that measured what a thing was worth
1:36:52before deciding whether it was
1:36:53interesting. She held his gaze until his
1:36:55gaze moved. The water belongs to the
1:36:58land, and the land is going to be mine.
1:37:01This land could be worth a great deal. I
1:37:03know, Cornelius said, "We can come to an
1:37:06arrangement. An arrangement between
1:37:08family, not courts. The land has value.
1:37:12We can divide it." Winterford stood up.
1:37:15She set the wooden bowl aside on the
1:37:16porch railing. She dusted the corn silk
1:37:19from her palms. She looked at Cornelius
1:37:21Ashcomb for the length of a breath she
1:37:23took deliberately to think clearly. She
1:37:25thought about the coffee she had poured
1:37:27him on a Monday in September when he had
1:37:29walked into her kitchen and told her
1:37:31about the practical matter of the house.
1:37:33She thought about the walnut chest of
1:37:35drawers going out the door for $12. She
1:37:38thought about Hester's hand on the top
1:37:39of the stove. She thought about the
1:37:41words he had shouted from the yard on
1:37:43Mosquite Street when she had turned
1:37:45toward the southeast with a canvas
1:37:47satchel and a child. She said in a voice
1:37:49that had grown to fit the woman she had
1:37:51become quieter than the woman she had
1:37:53been in Copper Hollow and harder in a
1:37:55way that had nothing to do with anger.
1:37:57Cornelius, you put me out of my own
1:37:59house with $43 in a shawl on the day we
1:38:02buried your brother. There was no
1:38:03arrangement then. There is no
1:38:05arrangement now. Nothing moved for a
1:38:08beat. The broad-shouldered man looked at
1:38:10Cornelius. Ambrose looked at his father.
1:38:13Cornelius looked at Winifred and
1:38:14understood at last the mistake he had
1:38:16made in September and understood too
1:38:18that the mistake could not be unmade by
1:38:20the arrangement he had written two days
1:38:22to propose. She did not raise her voice.
1:38:25She did not need to. Marberry will
1:38:28answer Grimes's opposition in the next 2
1:38:30weeks. If you want to withdraw the
1:38:32opposition before that answer is filed,
1:38:34I would advise you to speak with your
1:38:36lawyer and to ask him how your arguments
1:38:38look next to my documentation.
1:38:41She picked up the wooden bowl again. She
1:38:43sat back down on the porch step. She
1:38:45resumed the shelling of the corn. You
1:38:48must be out of the canyon before sunset.
1:38:50The road back is difficult in the dark.
1:38:52They rode out. They did not speak. She
1:38:55sat on the porch and shelled the corn
1:38:57without looking up until she heard the
1:38:58last of the hoof beatats pass through
1:39:00the mosquite gate and then her hands
1:39:02trembled for one second and then they
1:39:04stopped trembling. Prudence returned
1:39:06with Josephine an hour later on the back
1:39:08of Prudence's own mule and asked no
1:39:10questions and Winterfred offered no
1:39:12answers and the two women worked
1:39:13together in the kitchen making biscuits
1:39:15for supper as if the visit had never
1:39:17occurred though both of them knew it had
1:39:19and both of them knew what it meant. The
1:39:22opposition of Cornelius Ashcom was
1:39:24withdrawn 12 days later. The letter from
1:39:27Marbory arrived through the mail rider
1:39:28at Dryfork and Prudence carried it up to
1:39:31the canyon herself. Grimes contacted my
1:39:34office this morning informing me that
1:39:35his client is withdrawing the opposition
1:39:37for reasons of family convenience. The
1:39:40process continues without obstacle. I
1:39:43expect the judge's decision in the next
1:39:45four to six weeks. Wifred read the
1:39:47letter twice. She folded it. She placed
1:39:50it in the chest with the fieldbooks and
1:39:52the receipts and the deposition and the
1:39:5438-page letter. The judgment reached her
1:39:57on the 11th of January 1890. She was in
1:40:00the plots pulling the last of the winter
1:40:02chard when Prudence came through the
1:40:04Msquite gate calling her name, and
1:40:06Prudence's voice carried a quality that
1:40:08told Winterfred, before she had even
1:40:10climbed out of the bed of soil, that the
1:40:12wait was over. She washed her hands at
1:40:14the well. She sat down at the mosquite
1:40:16table. She read it there slowly with the
1:40:19lamp lit even though the day was bright
1:40:21because a moment of that weight required
1:40:22the light she chose and not the light
1:40:24the sky offered. The territorial Supreme
1:40:27Court in the matter of the petition of
1:40:29Winterford Howerin Ashkcom widow of
1:40:30Thaddius Ashcom for adverse possession
1:40:32of the parcel known as Ashcom Canyon in
1:40:34the county of Copper Hollow territory of
1:40:36Arizona having reviewed the evidence
1:40:38submitted and having received no
1:40:40wellfounded opposition following the
1:40:4290-day period of public notice does
1:40:45hereby recognize the said Winterford
1:40:47Howerin Ashcom as the lawful proprietor
1:40:49in fee simple of the described parcel
1:40:52comprising 43 acres as measured by the
1:40:55court's survey. air and inclusive of the
1:40:57water rights of the enclosed spring and
1:40:59of the unnamed river that traverses the
1:41:01southern boundary. 43 acres, not just
1:41:04the canyon, the 15 acres of riverland in
1:41:07the postcript, and the additional
1:41:09acreage the court's surveyor had
1:41:10included because no adjoining property
1:41:12had claimed it. 43 acres of fertile
1:41:15ground and water in the desert of the
1:41:16Arizona territory. She walked out onto
1:41:19the porch with the paper in her hand.
1:41:21Josephine was in the small garden she
1:41:23had begun to tend against the western
1:41:25wall of the canyon, watering with a tin
1:41:27cup a row of holly hawk seedlings
1:41:29prudence had brought her from dry fork.
1:41:31Wifred said her name once. The child
1:41:34looked up. Wifred held out the paper.
1:41:37Josephine looked at the paper. She
1:41:38looked at her mother. She looked at the
1:41:40paper again. Is it ours, Mommy? It is
1:41:43ours. The child dropped the tin cup. She
1:41:46ran the length of the walkway.
1:41:48Winterfred caught her against her hip
1:41:50and held her for a long moment in the
1:41:52winter sunlight on the flagstone of the
1:41:54porch. Her husband had laid with such
1:41:56patience across some Saturday she would
1:41:58never be able to picture, but which she
1:42:00now forever would carry as if she had
1:42:03watched him lay each stone. The letter
1:42:05to Nathaniel Ashford at the Colorado
1:42:08School of Minds went out in the
1:42:09following week. It included Silas
1:42:11Redern's written notes and a formal copy
1:42:13of the newly issued title of possession.
1:42:16Ashford's reply came in March. He
1:42:18proposed a visit in April at his own
1:42:20expense to conduct a preliminary
1:42:22geological survey. He came with two
1:42:24assistants and a light spring wagon of
1:42:26instruments and he stayed 5 days. He
1:42:28climbed the northern wall in the
1:42:30mornings and drilled small core samples
1:42:32in the afternoons and spent his evenings
1:42:34at the mite table making notations in a
1:42:36black cloth notebook with a mechanical
1:42:38pencil that pleased Josephine because it
1:42:41clicked when he pressed its cap. On the
1:42:43evening of the fifth day, with the
1:42:45samples packed and the horses ready for
1:42:47the departure at Dawn, Ashford accepted
1:42:49a second cup of coffee. He set the mug
1:42:51down. He said, "Mrs. Ashcom, I cannot
1:42:53tell you this is a silver mine. I can
1:42:56tell you it is a formation that merits
1:42:58serious investment in exploration. If
1:43:00that exploration confirms what the
1:43:02surface samples suggest, you are sitting
1:43:04on a piece of ground that is going to
1:43:06change the economic situation of your
1:43:08family significantly." She looked at him
1:43:10across the table for the length of a
1:43:12slow breath. How significantly? The
1:43:15preliminary estimate based on the
1:43:17surface samples only places the
1:43:19potential value of the deposit somewhere
1:43:21between $40,000 and $120,000
1:43:24depending on the depth and continuity of
1:43:26the veins. Marbury rode up from Tucson
1:43:29for the negotiation. It was the first
1:43:31time the lawyer had set foot on the
1:43:33ground he had defended on paper, and he
1:43:35arrived on the mail wagon with a single
1:43:36carpet bag and the mild curiosity of a
1:43:39professional who had wanted for many
1:43:41months to see the thing he had been
1:43:43arguing about. He met Ashford in the
1:43:45front room. The negotiation lasted 2
1:43:48hours. The final agreement placed the
1:43:50exploration costs on the mining company
1:43:52Ashford represented. If exploration
1:43:54confirmed the surface findings,
1:43:56Winifford would receive 17% of
1:43:58production royalties, would retain full
1:44:00title to the land, and would hold the
1:44:02right to terminate the contract if
1:44:04production had not commenced within 5
1:44:06years. It was not the maximum agreement
1:44:08possible in absolute terms. It was
1:44:10solid. It was legal. It placed the
1:44:13control in her hands and not in the
1:44:15companies. Marberry reviewed the final
1:44:17draft in his careful hand and pronounced
1:44:19it in his slow, professional way, a good
1:44:22agreement. She signed it. The seasons
1:44:24after the signing turned as seasons had
1:44:26always turned in the canyon. She planted
1:44:28the two acres of the river bottom that
1:44:30spring with corn from seed prudence had
1:44:33saved. She hired two men out of Copper
1:44:35Hollow at $6 a month with room and
1:44:38board, one of whom knew planting and one
1:44:40of whom said he could learn. She struck
1:44:42a small arrangement with Barnaby Quill
1:44:44for the use of the river water for his
1:44:46goats during the dry months in exchange
1:44:48for four wheels of cheese a month. She
1:44:51built in the second summer an additional
1:44:53room off the north wing of the house.
1:44:55Two rooms in fact, one she had measured
1:44:57properly and understood there was space
1:44:59for them. And Prudence Whitlock moved
1:45:01into those rooms permanently when her
1:45:03son's wife bore their first child at
1:45:05Dryfork, and the ranch there became too
1:45:07small for all of them. Prudence brought
1:45:09her mule and her seeds, and the old goat
1:45:12Betsy, whom Josephine still called by
1:45:14name every morning at the milking pale,
1:45:16and she brought a wicker chair that had
1:45:17belonged to her own mother, and that was
1:45:19the one object in the world she treated
1:45:21with anything resembling reverence.
1:45:23Josephine grew inside the canyon walls
1:45:25the way a plant grows inside a
1:45:26greenhouse. She learned the medicinal
1:45:29herbs from Winfred. She learned the
1:45:31goats and the reading of the wind from
1:45:33Prudence. She learned the geological
1:45:35terms from Nathaniel Ashford who
1:45:37returned twice a year through the
1:45:39exploration phase and who developed a
1:45:41habit on those visits of explaining rock
1:45:43formations to the child with the same
1:45:45seriousness he would have used with a
1:45:47graduate student so that by the age of
1:45:4910 Josephine could correctly identify
1:45:51quartz pfery granite bay salt and shale
1:45:54and could sketch on a piece of butcher
1:45:55paper the strike and dip of a mineral
1:45:57vein. She learned to read from her
1:45:59mother first with the McGuffy primer
1:46:01that Wifred had carried her whole life
1:46:04and then with the Bible and then with
1:46:06the reports of the mining engineer which
1:46:08she requested to be allowed to study on
1:46:10her own after Winterfred and Marbury had
1:46:12finished with them. At 12, she could
1:46:14explain the geology of the canyon to
1:46:16visiting government agents with a
1:46:18precision that left the men slightly
1:46:20stunned. At 15, she conducted the first
1:46:23correspondence in her own hand with
1:46:25Marbury's office on questions arising
1:46:27from the royalty contract under her
1:46:29mother's oversight, but with a
1:46:30vocabulary of law and minology she had
1:46:33absorbed on her own through the long
1:46:34hours of the desert afternoons. The mine
1:46:37began production in the autumn of 1893.
1:46:40The first royalty payment, a bank draft
1:46:42drawn on the Bank of Arizona territory
1:46:44in the amount of $432,
1:46:46arrived at the canyon by mail in
1:46:48December of that year. Wifred read the
1:46:51draft. She read it again. She carried it
1:46:54into the small white room where the
1:46:55chest had grown fuller with each passing
1:46:58season. And she placed the draft on top
1:47:00of the 38page letter. And she closed the
1:47:02lid of the chest. And she went back out
1:47:04onto the porch, and she made coffee. And
1:47:07she did not tell Josephine about the
1:47:08money that evening, because a moment
1:47:10like that belonged first to the man who
1:47:12had made it possible, and she wanted the
1:47:14quiet to sit with him a little while
1:47:16before the world took its share. Copper
1:47:18Hollow acquired a new municipal
1:47:20president in the second summer after the
1:47:22judgment a young lawyer of 34 named
1:47:24Lucius Palmer who had studied at the
1:47:26University of Michigan and returned west
1:47:28because his wife's health required the
1:47:30dry air. Palmer had the habit unusual
1:47:33for a man in his position of visiting
1:47:35the ranches and holdings of the county
1:47:36in person to understand the actual
1:47:38condition of their inhabitants. He rode
1:47:41into the canyon on a Tuesday afternoon
1:47:43in September with his secretary and
1:47:45without prior notice. He walked the
1:47:47ground for 2 hours. He saw the well, the
1:47:50water channel, the plots, the garden,
1:47:52the river at the south, the new fence
1:47:54pasture along the river where the two
1:47:56hired men were breaking a plow team. He
1:47:58spoke with Prudence who was hanging
1:48:00bunches of drying yrow from the north
1:48:01eaves of the house. He sat at the mite
1:48:04table at the end of the two hours and
1:48:06accepted a cup of coffee. He said, "Mrs.
1:48:08Ashcom, there is something the town is
1:48:11considering, and I wanted to consult you
1:48:13before we act. Tell me, the town council
1:48:16is discussing the possibility of
1:48:18building an official road connecting
1:48:20Copper Hollow with the region south of
1:48:22your canyon. It is territory that has
1:48:25not been on any municipal map because no
1:48:27one has worked it. But if you are
1:48:29producing there, and if there is a mine
1:48:31and exploration, the town has an
1:48:33interest in connecting the region with
1:48:35the main road system. It would be good
1:48:37for the town. It would [clears throat]
1:48:38be good for you. She thought for a
1:48:41moment. What would the town need from
1:48:43me? a letter of no objection to the road
1:48:45along the boundary of your property. And
1:48:47if the road is built, a commitment that
1:48:49the adjoining parcels to the south,
1:48:51which are lands without declared owner,
1:48:53may be considered for distribution to
1:48:55families willing to settle the region.
1:48:57She sat with that for a while. She
1:48:59thought of the families that would come.
1:49:01She thought of the sound of a country
1:49:03that filled with voices. She thought of
1:49:05what Thaddius would have said. Thaddius,
1:49:07who had walked that ground for four
1:49:09years, convinced it held value that no
1:49:11one else could see. I have one
1:49:13condition. Tell me that among the
1:49:16families who settle to the south, single
1:49:18women, widows, mothers without husbands
1:49:20be included on equal terms with the men.
1:49:23The same access, the same support, the
1:49:26same papers.
1:49:28Palmer looked at her. He looked at his
1:49:30secretary. He looked back at her. That
1:49:32is unusual. I know. A silence. It is not
1:49:37impossible. Then we have something to
1:49:40discuss.
1:49:41The road took two years to build.
1:49:43Municipal things always took twice as
1:49:46long as their announcements. When it
1:49:48reached the mouth of the canyon in the
1:49:49autumn of 1895, it brought as roads
1:49:52always bring what roads bring. People.
1:49:55Three families the first year, five the
1:49:58second. One of the families of the
1:50:00second year was headed by a widow of 42
1:50:03named Amarillis Truheart, whose husband
1:50:05had been a minor at Bisby and who
1:50:07arrived with three adolescent sons and a
1:50:10quiet grave determination that Wifred
1:50:12recognized at once as her own kind.
1:50:15Amarillis took the parcel south of the
1:50:17river. She planted her first corn in the
1:50:19same autumn of her arrival. Word from
1:50:21Copper Hollow reached the canyon by the
1:50:24same trail Prudence had once ridden
1:50:25alone. Cornelius Ashcom had sold the
1:50:28house on Mosquet Street in the second
1:50:30August after Thaddius's death for $110
1:50:34less than the price he and Winifred had
1:50:36paid for it in 1885 to cover debts from
1:50:39a cattle season that had gone badly.
1:50:42Cornelius and Hester moved to a rented
1:50:44house on Camino Street, which was
1:50:45Winfred remembered with a perfect
1:50:47equinimity precisely where Cornelius had
1:50:50told her to go when he had put her out
1:50:52of her own home with $43. Hester kept
1:50:55house there without the servants she had
1:50:56enjoyed on Mosquet Street. Millison, who
1:50:59had been two years old at the wedding in
1:51:01the stone church at Prescott and was now
1:51:0317, took a position as a school
1:51:06teacher's assistant in Copper Hollow
1:51:08that same year, and paid a portion of
1:51:10the rent to her mother out of her small
1:51:12monthly wage, a thing Prudence remarked
1:51:14upon with quiet approval when the news
1:51:16reached Dryfork. Wifred did not feel
1:51:19satisfaction at the account of any of
1:51:21it. She felt, if anything, a soft
1:51:23sadness for Thaddius, who had wanted a
1:51:25different kind of brother, who had
1:51:27wanted a brother who did not need to
1:51:29become the man he had become in the days
1:51:31after the funeral. Thaddius had not had
1:51:33that brother. He had had Cornelius, and
1:51:35he had done what he could with what he
1:51:37had, which was more than any of them had
1:51:39known. Ambrose Ashcom came to the canyon
1:51:42alone in the summer of 1895. He was 22
1:51:45years old. He rode in on a good horse
1:51:47and dismounted at the mosquite gate and
1:51:50walked the last stretch on foot with his
1:51:51hat in his hand. And the woman who
1:51:53watched him come was no longer the woman
1:51:55he had seen in the corridor of the land
1:51:57office. She had begun to gray at her
1:51:59temples. She had begun to hold her
1:52:01shoulders in the manner of a woman who
1:52:03owned her own ground and did not have to
1:52:05explain that ownership to anyone. She
1:52:07met him at the porch. He did not sit. He
1:52:10said, "Aunt Wifred, I have come to ask
1:52:12if there is work here. I have left my
1:52:15father's business. He does not know I am
1:52:17here. She studied him for a long moment.
1:52:20The ashcomb jaw, the eyes that measured,
1:52:23but the shoulders had shifted since
1:52:25Tucson, and the eyes did not measure the
1:52:28way they had measured in the quarter.
1:52:29She said, "There is work here. There is
1:52:32always work here. But if you come to
1:52:34work in this canyon, you come as a hand,
1:52:36not as family. Do you understand?" I
1:52:39understand. You take orders from
1:52:41prudence and from the men. You do not
1:52:43speak to my daughter unless she speaks
1:52:45first. You earn your pay week by week.
1:52:48Yes, ma'am. She turned to the porch
1:52:50railing and let a long breath go into
1:52:52the canyon air. Then she said, "Put your
1:52:54horse in the corral. Prudence will show
1:52:56you the bunk house. Supper is at 6." He
1:53:00worked that summer and the autumn and
1:53:01the winter and the following spring. He
1:53:04learned. He kept his hat in his hand. In
1:53:06the second year, he began to speak with
1:53:08Josephine at supper about the mineral
1:53:10samples she was cataloging for
1:53:12Asheford's next visit. And Josephine,
1:53:14who had been 12 when he arrived and was
1:53:16now 14, met his interest with the cool,
1:53:19measured attention of a young woman who
1:53:21had been raised to expect that her
1:53:23intelligence would be treated as an
1:53:24ordinary fact. Winifred watched this
1:53:27from the head of the table without
1:53:28commentary. Whatever Ambrose became in
1:53:31the years that followed, and he did in
1:53:32fact become something other than his
1:53:34father, he became it in the canyon.
1:53:37Temperance Hollis, whom Winifred had not
1:53:38seen since the morning she had walked
1:53:40out of the house on Mosquet Street with
1:53:42a canvas satchel over her shoulder, came
1:53:44to the canyon in the spring of 1896. She
1:53:47was 62 now, and her back had begun to
1:53:49trouble her, and her cousin, who had
1:53:51taken her in when the taxes on her own
1:53:53small house had grown too heavy, had
1:53:55died the previous winter. Winterfred met
1:53:57her at the mosquite gate and did not say
1:53:59anything for a long moment because there
1:54:01were no words for what needed to be said
1:54:03between them and temperance did not need
1:54:05any. Wifred took the old woman's carpet
1:54:08bag from her hand and led her through
1:54:09the gate and along the flagstone walk
1:54:12and into the second of the two rooms she
1:54:13had built for prudence, which had been
1:54:15empty since its completion, waiting,
1:54:17though Winterfred had not known for
1:54:19whom. Temperance lived in that room for
1:54:21the rest of her days. She taught
1:54:23Josephine the small kitchen songs that
1:54:25had come down her mother's line from
1:54:27Ohio. And she sat in the sun each
1:54:29afternoon watching the plots. And she
1:54:31died peacefully in her sleep in the
1:54:33winter of 98 and was buried in the small
1:54:35graveyard at the south end of the river
1:54:37property near the grave of a middle son
1:54:39of Amarillis Truheart who had been lost
1:54:42to fever in the third year of the
1:54:43settlement. Bridget Howerin in her small
1:54:46house outside Prescott lived long enough
1:54:48to hold the first bank draft in her worn
1:54:50hands. Wifred had ridden the two days
1:54:53north with the draft folded in the
1:54:55pocket of her coat in the spring after
1:54:56it arrived and had placed it on her
1:54:58mother's kitchen table without ceremony,
1:55:01and Bridget had studied it through the
1:55:02reading spectacles she had begun to wear
1:55:04only in her 70th year, and had said the
1:55:07sentence Winterfred would keep with her
1:55:08the rest of her life. You have made your
1:55:10husband's word into ground. There is
1:55:12nothing better a woman can do with a
1:55:14promise. Bridget died two winters later
1:55:16in the January of 93 in her sleep in the
1:55:18room she had shared with Aean for 41
1:55:20years. She was buried next to him in the
1:55:23small cemetery outside Prescott.
1:55:25Winterfred rode north for the burial
1:55:27with Josephine beside her on the second
1:55:28mayor and the two of them stood at the
1:55:31graveside in the cold clear light and
1:55:33Winterfred understood standing there
1:55:35that she had become the woman her mother
1:55:37had raised her to become and that her
1:55:39mother had lived long enough to see it
1:55:41which was in the accounting of any life
1:55:43a great deal. By the year 1899, the
1:55:46ground that Ruben Blackwood had wanted
1:55:48and that Thaddius Ashkcom had built for
1:55:51and that Cornelius Ashkcom had dismissed
1:55:53as Scorpion Gulch had become a place.
1:55:55The mine was in its sixth year of
1:55:57production. The royalty had grown from
1:55:59the first $432 to sums. Winterfred no
1:56:03longer counted with her fingers. The
1:56:05plots produced chili and squash and
1:56:07beans and enough tomato to sell into the
1:56:09Copper Hollow Market. The river bottom
1:56:11had 18 acres in corn and alalfa. Two
1:56:14dozen goats grazed the upper slopes
1:56:16under the care of a young man Barnaby
1:56:18Quill had trained before his own death
1:56:19in the winter of 97. A peaceful death in
1:56:22the same three- room ranch to which he
1:56:24had welcomed a strange woman and a small
1:56:26[clears throat] child 8 years earlier.
1:56:28Prudence Whitlock, 78, now still tended
1:56:30her garden. She moved a little slower.
1:56:33She still had her mother's wicker chair
1:56:35which now sat in the room that had been
1:56:37added to the north wing for her and
1:56:39which she still treated with the
1:56:40reverence a person gives to the one
1:56:42physical object that has followed her
1:56:43across the whole of her life. Josephine
1:56:46Ashkam turned 16 that summer. She had
1:56:48grown tall like her father and had her
1:56:50mother's careful hands and she had begun
1:56:52to spend her mornings in correspondence
1:56:54with a professor of geology at the
1:56:56university in Tucson who had first
1:56:58written to her after Ashford had
1:57:00mentioned her name at a mining
1:57:01conference in Denver. Winterfred did not
1:57:03open those letters. She left them on the
1:57:05msquet table for Josephine to find when
1:57:08she came in from the plots. She had
1:57:10raised, she understood by then, a woman
1:57:11who would not need her mother to answer
1:57:13her correspondence for her. It was one
1:57:15of the private small satisfactions of
1:57:17the years. She sat on the porch on the
1:57:20last night of 1899 with a cup of coffee
1:57:23and prudence in the wicker chair beside
1:57:25her, and Josephine asleep in the room
1:57:27that had been Josephine's since she had
1:57:28been six years old. The sky above the
1:57:30canyon corridor was very clear. The
1:57:33stars did what stars did over the desert
1:57:35in December, which was to press downward
1:57:37with an intimate weight. From the
1:57:40direction of the mine drift half a mile
1:57:42up the north wall, came the faint
1:57:44intermittent sound of the night crew's
1:57:45hammer on rock. From the river bottom to
1:57:48the south came nothing, because the corn
1:57:50was in and the field was resting. The
1:57:52stone channel which had run for a decade
1:57:54without interruption and would run for a
1:57:56decade more made its small constant
1:57:58thread of sound at the edge of the
1:58:00flagstones. Prudence said, "Do you think
1:58:02of him still?" Winterfred did not answer
1:58:04at once. "Every day, not the way I used
1:58:08to, not with the hole, something more
1:58:10like a conversation that has never
1:58:12stopped. That is a good way. It is the
1:58:15way that came." She looked down at the
1:58:18coffee. She looked back up at the strip
1:58:20of stars. I speak to him about the
1:58:22ground. I speak to him about Josephine.
1:58:26I speak to him about the ones who arrive
1:58:28at the road about the widows. When
1:58:30Amarillis Trheart lost her middle son to
1:58:32fever in the third year, I spoke to
1:58:34Thaddius about that for a long time. I
1:58:36is a good listener even now. He always
1:58:39was. He was. Prudence set down her cup.
1:58:43She said in the tone she used only for
1:58:45the sentences she meant to leave
1:58:46unanswered. You did what he asked and
1:58:48more than he asked. Wifford smiled at
1:58:51the corridor of stars. She said, "The
1:58:53country did most of it. I only stayed.
1:58:56That is one way to name it, not the true
1:58:58one." Prudence Rose slowly tucked the
1:59:00wicker chair with the small ceremony
1:59:02that had become her nightly ritual, and
1:59:04went into the house. Winifred sat alone
1:59:07for a little while longer. She thought
1:59:09of the seven words she had carried
1:59:10against her breast, the length of two
1:59:12days in the desert. She thought of the
1:59:1438 pages folded in the chest. She
1:59:16thought of the mark she had cut into the
1:59:18pipery beside her husband's cross, her
1:59:20horizontal line across his crucifform, a
1:59:23signature of a partnership that had
1:59:25continued past the boundary the world
1:59:27had set for it. She thought about the
1:59:29widow, Amarillis Truhart, whose middle
1:59:31son had been buried in the small
1:59:33graveyard she had permitted at the far
1:59:34south end of the river property
1:59:36alongside Temperance. Now she thought
1:59:38about Barnaby Quill, who had died with
1:59:40his hand around the hand of the young
1:59:41herder he had trained. She thought about
1:59:43her mother in the small cemetery outside
1:59:45Prescott, who had lived long enough to
1:59:47hold the draft. She thought about the
1:59:50coldness of the kiss Cornelius had given
1:59:52her at the altar in Prescott 20 years
1:59:54earlier, and about how a woman learns if
1:59:56she is careful to file away the small
1:59:58signals of the world, and to use them
2:00:00later. And she thought without
2:00:02bitterness now, without heat about her
2:00:04brother-in-law, who had walked into her
2:00:06parlor on the day of a burial, and had
2:00:08spoken the words that had set the entire
2:00:10arc of her life in motion. If Cornelius
2:00:13had not put her out with $43, she might
2:00:15have stayed on Mosquet Street. She might
2:00:17have taken the pension, whatever pension
2:00:20the law allowed a widow, and she might
2:00:22have raised Josephine in the small rooms
2:00:23of that rented town and the canyon and
2:00:26the mine and the road and the widow true
2:00:28heart and every other consequence would
2:00:30have belonged to another life. Cornelius
2:00:32had given her, without meaning to,
2:00:34without ever understanding it, the push
2:00:36toward the shape her husband had drawn.
2:00:39She stood at last from the porch. The
2:00:41coffee was cold. The canyon walls held
2:00:43their old warmth from the day and would
2:00:45release it slowly through the small
2:00:47hours until dawn. [clears throat] She
2:00:49looked out at the strip of sky between
2:00:51the walls that corridor of black and
2:00:52light. And she said aloud in a voice
2:00:54pitched so quietly that only the stones
2:00:57and the water and the memory of the man
2:00:58she had married could hear her. The debt
2:01:01is paid, Thaddius, the house you built
2:01:03is standing. Our daughter reads better
2:01:05than either of us. The country does not
2:01:08scare her. It never will.
2:01:10On the porch of the house her husband
2:01:12had raised brick by brick in the chair.
2:01:14No one now remembered exactly who had
2:01:16first placed there. Winifred Howerin
2:01:19Ashkcom finished her coffee. She looked
2:01:21at the sky over the canyon that had at
2:01:23that hour of the evening the deep clear
2:01:25blue of the territory. A color that
2:01:27seemed a second horizon aimed upward.
2:01:30She felt without needing to name it
2:01:32exactly and without needing to name it.
2:01:34What a person feels when the life she
2:01:36had and the life she lost and the life
2:01:38she built with her own hands come to
2:01:41rest inside the same space without
2:01:43contradiction. When the loss and the
2:01:45gratitude and the love and the ground
2:01:47that is yours truly yours fit inside the
2:01:50same chest. Only a single warm and
2:01:53complete weight remained which if it had
2:01:55to be called by any name was called
2:01:57hope. Hope from within. The kind that
2:02:00does not come from outside. That no one
2:02:03needs to grant because it has been there
2:02:05all along. Waiting like water that comes
2:02:07from so deep.

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