Chapter 4: Thirty Days

I asked my father about the note on Sunday night.

He said it was for the drought, and that Constance Kell was a liar, and that he was tired.

I did not push him.

I wrote down what he said, and on Monday at dawn I drove to the north pasture gate.

The pasture was six thousand acres of summer grass at the top of our land.

My father had put it in my name alone as a wedding present, and his lawyer had filed the deed on Thursday.

It was mine whether I was married or not.

The Kells ran two thousand head of cattle on it under a grazing lease my father had signed.

Boone parked beside me at the gate with a thermos.

"Cold," he said.

"It's October."

"I mean you." He handed me a cup. "You didn't sleep."

"No."

"Nobody expects you to."

I took the coffee and held it.

At seven the Kell riders came up the track in two trucks, with a horse trailer behind.

They were the same men who had eaten my wedding cake two days before.

The older one got out and touched his hat.

"Miss Sorley," he said. "Heard you had some trouble."

"I did," I said. "Here."

I held out a printed sheet.

It was a notice to Kell Cattle & Feed that the lease on the north pasture would end in thirty days.

He read it once and looked up.

"Ma'am, that's your daddy's name on the lease."

"It's my name on the land."

"This is two thousand head."

"Then you have thirty days to move two thousand head."

The second rider climbed out of the other truck and read it over his shoulder.

He whistled low.

"The Kells won't like this."

"The Kells are welcome to call me," I said.

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