They Sent Me to Prison for the Family Fire, So I Came Home to Sell the Ranch Out From Under Them novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: Who Worked at the Clinic

"Not for you," I said.

"You heard me," Iker said.

I came across the dirt yard with the flashlight held low and stopped at the edge of the slab.

Iker sat on the feed bucket with his hat on his knee.

He had the same squint he'd had at twenty-five, narrowed against a sun that wasn't there.

The chimney stood behind him, black against the stars.

"You swore you saw me with the gas can," I said.

"I swore," he said.

"Did you see me?"

"I saw a can," Iker said flatly.

"I saw a person in the dark, and I said it was you.

"I'd have said it of anybody."

"Anybody," I said.

"Anybody who wasn't her," he said.

The word hung in the cold between us.

I didn't pick it up.

"Who?" I said.

"I said I'd do it again," Iker said.

"I didn't say I'd tell you."

"The foreman's son says you told him what to say."

"I told him what the district attorney wanted," he said.

"It's what everybody did."

"You told a man I'd talked about burning it," I said.

"I told him it would help," Iker said.

"Help who?" I said.

He turned his hat in his hands.

He was thirty, and he looked fifty in the moonlight.

I had known him eleven weeks.

He had been the one who showed me the irrigation ditch and taught me to ride the fence.

He'd taken me into town and bought me a pair of boots without asking my size.

When I told him they fit he had looked as pleased as a boy.

"You had a place here," he said.

"I did," I said.

"And it wasn't enough for you."

"What place?"

"I'm not going to do this," Iker said.

"Iker."

"I protected my sister.

"That's all I've got to say.

"I'd do it tomorrow."

"Your sister is Amaia."

He looked at me.

There was a stillness in his face I couldn't read, something between shame and rage.

"Amaia is not your sister," I said.

"She's the girl they picked up in Reno at two.

"I'm the one they claimed."

"She is more my blood than you'll ever be," Iker said, so low I almost missed it.

I stared at him.

I thought it was a cruelty, a thing said to wound.

I took it as that.

"You've been drinking," I said.

"I've been sitting here every night since you stood up in that tent," he said.

"I want you to say it in front of the bank," I said.

"I can't."

"I'll make you."

"You won't," Iker said.

He stood up.

The bucket tipped over and rolled on the slab.

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