His last job was with a cattle company headquartered in the San Rafael valley. But before that he seemed to have spent most of his time mining. His record showed his first job had been with the Moctezuma people in Bisbee. I wired them and found out he had lived there most of his life. His father had been a mine foreman with Moctezuma and Bowen worked for him on and off, sometimes going up into the hills alone to try his own luck, until the father was killed in a mine shaft cave-in. Shortly after that, Bowen left Bisbee. He worked for a horse trader about two years then joined the San Rafael cattle outfit. His mother had passed away some time before the father and as far as I can discover, your friend has no other kin in the territory.

Girl, if all this sounds overly quick and simple, put it out of your head. I have been working harder at my “spare-time job” than at my regular practice or for Hatch and Hodges. It is fortunate, Karla, that you have a pretty face (even if your father does claim you are half boy), or you never would have talked me into this.

I expect to be in Willcox some time next month and look forward to seeing your mother and sisters. If I have time, I will stop by Pinaleño on the way back.

With love,

Your Uncle Lyall

“Your Uncle Lyall,” Demery repeated, looking up at Karla. “I hope he isn’t claiming kinship from my side of the family.”

Karla was still smiling. “And you said he’d be wasting his time.”

“He hasn’t proved anything, Karla.”

“He has for me.”

“And now you’ll want to go up and tell your friend about it.”

“I have to take the mail anyway.”

“Not today, you won’t. It’d be dark before you got back.”

They were in the main room, standing near the roll-top desk and now Karla glanced toward the open door. “I might have time.”

Demery shook his head. “It’d be dark before you even started back.”

“Well…I’ll go in the morning then.”

“Tomorrow’s Sunday,” her father reminded her. “They don’t work on Sunday. So how’re you going to get to him?”

“That’s something you can’t plan,” Karla said. “A way just happens.”

“Sis, even with your sunny outlook, how do you think it’s going to just happen?”

“It happened the other day.”

“You were lucky. Tomorrow they’ll be standing in front of the barracks smoking, your friend one of them. Or maybe he’ll be inside.”

“If I don’t see him tomorrow,” Karla said, “then the next day. One more day isn’t going to matter now that he’s as good as out.”

“You’re taking a lot for granted. Lyall still has to prove his innocence.”

“He will.”

“You’re sure of that.”

“Pa, when something that looks almost impossible to start with all of a sudden turns possible and everything falls into place as if all you have to do is wish and it happens, then you know it’s going to turn out all right.”

“You figured that out all by yourself?”

“It makes sense.”

“Do you know that your talking to him, even though he might be innocent-”

“Might be!”

“Listen to me. Your talking to him like that, even though he might be innocent, is against the law. You know that, don’t you?”

“Sending an innocent man to jail is against the law, too, if you all of a sudden want to be ethical about it.”

“Karla, if I told you not to see him, but wait for Lyall to do something…would you listen to me?”

“Of course I’d listen to you.”

“But you’d go ahead and try to see him.”

“It’s only fair. If you were in prison, and were going to get out, wouldn’t you want to know about it?”

“You’re taking things for granted again,” Demery reminded her.

“You just want to argue,” Karla said.

Demery shook his head. “I’m glad I don’t have your sweet faith in human nature.”

“Some men,” Karla said pointedly, “have to put on a big front of not believing in anything-hoping, I don’t know why, that everybody will think they’re very smart.”

“You’re some keen observer.”

“If we had time, I’d tell you some other things.”

“I guess you would,” Demery said. “Listen, I’ll tell you something now. I’ll bet you four bits you don’t talk to him tomorrow or the next day.”

“You sound pretty sure of yourself.”

“I’m just playing law of averages, Sis.”

“Make it a dollar,” Karla said, “and you’ve got a bet.”

It was almost ten o’clock, the next morning, before Karla finished helping her father with the monthly report to the main office. She put aside the mail for the convict camp, then saddled her horse and brought it around to the front of the adobe. The next quarter of an hour was spent carrying in water from the pump to the big wooden tub in her bedroom. Her cold-water bath took only a few minutes and after it she brushed her hair and put on a fresh blouse and skirt.

John Demery’s eyes studied her appraisingly as she came out of her bedroom. “Something special about today?”

Karla smiled. “I don’t have time to be drawn into one of your traps.”

“You’re the only girl I know who can look dressed up in a man’s shirt. Maybe if Willis had seen you, he would’ve stayed.”

“Mr. Falvey was here?”

“He waved going by. Headed for the bar at Fuegos.”

“The last time he was here,” Karla said, “I think I frightened him. I told you-he was talking about wanting somebody to talk to-I felt sorry for him, but the way he was going about it I had to tell him to leave.”

“Well, I don’t imagine even his wife understands him,” Demery said. He picked up the small bundle of convict camp mail from the desk and handed it to Karla. “There’s a couple there for Willis. I didn’t think about it…I could’ve given them to him.”

“I’ll give them to Lizann,” Karla said.

“Don’t get too close to her,” Demery said. “Some of that gild might brush off.”

“Now…you can’t judge people just by looking at them.”

“It seems to me I said the same thing not too long ago-about a man not having to look like a jailbird to be one.”

Karla shook her head. “When you look at Corey Bowen, you know he’s good. When you look at Lizann, you give her the benefit of the doubt.” She leaned toward her father and kissed him on the cheek. “I’m going now. Before you think of something else to argue about.”

She rode for the willow stand, passed through the dim silence of the trees, then entered the vast sunlight of the slope beyond and followed the sweeping curve of wagon tracks to the shoulder of the hill. There she left the tracks, riding straight on, up into the close-growing pines that covered the crest of the hill, following a horse trail now that twisted narrowly through the trees. Coming out of the trees, the horse trail dropped down a steeper grade, crossed the wagon ruts that had circled the hill, then followed the length of a narrow grama meadow before climbing again up through fields of house-sized boulders.

A mile farther on Karla emerged from a thin, steep-walled pass to stand above the canyon which the new road followed. Far below her, the dead end of the canyon was choked with pinyon and mesquite. The brush clumps thinned gradually as they spread and finally the dusty green patches of color disappeared completely, almost evenly, before reaching the end of new road construction.

Karla walked her horse along the west rim until she reached the trail that dropped down into the canyon: a rock-slide draw that fell to a shelf, the shelf hugging the wall narrowly until it reached the floor of the canyon. Karla descended and a quarter of a mile farther on, she stopped at the waterhole among the sycamores where she had talked to Bowen.

She let her horse drink. Coming out of the trees, her gaze caught the wisp of dust farther up canyon; but she reached the stretch of new road, passed the timbers that were used for grading, passed fire-blackened circles where brush had been burned, before she saw the rider who was leading the dust trail down the wash, down into the canyon and following the road now toward her.