When I finish, he pulls his phone out and makes one call.
"Phantom. We've got a problem."
Wednesday passes in a held breath.
Lee goes to church.
I stay with Earl, who is furious when I show him the bruise and has to be physically talked out of getting his shotgun from the hall closet.
The old man has no business holding a firearm in his condition but his eyes are burning blue and his jaw is set.
For a flash I see the man who raised Rose and took in a stranger's kid and held this land for three generations through drought and flood and the slow death of small-town ranching.
"This ismyland," he says. On his feet, on his porch, one hand on the railing because his legs aren't what they were. "My father's land. My daughter's land. I will die on this porch before I sign it over to Wade Lockhart."
"No one's dying on any porches." I steer him back to his chair. "The Shotgun Saints are handling it."
"The Shotgun Saints." He says it with the particular tone of a man who has watched outlaw bikers become his daughter's family and still isn't entirely sure how that happened. "Lee?"
"Lee."
Earl nods.
Something settles in his face—the easing of a man who has been carrying this fight alone and has just been told he doesn't have to.
On Thursday, not a damn thing happens. It’s quiet, but I can feel it’s the quiet before the storm.
By Friday afternoon, I'm at Earl's replacing a hinge on the barn door when the trucks come.
Three of them. Silver Dodges, matching, the Double L brand on the doors.
They come up the ranch road in a line—unhurried, deliberate, the convoy of men who believe arrival is half the intimidation.
They park in the yard. Doors open. Six men get out.
The one from Tuesday is among them—I recognize the build, the hat, the walk.
The others are the same type—ranch hands, big, employed by a man who values loyalty and discretion and the willingness to stand in someone's driveway and look threatening.
Wade Lockhart steps out of the lead truck.
He's dressed for business, not ranching.
Clean pressed shirt, the good Stetson, boots that have never seen a stirrup.
He straightens his cuffs and surveys Earl's property with the expression of a man walking through a house he's already bought in his mind.
Earl comes out on the porch.
He's had a good day—one of the rare ones where the chemo hasn't flattened him and the color in his face is almost human.
He stands at the railing and doesn't dare sit.
"Wade." Flat. The voice of a man who is done with pleasantries.
"Earl." Lockhart tips his hat. Still polite. Still smiling. "I was hoping we could have a final conversation. Neighbor to neighbor. Before this gets to lawyers and county offices and places neither of us wants it to go."
I come around the side of the barn.
