“No, I don’t. If you need papers signed, you mail ’em out to the 8T8 ranch and I’ll sign ’em and send ’em back. If it’s gettin paid you’re worried about, send me the bill. You know I’m good for it.”

She shrugged. “Well, I guess I can’t stop you unless I call the orderlies. I’m not going to do that.”

The nurse had a heavy, weary face under a dark thatch of hair. She had come to work in this place as a young girl and now she was almost an old woman, too old to fret over a patient as bullheaded as Eli Paint. He was old enough to do as he pleased. She had plenty of other patients to worry about.

It was a cool, breezy evening, a whiff of snow in the air. There was a storm coming, it would be good to get home before it hit. Ben helped Eli get settled in Ezra’s old Ford Model TT truck and stowed the wheelchair in the back. Eli winced now and then, but he didn’t complain. They were halfway home when he asked Ben how the Appaloosas were doing.

“They’re good.”

“He told me he had a fella down in Argentina who might take a bunch of horses. I told him not to sell any for the sake of the ranch.”

“Yep. Ezra is talking like he might send me along to Argentina to make sure them horses get there safe. He’d send them to New Orleans by train and from there by ship to Buenos Aires. Once I get down there, he wants me to take a look around, see about setting up a Appaloosa outfit.”

“You don’t say. Argentina. It’s quite an old world, Ben.”

“It is that.”

“That’s what a young man ought to do. Get out and see the world.”

Eli thought for a time about Ben going all the way to Argentina, maybe looking to settle down there, and figured he ought to say something while he had the chance.