It was legitimate. It was also, he went on, the kind of document that certain people in the territory government had spent considerable money, ensuring no longer existed, and whoever had it was walking around with a target painted on them that money and influence had been applied to maintain. She met his eyes steadily. I am aware of that. Beckwith would make two copies and send them by separate routes to contacts.
He trusted in Santa Fe. He would write to the federal attorney general's office. It would take 60 days, maybe 90. And in the meantime, she needed somewhere she could not be found. He looked at Levi.
Levi was already listening. Beckwith's grazing allotment held a line camp 20 minutes east of the main house, a single room pine structure with a cast iron stove and a loft that still smelled of summer hay. Tight, dark, invisible from any road. By that evening, Levi and Shenoa were there with a sack of supplies from Beckwith's pantry, two spare blankets, and a mended oil lamp. Shenoa assessed the space the way she assessed everything, methodically without comment.
Checking the window, the door latch, the sight lines from each position, she found a loose board in the east wall and stuffed it with a strip of blanket to stop the draft. She moved the table so it faced the door. She placed the lamp in the corner that would not backlight anyone sitting at the table. Levi built a fire. He heated soup from a tin.
He was hungry and he suspected she was hungrier. She sat at the table and ate without speaking. He did the same. After a while, she noted that the line camp was better than the ledge on the mountain. He agreed it was a low bar, but he was glad to clear it. something shifted in her face.
Not yet a smile, but the closest thing he had seen from her. The days that followed had the careful, compressed quality of lives, lived in small spaces under pressure. They were deliberate with each other, not cold, not distant, but like people handling something that might be fragile or might be strong, and they haven't yet learned which. She was not fragile. He understood that quickly.