He is a territorial resident by any standard definition. Your argument has no merit. This land is mine. Come back with something real or don't come back at all. She turns back to her garden.
They stand behind her for a moment. Then the horses move. They are gone. She does not move from the garden for several minutes. She digs carefully around the base of the onion plants, hands steady, breathing even.
Then she goes inside, picks up her infant son, Henry, who arrived 3 weeks ago in this cabin with Amos Caldwell, the only other person present, born in a mountains storm, named for his father, and sits in the rough chair by the window and lets her hands shake for exactly as long as they need to. She sends word to Amos that afternoon. Three words, come when you can. He arrives the next morning before 8. She tells him everything.
Dunar, Perch, the witness argument, the dates without editorial. He listens the way he always listens without interrupting. You know Dunar, she says, I know who he is. He's been absorbing smaller claims east of here for 2 years. Usually from homesteaders who run out of money or get scared.
A pause. He's never tried to take one that was already built and settled. He's trying now because he thinks I'm easier, Clara says. Yes, Amos says flatly. A widow, a woman alone.
He says each word without softening because the softening would be its own kind of condescension. He thinks you don't have the means or the knowledge to fight it. He's partially right about the means, she says, not about the knowledge. She has already spent two nights reading every piece of territorial land law she has access to. She has written to the territorial land office directly requesting a review of the Whitmore claim before Dunar's contest can advance.
She has written to Edmund Cole at the Durango freight depot asking him to confirm his residency status in a written statement. She has made a list of witnesses to the cabin construction. Amos, Jesse, Tommy, men who can document continuous settlement and make Dunar's prior claim argument collapse. A prior claim requires the land to be unsettled, she says. It has not been unsettled for a single day since I arrived.
Amos reads the list. Something moves in his expression. Past surprise, closer to reassessment. You did all this last night. Young Henry sleeps 4 hours at a stretch, she says.