Not a name on a document. A person who built a cabin and planted a garden and had a child on that land and is standing in his office. She looks at Amos steadily. Dunar is counting on me being abstract. I am going to make sure I am not.
Amos drives the wagon. He has business in Durango. He says she does not argue because she is tired and the offer is practical and she has spent her arguments on things that matter more. The road in November is not the road in August. The San Juan range is already under snow on the upper faces, the air sharp enough to cut.
They do not talk much on the first day. She is not a talker in transit, and neither she has learned is he. They camp where the road bends east near a stand of cottonwoods. She feeds young Henry in the gray pre-dawn. And Amos has the fire going and coffee ready when she comes out of the tent.
And they sit on either side of the fire and drink it. And she thinks about what she knows of this man and what she does not know yet. You lost your wife, she says. Not a question. He looks at the fire 7 years ago.
Beth, a pause. And a daughter. Margaret. Same winter. Fever.
I'm sorry. She says, which is inadequate, but the inadequate thing said plainly is better than the adequate thing said wrong. It's why I went further into the mountains after. He says, I needed to make enough noise so I couldn't hear the quiet. She understands that in a way that is almost uncomfortably direct.
The cabin, she says. He looks at her. That's what it was for me, she says. I needed to make enough noise. He holds her eyes for a moment and then looks back at the fire.
The understanding between them is so plain it does not need language, which is fortunate because neither of them has the right words for it. The cottonwoods move in the dark air above them. We should sleep, she says. Yeah. He says the commissioner's hearing room is smaller than she imagined.