He put his fist in his mouth. She took that as acknowledgement. She sent word to Amos through Tommy, who arrived that afternoon for his regular visit, and went back north with a note that said, "Only, the determination came. We're clear." She thought about adding more. She decided the rest could wait until she said it in person.
He came the next morning. She heard the horse before she saw it and came to the door and he was dismounting faster than he usually did with the urgency of a man who has been waiting for news and is now arriving at it. And when he turned and saw her standing in the doorway, he stopped. Just stood there for a moment with the rains loose in his hand. It's done, he said.
Denied in full, she said. Cole's statement. The settlement record, the photographs. Aldrich found no basis for Dunar's claim. He let the breath out slowly.
He looked at the cabin, at the clearing, at the garden beds under their straw covering, at the firewood stacked along the east wall, at all of it. And then he looked at her. Good, he said. The word was insufficient for what she could see in his face, which was a relief so deep it had clearly been sitting on him for weeks, heavier than he had been showing. She had known it was there.
She had seen it in the twice weekly visits without stated reason in the photographs, in the way he had sat in that hearing room watching Aldrich's pen move. But seeing it come off his face was different from knowing it was there. Knowing was one thing. Seeing was another. Come inside, she said.
The coffee is on. He tied the horse and came in. And she set a cup in front of him at the table she had built and sat across from him with her own. Young Henry was in the cradle making the small investigative sounds of a person who is awake and not yet sure how he feels about it. The fire was low in the stove and the morning light came through the glass window and the whole room was quiet in the way that rooms are quiet after the thing they were built to hold has finally arrived.
Dunar won't come back. Amos said he's not stupid. He pushed this as far as it could reasonably go and it failed. He'll find other claims, smaller ones from people with less. He paused.