The first patches of bare ground appearing on the south-facing slopes like the beginning of an argument being made. The families began making arrangements to return to their own properties. The Kellermans went first. Their place was the closest to functional.
Their loss is manageable in the way that careful people's losses tend to be. They left on a Monday morning, Carl shaking Evan's hand with a directness that suggested the 2 weeks left before that moment had built something real enough to be demonstrated without embarrassment. Reuter went next with the hay he'd been promised and the understanding about the spring fence work, shaking Caleb's hand at the gate with the quiet of a man who knows he owes something that can't be paid entirely in labor. Birch went on a Wednesday.
The parents left Thursday, the husband on a borrowed crutch, the child healthy and pink and running for the wagon with the energy of a recovered child who has no patience for the pace of recovering adults. The Perrin wife stopped at the gate. She looked at Mara, who was standing on the porch. She opened her mouth and didn't say anything for a moment, then she said, "I'll be at the trading post if you're ever" She stopped.
"You'll be at the trading post," she said instead, which was a different sentence, but said what needed saying. "I will," Mara said. The parents left. Then it was Hutchins.
He came to the barn to collect his horse. The cattle had already been driven back to his property the day before, Evan and Carl making a final joint operation of it, and he stood in the barn door with his coat buttoned and his hat in his hand and looked at Caleb. "I'll have my men start on the shared fence come April," he said. "April's fine," Caleb said.
"And there's a stretch of my north pasture that could run another 30 head if the graze comes in right this spring," Hutchins said. "More than I need. I thought if you were looking to expand the herd." Caleb looked at him.
This was a different kind of offer from Hutchins than anything that had come before. Not charity, not apology, but a proposition between men who had arrived at a different understanding of each other than the one they'd started with. "I'd want it on paper," Caleb said. "Obviously," Hutchins said.
"And Mara keeps the accounts on it." A pause. A shorter pause than it would have been 2 months ago. "Obviously," Hutchins said again, and put his hat on.
He extended his hand. Caleb shook it. Hutchins rode out. Caleb stood at the barn door and watched him go and thought about the distance between the man who had ridden up to this gate in October to deliver his opinions about widows and children and what a real ranch looked like and the man who had just ridden away with a handshake agreement and a commitment to shared work come spring.