Their faces were windburned. They spoke little during the day, conserving their energy for the labor, but the silence was no longer heavy. It was the companionable silence of two people pulling on the same rope. The town of Red Rock did not change overnight. Prejudice, Clara learned, was like the Msquite route.
You could chop it down, but the tangled knot of it lived deep underground when they rode into town a month after the fire to speak with the new interim sheriff. The reaction was fractured. They walked into the merkantile, and the silence that greeted them was familiar, yet different. Mrs. Gable, the banker's wife, who had once called Clara trash, was standing by the counter.
She looked at Clara, then at Eli, then at the bandage still wrapped around Clara's hand. She turned pink. She did not smile, but she nodded. A stiff, jerky motion of her chin. "Good morning, Mrs. " Gable said.
Her voice was tight, as if the words tasted like vinegar. Good morning, Clara replied evenly. But at the other end of the counter, a man named Henderson, who had sold grain to Pike for years, spat on the floor as they passed. He turned his back, muttering about thieves and luck. Clara did not flinch.
She did not look at Eli to see if he was angry. She simply bought her flower and walked out. Outside, Eli stopped her. "He should not have done that. He can do what he likes, Clara said, adjusting her shawl against the biting wind.
I cannot earn them all. Eli, I am done trying to be the woman they want me to be. I can only be the woman who lives the truth. The truth is enough, Eli said. He took her arm, not to lead her, but to walk with her.
The healing of the past required more than just work. It required a burial. In late February, on a day when the wind had died down enough to make the outdoors bearable, Clara rode to the high ridge overlooking the southern pass. It was not a graveyard, but it was a place of long views and deep silence. She dismounted and tied her horse to a scrub oak.
She walked to the edge of the drop off. She held a small bundle in her hand, the dried flower from her wedding bouquet, which she had saved in her trunk, and the ribbon she had worn the night she left the border town. She was not near Sarah's grave. Sarah was buried in a poppers plot 300 m south, but the spirit of the grief was here, in the freedom of the wind. "I did it," Clara said aloud.
Her voice was small in the vastness of the basin. I told them Sarah. I told the judge. I told the town. They know what he did to you.
She waited half expecting the wind to answer. There was only silence. But it was a clean silence. I am not running anymore. Clara continued.
I have a home. I have a man who sees me. I am not just a survivor. I am living. She placed the flower and the ribbon under a heavy stone, anchoring them against the elements.