It was something closer to recognition, a practical man. He understood what that meant. He had been one himself and had lost one too in his own way. Can you hit something at 40 yards on one leg? He asked.
I've never tried on one leg. You might have to. Then I'll find out, she said. He looked at her for a moment and she held the look and neither of them said the other things that were in the room. The things about what 40 yards meant and what having to shoot meant and what came after if it came to that.
There was a particular discipline to not saying those things. She had learned it from Thomas, who had never wasted words on fears that couldn't be solved by talking about them. Gideon had learned it from something else she suspected. She didn't ask. The second day of preparation, Mara noticed that Gideon had taken something out of the wooden chest in the far corner of the main room.
Not taken it out to use, taken it out, and looked at it and put it somewhere else. She didn't what it was. She saw the chest lid close with a particular deliberateness, and she saw him stand beside it with his hand on the top of it for a moment that lasted slightly too long to be unconscious. She let it alone. That evening, after Toby was sleeping, Orson made coffee with a heaviness to his movements that suggested his joints were registering the cold the way old joints did.
And Gideon sat at the table working on the broken hinge of the shutter that faced the south ridge, fixing it properly now, rather than the temporary fix he'd done in the fall, because a loose shutter was noise he didn't want when he needed quiet. The three of them were in the same room with three very different things on their minds and the particular silence of people who have said what needs saying and are now just waiting. Mara spoke first. If Whitlock's quarter gets here and authenticates the deed, she said,"How quickly can she file?"Same day, Orson said,"She told me she'd be ready. She just needs the authenticated copy."He wrapped both hands around his cup.
She's also got the territorial marshall's office prepared to move on warrant service. She's been waiting for this a long time, waiting for someone to hand her the piece she needed, Mara said. Yes. She looked at the oil cloth packet on the table in front of her. She'd kept it within reach at all times.
Not compulsively, not anxiously, but steadily. The way you keep something you can't afford to lose. And in the meantime, Ror knows where I am, or he's close to knowing. And he's not going to wait for warrants. No, Orson said.
He's not. Gideon set the hinge down. He had one of those faces that was difficult to read in motion, but legible in stillness, and right now he was very still. He's going to come before the recorder gets here. He's going to try to take the deed before there's anyone official to receive it.