You're not wrong. No, she agreed without any particular satisfaction in it, just the acknowledgement of something that was simply true. Deputy Hurt arrived before dawn with two men behind him, which meant Calhoun had moved faster than Sadi had expected. He was thin and efficient, proud of his mustache, and he took their statements at the kitchen table while Sadie made coffee for everyone with the composure of a woman for whom this was just the morning's work. Hurt went north along the ridge trail with the first light and found the Quillens' camp at the alkali seep, precisely where Sadie had described it.
Fire still smoking, the blue roan horse tied to a juniper. Hector Quillen had made it about six miles before he lost his nerve or his direction in the dark and stopped to wait for daylight. It was a mistake. They brought him in before noon. Mattis stood on his porch and watched them ride past with Quillen in irons.
The man looked at him from the saddle with those flat, reasonable eyes and said nothing at all. The paint horse came back two days later. Hurt's men had found the Quillens' string of stolen horses and sorted them out, and Sadie's paint, a small sturdy mare with markings Sadie had described in exact detail, down to a white star on the near hind fetlock had been among them. One of the deputies' riders brought her up the ranch road in the late afternoon and Sadi went out to meet her with her hands open and her face doing something quiet and private. Mattis gave her the space for that without being asked.
The medicine bundle came back intact. The Quillens had kept it, apparently deciding that a leather bundle had to hold something valuable. They hadn't been wrong about that part. They'd just been wrong about what form the value took. Sadi and Invent laid it at the kitchen table that evening, laying each thing out and checking it and repacking it in precise order.
Mattis sat across from her and watched. When she was done, she tied the flap closed and smoothed it once with her palm, a small gesture like closing a door you've been worried about, and then looked up at him. Your people will have their medicines for winter. Yes. He was quiet a moment.
That's a long ride east. Two days you said. I know the route. When were you planning on going? She turned the bundle in her hands once.
I had not decided. He understood both things she was telling him at the same time. She was a medicine woman and she had responsibilities she took seriously. People were waiting for what she was carrying. She had been gone longer than planned already.