What was complicated, what Boon could see working through Rearen's expression even at this distance was the specific discomfort of a man who has built his understanding of the world on the premise that he is the kind of person things go toward and is now confronted with evidence that the world may not have gotten that memo. "This isn't finished," Rearen said. His voice was even controlled. The voice of a man filing something away for later. "File it with Vain," Boon said.
"That's what he's there for." Rearen looked at him one more time. Then he turned his horse and rode back up the western slope. His men trailing behind him in the particular silence of men who have been very ready for something that did not happen and are not sure how to carry that readiness back with them. The sound of their departure faded and then was gone.
The figures on the ridgeelines remained for a while longer, and then they too began to move, not in retreat, but in the unhurried way of people returning to the things they had set down to come and stand here. The valley settled back into its morning. Somewhere near the corral, Cheese appeared, apparently having been waiting out the morning's proceedings with considerably less patience than the adults. Natan appeared beside Boon on the horseback. The younger man looked at the now empty western slope for a moment.
Then he said, ""My uncle wants to know if you are staying."" Boon looked around the valley. The light had come fully up while he was watching the ridge lines and the morning was clear and cool, the kind of morning this country offered about twice a week when it was feeling generous. August nosed at the ground beside him, apparently having located a particularly interesting patch of grass. "What does your uncle say?" Boon asked.
Natan almost smiled. He says the fence on the south boundary still needs a proper post at the eastern end and that you set a fence post better than anyone he has seen in recent memory. Boon looked down at August. August looked up at him with the patient expression of a horse who has long since stopped trying to predict what the man on his back is going to do next and has made his peace with it. "Tell him I'll look at it tomorrow," Boon said., "" The legal challenge that Aldis Vain had filed moved through the courts with the particular speed of bureaucratic processes that nobody powerful had specifically asked to speed up, which is to say slowly, but it moved.