You'll hear from the federal office, Apprentice said. I expect so, " Gideon said. Apprentice folded his warrant, put it in his coat, looked at Cesa, who met his gaze with the directness of someone who had stopped being afraid of him at a specific moment and had not gone back at Amma, who had already looked away, was already looking at the map on the table, already three steps ahead. Apprentice walked out, the door closed. Gideon listened to the horses leaving.
Listened until the sound was gone and only the wind remained. Then he turned. Desa had her arms at her sides. The posture of someone who had been very still for a long time and was now carefully releasing it. Amma exhaled long like she had been saving it.
That's done. Desa said that part. Gideon said yes. A pause. That part.
The weeks that followed were not simple. They were not simple because Apprentice was not finished and they all knew it. He filed a complaint with the federal office. There were letters, official responses to be drafted. Gideon made two trips to the county seat.
Once with Desa once alone. Each time he came back with more paperwork and the exhaustion of navigating a system that had not been built with him in mind, or with Desa and Amma in mind at all. But the letters had arrived in Cheyenne. Burell was careful. The clerk was careful.
The documents reached the federal court with the proper signatures and the particular detail that made Apprentice's arrangement visible as an arrangement rather than a legal process. Nothing resolved immediately. Nothing like this resolved immediately, but it created friction. Enough friction that apprentice's timeline expanded. Survey markers came down while the investigation was pending.
The methodical legal looking pressure he'd been applying to the north end of the territory paused. Just paused. Paused was something. Paused meant time. And time meant spring.
January gave way to February. February was brutal the way Wyoming February always is. The cold stopped being weather and became something with intent. But the cabin was warm. The considerable, frankly excessive quantity of firewood Gideon had split kept the fire going.
Amma healed completely. One morning in late January, she stood up from the table and walked across the cabin and turned and walked back without managing anything. Without the careful breath work she'd been doing for weeks, she stood in the middle of the room with her arms at her sides and looked mildly triumphant. There she said nobody spoke for a moment. Then Desa said, "About time.
" And Amma threw a dish towel at her, which hit Desa in the face, which Desa had not been expecting, which produced a sound that Gideon, who did not have better language for this, could only describe as almost certainly a laugh, quickly suppressed, but present. He had not heard Desa laugh before. He had not known it sounded like that. He turned back to the stove because his face was doing something he did not want witnessed. The conversation about what came next happened on a February evening.