Cage was the arresting officer, the primary witness, and the man who had found the knife. Nine minutes from the drop to the stillness. Cage had also found a way to be compensated for the arrangement. $380 drawn from an army payroll fund that had been designated to carry Nathan's widow through the winter. The paperwork described it as a processing fee. Everyone who understood the territory understood it was something else.
Bidzi had taken it back. He looked at the satchel lying in the hay beside her. He thought about Nathan's widow, two children, the youngest three months old. He thought about Delwood Cage and what three years of patient waiting had produced and about what the right moment had turned out to look like. He thought about the listing walk and the inquest and the careful neutral expression Cage had kept across three days of testimony.
He'll come here regardless. A pause while he worked it through. Whether you stay or go, a man with a trail dog can follow your sign from the Presidio road to this barn. You riding out before daylight doesn't change what he already knows. She waited, watching him.
Stay until you can ride, then go north and send the money from Presidio. The postmaster up there doesn't know Cage well enough to be useful to him. I'll handle what comes here. She studied him, that thorough fast measuring quality she'd had since the first moment in the barn. Then she nodded once, the way you nod when the arithmetic favors a course of action and there is no good argument against it.
He went down from the loft and stood at the kitchen stove for a long time without making anything. He thought about Marta, what she would have done in this situation. She would have had Bidzi in the spare room within the hour. Soup on the stove, the fire built warm. He was not Marta, and he had made his peace with that.
He did what he could. He made up the spare room cot, dust cover off, quilt from the chest, lamp and matches on the chest, water in the pitcher. Then he went back to the barn and stood at the base of the loft ladder. She came down slowly holding herself carefully around the damaged shoulder and she looked at the spare room doorway with an expression he could not entirely read. Something she was deciding whether to allow herself.
Then she crossed the threshold and lowered herself onto the cot and closed her eyes. He left her there and returned to his work. The first two days he mostly let him. On the first morning she slept well past noon. Not surprising.