Long patience, never forcing, always letting the animal make the approach, no matter how long it took. The way the other workers at the station had started bringing their problem horses to him. And how he'd handled each one with the same unhurried care. She talked about him the way you talk about someone you have been carrying inside you and are finally setting down for a moment, not to abandon, but to rest. Then, it was Tobias's turn.
The story of Marta's death came out of him quietly, in the careful way that a man speaks about something he has rehearsed in his own mind many times, and has not spoken aloud often enough to make it easy. Cage had appeared at the inquest and described an accidental discharge. He had fired because a rider near the road made a movement he interpreted as threatening, and the bullet was intended for the ground as a warning. The sheriff closed the inquiry in 6 days. The other rider that day, the tax collector who had retained Cage as escort, had privately told someone afterward that Cage had not fired toward the ground, that the shot had been level and deliberate.
He had been specific about it. He had used the word deliberate. The tax collector had relocated to El Paso 2 months after the inquest. Through a chain of two or three people, Tobias had learned that this relocation had been financially assisted. Bidsy sat with this.
The fire was the only sound for a while. The fire settled for a moment. "When he comes here, what will you do?" "Nothing," Tobias replied. He had seen no one, heard nothing, noticed no sign of anyone.
He would turn Cage back toward the road, but Cage would search the property first. "Yes." And that was what the root cellar's false floor was for. Marta had built it for winter stores, knowing a hard winter could leave you cut off from town for weeks, and a well-concealed supply meant the difference between eating and not. The floor was invisible unless you knew to remove the right shelf panel, and the panel was currently behind a stack of seed sacks.
He had spent the previous afternoon making it ready for this purpose. "You thought about this before I came down from the loft." "I've had 3 days." Something crossed her face briefly, not quite a smile, but related to one. It came and went in the firelight, and then she was looking at the fire again.
In those evenings, they began to trade other things, smaller, quieter than the events. He learned that she spoke Spanish as fluently as English, and some German she had acquired from a mission school teacher who had recognized in her a particular capacity for language and pushed it as far as the curriculum allowed. She had traveled this country since childhood and knew it with the specificity of someone who has learned a landscape from necessity rather than leisure. Which creek crossings ran shallow in March, which cottonwood stands marked reliable water, what the cloud patterns off the southern peaks meant for the next day's weather. She knew the birds by their calls.