Malone paused at 30 yards, didn't turn around. "This isn't done," he said. "It is," Hadley said. Because sometimes you just say the thing and let it be true. He stayed on the porch until they were a half mile out.
Nayeli stood beside him. Tsula on the other side. Nobody said anything. When Malone's group disappeared over the north rise, Tsula exhaled long and slow. "He'll think about it," she said.
"Decide if it's worth coming back. He'll decide it isn't," Nayeli said. "How do you know?" Hadley said. Nayeli watched the empty horizon.
"Because men like that," she said, "count the cost. And the cost just went up. And the thing he wants went down in value when it required this much." She paused. "He'll find another route.
Another easy target." Something crossed her face, brief and complicated. "That's who they are. They look for easy." Hadley looked at her profile.
"And we weren't easy." She turned and looked at him. "No," she said. "We weren't." Three days of quiet, real quiet, the good kind.
Hadley checked the perimeter every morning and found nothing. No prints, no smoke on the ridge. The land had gone back to being just land. Wyoming in late winter, still and white and pale, the barn work progressed. The east wall came down.
Hadley and Nayeli, two days careful work with the salvageable lumber stacked to the side. The framing went back up on the third day. Tsula handed up pieces, called out measurements, developed a running commentary on the quality of various boards that was detailed and occasionally profane. Hadley didn't know where she'd learned some of those words. He didn't ask.
Rex supervised from the paddock with the expression of a foreman who finds the whole crew disappointing. "Your horse," Tsula said on the second afternoon, looking at Rex looking at them, "has opinions." "He does." Hadley agreed, "About everything." "About everything."
She looked at Rex. Rex looked back. "I like him," she said. "Don't tell him that," Hadley said. "He'll get worse."
Rex turned away from them all, which was as close to approval as Rex ever got. Hadley handed up another nail and thought, "When did this become normal?" And then thought, "I don't mind." The drawing. He came in from the barn on the fourth quiet evening and stopped.
Tsula had finished the new section. He hadn't seen it before. She'd been covering it when he was near, working on it in pieces when he was outside, adding to it the way you add to something private until it's ready to be seen. Now it was ready. It covered the section of wall to the right of the fireplace, the section that had always been empty.
Just planking. Three figures standing in front of what was clearly meant to be the outline of a cabin. The roof line was unmistakable. The proportions exactly right. The mountains behind it in the style she'd developed over the weeks, angular, specific, present, and three figures.