The sheriff arranged to take the wounded messenger to the physician and sent a separate rider to alert the circuit judge. Then he asked whether anyone knew how to reach the abandoned relay station.
Her husband unfolded a mountain map. “I do.”
“So do I now,” his wife answered. She indicated a narrow supply road partly obscured by the ledger's old parcel sketches. “And that road stays below the ridge. Your route crosses the exposed pass.”
The men examined her suggestion. One of the freight workers nodded. “The lower road's longer, but the snowdrifts are shallower.”
Her husband looked toward her. “You don't have to come.”
“I know.” She paused. “I'm coming because I choose to. I want to hear the truth from the woman herself, and I can keep these records out of the wrong hands.”
He didn't argue. That simple restraint was the first repair to the trust between them.
They traveled on a broad freight sled drawn by two steady horses, with blankets and heated stones beneath protective wrappings. The road wound through a forest of tall dark pines. Snow fell in little bursts whenever the branches moved. Her husband walked beside the sled over the roughest stretches, while the sheriff rode ahead with one deputy and a local guide.
Hours passed. Near noon, the roof of the old relay station appeared between the trees. One window was boarded. The stable door hung crookedly. Smoke barely escaped from a small chimney.
The sheriff called for anyone inside to show themselves. No answer came.
Then a woman's voice, thin and exhausted, asked the sheriff to identify the man with the scar.
The mountain man stepped forward. “I'm here.”
For several seconds, nothing moved. Then the door opened.
The woman standing inside looked much older than her years. Her cheeks were hollow, her hands red from the cold, and her plain gray dress hung loosely from narrow shoulders. A bandage circled one wrist. She stared at the mountain man as if she had been holding her breath for seven years.
“You're alive,” he whispered.
She nodded, her eyes filling. “I hoped you were too.”
His hand rose halfway toward her, then fell. They remained apart, and the woman in the blue gown was grateful for that moment of honest uncertainty. Nobody knew yet what a reunion was supposed to mean.
The first wife glanced toward her. Understanding appeared slowly in her tired face.
“You must be the woman from his letter.”