"Are you going to send me away?"
The question broke something in him.
He stared at her.
Only an hour earlier, he had been telling her to go back east.
To find someone safer.
Someone who didn't come home with blood on his coat.
Now she was asking whether he would abandon her because the danger was real.
Caleb leaned forward.
He took her hand.
"No."
Her lips trembled.
He held her gaze.
"I was wrong to think I could protect you by deciding your future for you."
Tears gathered in her eyes.
He continued.
"But I won't promise this will be easy."
Clara nodded.
"I know."
He squeezed her fingers.
"And I won't ask you to hide what you know."
She looked toward him.
For a moment, she seemed almost afraid to believe him.
Then she whispered, "What happens now?"
Caleb looked toward the papers.
The fire.
The snow beyond the window.
Then back at her.
"Now we find out what happened to both our families."
He paused.
"And this time, we make sure the truth survives."
They spent the rest of the night examining Samuel Whitmore's records.
Caleb moved the kitchen table closer to the fireplace, where the lantern could provide enough light without forcing them to strain their eyes.
Clara opened her traveling case.
Beneath a folded dress and a packet of letters lay a narrow cloth compartment she had sewn into the lining.
She carefully removed its contents.
Three field books.
Two rolled survey sketches.
A packet of correspondence.
And a small brass instrument wrapped in oilcloth.
Caleb looked at the instrument.
"What's that?"
Clara unwrapped it.
"A surveying compass. My father's."
The metal was scratched.
Its leather case had darkened with age.
She touched it gently.
"He used to say a compass could tell you where north was, but not whether the man holding it knew where he ought to go."
Caleb smiled faintly.
"Sounds like a thoughtful man."
"He was."
For a moment, grief crossed her face.
Then she opened the first field book.
Caleb watched her turn the pages.
His hands were enormous beside hers, scarred and rough from years of work.
Hers were smaller, but the tips of her fingers bore faint stains from ink and pencil graphite.
She moved through the material confidently.
Here was the old creek bed.
Here was the northern trail.
Here was the quarry.
Here were the measurements her father believed had been altered.
Caleb listened closely.
He understood land.
He understood distances and landmarks.
But the technical descriptions were more complicated than the maps he used to move cattle.
Clara explained without making him feel foolish.
She traced lines with the end of a pencil.
Showed how one boundary depended on another.
Then demonstrated why two different descriptions couldn't both be correct if they referred to the same original marker.
Caleb leaned forward.
"You're saying they moved the whole boundary."
Clara shook her head.
"Not the land. The records describing it."
He considered that.