"She did not tell me," Nils said. His voice came out strange. "She meant to. She stopped me once. I was taking the stones for this chimney, the first time I built it, and she stopped me and made me put them back. She said she would tell me when she was sure she had it right."
Tukweyit nodded slowly. "That sounds like what my grandfather said about her. That she was careful with words. That she would not say a thing about our people until she was sure it was true."
"And then she died."
"Yes. We heard. My aunts cut their hair a little for her. Not the way you cut it for family. But a little."
Nils had not known that. He thought of women he had never met standing in the draw with their knives and their braids, for Gudny, and he did not know where to put the thought.
"My grandfather died in February," Tukweyit said, "in the Grandmother's country, on the Milk River, in a camp of Sitting Bull's people. He was very old, and it was very cold, and there was not enough to eat, and in the end he just stopped, like a clock. He knew it was coming. He called me and my sister and told us three things. He said, take the woman Gudny's horse home, it is not ours. He said, when you go, go to my mother's stones, and tell Ordway who is under them, because his wife promised to tell him and she died first, and a promise should not die just because the person who made it does. And he said—" Tukweyit stopped, and for the first time looked away, out over the stubble. "He said, tell Ordway thank you for leaving them. He believed you had."
The meadowlark had stopped. Nils could hear Ketti breathing beside him.
"He said that to me the night I gave her the horse," Nils said. "He said my wife's stones were still there and thank you for leaving them. I didn't understand him."