"No."
"They weren't there." Nils made himself say it plainly. He made himself look at the other man while he said it. "They were already gone. I took them the autumn after Gudny died. I was rebuilding the chimney and I needed rock and I went down to the draw and I didn't think. I didn't remember. I loaded them on the stoneboat and brought them up here and laid them into that." He pointed. His hand was shaking, and he let it. "Your grandfather thanked me for something I didn't do. I did the opposite. They are in the chimney. Your great-grandmother's stones are in my chimney, and I have known it for two years, and I didn't take them out, because I was afraid of the winter."
Tukweyit did not answer at once. He looked at the chimney. Then he looked at Nils. His face did not change, and Nils, who had spent two years imagining this moment in various forms, every one of them worse than the last, could not read it at all.
"I know," Tukweyit said at last.
"You know?"
"I went to the spring first. Before I came here. I came across the north end of your claim and down the draw, because I wanted to see it before I saw you, and I saw the place where the stones were and they are not there. Somebody has put a ring of new stones around the place where they were. Field stones. I did not know who would do that, or why." He nodded at the chimney. "And then I rode up here and I saw that, and the gray stones in it are draw stones, ledge stones. Anybody who has lived on this prairie knows what that ledge rock looks like. So I knew." He put his hat back on. "I wanted to see what you would say."
"And now you've seen."
"And now I have seen."