"Will we still have school?" she said.
"Tomorrow there's a hearing. There won't be lessons. After that—I don't know. I don't know, Hannah."
The girl looked at her with her father's red-rimmed eyes, though she had not been up all night.
"You always know," she said. Not unkindly. Only surprised.
***
By suppertime all four hundred people in Harlan Crossing had heard some version of what happened on the knoll. In one, Garrity had been drunk. In another, the Indians had brought rifles. In a third, the teacher had fainted in the schoolyard and been carried to a buggy.
At the boardinghouse, Mrs. Okerlund met Cora in the hall with her hands wrapped in her apron and her mouth tight.
"Your supper's kept," she said. "Mr. Pruitt's foreman was here asking for you. Mr. Whitcombe sent a boy twice with a note. It's on your bed. And Arvid Bishop says the board's meeting tonight at the church, and you're expected."
"Expected to do what?"
Mrs. Okerlund looked at her with something like pity. "Expected to say what side you're on, I suppose," she said. "Same as everybody."
Cora went upstairs and read the note on her bed. It was on Land Office paper, in a large, rapid hand.
Miss Lindqvist— I would be grateful for a quarter hour of your time this evening at the Commercial Hotel. Much depends on our understanding one another before tomorrow. The welfare of your pupils above all. —H.W.