Then Moberly called Horace Whitcombe.
He stood by the desk and gave his testimony in his deep preacher's voice, and for a while, Cora thought, he almost carried it. Long service. Hundreds of plats approved in the regular course. He could not answer for a young man's private crimes at a distant camp. Garrity was ruined by drink. If gold had changed hands, it was repayment of a loan Garrity had confused in his memory. And with a sorrowful look toward the window, he said a people without written records could hardly fix a corner to the foot after twenty years.
"She fixed it to the foot," said Moberly mildly, not looking up. "I measured it."
Whitcombe stopped.
"Two further matters." Moberly drew out an envelope. "A copy, obtained in Omaha, of the Pruitt Land and Cattle Company minute book for October 1874. It records six hundred dollars paid to you 'for services in expediting the survey of Township Nine North.' I find no such services in the Surveyor General's files."
Abner Pruitt half rose from his chair. "That was a fee," he said hoarsely. "He told us it was customary. Nobody said a word to me about any chain. I'll swear to it." He looked around at his neighbors. Nobody looked back. He sat down.
"The second," said Moberly, and held up a yellow telegraph form, "was handed to me at the depot. The Governor has this morning suspended you as Commissioner of Territorial Lands, pending this investigation. I asked the depot agent to give you a copy. I gather he did not."
In the silence a child at the back asked what suspended meant, and its mother hushed it.
Cora had seen his face break once already, in the yard. She had thought that was the end of it. What she saw now was worse, because there was nothing left to break. He stood with his portfolio clutched to his chest like a boy holding a reader and looked around the room for someone, anyone, and found only faces: men whose hands he had shaken at the depot for twelve years, women he had given prizes to, Arvid Bishop, who had named a son after him, Pruitt staring at the floor. And at the window, in the hard light, the Red Willows, looking at him with no expression at all.
He set the portfolio on the desk, very carefully, as if it might break. Then he picked it up again. Then he walked down the aisle and out into the sun. Through the window Cora watched him stand beside his hired buggy with one hand on the wheel, a big gray old man in a black coat in the glare, as if he had forgotten what came next.
Nobody went out to him.
***