"I won't."
"I didn't think you would."
He lifted his head then and looked at her, and his eyes were wet, and she let them be wet; it was not hers to do anything about.
"Sabra," he said. "Was it all bad? The nine years?"
She thought about it honestly, because he had asked honestly, and because it was the last thing, she thought, that she would give him.
"No," she said. "The chimney was good. You laid a good chimney. And the first summer, before the sluice gate. That was good." She turned toward the door. "Write to that boy's mother, Eben. Not through his brother. Yourself. Tell her he wasn't alone. You owe her that, and nobody else can pay it."
She did not wait to hear what he said. Ruddock let her out. In the street the sun was shining on the dirty snow and a freight wagon was going by with a twelve-mule hitch and the driver singing, and Tallis Marten was standing against the courthouse wall with his hands in his pockets, waiting. He straightened when he saw her and did not ask her anything, and she was grateful, and they walked together up Harrison Avenue to the clerk's office without speaking, and she swore to it.
Tallis went home to Kansas for the rest of the winter. He had a farm to see to and a mother to tell, and he said he would rather tell her in the kitchen than in a letter, and Sabra thought he was right. He saw her onto the Corbel stage on a gray morning with the snow beginning again, and stood in the road with his hat in his hand, and said, "April, then," and she said, "April," and the stage pulled out, and she watched him through the little back window until the road bent and the falling snow took him.
She went home up the trail with Deacon and Orpha and Nimrod, and fed the stove, and dug the shed path, and was alone again.