"Say that again," she said.
"The man in your husband's grave isn't your husband." He said it gently, but he did not soften it. "Your husband was alive in October. He was alive in Leadville the day I left. He wrote you that letter, ma'am, and he asked me to carry it, and I said I would. I'm sorry. I'm sorry to be the one."
She looked at the packet on the table. Oilcloth, string. A corner of folded paper showing where the cloth did not quite meet.
"No," she said.
He did not argue. He only sat.
"No," she said again, and found that it meant nothing, that it was only a sound she was making, the way a horse blows when it has been run too hard. She set the rifle on the table. She reached out and took the packet and untied the string with fingers she still could not feel, and unfolded the oilcloth, and there was the letter, three sheets of cheap ruled paper folded in thirds, and on the outside of it, in pencil, in a hand she had last seen on a note left on this same table two winters ago, a note that said Gone to Halfmoon to see about the Gilpin lease, back Thursday, don't wait supper, were the words: Sabra. By hand.
She did not open it.
She sat there holding it for a long time, long enough that the coffee went cold in Tallis Marten's cup and he did not drink it, long enough that the light came off the table and went up the wall and turned the color of weak tea. He did not speak. She was aware of him in the way she was aware of the stove, a fact of the room. Nimrod got up once and went to him and smelled his boots and lay down again at his feet, which was a thing she had never seen Nimrod do for a stranger, and she noted it the way she would note a change in the wind.
At last she said, "Why you?"