"And you didn't tell me."
"No."
"For three months."
"For three months."
"Why." He realized he was shouting now. He had not shouted at her in thirteen years, not like this, and his voice slammed back at him off the barn wall. "Why, Claire? Why in God's name wouldn't you tell me?"
"Because you stood up in front of the whole Stockgrowers and said you wanted him in Deer Lodge," Claire said, and her voice came up to meet his. "Because you said you didn't care how old he was or what his story was. I was sitting right there. I heard you say it, and I believed you, and I'm still not sure I was wrong. He was sixteen when he took those calves. He turned seventeen in August, in this barn, splitting your wood. You'd have called Tom before I finished the sentence, and Tom would have had to take it to the county attorney, and with your reward on it and your name on it and the whole association watching, that boy would have had a felony on him for the rest of his life. Theft of livestock. He'd never get a loan. He'd never lease ground. He'd never work for any outfit in this state that ran a background check. And his mother would have been left with two little girls in a trailer with no heat."
"So you decided."