Five graves, two of course his father's and brother's. Three more. Sett leaned his head on his arms and swallowed against the thickness in his throat. His mother and his sister dead? Some unknown hired man too. Darkness advanced through the aspen grove and the creek bubbled cheerily. The years in the cold cell, the days of hard riding and nights of speculation and practiced apologies, the loneliness that he had chosen while waiting to return somehow to that previous life, all were dashed away. There were strangers in his house. There were five graves on the pretty wildflowered knoll.

SETTLER'S LAW, page 27