it, forcing her to lay with him. He told himself he had
too much pride to rape a woman.
“It’s up to you,” he said, and doused the light.
She made her way to one of the other cots and lay
down on it but could not seem to get warm. How
long she’d been fleeing from the fat Indian she
couldn’t say, but it seemed like an eternity. She was so
cold and miserable that she couldn’t stand it any
longer. She made a last-ditch decision to save herself.
I’m sorry, dear husband, she said to herself as she
shucked out of her wet clothing and quickly climbed
into the blankets next to the stranger. I hope you for-
give me for whatever might transpire this dark and
mean night.
It was like crawling into a sanctuary of God’s own
making and she closed her eyes and the stranger
wrapped his arms around her and drew her near to
his warmth.
“I’m so tired,” she whispered.
He didn’t say anything.
*
*
*
Karen Sunflower prepared to fight and die if she had to.
Men were breaking into her house.
“Guddamn, what if they’s a man inside with a shot-
gun?” Zane said as Zeb busted the window glass,
having tried first the door only to find it locked.
“What if they is? We’ll kill the son of a bitch is all.
Get prepared to go to fighting, you damn slackers.”
“It’s a small winder,” Zack said, Zack being the
brawniest of the lot. “I can’t fit in no hole that small.”
“You go, then,” Zeb said to Zane who was the
runt of them standing barely five-and-a-half-feet tall
and weighing no more than a couple of sacks of
corncobs.
“You mean I got to be the first to get my head
blowed off by the man inside there with his shotgun.”
“You don’t know they’s a man with a shotgun in
there, guddamnit. Now git, or I’ll blow your head off
myself.”
Karen had slipped out of bed and took the rifle from
the corner of her bedroom. It was the needlenose gun,
not the Sharps Big Fifty Toussaint had given her the
first year they were married.
“Where’d you get such a gun?” she’d asked.
“I found it,” was all he said. And it was true. He
had found it way off the road while hunting for
dreaming rabbits. Found it alongside a skeleton with
shreds of clothing clinging to the bones—ribcage and
such. Obvious it was a fellow who had come to some
untimely death—an accident or murdered.
Buzzards and other creatures had picked the bones
clean and the passing seasons had turned them white.
There wasn’t any skull to be found with the rest of the
bones. Toussaint figured the skull must have got car-
ried off by some lobo, or possibly coyotes. The gun
lay a few feet away from the outstretched bony digits
of the man’s right hand. Toussaint had given some
thought about taking the finger bones and selling
them as trigger fingers of famed gunfighters—Billy
the Kid and Dick Turpin and such, like he had the
rabbit bones—but it wasn’t right to desecrate the
dead, and so he left perfectly good finger bones where
they lay and took up the rusty rifle instead and an old
butcher knife whose blade was equally rusty.
He spent hours cleaning and oiling the gun back to
workable condition, then gave it to Karen for her
protection.
“I’d just as soon keep my squirrel gun,” she said
when he told her his reason for giving her the Sharps.
“Why that squirrel gun wouldn’t shoot the hat off
a man’s head,” Toussaint had argued.
“Would you like for me to shoot you with it and
see what it can do?”
“Don’t argue with me, Karen.”
Still she did, like everything else. But he took her
out away from the house and set up targets—bottles
and tin cans—and showed her how to put a shell in
the chamber.
“It’s heavy as a log,” she said.
“Lean into it.”
She did and when she pulled the trigger it nearly
knocked her down. The sound of it rolled out over the
grasslands like small thunder. The sound pleased Tous-
saint, but not Karen.
“Thing is,” Toussaint said, blowing smoke out of
spot to stop him with this; it will kick the slats out
from under anything you hit. Whereas that squirrel
gun you might have to shoot a man four or five times
to stop him. By then, it might just be too late.”
“Who is it I’m supposed to be stopping, anyway?”
she said quite soured on the idea of shooting the Big
Fifty again.
“Anyone who might set himself upon you, that’s
who.”
“It’s not like these prairies are teeming with hu-
manity,” she said. “Not like strangers pass by here
every day. I’ve not seen a stranger pass this way since
Coronado came through here searching for the lost
cities of gold.”
Toussaint looked at her with growing agitation.
“Coronado,” he said huffily. “What would you
know about Coronado?”
“As much as you, I reckon.”
“Well, for one thing, Coronado never got this far
north. And even if it is Coronado who comes through
here and decides he’s tired of looking for lost cities of
gold and gets it in his head he’d rather have the plea-
sure of a woman instead, you shoot him with this
damn gun, okay?”
“Lord,” she said. “Ain’t there nothing you’re not
an expert on?” Every day of their lives was like this.
They couldn’t agree on the color of the grass.
Well, she’d never had to use it yet to defend herself.
And now she was sorry it was the needlegun there in
the corner and not the Big Fifty as she heard the
voices outside, the sound of breaking glass.
She checked to see if there were shells in the
needlegun, and there were.
First one gets the slats knocked out from under
him Big Fifty or no Big Fifty, she told herself.
23
They were saddled by first light and cutting sign.
“Rain’s washed out her tracks,” Toussaint said.
“Let’s just keep riding the same direction,” Jake
said. “It’s all we can do.”
The air had an icy chill to it, the sky gray and
cheerless. The prairies looked long and lonesome un -
der the disheartened clouds.
They rode another hour before coming on fresh
tracks and a cold camp.
“Somebody was here last night,” Toussaint said,
fingering the carcass bones of the prairie dog.
“Whoever it was had more than one horse,” Jake
said.
“Three, it looks like.”
“You see any footprints look like a woman’s in
this?”
Toussaint looked closely.
“
Yeah, she was here,” he said pointing at the
ground.”
“Let’s ride.”
They rode hard and shortly saw the rider ahead of
them, leading a pair of saddle horses.
Big Belly didn’t hear the riders coming up on him
until it was too late. He could let loose of the two
horses he was leading and maybe escape on the one he
was riding, but he sure hated to give up free horses.
And by the time he made up his mind they were al-
ready alongside him.
“Hold up,” Jake said, raising a hand.
Big Belly stopped.
“You come across a woman last night?”
Big Belly looked at him, not understanding a word
the man was saying, but noticing as he did the badge
the man was wearing. Not too dissimilar to the
badges the Texas Rangers wore.
“You ain’t going to shoot a big old Indian are you,
mister?”
“What’s he saying?” Jake asked Toussaint.
“Goddamn if I know.”
“You know any sign language?”
“Some.”
“See if you can find out if he’s seen Martha.”
“I think if he’d come across her and she’s not with
him now, she’s probably dead somewhere, but I’ll give
it a try.”
Toussaint asked Big Belly questions in sign about
Martha, Had he come across a woman the night be-
fore?
Big Belly replied, No, I didn’t see no woman.
I think you’re lying, Toussaint said. Because her
tracks led right to that camp you made.
No, Big Belly said, slicing the air with the edge of
his hand. It’s a big insult where I come from to call a
man a liar.
I don’t give a shit about that. We’re looking for this
woman and if you seen her you better tell us or I’ll cut
your nuts off.
Big Belly was getting pretty indignant with this
son of a bitch calling him a liar and threatening to
cut his nuts off.
Well, if I seen her, he asked, where the hell do you
suppose she’s at now? Do you think I ate her?
Toussaint raised his shotgun and leveled the barrels
at the Indian.
Jake stepped his horse forward and said, “What
the hell you planning on doing here, anyway?”
“I’m going to kill this goddamn Indian for lying to
me about Martha.”
“No,” Jake said. “You don’t know he’s not telling
the truth.”
Big Belly sat stoically upon his stolen horse. At
least, he told himself, he’d die a rich man with three
nice horses and saddles if this son of a bitch was go-
ing to shoot him.
“Tell him if he tells us where the woman is we’ll let
him go in peace,” Jake said.
Toussaint lowered his shotgun, let it rest on the
pommel of his saddle again and said in sign, My boss
here says if you tell us where the woman is we’ll let you
go. Hell he knows you stole those horses. But he says
he don’t give a shit about the horses, he just wants to
find this woman. But I’m telling you, it’s your last
chance to tell where she is, or I’m going send you to the
great beyond.
You just want to steal my horses.
Toussaint shook his head no.
Shit, I hate goddamn horses. You see what it is I’m
riding? I don’t even much like riding a mule. So I ain’t
interested in those nags.
Okay, then, I guess if you’re going to kill me you’re
going to kill me either way. She showed up last night
and ate my prairie dog, then she ran off, Big Belly said.
I don’t know why she ran away. I thought we were hav-
ing a good time. I was planning on fornicating with
her, but she must have gotten scared or something.
Which way?
Big Belly pointed.
“He says she was in camp with him but she headed
off east.”
Jake looked in that direction.
“East?”
“You want me to shoot him?”
“No. It wouldn’t do any good to shoot him. If he
killed her we would have come across the body or a
grave. Let him go.”
“You know he stole those horses, don’t you?”
“Not our problem. Can’t prove he did, can’t prove
he didn’t.”
You’re a lucky son of a bitch, Toussaint gestured.
You better get out of here with those stolen horses be-
fore some white men meaner than this one comes
along and hangs you. You better go back to where
you came from.
Big Belly grunted, made sign: Comanche don’t run
from white men or from no goddamn half-baked In-
dians like you, neither.
Get!
*
*
*
Martha awakened feeling cold, realized she was with-
out a stitch under the blankets. She saw the man
standing at the open window looking out, his back to
her. She saw her dress hanging over the back of a
chair with a busted bottom.
She didn’t remember anything that might have
happened during the night and for that she was grate-
ful. Still she fretted she might have been unfaithful to
Otis. It caused her heart to ache to think she may
have been.
She went to retrieve her dress but when she did the
man turned to look at her.
She had the blanket pulled up around her. He
seemed to stare right through it.
“You look better in the light,” he said.
“Can I ask you something?” Martha said, reaching
for her dress.
He shrugged. He was a handsome fellow, not badly
dressed in a wool suit of clothes, trousers tucked
down inside his boots, the butt of a gun showing be-
tween the flaps of his coat. He had longish cinnamon
hair and wide-set eyes.
“Ask away,” he said.
“Did you do anything that would make me un-
faithful to my husband?”
He half smiled.
“No,” he said. “Not, very much . . . maybe just a
little.”
She felt sad all at once.
“I don’t remember doing nothing with you,” she
said.
“Well, I guess it don’t matter, then,” he said. “Be-
sides, I’ve got me a woman up in a place near here. So
if you don’t tell, I won’t, either.”
“You mind turning your back so I can get dressed?”
“You want to dress, go ahead,” he said without
turning away.
In the greatest frustration she turned her own back
to him and pulled on her dress, then sat on the side of
the bed and put on her shoes, lacing them with all due
deliberation. Would it be possible to kill him, to shoot
him cold so he could never say anything to Otis? Poor,
poor Otis. She felt like weeping for him, for the sor-
row and uncertainty he must be going through worry-
ing about her. She vowed to make it up to him
somehow. Perhaps they could start fresh like he’d
wanted to by taking her on the picnic. She would stop
&
nbsp; being hard on him and maybe it would work out be-
tween them and she could truly learn to love him
again.
“You said you had a gal near here,” she said.
“Possibly in a place called Sweet Sorrow,” he said.
“How about taking me with you, then? I’m from
there, too.”
“Maybe you know her,” he said.
“What’s her name?”
“Clara,” he said. “Monroe. I’m her husband.”
Something told her to fear this man, the fact that the
new schoolteacher had told others she was a widow.
“No,” she said. “I never heard of anyone by that
name.”
He shrugged, set his hat on his head, and opened
the door.
“You’d leave me here, stranded?”
“Your troubles are none of my own,” he said. “I
imagine some Good Samaritan will come along sooner
or later.”
“What sort of man do you consider yourself to be
leaving a lady alone like this on these wild grasslands?”
“The leaving sort of man,” he said.
She was mad enough to fight him, but she knew she
could not win and so stood in the doorway and
watched him ride off. She never felt more alone in all
her life. With his leaving, the sun suddenly broke
through the clouds as though a sign of better things.
She took the busted-bottom chair out front and sat
with her face lifted toward the light. She felt cold
from the inside out. Cold and violated in a way she
never could have imagined.
Dear Lord, let me be saved and let my husband be
saved as well. Let me get returned to him and let me
be a good wife from now on. Then a terrible thought
entered her head: what if the man had violated her?
And what if his seed was to grow in her? She was ter-
rible old to bear children. But she’d known of other
women old as she who had. It caused her to weep
thinking of the possibility.
Jake and Toussaint found her sitting on a busted-
bottom chair out front of the shack muttering to
herself.
“Martha,” Jake said. “You all right?”
She opened her eyes.
She couldn’t be sure it wasn’t more men come to
have at her and threw her hands up in front of her face.
“It’s okay,” Jake said dismounting and kneeling
next to her. “We’ve got you now.”
He tugged her hands away so that he could look
at her.
“Are you hurt anywhere?”
She simply stared at him.
“Did anybody hurt you, Martha?”