He said, “Eat your breakfast before it gets cold.”
She set to eating, her jaw and lips sore from every
bite, but her stomach practically begging her to fill it.
He watched her careful as he might a dreaming rab-
bit. She wondered what he thought was so interesting.
“You want to tell me about it now, you can,” he
said when he finished the last of his food.
“Why do you think I would want to talk about?
Don’t you think it was bad enough having to go
through it?”
“You don’t have to, but if you want to, I’ll listen.”
“No, I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Longer you don’t tell me who it was, the more
likely the ones who done this will get away.”
She gave a little incredulous laugh.
“Hell, they already got away.”
“Okay,” he said and stood and got the coffee pot
and refilled each of their cups and sat back down
again.
“How come you never found yourself nobody
else?” she said. “All these years living alone when you
could have had you another woman?”
“You was woman enough for me,” he said. “How
come you didn’t?”
“One go-round was plenty enough for me, too,”
she said. “I wouldn’t marry another man, even one
with money.”
“You think we ruined each other for anyone else?”
“No,” she said. “I don’t reckon we did. I guess
once drinking at that well is enough for anybody.
Nothing special about us.”
He looked toward the window, then back at her
again.
“Was it all that bad—I mean between us, so’s you
didn’t want another woman?” she said. “Was I that
bad a wife to you?”
“No,” he said.
“Then what was it?”
“Just the opposite, is what it was.”
He saw the tears brimming in her eyes and looked
away because he didn’t want to see her cry anymore,
didn’t want to see her hurt in any way that would
cause her to cry. She was tough as most men he knew;
not the crying type, and he felt embarrassed for her.
“Thing with us,” she said, “is, however bad it was,
it could be equally good.”
“You’ll get no argument from me if that’s what
you’re looking for.”
“I ain’t.”
“Me either.”
Sun struck the window then cut like a knife blade
into the room and across the table. A blade of light
cutting right down between them and it was the first
sun either of them had seen in three days.
Zane Stone found himself sleeping in an alley. How
he got there he didn’t know. His head hurt with
whiskey vapors still in it. Hurt like somebody had
pounded him with a rock. Wind whistled through the
narrow opening and he shivered because of it. Where
had his brothers gone, Zeb and Zack?
Hell, he thought. He stood up shakily and steadied
himself against a wall before moving down to the
mouth of the alley and onto a street. He gauged from
the low lie of the sun it was early yet. And when he
looked up and down the street nobody was out and
about. His thin coat wasn’t any protection against the
wind, and even though the sun was shining, the air
was damn chill. He knuckled slobber from the corner
of his mouth, then saw something that drew him to it:
a small white church. Hell, he hadn’t been inside a
church since he was a kid. He remembered the
singing they did in church, and that he liked it. He re-
membered the smell of Bibles and dry wood and the
way the light caught the colors of the stained glass
and how it felt like a safe place to be. Nothing much
in his life since had felt as safe to him.
Once inside, he saw a row of benches like they
were just waiting for him. And up on the altar hang-
ing from wires strung to the rafters was a large wood
cross. It was quiet and peaceful and he sat down on
one of the pews and just stared at the cross remember-
ing the stories his mam had told him about the blood
of the lamb, and how Christ died for his and everyone
else’s sins and what happened to sinners: how they
burned up in lakes of fire. He remembered the passing
how it looked like all the money in the world and
wondered what Jesus did with all that money and why
he even needed it since he was God. There was a lot
about religion that he didn’t understand then or now.
But somehow, just being there made him feel bet-
ter. He didn’t know quite how to pray or even if he
should, but he felt like he wanted to pray, to tell God
how damn sorry he was for what happened with the
woman and how he didn’t want any part of it to be-
gin with. So that’s what he said, under his breath,
hoping God would hear what he was whispering and
wouldn’t strike him dead with a lightning bolt or
have a tree fall on him or something like that. And
the more he let it out, the more that came out until it
seemed like everything he’d ever done wrong was
spilling out of him.
“Damn it to hell, I can’t stop talking,” he muttered
to himself after a while. But it felt good, like a boil
being lanced and the pressure relieved.
Then someone said, “May I help you?” and he
quick turned reaching for his pistol as he did and the
man behind him said, “Easy, son, nobody’s going to
bring harm to you.” He saw this wild-haired man
looked like Moses—at least the rendering he’d seen of
Moses in a book his mother had. This stranger was a
tall lanky cuss who looked like he’d seen all the trou-
bles a man could suffer and yet survive them.
“I wasn’t doing nothing,” he said. “I was just sit-
ting here.”
“Nobody was accusing you of doing anything.
You’re welcome here in God’s house,” Elias Poke said.
That sounded odd: God’s house.
“I just come in to git out of the cold some. Till
things open and I can buy me a better coat.”
“That’s all right. This is a sanctuary, a port in the
storms of life. You’re welcome to stay as long as you
like.”
Guddamn, but it was all confusing what this
Moses fellow was telling him.
“Have you been hurt somehow?” the preacher said
after Zane didn’t move or say anything more.
“No sir, none that I know of.”
“You hungry, on the skids?”
“Skids?”
“I mean are you down and out, brother?”
“No sir. I ain’t down and out, I’m just a little lost.”
“Welcome to the fold. We’re all lost if we do not
heed His way.”
“You a preacher? I mean you run this place?”
“I’m this town’s only preacher,” Elias said. “But it
is the almighty who runs things around here.”
“Th
e almighty, huh?”
Elias nodded.
“My old woman told me once the almighty would
forgive a man anything, any sort of sin, no matter what
or how bad a sin it was. You reckon that’s true?”
“I believe it is if the sinner is contrite.”
“Contrite? Mister, you’re going to have to speak a
lot plainer if you want I should understand you.”
Elias explained it to him.
“If you mean am I sorry I did certain things, yes
I am.”
“Then He will forgive you if you ask Him to.”
“How I do that, the asking part?”
“Simply speak your heart, say how sorry you are
for what you did and ask His forgiveness and it will
be granted.”
“That’s it? That’s all?”
“Pretty much, except you ought to not go out and
do the same sin again. Even the Lord has His limits.”
“Believe me, I ain’t planning on it never.”
“You want to come to the house and eat? Are you
hungry?”
“No, I best get on.”
“Go with God, then.”
Once outside, Zane Stone felt somehow like a
changed man. But he wasn’t sure how he was changed.
He still had to contend with his brothers and how the
three of them were supposed to find this fellow, this
William Sunday, and put him under and collect the re-
ward money. He didn’t see no way of getting out of it,
and it was probably a for sure sin to be killing a man
for money as it was to be doing what they did to that
poor woman. But if what that preacher said was true,
then it’d probably be all right that he kept his part of
the bargain with his brothers until the killing got
done. Afterward he’d confess it and quit and take off
on his own and maybe find a nice job clerking in a
grocery store or shoeing horses or the like, and do no
more sinning, because it was hard carrying that sort of
thing around inside his head.
The town was starting to wake up. There were a
few folks on the street now—mostly merchants
sweeping the walk out front of their businesses. He
tried to think where his brothers could be. Then re-
membered where he’d last seen them.
Whoring was a sure enough sin. He wondered if
just being in a house where the whoring got done was
also a sin. He didn’t know how else he was going to
rejoin them if he didn’t go to where they was. He
made a mental note to remind himself that it would
be one more thing he’d need to confess once he’d
done it.
“Where you been, hon?” Birdy said. She’d just awak-
ened and had gotten fearful when she saw that Elias
wasn’t there in the bed with her. She still worried the
preacher would leave her because of her whoring
days. It was still hard for her to believe she’d married
a preacher man, had to pinch herself to know it
wasn’t a dream sometimes.
“I was providing succor to a lost soul,” Elias said,
feeling good he was a preacher man again.
“Succor?” Birdy said.
“Succor.”
“Succor,” she said again, as though tasting the
word.
She looked at Elias, suddenly hungry for his very
being and tossed back the covers and said, “Why
don’t you take off your boots and climb in here with
me, hon. I’m about lonely for you.”
He knew that no matter what else he did in life he
would never be able to resist his wife or her needs, nor
did he ever want to. He was so shocked and happily
surprised by her at times, he never wanted to spend a
single minute without her.
He got in the bed with her and took her into his
arms and said softly, “I’d like us to start working on
some youngsters.”
The joy of his suggestion caused her to weep and
her tears fell on his face until he began to weep as well.
“I never been so happy,” she said.
“Neither have I,” he said.
Unbeknown to either of them, a mocking bird
landed on the roof and chirped at the rising sun.
Jake was up first light, dressed and ready to go find
whoever it was took a shot at him the night before.
He dressed in silence and set the brace of pistols into
his waistband then put on the hat with the bullet hole
in it and gauged that two inches lower, it would have
been his brains out on the street instead of the other
man’s blood.
Clara came into the room wearing a cotton shift,
still looking sleepy.
“I can fix you something to eat before you go,” she
said.
“No, I’m fine. Thanks for offering.”
“How will you find him?”
“Can’t be that many men in town with fresh bullet
wounds.”
“He probably fled and isn’t anywhere around here
any longer.”
“Maybe so, though I will check just to make sure.”
“I’m sorry I brought you into this,” she said.
“You didn’t bring me into anything,” he said. But
he wondered if he had a fatal weakness for women
who seemed they were in need of help.
He turned to go, then turned back.
“Keep your door locked,” he said. “Just in case.
And maybe it would be best if you didn’t hold school
today.”
She smiled.
“It’s Saturday,” she said.
“Good.”
“Be careful, Jake.”
She watched him go. Went to the window and
watched him head up the street until she couldn’t see
him any longer. She told herself not to let him get to
her, not to let herself be drawn to him. She wasn’t
sure she was able to listen.
Jake picked up the blood trail from the preceding eve-
ning and followed it—the blood spots dried now,
dark brown. They led down a couple of alleys before
they petered out where one alley opened up onto the
main drag. Son of a bitch could be anywhere.
He walked out to Toussaint’s lodge thinking he
could use an extra pair of eyes on this. Only the lodge
was empty. He went down to the livery where Sam
Toe was standing with one foot on the bottom rail of
the corral staring at the horses in it.
“You seen Toussaint? He bring back that mule last
night?”
Sam Toe shook his head without turning his atten-
tion from the horses.
Jake thought it possible that maybe Toussaint had
won her back after all. He felt good about it if he had.
Jake turned away.
Sam Toe said, “I seen some damn things in my
time but nothing like this.”
Jake said, “Like what?”
“Like I seen horses stole all over this country but I
ain’t never seen nobody just give ’em away.”
Jake didn’t know what he was talking about.
Sam Toe said, “I come out this morning and had
them two extra horses just showed up like they fell
out of the sky. I knowed we had us some h
ard rains
recent, but I never knowed it to rain horses. Frogs and
fish, yes, but never horses.”
Jake took a look at the horses, then he knew whose
they were.
“Saddle me that one I rode the other day, and put a
rope around those two you think got rained from the
sky.”
“Why would I let you ride off with two free
horses?”
“Because I know whose they are.”
Sam Toe looked suddenly glum knowing his rain
gift was about to evaporate.
The wind gathered itself along the vast flat country,
growing quicker and quicker as it came on, like a stam-
pede, and by the time it reached them it sounded like a
train coming down the tracks. It rattled the windows
and buffeted the walls. They could hear it moaning as
though something miserable outside sought shelter.
She thought of the boy. The one with the big sad
eyes. The one who had one time flung clumps of dirt at
her horse and nearly unseated her. The one whose folks
were all dead and in spite of what had come before,
had no one to care for him now. She didn’t know why
she thought of him, what brought it on sudden like
that.
Toussaint sat there at the table, his dark broad
face pensive. He never got to know what it was to be
a father.
He caught her staring at him.
“What is it?” he said.
“That boy,” she said.
“What boy?”
“That orphan boy, the Swede . . .”
“What about him?”
Wind rattled the windows again.
They listened.
“I want you to go get him,” she said.
He thought about the silver ring in his pocket,
whether this was a proper time he should give it to
her or not.
“Stephen,” she said.
“What?”
“That’s his name, the Swede boy’s.”
He closed his eyes and wished they were all some-
place else.
29
Jake found Brewster, his sometime deputy, hav-
ing his breakfast at the Fat Duck Café. Brewster
wore a large napkin tucked into the throat of his shirt
and ate with his hat pulled down to the tops of his
ears. He ate in earnest.
“I need you to keep on keeping an eye on things
until I get back,” Jake said without bothering to pull
up a chair. “I’m riding out to Karen Sunflower’s
place, I should be back sometime this afternoon or be-
fore. Another thing, too: there might be a stranger