“You did.”
“Is your life valuable?”
“Of course.”
“So that means I done a good thing, don’t it?”
“It does.”
“Do you kind of owe me?”
“A debt I can never repay.”
Flower was silent for awhile. “You know what?”
“There’s a way you can pay off some of it.”
“How is that?”
Flower lit a lantern. The Reverend looked. She flipped the buffalo robe off of herself. She was nude, and with Flower, that meant really nude, because there was a lot of her. In the lamplight, except for her head and arms, she looked pale as biscuit dough, a tuft of darkness between her legs.
“How about since I saved your life and you wouldn’t be layin’ there wasn’t for me, you get over here and pay a bit of that debt off.”
The Reverend hesitated for only a moment. Thought: What the hell? I do owe her.
A little later, lying in the crook of the sleeping, snoring, Flower’s arm, he thought: Damn. That was not half bad. Not after you got past the stink. And that was nothing a good bath couldn’t fix.
Next morning the Reverend rode away from there, and when he was half a day out, he heard a noise behind him. He looked back. It was Flower on a mule, her big black dog trotting behind them. The Reverend waited and let her catch up.
“Well, now, I don’t want you to think I come to get you to dip your wick again, though I didn’t mind it none at all, but I did figure on askin’ if I could be your ridin’ companion for a bit. I think me and that ole mine and that town back there have done played out on one another.”
“Of course, Flower. You are welcome. As long as I do not have to attend to your dog’s tensions.”
“Naw, I can do that. I don’t mind.”
“Where did you get the mule?”
“Stole it.”
“All right,” the Reverend said.
They began riding.
Flower grinned at him. “Hell, Reverend, that sounds like one hell of a fine idea.”
The Reverend winked at her, and the two of them, followed by the big black dog, rode on across the landscape.