other. Might as well go in with me and we’ll get the
boy and some supplies.”
He could see her thinking about it, going out and
exposing herself to strangers she knew would be in
town, maybe even the same strangers who had hurt
her. But he wasn’t going to let anyone hurt her again
and he knew, even if she didn’t, what was needed.
“You don’t go, I don’t go,” he said. “I can’t leave
you here alone.”
“What if they . . .”
“Nobody’s going to hurt you.” He put his arms
around her and drew her to him and said it again,
whispered it into her hair.
“That Swede boy’s probably as afraid as we are,”
he said softly. “Everybody’s afraid of something,
Karen, but together they can’t touch us.”
He felt her body relax.
“He’ll probably need some clothes,” she said.
“Then we’ll stop at old Otis’s and get him some.”
“Kids like hard candy, too.”
“I remember,” he said. “I ain’t so old I don’t re-
member what kids like.”
It felt like the sweetest thing in the world she could
have done when she kissed him on the cheek.
Toussaint hitched the rented mule to the wagon
and he helped Karen up, then went around and
climbed up and sat next to her and took up the reins.
“You set?” he said.
She nodded.
“We’ll be back here by evening,” he said reassur-
ingly.
“What if he don’t want to come home with us?”
Toussaint looked at her; she was staring straight
ahead, her face taut with worry.
“Why wouldn’t he? Hell, knowing you, he’d have
the run of the place in nothing flat. You’ll probably
spoil him and he’ll grow big and fat as a coon from
your cooking and lazy, too.”
He saw a slight smile playing at the corners of her
mouth.
“Let’s go, you old fool.”
“You know,” he said when they’d gone about a
mile, “we could get that wild-haired preacher to
marry us if we wanted to.”
She didn’t say anything.
“Or, we could just go on like we have been,” he
added.
She knew he said this last to save face. What he
didn’t know was he didn’t have to save face any longer
with her. What he’d done, the gentle way he’d been
with her, had saved her—in her mind—and every anger
and hurt she’d held toward him over the years since
they’d gone their separate ways, she’d forgiven him.
They rode on in silence for another hour. Then she
said, “Why you want to marry me?”
He didn’t answer right away. Then he halted the
mule and set the brake with his foot and turned and
looked at her and she looked at him. A stiff wind ruf-
fled their hair and clothes. He could smell winter and
she could, too, and they each thought at that same
moment of the coming season with fresh snow deep
on the grasslands and water you’d have to break a
skin of ice to get to and horses with thick coats snort-
ing steam and stamping the ground. And they thought
of smoke rising from a chimney and a fire in the fire-
place throwing off heat and the sound of wood being
split with an ax. They thought of hot cups of coffee
and frosted glass you had to rub a circle in with the
heel of your hand to see through. And they thought of
the warmth of lying in bed together and a little blond-
headed boy running around the house being wild and
busting with energy, asking to be set astride a horse
and taken fishing.
“Hell, I guess I want to marry you for the same
reason you want to marry me,” he said at last.
She nodded.
“Then that’s what we’ll do,” she said.
He started to take up the reins and release the
brake, then paused and took instead her face into his
large thick hands and brought it close to his own and
kissed her on the mouth and she kissed him back.
Then he just sat there for a time, until she said,
“Well, are we going to just set here?”
He took up the reins and released the brake and
snapped the lines over the rump of the mule and said,
“Step off, mule,” and they started forth again toward
Sweet Sorrow. He didn’t have to say what he was
thinking. She already knew from the look on his face.
Jake crossed the street from the saloon—silent now as
it had been before the gunfight. Inside were five dead
men and the dead didn’t make a hell of a lot of noise
when it came down to it. He went first to Tall John’s.
“I’ve got business for you to handle,” he said.
Tall John said, “I figured when I heard the shoot-
ing.”
Jake went up the street again to the rented house
Clara was living in. He knocked on the door and
waited and when she came and opened it, she read the
look on his face.
