them, then leaned his rifle against the wall just inside the door. He thought for a moment of going back up to the house and leaving Susanna to sleep undisturbed, but decided he’d be better off if he stayed clear of Belle, Floyd, Sam, and the rest of the Younger’s Bend bunch.
Stepping lightly on the wide floorboards, he pulled the almost empty bottle of rye from his saddlebag and put it on the table, then lighted a cheroot. He settled down in one of the chairs. It creaked when it took his weight. Susanna stirred and woke up. For a moment she stared at the ceiling, then the aroma of Longarm’s cigar reached her. She twisted her head on the pillowless bunk, looked at him, and sat up. Her long, tousled blonde hair cascaded over her shoulders, and her eyes were still glazed with sleep.
“Oh,” she said. “Windy. I guess I was a little confused for a minute. I sort of forgot where I am.”
“You feel better, now that you’ve had a good sleep?”
“Yes. At least I think I do.” Susanna yawned and stretched. “I guess I’m hungry, though. And I need to…” She stopped and looked around the bare little cabin. “I need to go to the outhouse.”
“It’s not far off. Up the slope a ways. It’s toward the house, and if you want me to go with you while you get some breakfast, I’ll be glad to.”
Her brows drew together in a frown. “I’m hungry, Windy, but I don’t think I could stand to sit down and eat off that table where I saw Lonnie die last night. I’d lose my appetite for sure.”
“Tell you what. We’ll walk up together and I’ll go get you some breakfast on a plate, and we’ll come back down here while you eat.”
“That’d be fine, if you don’t mind. I don’t mean to be a lot of trouble to you, but-well, even as hungry as I am, I just-I just couldn’t stand to eat off that table right now.”
“Come on, then, if you’re ready.”
Before they reached the house, they saw Sam Starr and Yazoo coming back from their unpleasant job in the grove. Longarm told Susanna, “You run on ahead. I want to have a word with those two.”
Yazoo greeted Longarm while they were still a dozen paces apart. “You’re the damnedest one I ever seen, Windy. Where in hell did you find that blonde-headed woman? Prettiest thing I seen since I been here at Younger’s Bend.”
“She’s Taylor’s woman,” Longarm told him. “I let her sleep in my cabin. She didn’t feel like staying in the house after Taylor died.”
“I got to give you credit,” Yazoo chuckled. “You sure didn’t let no grass grow under your feet.”
The oldtimer had obviously been lightening the job of grave-digging with a sip of corn for every shovelful of dirt, so Longarm let Yazoo’s remarks pass. He said to Starr. “I hate to put you to extra trouble, but Susanna’s hungry, and I don’t think there was much left from breakfast except a few biscuits. If you wouldn’t mind, could you stir up a bite for her?”
“I don’t mind, Windy. I’ll get at it right now, before Belle finds some new job for me to do.” Yazoo said, “I want a closer look at that yellow-haired girl. You get to be my age, Windy, you’ll find about all you can do is look. Now, you go on back down to the cabin with her, and I’ll bring her breakfast down there when I start back to the stillhouse.”
“I’d take that right kindly, Yazoo. Susanna’s still upset about last night, and I’d as soon not leave her by herself.”
“Now, I just can’t imagine why,” Yazoo chortled as he followed Starr toward the house.
Susanna joined Longarm a few moments later. Her face showed her disappointment when she saw he was empty-handed. “Wasn’t there anything for breakfast?” she asked.
“Don’t worry. We’ll just go back to the cabin and wait a few minutes. Your breakfast’s going to be coming right along.”
Susanna looked puzzled, but she walked with Longarm back to the cabin. She spoke only once, to ask, “Those two men—Mr. Starr and the old one—they were carrying shovels. Had they been…”
“They buried him up on the hill there. If you want, we can walk up and look, after while.”
“No. I don’t think so, Windy. Lonnie’s gone, and that’s that. It wasn’t-” She stopped short, shook her head. “I guess there’s not much else to say, is there?”
Susanna was thoughtfully silent while they waited for Yazoo, and maintained her silence while she ate. Longarm didn’t try to encourage her to talk. Susanna was young, she hadn’t seen enough of life yet to know that death is inevitable and comes in a fashion that seems arbitrary and undiscriminating and always unfair. He sat across the table from her, sipping rye while she ate.
Having cleared her plate, Susanna sighed and stretched. “I guess I was hungrier than I realized. It was— goodness, it seems like a year since I had anything to eat. But it’s really only been since yesterday.”
“You’ve been through an awful lot since then,” he pointed out.
“Let’s don’t talk about it, Windy, please. All I want to do is forget everything that’s happened since Lonnie first found me, there in Texarkana.”
“Maybe that’s what you think you want, but I ain’t sure it’s the best thing,” Longarm told her. “I’ve found out that the things you try to bury have got a mean way of popping up to plague you later on, when they ain’t welcome or wanted. Maybe it’d help if you was to get it all out of your system.”
Susanna thought this over for a moment. “You might be right, Windy,” she said slowly. “I tried to forget about things that had happened to me at home, after I’d left. I never could really put them out of my mind, though.”
“If you feel like talking, I’m ready to listen.” Longarm didn’t feel at all ashamed that he had an ulterior motive in making the suggestion. If Susanna began to tell him of her days with Taylor, she might let a few things fall that would help him.
She stood up and walked the length of the little cabin, then came back to the table before she answered him. “It might be too soon to talk about all of it. But there are a few things that keep bothering me.”
