tant to him than his pistols.
“I need you to drive with all due haste, Mr. Glass,
but take it gentle as you can, if you understand my
meaning.”
The road out of Bismarck looked hard and smooth,
a road they could make good time on. Glass thought
he understood what the man was asking him.
“I’ll do my best, Mr. Sunday.”
And snapped the reins over the rumps of the two-
horse team.
8
On a late afternoon that was more like evening
because of the dark brooding weather, their hands
nearly frozen, they made Karen Sunflower’s place;
she, the ex-wife of Toussaint Trueblood.
They dismounted and Toussaint said, “I’ll take
care of the horses. Maybe I’ll just sleep in the stables
till morning.”
Jake lifted the boy down from the horse.
“Don’t be foolish,” he said. “We have to eat and
get something warm in us. I doubt Karen’s going to
turn you away.”
“You don’t know Karen.”
“Sometime you’ll have to tell me why, but right
now I’ve got to get this child inside.”
Karen opened the door when Jake knocked, looked
at the boy in his arms, her gaze narrowing.
“It’s one of the Swedes,” he said. He knew her feel-
ings toward that family, but it didn’t matter. She
stepped aside and let him enter.
“I hate to impose upon you,” Jake said, setting the
boy at the kitchen table close to the stove. “But we
need to get something warm in us and I need to take a
look at this boy once he’s warmed up to make sure he
isn’t hurt.”
“I don’t understand,” she said.
“I’ll explain it soon as we eat and I have a look at
him.”
Karen set two plates—her supper already eaten an
hour earlier. She’d been preparing for bed even
though it was early. Ever since her son, Dex, had been
killed, she preferred lying in bed it seemed more than
not. At least asleep, she told herself, she didn’t have to
think about how much she missed him. Now here was
the marshal bringing one of the Swede boys to her
home—one of the very boys who’d tossed clumps of
dirt at her horse one day and almost unseated her.
One of the boys who was blood kin to the girl Dex
had been with the day he was shot, no doubt over her,
by another boy. It felt like an intrusion upon her sen-
sibilities until she looked closer at his small face and
saw that whatever his older sister had been, he surely
was innocent of her sins.
“Better make it another plate,” Jake said, remov-
ing his mackinaw and hanging it over the back of a
chair. Karen looked at him questioningly.
“Toussaint’s with me.”
He saw the way that hit her.
“Please,” he said. “It’s just for the night. We’ll be
moving on first light if the snow has quit.”
Toussaint knocked and waited. Karen opened the
door and stood there looking at him directly in the
eyes.
“I know,” he said. “I ain’t wanted, and I can sleep
in the stable, like I told the marshal,” and started to
turn away, for he had told himself he would not quar-
rel with her no matter what the situation. They’d quar-
reled enough for a lifetime. In fact quarreling with her
was the exact opposite of what he’d had in mind for
months now.
She stepped aside and said, “You might as well
come in since you’re already here. I wouldn’t turn
even a dog away on a night like this.”
“Thank you very much,” he said, trying hard to
keep most the sarcasm out of his voice.
They ate in silence, Karen sipping coffee watching
them.
Three men at my table, she thought, certain memo-
ries trying to flood their way back into her mind. But
she would not let them. She watched most especially
her ex-husband sitting there, his black hair damp
against his head, his square face with its sharp fea-
tures of his mixed blood eating like she’d remem-
bered him before things went bad between them.
The boy fell asleep eating. Karen made him a pallet
on the floor by the stove and Jake carried him to it.
He did a quick check to see if there were any wounds,
saw none, and started to draw the blanket over him.
“Take off his shoes, at least,” Karen said, kneeling
and untying the boy’s shoes and pulling them off. She
shook her head when she saw the state of his socks,
damp and with holes in them. She took them off as
well and rubbed his feet with a dry towel then cov-
ered him with the blanket. This, too, caused certain
memories to try and come back to her, but she shut
them off quickly.
Then they sat back down at the table where Tous-
saint sat finishing the last of his food, swiping up the
