stew gravy with another of Karen’s biscuits. He didn’t
realize how much he missed her damn biscuits until
now. Woman makes the best damn biscuits a man
could put in his mouth, he thought. Just one more rea-
son I ought to try and make amends with her, get her
back.
“You want to tell me the story now?” Karen said to
Jake, trying her best to ignore Toussaint altogether.
So Jake explained it and when he finished she sat
back with a dour look on her face, shaking her head.
“That family . . .” she said.
“It was the husband,” Toussaint said. “I don’t
suppose we can blame them all for how they were
with a man like that running herd over them.” This
surprised Karen, for she thought Toussaint be-
grudged them as much as she, had hoped that he did,
for Dex was his son, too.
“When in the world did you find compassion in
you?” she said.
He shrugged, said, “Don’t know that I have. I was
just saying.”
“He’s right,” Jake said. “The sins of the father and
all that.”
“Philosophers,” Karen said. “You want more cof-
fee?” Toussaint held out his cup and Karen looked
at him.
Karen provided them more blankets with which to
make pallets, then without saying so much as good-
night retired to her room there at the back of the
house. The cherry glow from the wood stove felt com-
forting in ways more than just the heat it provided.
“What you going to do with that boy?” Toussaint
asked, the two of them lying in the near darkness.
“I don’t know. I heard there is an orphanage down
in Bismarck. Take him there, I guess.”
“And that crazy bastard Swede?”
“Get the boy settled in town, first, then go after
him.”
“That was a bad thing he did to them.”
“Yeah,” Jake said. “I know it was.”
Toussaint lay there thinking about Karen, about
how many times he’d slept on this same floor during
their short but tumultuous marriage—whenever they’d
argue and if the weather was bad, otherwise he’d sleep
outdoors under the wagon, or just on the ground. The
nice thing was when they made up. He wished they
could make up now, wished he could go and join her
in her bed and curl up next to her.
The wind moaned along the eaves.
The next morning, the sun was out in full force,
sparkling off the snow that lay in patches.
A gray tyrant flycatcher flew against the window,
its wings fluttering furiously, tried several times in
confused effort to enter the house, and when it could
not, flew off again.
Jake had been sitting at the table having a cup of
Karen’s coffee. Toussaint was already out with the
horses. A pan of powdered biscuits was turning
brown in the oven and their smell filled the cabin. The
Swede boy tossed and turned restlessly upon the bed.
“We should wake him,” Karen said. “He’s having
dreams, probably bad ones.”
Jake went over and shook the little fellow awake.
He stared up at Jake with eyes so blue they could
have been pieces of the sky. He began to whimper.
“Shhh . . .” Jake said. “It’s all right.”
Jake touched him in a gentle way, stroked the
thatch of soft, unkempt hair out of his eyes.
“Pa,” he said. “Pa.”
“You hungry, son?”
The boy looked about, saw Karen standing by the
stove.
“Ma,” he said. “Ma.”
She looked at him, then looked away. Straight
through the kitchen window she could see the grave-
stone of her Dex gleaming wet in the morning light
with the sun on it. The boy’s words caused her a sor-
row she couldn’t define.
She pulled the pan of biscuits from the oven,
knocked them onto a tin plate, took down from a shelf
a jar of clover honey. Jake walked the boy outside, told
him to wash his face and hands in the water he pumped
up from the ground by jacking the pump’s handle. Tou-
ssaint was currying the horses, stopped long enough to
watch. The boy seemed lost in the doing, so Jake
showed him how to cup his hands and scoop the water
to his face, and when finished, he handed him the thin
towel that hung from a nail driven into a corner joist.
“Breakfast is ready,” Jake said to Toussaint. Tous-
saint set aside the curry brush and went and washed
and dried his own hands and followed them inside.
The four of them sat and ate the meager breakfast,
the boy dipping pieces of biscuit into his coffee until
he’d eaten three of them.
“I’m low on supplies or I’d have fixed you some-
thing more substantial,” Karen said.
“I could bring you some things back from town,”
Toussaint said.
“No thanks, I can do my own shopping,” Karen
