of playing cards the old man had whipped him over
hidden in the top rafter of the outhouse and realized
why the old man made so many night trips out there
late at night, a lantern in his hand.
He thought now about women in general and those
on the back of playing cards and thought how it was
women who brought as much pain to men as they did
pleasure and how it been that way since the beginning
of time when Eve tempted old Adam with that apple
and got them both kicked out of Eden, just like that
hollow woman and her girl got his old man bit by that
big snake, and, now, just as his wife Clara had by
leaving him and taking their children—leaving him as
though he didn’t mean a thing to her.
He was half asleep when he heard the door open.
Quick as a flash he had his gun cocked and aimed,
thought he saw the shadow of someone there in the
room. Rain hissing like a thousand angry snakes.
Thought at first he was dreaming, that it was the old
man come back from the grave, come back to belt-
whip him for fooling with those card women.
“Easy, now,” he said. “I’ve got my gun on you and
I’ll sure as damn shoot a hole in you.”
The voice of a woman startled him.
“Don’t shoot, mister,” the woman’s voice said.
Fallon’s fingers found the matches, struck one and
touched it to the lantern’s wick and the room filled
with a nice warm light. The woman was wet and
bedraggled, her dress torn and muddy. She wasn’t a
young woman by any means. She wouldn’t remind a
man of the women on the back of a deck of playing
cards, not by a damn sight.
“I’m about froze to death,” Martha said. “I was
near killed by a savage and had to run for my life . . .”
“Then you better shuck them duds and crawl up in
these blankets with me,” Fallon said. She wasn’t
young, but she was a woman and it had been a long
time since he’d been with one. “It’s the only safe place
I know of on a terrible night such as this.”
“I’m a married woman, mister . . .” Martha said
through chattering teeth. “I hope you’ll be gentleman
enough to respect that.”
He looked her over good, decided it wasn’t worth
it, forcing her to lay with him. He told himself he had
too much pride to rape a woman.
“It’s up to you,” he said, and doused the light.
She made her way to one of the other cots and lay
down on it but could not seem to get warm. How
long she’d been fleeing from the fat Indian she
couldn’t say, but it seemed like an eternity. She was so
cold and miserable that she couldn’t stand it any
longer. She made a last-ditch decision to save herself.
I’m sorry, dear husband, she said to herself as she
shucked out of her wet clothing and quickly climbed
into the blankets next to the stranger. I hope you for-
give me for whatever might transpire this dark and
mean night.
It was like crawling into a sanctuary of God’s own
making and she closed her eyes and the stranger
wrapped his arms around her and drew her near to
his warmth.
“I’m so tired,” she whispered.
He didn’t say anything.
*
*
*
Karen Sunflower prepared to fight and die if she had to.
Men were breaking into her house.
“Guddamn, what if they’s a man inside with a shot-
gun?” Zane said as Zeb busted the window glass,
having tried first the door only to find it locked.
“What if they is? We’ll kill the son of a bitch is all.
Get prepared to go to fighting, you damn slackers.”
“It’s a small winder,” Zack said, Zack being the
brawniest of the lot. “I can’t fit in no hole that small.”
“You go, then,” Zeb said to Zane who was the
runt of them standing barely five-and-a-half-feet tall
and weighing no more than a couple of sacks of
corncobs.
“You mean I got to be the first to get my head
blowed off by the man inside there with his shotgun.”
“You don’t know they’s a man with a shotgun in
there, guddamnit. Now git, or I’ll blow your head off
myself.”
Karen had slipped out of bed and took the rifle from
the corner of her bedroom. It was the needlenose gun,
not the Sharps Big Fifty Toussaint had given her the
first year they were married.
“Where’d you get such a gun?” she’d asked.
“I found it,” was all he said. And it was true. He
had found it way off the road while hunting for
dreaming rabbits. Found it alongside a skeleton with
shreds of clothing clinging to the bones—ribcage and
such. Obvious it was a fellow who had come to some
untimely death—an accident or murdered.
Buzzards and other creatures had picked the bones
clean and the passing seasons had turned them white.
There wasn’t any skull to be found with the rest of the
