“Keep your door locked,” he said. “Just in case.
And maybe it would be best if you didn’t hold school
today.”
She smiled.
“It’s Saturday,” she said.
“Good.”
“Be careful, Jake.”
She watched him go. Went to the window and
watched him head up the street until she couldn’t see
him any longer. She told herself not to let him get to
her, not to let herself be drawn to him. She wasn’t
sure she was able to listen.
Jake picked up the blood trail from the preceding eve-
ning and followed it—the blood spots dried now,
dark brown. They led down a couple of alleys before
they petered out where one alley opened up onto the
main drag. Son of a bitch could be anywhere.
He walked out to Toussaint’s lodge thinking he
could use an extra pair of eyes on this. Only the lodge
was empty. He went down to the livery where Sam
Toe was standing with one foot on the bottom rail of
the corral staring at the horses in it.
“You seen Toussaint? He bring back that mule last
night?”
Sam Toe shook his head without turning his atten-
tion from the horses.
Jake thought it possible that maybe Toussaint had
won her back after all. He felt good about it if he had.
Jake turned away.
Sam Toe said, “I seen some damn things in my
time but nothing like this.”
Jake said, “Like what?”
“Like I seen horses stole all over this country but I
ain’t never seen nobody just give ’em away.”
Jake didn’t know what he was talking about.
Sam Toe said, “I come out this morning and had
them two extra horses just showed up like they fell
out of the sky. I knowed we had us some hard rains
recent, but I never knowed it to rain horses. Frogs and
fish, yes, but never horses.”
Jake took a look at the horses, then he knew whose
they were.
“Saddle me that one I rode the other day, and put a
rope around those two you think got rained from the
sky.”
“Why would I let you ride off with two free
horses?”
“Because I know whose they are.”
Sam Toe looked suddenly glum knowing his rain
gift was about to evaporate.
The wind gathered itself along the vast flat country,
growing quicker and quicker as it came on, like a stam-
pede, and by the time it reached them it sounded like a
train coming down the tracks. It rattled the windows
and buffeted the walls. They could hear it moaning as
though something miserable outside sought shelter.
She thought of the boy. The one with the big sad
eyes. The one who had one time flung clumps of dirt at
her horse and nearly unseated her. The one whose folks
were all dead and in spite of what had come before,
had no one to care for him now. She didn’t know why
she thought of him, what brought it on sudden like
that.
Toussaint sat there at the table, his dark broad
face pensive. He never got to know what it was to be
a father.
He caught her staring at him.
“What is it?” he said.
“That boy,” she said.
“What boy?”
“That orphan boy, the Swede . . .”
“What about him?”
Wind rattled the windows again.
They listened.
“I want you to go get him,” she said.
He thought about the silver ring in his pocket,
whether this was a proper time he should give it to
her or not.
“Stephen,” she said.
“What?”
“That’s his name, the Swede boy’s.”
He closed his eyes and wished they were all some-
place else.
29
Jake found Brewster, his sometime deputy, hav-
ing his breakfast at the Fat Duck Cafe. Brewster
wore a large napkin tucked into the throat of his shirt
and ate with his hat pulled down to the tops of his
ears. He ate in earnest.
“I need you to keep on keeping an eye on things
until I get back,” Jake said without bothering to pull
up a chair. “I’m riding out to Karen Sunflower’s
place, I should be back sometime this afternoon or be-
fore. Another thing, too: there might be a stranger
walking around here with a bullet wound. You see
him, make note and tell me when I get back.”
“They’s some men waiting down to the jail for
you,” Brewster said. He wasn’t keen on having con-
