into the mudwagon and insisted that they leave immediately. Liam, new to the job, succumbed to his threats, though Mac cursed and fumed at cutting the rest period short and railed at Sarah to tell him “what in hell’s going on.” Sick, Imogene had kept to her room and Sarah refused to tell Mac anything. She was afraid he would kill Maydley. And she was terribly ashamed.
34
BY THAT EVENING, KARL WAS WORSE. HE HAD CURLED HIMSELF INTO a ball, trying to ease the hurt in his stomach, and the women feared it was appendicitis.
Imogene was cooking supper when Sarah ran in from the barn. Karl was dying. The two of them sat with him, bathing his face with cool cloths and easing him with kind words and gentle hands. Just after midnight the big, quiet man passed away. His body grew limp and the pain left his face. Outside, the moss-faced coyote began to howl. Kneeling by the bed, Sarah wept. Imogene went on holding the hired man’s hand between her own. She felt old and tired, too tired to comfort, too tired to move.
Sarah recovered first, dried her face on her apron, and blew her nose. Then, with great care, as though afraid of waking him, she rolled Karl onto his back and straightened his limbs. His skin was still warm, still alive with blood, still damp from his sweat. For a moment Sarah held her breath, as if waiting for him to speak to her.
“There’s so much dying, Imogene. We’ve seen so much dying. Somehow I thought Karl would just be worn away over the centuries, carved by the wind and the sand until he was as smooth and hard as the pyramids at the lake. Who’d have thought Karl would die?”
Imogene rubbed her face. Her eyes felt grainy, full of sand. “His appendix must have ruptured. There was nothing we could do. Nothing.” She started to rise from the dead man’s cot, but her legs were too heavy to lift and she sat for a while longer, staring past Sarah into the darkness beyond the window.
Moss Face howled again and was answered by the coyotes in the hills. The hair on the back of Imogene’s neck stirred and Sarah shivered, though the room was warm. “He knows Karl’s dead,” she whispered.
“Don’t be silly, you’re scaring yourself,” Imogene snapped, but she knew it was true and shook herself to be rid of the fear and loneliness. “Break up the fire,” she said abruptly. “I’ll open the windows. It will be better if it’s cold in here.”
Sarah hurried to comply, glad of something to do. “Will he-will Karl-keep till morning?”
An icy wind blew over the still and snuffed out the candle. Revived by the sudden gust, the fire in the stove flared to life again, and as suddenly died. “Karl will be fine,” Imogene replied. Sarah drew strength from her nearness, and for several minutes they stood quietly in the darkened room, each saying their good-byes to Karl Saunders.
Supper had dried up to nothing. Both women were too tired and numb to sleep, and sat at the kitchen table hunched over plates of cold food. Outside, desolate howling rent the night. Sarah had tried to coax the coyote indoors but he had run from her like a wild thing. In the hall the pendulum clock pounded the dull minutes toward dawn.
“We should eat,” Sarah said without enthusiasm.
“We should get some sleep,” Imogene replied, but made no move to rise.
Another cry broke the night stillness, and Sarah shoved her coffee aside. “We’ll have to leave Round Hole now, won’t we, Imogene?” The older woman was silent for so long that Sarah spoke again: “Imogene? We will have to go, won’t we? Without Karl to take over the lease for us?”
The schoolteacher’s shoulders sagged and she pressed her palms to her eyes as though she were blind. “I can’t think about it now. I can’t think at all.
“Do you love me?” Imogene asked softly.
“You know I do,” came the reply.
“We’ll stay. We’ll keep the stop. I’ll think of something. Let’s try to get some sleep now.”
Morning brought no answers. At sunup they bundled into their coats and scarves to see to Karl’s remains. A kernel of anger lay hard in Sarah’s chest. “We’re going to have to leave the stop,” she said, knowing the words would hurt. “Maydley will tell Mr. Jensen. You know he will. We may as well start packing our things now. We’re going to have to leave on the next stage.” Imogene said nothing. She pressed her lips into a thin line and jerked mittens on over her gloves. Sarah felt mean and little. “Well, this isn’t the first time I’ve been chased from my home.”
Imogene looked at her sharply. “Are you sorry, Sarah?”
The hurt in her old friend’s face took the bitterness out of Sarah. Gently she said, “No, Imogene, I’m not sorry. It’s been a long time coming and it’s right. I no longer believe in a God that rations out love only where the neighbors see fit.”
Imogene nodded shortly.
A wind had risen with the sun and blew steadily from the northwest. Moss Face was standing guard before the tackroom door. Sarah scratched his ears as they slipped past him and inside.
Karl’s room was as spare as a monk’s cell. Against the wall, opposite the narrow cot where Karl’s body lay, was a nail keg containing the entirety of the hired man’s estate: a jackknife, a silver chain with a silver nugget, a faded photograph of a middle-aged woman, and, tucked in a tobacco tin, every penny they had paid him in wages since the day he arrived.
Sarah looked at the shrouded figure of Karl Saunders. “Somehow I expected to find that he was all right this morning, not to see him just like we left him.” She started for the bed to turn back the cover from his face, but changed her mind.
“We haven’t the lumber for a coffin,” Imogene said. “We’ll have to bury him in a shroud.”
“I read somewhere that they sew sailors into sails before they bury them at sea,” Sarah replied. “Could we do that for Karl? A horse blanket-a sheet is so thin it wouldn’t keep out the damp.” Her eyes strayed to the feet of her friend, thurst out from under the cover, so human and vulnerable in their mended stockings.
“Karl’s too tall for a horse blanket,” Imogene said kindly. “We would have to sew four of them together.”
“We couldn’t spare four.”
There was a long silence while the cold seeped through their clothes and the coyote whined at the door.
“The best blanket in the house,” Sarah declared finally. “The one the bishop’s wife gave me.” It was of fine wool and brightly colored. Sarah felt good for the small sacrifice.
Moss Face squeezed in as she opened the tackroom door, and was across the room like a shot. He stopped short of Karl’s bed as though someone had jerked an invisible leash. A low moan built in his chest until it broke free in a howl. Imogene reached for him, soothing words forming on her lips, but he growled and darted under the bed. Imogene murmured and coaxed, but though he whined and thumped the floor with his tail, he wouldn’t come out.
Sarah watched from the door, the wind whipping her skirts into the room. A gust caught up a handful of ashes from the stove and scattered them over Karl. “Let’s go on with it,” Imogene said as she stood up. “Moss Face is all right where he is, I guess.” While Imogene fetched the long needles and strong waxed thread from the harness- repair kit, Sarah ran to the house for the blanket. When she returned they spread it on the floor beside the dead man’s bed so they could lower the body down onto it.
Tentatively, Sarah pulled the cover back. Karl was gone; only the pale, lifeless husk remained. She looked at the bloodless face, the stiff shoulders, and knew with a rush of relief that she could bury him.
The moment they laid hands on Karl’s corpse, the coyote went wild. Snarling, he exploded from under the cot like a wolverine defending its whelp. His usually soft brown eyes were narrowed, and hackles ridged his back. Crouching by Karl’s body, Moss Face bared his teeth in silent warning. The women retreated to the far side of the room. Immediately Moss Face sat down, the hair along his spine settled, and he looked up at them sheepishly, the picture of canine remorse.
“Look at him,” Sarah marveled.
The coyote crept toward them on knees and elbows. In the middle of the blanket he laid his chin on his paws
