him nor took his hand; she walked past him without a look. All he could do was follow her downstairs. Lorena and the girls had already made breakfast and Cholo came in to eat. July didn't feel hungry. The fact that Clara was displeased took his appetite away. He tried to think why she might be displeased, but could come up with no reasons. He sat numbly through breakfast and went out the door feeling that it would be hard to get his mind on work. He needed to repair the wheel of the big wagon, which had cracked somehow.
Before he could even get the wheel off, he saw Clara coming toward the tool shed. Though it was sunny, it was also very cold-her breath made little clouds. July was afraid the baby might have taken a turn for the worse, but that was not it. Clara was very angry.
'You'd do better to talk to me when I'm mad,' she said, with no preamble. There were points of red in her cheeks.
'I'm no talker, I guess,' July said.
'You're not much of anything, but you could be,' she said. 'I know you're smart, because Martin is, and he didn't get it all from your poor wife. But a fence post is more useful generally than you are.'
July took it as a criticism of his work, which he felt he had done scrupulously.
'I've nearly got this wheel fixed,' he said.
'July, I'm not talking about chores,' she said. 'I'm talking about me. I sat there all night in that room with your baby. Where were you?'
July had been thinking that he probably should have offered to sit with her. Of course, now it was too late. He wanted to explain that he was too shy just to come into a room where she was, particularly a bedroom, unless she asked him. Even coming into the kitchen, if she was alone, was not something he did casually. But he didn't know how to explain all the cautions she prompted in him.
'I wish now I had,' he said.
Clara's eyes were flashing. 'I told you how sickness frightens me,' she said. 'The only times I've ever wished I could die is when I've had to sit and watch a child suffer.'
She was twisting one hand in the other. July, seeing that she was shivering, took off his coat and held it out to her, but Clara ignored the offer.
'I sit there alone,' she said. 'I don't want the girls to be there because I don't want them to get death too much in their minds. I sit there and I think, I'm alone, and I can't help this child. If it wants to die I can't stop it. I can love it until I bleed and it won't stop it. I hope it won't die. I hope it can grow up and have its time. I know how I'll feel if it does die, how long it'll take me to care if I draw breath, much less about cooking and the girls and all the things you have to do if you're alive.'
Clara paused. In the lots a sorrel stallion whinnied. He was her favorite, but this day she appeared not to hear him.
'I know if I lose one more child I'll never care again,' she said. 'I won't. Nothing will make any difference to me again if I lose one more. It'll ruin me, and that'll ruin my girls. I'll never buy another horse, or cook another meal, or take another man. I'll starve, or else I'll go crazy and welcome it. Or I'll kill the doctor for not coming, or you for not sitting with me, or something. If you want to marry me, why didn't you come and sit?'
July realized then that he had managed to do a terrible thing, though all he had done was go to his room in the ordinary way. It startled him to hear Clara say she could kill him over such a thing as that, but he knew from her look that it wasn't just talk.
'Would you ever marry me?' he asked. 'You never said.'
'No, and I'm not about to say now,' Clara said. 'Ask me in a year.'
'Why in a year?'
'Because you deserve to suffer for a year,' Clara said. 'I suffered a year's worth just last night, and I guess you were lying at your ease, dreaming of our wedding night.'
July had no reply. He had never known a woman who spoke so boldly. He looked at her through the fog of their breath, wishing she would at least take the coat. The cold made goosebumps on her wrists.
'I thought you were a sheriff once,' Clara said. The stallion whinnied again, and, still watching July, she waved at the horse. He had the eyes of a sweet but bewildered boy in the body of a sturdy man. She wanted the sturdiness close to her, but was irritated by the bewilderment.
'Oh, I was a sheriff,' he said.
'Didn't you ever give orders, then?' she said.
'Well, I told Roscoe when to clean the jail,' July said.
'It ain't much, but it's more than we hear from you around here,' Clara said. 'Try telling me when to clean something, just for practice, once in a while. At least I'd get to hear a sound out of your throat.'
Again, she refused the coat, though it was clear to him that she was in a somewhat better temper. She went over and rubbed the stallion's neck for ten minutes before going back to the house.
Then the other man, Dish Boggett, had to come, bringing the news that Augustus McCrae was dead. He had picked his way along the Platte River in a January blizzard. Both his horses were exhausted, but Dish himself seemed no worse for wear. He treated blizzards as a matter-of-fact occurrence.
It seemed to July that Clara took an instant liking to Dish Boggett, and he couldn't help feeling resentful, although he soon perceived that Dish had come to court Lorena, not Clara. Lorena had hardly spoken since she learned that Gus was dead. Clara immediately offered Dish a job-it was a hard winter and they were always behind. The colts would start coming soon, and they would be farther behind, so of course it was only sensible to hire another man, but July hated it. He had grown used to working with Clara and Cholo, and he had a hard time adjusting to Dish. Part of it was that Dish was twice as competent with horses as he was himself, and everyone immediately recognized Dish's value. Clara was soon asking Dish to do things with the horses that she had once let July do. July was more and more left with the kind of chores that a boy could handle.
To make matters worse, Dish Boggett was standoffish and made no attempt to make friends with him. Dish knew many card games and could even play charades, so he was a great hit with the girls. Many a night through the long winter, July sat against a wall, feeling left out, while Clara, Dish and the girls played games at the big kitchen table.
Dish tried every way he could to draw Lorena into some of the games, but the most Lorena would do was sit in the room. She sat silently, not watching, while July sat just as silently. He could not help but wish that Dish Boggett had got lost in Wyoming or had somehow gone on to Texas. Hardly a day passed without him seeing what he thought were signs that Clara was taken with the man. Sooner or later, when Dish gave up on Lorena, he would be bound to notice. July felt helpless-there was nothing he could do about it. Sometimes he sat near Lorena, feeling that he had more in common with her than with anyone else at the ranch. She loved a dead man, he a woman who hardly noticed him. But whatever they had in common didn't cause Lorena to so much as look his way. Lorena looked more beautiful than ever, but it was a grave beauty since news of the death had come. Only the young girl, Betsey, who loved Lorena completely, could occasionally bring a spark of life to her eyes. If Betsey was ill, Lorena nursed her tirelessly, taking her into her own bed and singing to her. They read stories together, Betsey doing the reading. Lorena could only piece out a few words-the sisters planned to teach her reading, but knew it would have to wait until she felt better.
Even Sally, usually so jealous of any attention her sister got, respected the fact that Betsey and Lorena were especially close. She would let off teasing Betsey if Lorena looked at her in a certain way.
Clara felt no terrible stab of grief when the news of Gus's death came. The years had kept them too separate. It had been a tremendous joy to see him when he visited-to realize that he still loved her, and that she still enjoyed him. She liked his tolerance and his humor, and felt an amused pride in the thought that he still put her above other women, despite all the years since they had first courted.
Often she sat out on her upper porch at night, wrapped in Bob's huge coat. She liked the bitter cold, a cold that seemed to dim the stars. Reflecting, she decided there had been something in what she and Gus had felt that needed separation. At close quarters she felt she would have struggled bitterly with him. Even during his brief visit she felt the struggle might start, and if it did start, gentler souls, such as July and Lorena, might have been destroyed.
In the dark nights on the ice-encrusted porch she occasionally felt a cold tear on her cheek. In Gus she had lost her ultimate ally, and felt that much more alone, but she had none of the tired despair she had felt when her children died.
Now there was July Johnson, a man whose love was nearly mute. Not only was he inept where feelings were
