“Once burned, twice shy, they say, and I have been burned twice. The third time might be at the stake.” Imogene smiled. “I’m overanxious. You may kiss me as long as there are no alien eyes within a hundred miles.”
Sarah kissed her again.
This time Imogene kissed back. “I like this neighborhood,” she said.
A fat cottontail, slow with the heat, hopped ahead of them, his white fluffy tail catching their attention. Oblivious of the huntresses, the bunny grazed in the shade of a sage bush.
Sarah pointed, but Imogene had already seen it. Silently she held the rifle out and indicated Sarah’s apron pockets. Sarah counted out the cartridges and dropped them into the rifle. They always loaded the rifle together as they had the first time they’d fired it.
Imogene pumped a bullet into the chamber. At the click of metal on metal the rabbit ceased its eating and looked up at them. Slowly, Imogene pulled the gun to her shoulder. The rabbit took fright at the movement and darted into the road. Galvanized by the flight of her quarry, Imogene fired. The bullet struck the ground behind and a hundred feet beyond the rabbit, plowing a puff of dirt into the air. The rabbit scampered to safety in the high reeds along the irrigation ditch at the edge of the meadow. Sarah ran up the embankment and looked over the fence, her eyes raking the acres of grass.
“It got away,” she said accusingly. “You didn’t leave both eyes open.”
“I don’t think I left either eye open. I wasn’t even close.”
“Let me.” Sarah bounded down the slope and took the rifle.
“Do you think you can do better?”
Sarah just laughed and pumped a cartridge into the chamber.
“My, it’s exciting,” Imogene said.
“It’s real, not just a target.”
“Be careful, you’ve got a bullet ready.”
“I know,” Sarah replied with a race of annoyance. “It’ll be faster.”
A second rabbit came into view as she spoke, not fifteen feet from where the first one had been grazing. Sarah sucked in her breath, stealthily pulled the rifle up, sighted down the barrel, and squeezed the trigger. The gun barked and the rabbit toppled onto its side in the dirt.
“I got him!” she cried, and Imogene clapped her hands. They ran down the roadway. Sarah reached the rabbit first and stopped just short of it. The bunny lay on its side, panting shallowly, its open eyes covered over by a milky membrane. Its lips were pulled back from its teeth and a ribbon of tongue showed pink between the blunt incisors. Blood ran from a neat round hole in the little animal’s side, pulsing out with the rapid beating of its heart. Sarah fell to her knees with a cry. Frightened by the sound, the cottontail kicked its hind feet, the blood gushed out suddenly, and it was still.
Imogene stopped behind Sarah and rested her hand on the younger woman’s shoulder. Sarah looked up. “I killed him.”
“That was the object.”
“I guess so.” Flies had found the wound, and made a frenzied buzzing in the hot air.
Imogene urged Sarah to her feet. “You go back to the house. You got dinner, the least I can do is prepare it. Go on now.” She watched as Sarah walked back toward the welcoming shade of the buildings. The gun was left on the bank; Imogene picked it up and balanced it over her arm. The rabbit stared sightlessly up at her. She grasped its hind feet, lifted it, and holding it as far from her as possible, she too walked back to the house.
By suppertime the rabbit was stew, and Imogene served it with pride.
Two wagoners had come in that evening, one tall and lanky, with a horse face and a head as bald as an egg, the other of middling height, broad-shouldered and barrel-chested, with a spiky shock of black hair. They shoveled the stew down in complacent silence and asked for seconds. They were regular travelers through Round Hole and loudly appreciated the reappearance of meat on the supper table.
Sarah managed a small bowlful but was withdrawn most of the evening. When supper was over, Imogene led her out onto the porch, away from the murmur of the freighters. The summer night was cool and the air so dry and clear that the stars seemed to hang within reach of the distant mountaintops. Imogene pulled two weathered chairs, used for sitting outdoors, close together and they sat quietly for a time, enjoying the soft sounds of the desert night.
“Do you want to tell me about it?” Imogene said after a while.
“I just feel bad about the rabbit.”
“We have to eat.”
“I know. I’m being silly.”
Imogene smiled at her earnestness.
“I don’t want to hunt anymore. Is that okay? I’ll cook.”
“Of course.”
The door banged behind them and the tall angular wagoner joined them on the porch. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “I’m going to hit the hay. Dan’ll be up awhile longer, but he said to tell you he won’t be needing nothing. Good night, ladies.” He ambled down the steps and out toward the barn.
“Good night, Curley,” Imogene returned. “When are we going to have the honor of having you as an overnight guest inside?”
“When Farmer’s Feed and Grain pays their drivers a decent wage and pigs fly,” he called back good-naturedly.
They watched his lanky silhouette fold down out of sight in the high grasses beyond the spring as he bedded down for the night.
“I don’t mind killing chickens,” Sarah said suddenly. “I used to wring their necks better than Walter, Mam said. And I had some chickens at Sam’s. They were all mine, I took care of everything. Chickens are different, they’re just to eat.”
“We’ll order some chickens from Reno tomorrow when the stage comes,” Imogene decided. “Is there a time of year for chickens?”
“I don’t know. We’ll want grown ones anyway; baby chicks might die on the way. Some hens and a rooster. Do we have money?”
“No. We’ll ‘run our face,’ as Mac says. We may as well order some saplings too. In for a penny, in for a pound. I’m hungry for trees, shade trees.”
“Are we too poor?”
“No, dear. I just worry. We’re doing quite well. We should have most of the equipment I took over from the Van Fleets paid off by next year.”
They ordered the chickens and the saplings the following day, and as soon as the passengers off the southbound coach for Bishop had been fed and settled into their lodgings, they set about constructing a chicken coop, assisted by two young men. Neither was yet thirty years old, adventurers from the shattered South, cadging rides from freight wagons to try their luck in California. One was lean and blond, his eyes aged by the war; the other was shorter, darker, and spoke very little. Attracted by Sarah’s fragile good looks and a chance to break the tedium of an idle summer afternoon, they had offered their assistance with the building project. Dubbing Sarah “straw boss” because she was the chicken expert, they carried the motley assortment of lumber Imogene ferreted out from the piles of refuse behind the stable and shed. The Southerners would have built the coop by themselves if Imogene hadn’t insisted they instruct her and Sarah in the fundamentals of carpentry, in return for which supper would be on the house. By evening an adequate coop was erected, Imogene and Sarah wielding the hammers, the two boys looking on and shouting directions and encouragement.
When it was finished, Sarah patted the corner of the low, sloping roof; she’d been too busy to be shy and now the new structure took her mind up completely. “We’ve done it,” she said with delight. “And next time we’ll be able to do it by ourselves.”
Long after supper was over, while Imogene was still tending bar, Sarah sat by the window of her bedroom, looking out at the dark mountains and the small black hump on the north end of the stable that was her chicken coop.
Imogene came to bed after midnight, walking softly so she wouldn’t awaken Sarah if she was sleeping.