While the sky domed overhead, endlessly stretching to the western horizon, the country itself he was crossing appeared to swell with every mile he put behind him. And more than once he had come near scaring himself to the marrow, just to think that by some underhanded jigger-pokey magic the land puffed itself up beneath him like a lister, making it so those far mountains arose farther and farther away the faster he rode to find them, the harder he yearned to have that first glimpse of them.
“Yes,” Titus finally answered the settler, and stared down into the bowl of his pipe. His tobacco had gone out, and it had grown quieter inside the main house behind them as well as the children’s quarters nearby, connected to the squat cabin by a roofed dogtrot.
With a sigh the settler rocked forward and knocked his pipe against the side of his nankeen britches slick and shiny with age and wear. A small black dollop dropped from his clay pipe bowl. Then he peered squarely at the visitor. “I don’t s’pose there’s any use of a feller to try talkin’ you into staying put right here, is there?”
He looked at the plea in the man’s eyes for a polite moment before he answered. “No. I’m sorry. Was a time I figgered there’d be nothing for me but to stay on my own place back to Kentucky. But—I found out I ain’t the kind to stay on.”
With sad resignation the man nodded and said, “Coulda used a hand. You look to be a likely sort for work.”
Titus watched the settler twist and turn the small clay pipe in his big hands, the dirt scored into every wrinkle and crevice the way indigo ink would highlight a seafarer’s tattoo. “I’m sure the woman’s trying to give all she can.”
“It was hard enough at times afore my brother passed on,” he admitted. “Yes—I know Edna’s trying. Just that … this is a man’s work and she ain’t got no business …” Then his voice faded off as he looked up at Bass’s eyes and saw no softening there. “God knows it ain’t a woman’s lot to do what that woman does on this place.”
“She don’t seem the sort to shy at hefting her share of the load.”
With a doleful wag the settler explained, “Edna ain’t never shied away from her share of the work.”
“I figure she does what she has to for her young’uns,” Titus replied, whacking his pipe bowl against the sole of his worn boot.
“Time and again I tried to send her and them all back to her family.”
After waiting while the settler paused, he asked, “And?”
“And she wouldn’t have nothing of it. Said this was where my brother counted on setting down roots and making his stand. Said that’s why she was staying. Said she would stay close by where he was planted—right out yonder we laid him … and she wanted to be planted right next to him come her time to pass on to the great by-and-by.”
“How long’s it been?”
“Last summer,” he answered quietly. Then he wagged his head and stared at the tiny pipe in his big, rough hands. “She stayed with him all those days till the end while my woman saw to the young’uns. Then of a early morning when Heber died, just afore sunup, Edna cleaned him, put some fresh clothes on him while I dug his grave—and we buried him that very day. But what got to me was the way she shuffled the kids off to the house here when we was walking back from the grave. Told ’em to go with their auntie and mind her. Said she had work to be doing out with me.”
“That when she went to work with you in the fields yonder?”
“The very afternoon we buried my brother. She went in and put on a old pair of his britches, cinched ’em up with some twine, and told me we had us work to be doing out to the fields. And … she ain’t grieved a bit since then, what I know of.”
“She ain’t cried none?”
“Not since she walked away from Heber’s grave.”
“That’s a strong woman,” Titus ventured, not sure if it were strength or not that kept a body from grieving.
“Thought so my own self at first,” the man replied eventually. “But now … I just wonder if she ain’t in trouble.”
“What you mean—trouble?”
Rocking forward on his half-log stool again, the settler rose to his feet and kneaded the back of one thigh before he spoke. “A body’s gotta grieve the loss of a love, Mr. Bass. Edna ain’t yet grieved proper. She holds it all in—no telling how it’ll eat away at her.”
At last Titus quietly offered, “A strong woman like that—one what helps you to the fields and pulls her own weight, never asking for any slack in the rope—she’ll come through her grieving in her own way. And she’ll be fine.”
He looked at Bass a moment, then replied, “I ain’t got no choice but to trust in just that, mister. Hope is that Edna will grieve in her own way, and not keep it all tied up inside her like a bag full of knots.”
Titus watched the man turn and move off, stopping at the doorway.
The settler asked, “You’ll make do over there at the lean-to you picked out for yourself?”
“I’ll be fine. Thankee much.”
“I’m up afore light, Mr. Bass. So I’ll see we have coffee together afore you pull out.”
“I’ll look forward to it.”
For several minutes Titus waited there on the porch, listening to the soft sounds of people moving quietly about inside the main cabin, thinking he might have himself another bowl of that tobacco—then the place got quiet and he decided to be off to quiet himself. He slowly rocked himself up off the stool and stood to regard the stars dusting the sky above him, just beyond the edge of the slightly sagging porch roof.
The last Titus remembered was that he had crossed the rutted, hoof-pocked yard and squatted in the dim starlight below the slant of his log and brush lean-to, yanked off his boots, then kicked the blankets over himself and laid his head atop his coat he had folded over his old saddle. Closing his eyes, he faded off to sleep thinking about that far land where the mountains scraped the sky and the buffalo blackened the earth.
“Shhh,” the voice whispered to him in his dream. “Lemme in there with you. It’s cold out here.”
Beyond the lip of the shelter, the sky still hung inky black as he blinked his eyes open, sensing the hands lifting the blankets, fluffing them back over them both as the press of a body came against his. His hand tightened on the pistol between his knees as he came more awake. Rigid and wary.
“Lay still,” the woman’s voice husked against his ear. “We both stay warmer that way.”
Swallowing hard, Bass lay as still as a stalk of grass on a windless day, while he felt her screwge herself against his back, draping an arm over him. Her gasps of breath teased the long hair curled at the collar of his linen shirt, warming him.
“Ed-Edna?”
As quickly as he uttered her name, the woman brought her hand up and laid two fingers on his mouth.
“It’s me. Now shush an’ lay quiet aside me.”
He was afraid he already knew the answer to his question before he asked it. “What you doing here?”
“I’ll swear. Back to Bailey Henline’s place in Franklin you didn’t strike me as a man so thick in the head not to know what I’m here for.”
“I s’pose I ain’t so thick I can’t figger things out in the middle of the night,” he whispered, starting to roll on his side toward her. But the woman clamped her arm around Titus, stopping him. He lay perfectly still for a moment, then said quietly, “Long as I can remember, you womenfolk been the biggest of mystery to me. I don’t mind owning up to this here being a mystery to me too.”