The Little Girl Asked a Stranger to Wake Her Mother, and He Could Not Walk Away

Mrs. Pike’s back room smelled of boiled sheets, camphor, and onions frying somewhere beyond the wall. The bed was narrow but clean. Mrs. Pike, a heavy woman with rolled sleeves and a practical absence of surprise, helped Vale undress Nora and sent Silas and the children to the kitchen.

“You can sit,” she told him. “You cannot hover.”

Silas sat at a table scarred by knives and years of hot pots. Mae took the chair farthest from him. Jonah stood beside her until she lifted him onto her lap.

Mrs. Pike set down milk for the children and coffee for Silas. The milk disappeared quickly. The coffee tasted as if the grounds had been boiled with a horseshoe. Silas drank it anyway.

“Who is Mr. Voss?” he asked.

Mae wiped Jonah’s upper lip with her thumb. “He owns the Double V.”

“I saw the brand on the north road.”

“He owns the feed store, too,” she said. “And the freight line. And the house we lived in after Papa died.”

“Caleb Kincaid was your father?”

Mae nodded.

“How long ago did he die?”

“Winter.”

“What happened?”

“He fell.”

“From what?”

“A roof.”

Her answer carried the warning of a closed door.

Silas rubbed his thumb along a crack in the tabletop. “Your mother worked for Voss?”

“She kept books. Before that, she washed clothes at the hotel. Mr. Voss said she had neat writing.”

“She always did.”

Mae’s head rose.

Silas wished the words back.

“How do you know?”

“I knew her before you were born.”

“What did she say about me?”

He looked at the child’s face. Nora’s mouth was there, and perhaps Nora’s stubborn chin. The eyes were gray-blue, like his mother’s. That proved nothing. The West was full of blue-eyed children and men foolish enough to search for themselves in every one.

“She didn’t have the chance to say much.”

“She told me about the scar.”

“Why?”

Mae turned the tin cup between her palms. “She said a horse kicked you when you were seventeen because you tried to steal an apple from its feed bucket.”

Silas stared at her.

The horse had been a dun mare named Sunday. He had not been stealing an apple. He had been trying to impress Nora, which was worse.

Mae continued, “She said you blamed the horse, but everybody knew you were stupid.”

A small laugh came from the doorway.

Mrs. Pike stood there with a basin in her hands.

“She sounds familiar with you,” she said.

Silas looked into the coffee.

“How is Nora?”

“Sleeping. Doctor says her heart is holding. Fever may break by morning. May not.”

“What does she need?”

“Quiet. Water. Broth. Somebody to pay for all of it.”

“I said I would.”

Mrs. Pike considered him. “Gideon Voss pays a great many people in this town.”

“So?”

“So money can buy care. It cannot always buy courage. If he tells Amos Vale to stop coming, Amos may suddenly discover another patient.”

Mae went rigid.

Mrs. Pike noticed and softened her voice. “I’m only saying we should be sensible.”

“Do you work for Voss?” Silas asked.

“My husband owes him for this house, the stable, and two horses that eat like congressmen. Decide for yourself.”

“What does Voss want?”

“The same thing men like him always want. Whatever somebody else is trying to keep.”

Mrs. Pike carried the basin away.

Jonah had fallen asleep against Mae’s chest. She stroked his hair with the stiff concentration of a person doing work she had done too often.

Silas said, “You can put him in the other room.”

“He wakes scared.”

“He might sleep better lying down.”

“So might Mama.”

There was no accusation in the words. That made them worse.

He folded his hands around the coffee cup. “Did she tell you why she left Voss’s ranch?”

Mae’s fingers paused in Jonah’s hair.

“She said we were going somewhere safe.”

“Where?”

“She didn’t say.”

“Did she take money?”

The girl’s chair scraped the floor as she stood.

“No.”

“I’m asking because Voss will ask. The deputy will ask. You need to tell the truth even if—”

“She did not steal.”

“I believe you think that.”

“You talk like him.”

Silas lowered his voice. “Mae.”

“You don’t get to say my name like you know me.”

She shifted Jonah higher and carried him toward the sitting room. The boy’s bare heel struck the doorframe. He did not wake.

Silas remained alone with the bad coffee.

Through the wall came the murmur of Mrs. Pike and Doctor Vale. A wagon rolled past outside. Someone in the livery sang two lines of an old marching song and forgot the rest.

Silas reached beneath his kerchief and touched the scar.

He had told himself for nine years that leaving Nora had been an act of mercy. After her brother, Thomas, died beneath the wheels of a freight wagon during a fight Silas had started, the town had wanted blood. The sheriff had advised Silas to disappear until tempers cooled. Nora’s father had stood on the platform and said that if Silas returned, he would kill him.

Silas had waited for Nora to ask him to stay.

She had stared at the blood on his cuff.

He had boarded the train.

By the time he wrote from Dodge City, her family had left Abilene. Two letters returned. A third did not. He had taken silence as an answer because silence required nothing from him.

He finished the coffee and hated himself for being able to taste it.

Nora woke after midnight.

Silas had been sitting in a straight-backed chair beside the bed, pretending he did not sleep, when her hand moved under the blanket. Her eyes opened. Fever glazed them, but the recognition inside them was clean.

He stood.

She tried to move away and struck the wall.

“Nora, easy.”

“Where are the children?”

“In the next room. Mrs. Pike is with them.”