"What did you tell her?"
"I told her soft is the wrong word. Soft is what men call women when they mean weak. You are careful. Careful is allowed."
Drake stared into the dark. "Careful is what I failed at the day I rode past that other town's paper. I am trying to be a different kind of careful now—careful toward people, not careful toward my own comfort."
"That sounds like a man writing a better story for himself."
"Maybe. Better stories still need better mornings."
They left it there. The coffee cooled. An owl called. Somewhere in town a baby cried and was soothed. The claim's shadow did not sleep, but it did not climb the porch either.
When the pouches came back, Drake did not celebrate.
He took them to the livery, counted them again alone, and divided what remained into a travel poke and a town poke. The travel poke was thinner than his plan had required. The town poke he used to pay Mrs. Colm for nights the women had stayed, over her protest, and to settle a farrier bill for the brown horse. He wrote a short letter to the land agent saying he might still come, might not, and that any buyer who loved the grass should not wait on a man sorting his debts to his own spine. Ruth Haver sent it. Drake felt lighter and worse at once.
Nora, reading the copy he allowed her to see, said, "You keep choosing the pause over the pasture."
"For now," he said. "Pasture does not forgive forever. I know that."