Could we both ride if you do the steering, so to speak? He was quiet for a moment. You trust a man you don't know that much? I just spent an hour stitching up a man I don't know, she said. I suppose I've already committed to trusting you somewhat.
He looked at her for a long moment. Yes, he said at last. We can both ride. Tar. They rode into Cedar Falls as the last light failed.
His horse Clara would learn her name was Duchess, a name that suited her, moved steadily despite carrying double. He rode behind Clara, one arm around her waist for balance. Steady and unobtrusive as possible. He directed the horse with a light touch and said nothing unless she asked him something. She asked about the land, he answered.
She asked about the cattle she could see in the distance, he answered. She did not ask about his name or where he'd come from or what he'd been doing out on that trail with a broken wagon. She had the sense that those were questions he would answer in his own time or not at all, and she was too tired to push. Cedar Falls resolved out of the dusk church steeple first, exactly as the old man at the station had promised, then lantern light in windows, then the sound of boots on wooden boards and the smell of wood smoke and food cooking somewhere close. They drew attention.
The main street was still occupied at this hour. Men leaving the saloon. Women making final errands. Children called in from play who lingered anyway at the sight of something new. Two women on the boardwalk outside the dry good store stopped talking and stared.
Clara felt the weight of it. The two of them arriving together, her clothes dusty and travelworn. Him visibly injured, riding too close for propriety. She kept her chin level. She had not done anything wrong.
He seemed to feel the stairs as well. He said quietly near her ear. Gilmore House is straight ahead. Blue shutters. I see it, she said.
Mrs. Gilmore was a small woman in her 60s with sharp eyes and a practical nature. She looked at them both with an expression that took in the blood on his shirt, the dust on Clara's skirt, and the general situation in about 3 seconds. Room for each of you? She asked.
"Please," Clara said. "Are you family? " "No, ma'am. He was injured on the trail. " I assisted him. Mrs. Gilmore looked at him.
"You're going to need that shoulder looked at by Dr. Haynes in the morning. " "It's been looked at," he said. "By who? " He glanced at Clara. Mrs. Gilmore turned the same glance on Clara.
Clara met it evenly. "My grandmother was a medical woman," she said. I have some knowledge. Mrs. Gilmore's expression shifted slightly.
Not unfavorable. Boston? She asked, recognizing something in Clara's vowels. Yes, ma'am. H.
She led them inside. They ate dinner at a small table in the corner of the boarding house kitchen. Soup bread, a slice of dried apple pie, because Mrs. As Gilmore declared that a man who'd lost that much blood needed feeding, and a woman who'd been traveling since dawn needed it, too, and neither of them was going to argue. He ate slowly.
Clara noticed he watched the room. Noticed every person who entered, noticed where the exits were. It wasn't anxious watching it. Was the watching of someone accustomed to being responsible for something, someone who does not entirely switch off. "You said you were supposed to be met," he said halfway through dinner.
Yes. What happened to the person who was supposed to come? I don't know. She kept her voice flat because the alternative was letting it have an edge. The station agent told me the man I was expecting owns quite a lot of land in this valley.
I expect someone of that standing has more important business than keeping an appointment. Silence. What was his name? He asked. She looked up.
Why? Just curious. William Carter, she said. He looked at his soup. You know him?
She asked. He picked up his spoon. Small territory. What's he like? A pause.
Hard to say. Try. He set down his spoon again. He seemed to be choosing something she couldn't tell what exactly. He's a stop.
He works hard. He takes his responsibilities seriously. He's not a man who another pause. He doesn't talk much. That Clara said has been my experience of most men out west so far.
The corner of his mouth moved. Fair point. Do you think he'll come if I send word I'm in Cedar Falls? He looked at her steadily. Something moved in his eyes, something she couldn't quite name.
I think, he said carefully, that he'll come. She lay awake a long time that night. The room Mrs. Gilmore had given her was small and clean whitewashed walls, a narrow bed, a window overlooking the back of the property, where a kitchen garden grew in orderly rows. It was the kind of room that asked nothing of you, and she was grateful for that.
She thought about the letter. She thought about Boston. She thought about the school where she had taught the smell of chalk and wintergreen. The sound of children reciting their tables, the peculiar satisfaction of watching a child's face when something finally made sense. She thought about a man's eyes blew gray in the fading light, watching her with something she couldn't categorize.
She thought, "I don't even know if he was telling me the truth about his name. " She wasn't sure why that thought came. It simply arrived quiet and clear and lay down next to her. She turned it over. Jack Miller. He had said it easily.
Too easily maybe. But then she was a woman who had spent 3 years teaching children to read. And part of reading was recognizing when a sentence didn't quite sit right on the page. She let the thought go. She didn't know this country.
She didn't know these people. She was making judgments based on nothing but instinct. And instinct in an unfamiliar place was an unreliable compass. She was here. She had a room.
She was safe. Tomorrow she would send word to William Carter that she had arrived. She closed her eyes. She thought just before sleep he broke the biscuit in half. A man who didn't know her.