"So do young widows," she said, "but I haven't yet."
After supper Ab walked her up the hill behind the house to the grave. It was fenced with pickets from a packing crate, and there was a board at the head with the name burned in with a hot iron, AMOS J. PRUETT 1819–1886, and below that, in smaller letters someone had worked harder on, HE KEPT HIS WORD. The dirt had settled and cracked. Somebody had put a jelly glass on it with a few asters in it, dried now to paper.
"Toby," said Ab, of the asters.
"Were you there? When it happened?"
"Wasn't nobody there." Ab looked off at the last red light on the Ferris range. "He saddled up before daylight on the twentieth of August and lit out north. Said he had business in Rawlins and would be back Saturday week. Didn't say what business. That was Amos. About noon the horse come back to the yard with the saddle under his belly, bleeding, crazy as a loon. Lyle and Dutch back-trailed him and found Amos at the second crossing, in the rocks. Neck broke clean." He worked his jaw. "Rawlins is south."
She turned and looked at him. "South."
"Yes'm. He said Rawlins and he rode north. I never understood it. I don't guess I ever will."
"What's north?"
"Ferris Crossing. That's the town, if you call it a town. Post office and a store and Truesdale's forge and two saloons. Beyond that, nothing but Crane's range and the Seminoe country and the breaks. Plenty of nothing." He took out a plug of tobacco, looked at it, and put it back. "Bleeding," he said again, like he had only just heard himself say it.
"The horse was bleeding. Where?"
"On his back somewheres. Old man must have raked him something terrible with his spurs when he went off. Lyle said. I never looked close. I was busy being sick in the wash." He turned toward the house. "That horse's name is Gideon, by the way. Amos raised him from a colt off a mare he had out of Texas. Everybody calls him the Devil now. You'll hear 'em. But Amos named him Gideon, and he rode him eight years, and he never so much as crow-hopped. That's all I got to say about it."