“I just was swimming,” I said, not sure that I’d heard her right.

“Not with me though,” Cecily said. “I’ve indulged in quite a few fond memories of you recently, Ben. Except that you’re quick when you’re nervous, we enjoyed some tolerable coupling, didn’t we?”

She was briskly folding her easel and putting away her paints.

“I’m such a poor artist when I’m feeling like coupling,” she said. “What’s the water like?”

“Very wet,” I said. I had just begun to realize that the woman was perfectly serious.

“I’ll just go back to the tent and get a blanket and something we can dry off with,” she said, picking up her easel.

“Cecily, Billy just blew a man in two for suggesting what you’re suggesting,” I told her. “What do you think he’ll do if he wakes from his nap and finds us? Besides, aren’t you eloping with him?”

“Yes, but we aren’t making much progress this afternoon. What’s the harm in a little coupling?” she asked.

“Cecily, he’ll kill us,” I said.

“Quite incorrect, he’ll only kill you,” she said, with a look that I knew meant she was growing impatient. “I’ll convince him you debauched me with some Yankee trick. But what a lot of fidgeting you’re doing, Ben—I assure you he’s quite sound asleep. And after all, coupling is greatly improved by a bit of danger.”

“No, thanks, it’s too big a bit, this time,” I informed her. “Besides, you’ve been mighty rude to me, you know.”

“I hope so. You’re most unaccommodating; now I’ll have to locate one of those hairy cowboys,” she said hotly before picking up her easel and marching back to the tent.

6.

Cecily found no willing cowboy that day—in fact, she found no cowboy at all, for Dewey Sharp and Waco Charlie and the others were not foolish men. They put up Cecily’s tent, dug Des Montaignes a hasty grave, and left. Dot, seeing that the prospects were bleak in Greasy Corners for the moment, asked the boys to take her with them, and they did.

When Billy came out of the tent about sundown, he was still pale and a little shaky, but the fact that much of the town’s population had deserted didn’t seem to surprise him.

“They don’t want to be around when the bullets go to whistling, do they, Sippy?” he said to me, sitting in one of Lord Snow’s camp chairs.

Cecily was inside dressing for dinner, which would consist of three cold guinea hens from Winds’ Hill.

“Billy, if you know they’re going to whistle, why stay?” I asked. “Sooner or later one could whistle right into you.”

“I know, but Snow don’t like to rush her travel,” he said.