“Understood.”  Then he was on his horse and gone.  Charlotte sat away from the fire with her back against a tree and the rifle across her knees.  As she watched, something that might have been a possum ambled out into the firelight sniffing.  If it had any possibility as dinner, she knew she should shoot, but that would be all Chace needed.  “Shoo,” she said, and threw sticks till whatever it was thought better of the whole situation and retreated.

Come back, she kept saying, her mind focused on only one person.  Please come back.

He slipped back quietly into the firelight.

“That was long,” she said.

“Had to be.  Nothing out there.  You can go to sleep now.”

Charlotte’s glance took in the wagon.  “We still have our agreement, don’t we?”

“That won’t change.”

The makings of a bed were simple, saddle, blanket, velvet coat, person of the tribes.

18

When all was as it should be, uneventful and undisturbed, still Chace wanted to keep moving.  At midday, they stopped, rested the horses and ate a cold meal in silence.  In the afternoon, Chace tied the gray to the back of the wagon and took the reins.  Charlotte rode up ahead, gazing out over the prairie.  How desolate it would be to live out here with no one around in any direction for hundreds of miles.  Then abruptly she reined in the mare.  She squinted, trying to make certain of what she was seeing.  Chace had stopped the wagon behind her.

“It’s a house,” she said.  “How can that even be?”  She scanned the outlines more closely.  No smoke coming from the chimney.  No visible signs of people anywhere.  The only sound was the wind moving through the grass.  Chace had relaxed into an alert watchfulness.

“Tie up the mare and take the wagon,” he said.  “I just don’t want to come up on anybody unexpected.”  Or worse, she knew.  Find something she shouldn’t see.

He rode the gray slowly up the track and into the yard, a rifle resting across his lap, a sign that he was armed but not looking for trouble.  He led his horse even more slowly around the house, down to the creek, then around the barn.  Finally, he dismounted and knocked at the door.

No one answered the knock.  No sounds issued from inside.  He tried the door.  It was securely latched but not locked and swung silently open.  The cabin was empty, only a thin layer of dust on the floor.  No furniture or belongings, but no evidence that there’d been trouble here either.

He went out to the barn.  It too was empty though there was still straw in the stalls and water in the trough.

“There’s no one?”  He nodded and she flicked the reins to move the wagon up into the clearing.  She got down and stood staring at the house, mystified.