Charlotte fell back into the rhythm of their days, time slowing down to the arc of the sun across the sky and each night’s phase of the rising new moon.  She took a broom and swept the dust off the cabin floor, then set up her meager kitchen, the Dutch oven, frying pan and knives.  She brought in two crates of books, set her cutting board across them and called it a table, though the chairs were still the hard wooden floor.  She washed clothes in the creek once it calmed, even asking Chace for his shirt.  He gave it to her then quickly pulled another faded one from his saddlebags and put it on.

Every day she gathered firewood and foraged in the vegetation by the creek.  When she found wild plums, she made plum bread.  She made corn cakes, roasted quail wrapped in bacon, chopped peppers and fried ham with beans, simmered rabbit stew till the meat fell off the bone.

Chace left her entirely for a part of one day to ride far off and fire the Spencer.  He came back subdued.

“It’s not good?” she said.

“It’s too good.”  He narrowed his eyes, staring out at the horizon.  “My people never stood a chance,” he said to no one.

She got out the cards at every opportunity.  He taught her faro and casino.  In return for being forced to learn these games, she demanded the right every now and then to play poker with anything wild that she wanted.  Those games made her laugh so hard she almost fell over.

Outside, they played for twigs.  “I have more twigs than you’ll ever have,” she said.

“And then what?  What are you going to do with all those twigs?”

“Build my very own forest and stay in it.”  She turned quickly away from that thought and onto another one.

“Is that how you speak English better than people who speak English?  From being a soldier with Ellis and playing cards?”

“What brought that up?”

“From not wanting to talk about living alone in my own forest.”

“I knew English long before I was a soldier.”

“Then how did you learn it so well?  I about lost my mind that first day when I saw you.  I expected you’d shoot me and you just kept talking and using all those words.”

“I never figured that out,” he said.  “Why would I shoot you?”

“I don’t know.  Because you wanted the horses?”

“I hadn’t even thought about the horses.  How you were, that was enough to think about.  But to answer your question, the trapper taught me English.”

“The one with your name?”