Bobby and Leo hadn’t appeared at closing time, so she locked up and went back to sit on the bench with Red and wait for them. She was looking forward to the party, but so much had changed since the first time she visited the ranch in the summer of 1936. Ben had finally married his sweetheart, Belle Swank, and the two of them had left for Argentina on an extended honeymoon in the fall of 1939, with twenty head of Ezra’s prize Appaloosas. They were bound for the Pampas, where Ben was to spend a year buying and selling horses before returning to Wyoming to settle down with Belle in the cabin he had already built a half mile from Ezra’s place. Eli’s older boys Calvin and Seth were also away, trying to run a small spread outside Thermopolis together. Eli would have done anything to keep them at home, but they wanted to prove they could make it on their own. His daughter Jenny had left to study at the University of Wyoming in Laramie. Her sisters Mabel and Anna were working year-round for Tavie at the dude ranch she ran with her friend Amelia in Jackson Hole.

Even Ezra had settled down with a cousin of Jenny Hoot Owl’s called Jolene Rides Prairie. Two Spuds had tried to warn Ezra away, saying that Arapaho women were bad-tempered and that they refused to keep a man warm at night, but Jolene had a sweet disposition. Ezra liked to razz Two Spuds about it, telling him that Jolene had never once turned him away when he tried to warm himself against her ample flanks on a winter night. She was a fine cook who had raised six children and buried two husbands, just as he had buried two wives. As far as Ezra was concerned, Jolene was the perfect companion for his old age.

By the time Leo and Bobby showed up, they were a half hour late. They climbed out of the car giggling and slapping each other on the back, so rowdy that Emaline thought maybe they had been drinking. When Bobby saw her glaring at him, he stood at attention and offered her a snappy salute. She wasn’t impressed.

“Where have you two been? Are you drunk?”

“Not a bit, Sis. You’re lookin at a couple of sailors. We just enlisted in the U.S. Navy.”

“You did what?”

“Enlisted. We signed up this afternoon. We’re leaving in a week for boot camp in San Diego.”

Emaline was about to start shouting at him when she remembered the date. “Is this an April Fool’s joke?”

“Nope. That’s why we’re late. We were at the recruiting station. It took longer to get processed than we thought, but we’re here now. How ya doin, Red?”

He gave the boy a friendly punch on the shoulder. Red was staring at them both. “You guys are sailors now?”