When Ben turned off the main track toward the house, Eli saw where he’d gone wrong the night of the wreck. There was no danger that Ben would miss the turn, crawling along in second gear in the noisy old truck. The house appeared suddenly, as it always had whether you approached it on horseback or by automobile. You topped a rise and there it was, a fourteen-room mansion built back in the 1880s by Sir Humphrey Doane as a home for his highborn English bride. The woman never saw the place. She deserted Sir Humphrey for the owner of a coffee plantation in Africa. When Eli first saw the ranch in 1886, it was known as the O-Bar and the house was inhabited by a no-account Texas gunslinger named Dermott Cull, the same Dermott Cull who had once slipped a rope around Eli’s neck. Eli had waited a very long time to buy this ranch and refurbished the house at great expense. Now he could not approach it without a mingled sense of pride, regret, yearning. As long as Ida Mae lived in the house, he had always approached that porticoed facade with dread, never knowing what was in store, whether she would greet him with a smile and a bowl of soup or silent, tight-lipped rage or a screaming, dish-throwing tantrum. Now he saw the kitchen light was on and knew that Juanita was awake. It galled him that he had to wait for Ben to get his wheelchair down, ease him into it, then park it at the bottom of the steps while he went to get Juanita. The temperature was below zero and a cold wind whistled from the west, but she came to the door in a thin dress, hands on her hips, and demanded to know just exactly what it was that he thought he was doing.

“You know you should have stayed in the hospital until they said you could go home. Sometimes doctors know what they’re doing.”

“I got no disagreement with that. Only I was ready to be home.”

“Ezra says you’re the most bullheaded man alive.”

“I wouldn’t care to argue that. Now are you goin to leave me out here to freeze to death or help me to get indoors?”

Juanita said it was safer to let Eli rest his weight on her while Ben hoisted the wheelchair indoors. Then they both supported him while he hopped up the steps on his good leg. She got him settled on the davenport with his broken leg propped up and asked Ben if he wanted supper.

Ben shook his head. “Thanks, Juanita. I had supper in town with Belle. I’d best get home to bed. Ezra starts in early, even on a Sunday mornin.”

Juanita saw him out and poured Eli two fingers of whiskey, brought her cocoa, sat next to him. She leaned her head on his shoulder.