Miss Moore crawled down in her coat. “Everything became unbelievably complicated. This seemed the simplest thing.” She saw Whipple smiling stupidly at the harness and reins, a scour of barn dust high on his neck, blackheads sprayed over his nose: the face of a chimney sweep. She said, “I’ll miss Bob very much but I doubt that I’ll ever see him again. I’m telling you this because you’re family. He’s retired the gang and resigned from train robbing. He’s leaving for Tampa, Florida, soon.”

“You’re a fountain of news, young lady.” He grinned selfconsciously, like they should be pals.

The barbed wire fence to her right was tufted with brown cattle hair. A bunch of white eyelashed Herefords stood in hoarfrost, staring at her. Steers climbed up on each other.

He said, “I’m a meat market proprietor, Miss Moore, and I have an associate in Guthrie I’m trying to swing a deal with. Name is Mundy. Mr. Mundy. Never been married. Lived with his sister for thirty-two years until she passed on to her final reward. He’s looking for a housekeeper and being as you’re looking for work I figure we might just satisfy a whole slew of situations. Now Mundy ain’t young and he ain’t handsome and exciting like Bob, but he’s stable and honest and owns his own house and butcher shop, and I reckon you’d be the most special woman he’d ever laid eyes on. Heh. He’d be beholden to me for many a year if I connected you two up.”

The woman in the shawl smiled. “Introduce us at lunch.”

Whipple talked business in the restaurant and wiped his plate with slices of white bread until it gleamed, while Mr. Mundy smiled at Miss Moore. He wore a gray wool sweater over a blood-stained butcher’s apron. He had a nose like a shoe and pouches under his eyes and a thin mustache that made him look Belgian. He paid for lunch and hung his apron on a nail in his shop and walked Eugenia to a scroll-porched white house with a white picket fence and a yard that he cut with a heavy iron push mower. He showed her the dark green sitting room and the kitchen with pots and kettles and skillets hanging over the stove, and the dining room with his cup and saucer and tableware already set out for his supper. They walked up quiet carpeted stairs to the bedrooms. “You’ll have my sister’s. The dresser drawers are cleaned out. There may be some dresses in the closet you’ll want.” He walked to a walnut door and opened it to a bedroom that smelled of pipe tobacco. His hands shook at his sides. “And this is where I sleep.”