“I killed a moose,” Ian said briefly, and jerked his thumb behind. “Go help him.” Hardman nodded, hesitated for a moment as though wanting to say something, but swallowed it and snapped the reins against the mule’s neck.

THE MEN WENT back together, laden with meat and exhilarated with cold and blood. It was midmorning when they returned to the house, and Rachel was looking out for them, peering out of the front window. She waved and disappeared.

Ian saw Hardman come out of the barn, where the man had helped finish the butchering.

“May I ask,” Hardman said, giving Ian a direct look, “how it came to be that you were traveling with my—with Silvia and the … girls? I take it that you were not aware I was here, as plainly Silvia wasn’t.”

“No. I came to visit the woman who was once my wife,” Ian replied. No point in being secretive; the whole of Canajoharie would know about it by this afternoon, if they didn’t already. “I had word that she and her children were in Osequa when the attack there happened, and that her husband had been killed—but none of my friends kent anything of her condition. So I thought I would come and see.”

“Indeed.” Gabriel Hardman glanced at him, one eyebrow raised.

“I have a new wife,” Ian said equably, in reply to the eyebrow. “She’s with me, and so is our son.”

“So I understand,” Hardman said. “I hear that she is a Friend?”

“She is, and she’s told me that Friends dinna hold wi’ polygamy,” Ian said. “I didna have that in mind, but if I had, I wouldna have brought her with me.”

Hardman gave him a sharp look and a short laugh.

“Silvia told you, then. Why is she with you? Why did you bring her here?”

Ian stopped and gave Hardman a look of his own.

“She did a great service for my uncle, who sent me to see after her welfare. If ye want to hear the state in which I found her and her daughters, I’ll tell ye, man, and it would serve ye right if I did.”

Hardman reared back as though he’d been punched in the chest.

“I—I couldn’t—I couldn’t go back to Philadelphia,” he said, furious. “I was a prisoner—a slave!”

Ian didn’t reply to that, but looked deliberately around him—at the house, the woods, and the open road.

“I’ll leave ye here. Go with God,” he said, and walked away.

87

In Which Rachel Paints Her Face

BRANT HAD SEEN WORKS With Her Hands the evening before, and told Ian that she would welcome his visit today, in the afternoon.