“What’re you doing, Pelham?”

“Something to eat sir?”

“Hungry?” Goundry eyeing the tunic.

“Yes sir.”

Goundry nodded. “Where the hell’s your rifle, Pelham?”

Norman inclined his head. “Back there. Right by the barn sir. I just wanted to get this food.”

Goundry nodded again. “Is your head feeling all right, son?”

“It’s fine sir.”

Goundry held him with his eyes. Then he said, “By Jesus I’m glad this thing’s done with. Get out of here, Pelham.”

He found her crouched in the shadow beside one of the mule-stall partitions, his rifle held upright between her legs, the barrel hugged against her chest. He took her hand and helped her stand and she said, “Some man came out the back of the barn and peed there so I hid down here.”

He traded her the can of coffee for his rifle and told her, “I’ve got some bread and bacon too. You know some place we could set down?”

She took him by the hand and led him over what had been vegetable gardens and then past a chicken yard, down a dirt track with a pair of empty cabins on each side, and behind these was a smaller structure made of heavy logs with no windows but with a door busted apart, pieces of timber still splinted upright by strap hinges. Inside she hung a blanket from nails over the doorway and lit a candle stub and he saw her suitcase and bedroll on the floor and a small rude bench made of a split log with unpeeled limbs splayed as legs. A short length of stout chain was bolted into the log wall, the chain ending in a manacle roughly cut open with the marks of the slipped chisel. They sat on the bench and shared the coffee and she ate some of the biscuit and the bacon he sliced off for her, ate with a vast controlled manner that made clear how hungry she was, and while she declined more than a small amount of the food he cleared his pockets and set the rest on the edge of the bench in a natural sort of way. They sat silent on the bench in the guttering candlelight, the boy younger than he thought he was and the girl older than she thought she was. He saw slight spasms running over her upper body and he unbuttoned his tunic and saw her watching him, her mouth tight and her eyes flat, and he took the tunic off and put it around her shoulders and sat there beside her with his suspenders up over his woolen undershirt. She crossed her arms to take the tunic edges in opposite hands and drew it close around her and in so doing leaned a little so her shoulder touched his and she said, “Norman, what do you want with me?”

He thought about this and only would say, “I guess I could ask the same thing.”

Without pause she said, “Ask then.”