There was nothing for it but to walk out and greet her and she looked him up and down, her eyes cut with laughter and fear. A flick of concern, one of victory. “What happened to you?”

“I was out in the woods.”

Her eyebrows arched. “Wrestling what? A catamount?”

“I wasn’t wrestling anything. There was some dogs barking woke me up and I ran out there and chased them off and fell down and got the shit stung out of me by deerflies. I was just going down to the river to swim. It’s awful early in the morning for you to be up and about. Your boyfriend kick you out?”

“No,” she said. “My boyfriend did not kick me out.”

“Well. I don’t want to hear whatever story you made up and got ready to tell me. I guess maybe you don’t feel so cornered anymore. That’s good. I’m happy you knew you could go off for however long you wanted and do whatever you wanted with whoever you wanted to do it with and get yourself uncornered. And know you could traipse back on in and I’d be falling-down-glad to see you. I’m glad you knew that much. But I don’t want to hear the first word out of your cocksucking little mouth right now because I’d split your lips open and lose you some of your teeth and feel pretty good about doing it. So I’m going to go swim. I figure you either came back or come to pack your trash and get out. I get back up here from the river and you’re here, then forget about whatever you had all rehearsed to tell me. You understand me?”

“I heard that about you.”

“Heard what?”

“That you’d taken to larruping on french canadians.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She scanned him again up and down, most clearly not liking what she saw. “Old men and now women. It’s a sad place to come to, Jamie. I saw Estus Terry; he told me how you broke up that old cook’s face.”

“How’d you see Terry?”

“Told me he’d already got the money you were after. He was spooked, Estus was. Said he paid the doctor for that old man from his own pocket. And a fit of dentures as well. Told me he couldn’t see how you’d go off like that.”

There it was, he thought. Her hair a jumble like she’d risen from bed five minutes before or worse didn’t care about it and in clothes rumpled and dusty but still too fresh for four days of living, walking in like any morning, her eyes clear and large and it all turned back on him. He could not help himself. “I’ll settle with Terry. And that Frenchman business was about a lot more than him. Estus knows that. He was working on you was all. Where was it you said you saw him?”