He still held Sally’s heavy bag. He pulled it open to find there was no gun inside, just the one hundred silver dollars he had originally paid to bribe her into silence. Each coin had been separately wrapped in a torn sheet of blue sugar paper, as if each was peculiarly special, and for a moment Ridley’s heart was touched by that childish tribute, but then he realized that Sally had probably wrapped the coins to stop them chinking and thus attracting predatory attention. Whatever, the coins were now his again, which only seemed right. He tucked the bag under his arm, pulled on his gloves, tipped his uniform hat over his eyes, tugged his saber to a jaunty angle, and sauntered slowly home.

“It seems”—Anna reached across the table for a bread roll that she broke in two, then dipped one-half in gravy as a titbit for her noisy spaniels—“that Truslow has a daughter, and the daughter got herself pregnant, so he married her off to some poor boy and now the daughter’s run away and the boy’s in the Legion, and Truslow is angry.”

“Damned angry,” her father said in high amusement. “Hit the boy.”

“Poor Truslow,” Adam said.

“Poor boy.” Anna dropped another morsel of bread among her yapping, scrapping dogs. “Truslow broke his cheekbone, isn’t that right, Papa?”

“Broke it badly,” Faulconer confirmed. The Colonel had managed to repair the ravages imposed on him by the abortive cavalry raid. He had bathed, trimmed his beard and donned uniform so that he once again looked like a dashing soldier. “The boy’s called Robert Decker,” the Colonel went on, “the son of Tom Decker, you remember him, Adam? Wretched man. He’s dead now, it seems, and good riddance.”

“I remember Sally Truslow,” Adam said idly. “A sullen thing, but real pretty.”

“Did you see the girl when you were up at Truslow’s place, Nate?” Faulconer asked. The Colonel was trying very hard to be pleasant toward Starbuck to show that the morose disregard of the last few days was over and forgotten.

“I don’t remember noticing her, sir.”

“You would have noticed her,” Adam said. “She’s kind of noticeable.”

“Well, she’s bolted,” Faulconer said, “and Decker doesn’t know where she’s run to, and Truslow’s mad at him. Seems he gave the happy couple his patch of land and they’ve just left it in Roper’s care. You remember Roper, Adam? He’s living up there now. Man’s a rogue, but he knew how to manage horses.”

“I don’t suppose they were ever properly married.” Anna found the plight of the unhappy couple far more interesting than the fate of a freed slave.

“I doubt it very much,” her father agreed. “It would have been one quick jump over the broomstick, if they were even that formal.”