After dinner, Evangeline helped Mrs. McCaffrey with the dishes, while Jacob and Mr. Wainwright went outside again, to smoke and assess the weather. Abigail, full of good food and worn out from listening, had fallen asleep on a deacon’s bench near the hearth.

“Do you ever feel lonely, way out here?” Evangeline asked, drying a plate.

Mrs. McCaffrey smiled and shook her head. “I’ve got my Jacob and the Lord when I want company, and things get mighty lively when the stagecoaches are running. I see different sorts of people all the time, and they’ve all got their stories to tell.”

She wanted to ask about the McCaffreys’ children, but the question seemed too personal. Westerners were private sorts, in Evangeline’s judgment, with more than their share of secrets. “It scares me a little,” she confessed. “The idea of being so alone, I mean.”

June-bug favored her with another smile. “Bein’ alone ain’t necessarily bad, you know. A person can come to understand herself real well that way. Some folks pass their whole lives without learnin’ a thing about their own minds and spirits, but out here, all you’ve got to do is pay attention.”

“Pay attention,” Evangeline repeated, distracted. Beyond the thick log walls of the stagecoach station, the first night cries of the wolves could be heard. Jacob and Scully, settled once again at one of the tables, were embroiled in a game of checkers, and neither of them so much as looked up.

Unexpectedly, June-bug patted her arm. “Here, now. Don’t you be afeared. You’ll be safe with Scully, you and your little one both. I ain’t never seen a bear nor a wolf nor a Yankee that could get the better of him.”

Evangeline was starting to feel better—until the gist of what Mrs. McCaffrey had just said began to sink in. “He fought on the Confederate side?”

June-bug fairly glowed with pride. “ ’Deed he did,” she replied. “Scully was a courier for General Robert E. Lee himself.”

The shadows inside the station seemed to deepen in that moment, although Evangeline was sure it was just a trick of the light. She studied Mr. Wainwright in profile as he reached out to draw a kerosene lamp closer to the board, removed the glass chimney, and struck a match. When the wick caught, he replaced the chimney, and he and Jacob went on with their checkers match.

Evangeline cleared her throat. “Coming from Pennsylvania and all, well, politically speaking—”

“Never you mind,” June-bug interrupted, patting Evangeline’s hand. “You cain’t help you was born a Yankee. Scully knows that, and he ain’t likely to hold it against you.” She frowned pensively. “As for Big John Keating, I don’t rightly know where he stands on the question. Reckon he probably don’t hold with neither side.” She lowered her voice to a confidential whisper, as though imparting a profound secret. “He growed up in Texas. To his mind, that don’t make him a Yankee or a Confederate, neither one. It makes him a Texan.”