Mr. Wainwright read her expression with uncanny accuracy. “This is hard country, ma’am,” he said, “but it’s a fine place to live. Lots of elbow room. All it takes is some gumption and hard work.”

Evangeline figured she had as much “gumption” as anybody, and God knew she was no stranger to hard work, but she didn’t delude herself that the West held the same promise for a woman that it did for a man. She was simply trying to make the best of a difficult situation. Hearing Mrs. McCaffrey clattering pots and pans at the cookstove, she excused herself and crossed the room.

June-bug was humming an old hymn as she measured lard into a large skillet, preparatory to frying chicken. A kettle brimming with water and freshly peeled potatoes sat on the back of the stove, just beginning to bubble.

Evangeline glanced in Wainwright’s direction, saw that he was watching her with a half grin, and turned her back on him.

“Is it safe to travel with that man?” she asked of Mrs. McCaffrey, in a whisper.

June-bug smiled warmly. “Scully? Why, he’s as good as they get. He’ll look after you and the little girl right enough. You’ve got nothin’ to fear from him.”

Evangeline folded her arms. “Why didn’t you tell me when I first arrived that Mr. Keating had gone to Denver? You must have known.”

Mrs. McCaffrey began dropping pieces of well-seasoned and flour-coated chicken into the pan. “Me and Jacob discussed it,” she admitted, with an air of benign chagrin, “but you was froze plum through and tuckered out from the stagecoach ride when you got here last night. We just didn’t have the heart to say nothin’ about it. Besides, we knew Scully would come to fetch you home.”

“He’s a friend of yours, then? Scully, I mean?”

June-bug nodded fondly. “Like a son, really,” she confirmed, reaching for a jar of green beans, already opened, and upending the contents into a smaller kettle. “We’ve known Scully ever since we come out here to run the station.” Her smile faded a little, and her voice got smaller. “Our own two boys got themselves kilt at Chattanooga.”

Evangeline was silent, absorbing the magnitude of the loss the McCaffreys had suffered. So many sons, fathers, brothers and husbands had perished, Union and Confederate alike. To distract herself from the vast, overwhelming sorrow of it, she stole another look at Scully Wainwright, who was talking with Jacob, now seated across the table from him. Abigail perched on the bench beside Scully, enraptured.

“What about Mr. Keating? What’s he like?” She hadn’t dared ask until then; she’d been too frightened of the answer. Suppose he was a whiskey-drinking man with lascivious ways? Suppose he beat her or—she’d kill him—Abigail?

Mrs. McCaffrey smiled again, though remembrances of her lost sons lingered visibly in her eyes. “He’s real decent. Older’n Scully, by twenty years or so, o’course. They’ve got a good-sized piece of land over there and a fine log house, too. Sold a whole passel of cattle to the army last fall and made themselves a pile of money. I reckon Big John means to bring more livestock with him when he comes back up from Mexico, to build up another herd.”