“Marie,” she cried, “tell me I’m right. Tell me if that’s—”

Marie’s voice tinkled with glad excitement. “It is. It’s Sly Shipman.”

Annie laughed and cried, both at the same time. She hurried around the wagon, intending to run and meet him. But she stopped, remembering the hurt, remembering the day he had left her to ride back toward Natchitoches with Baptiste. She had wanted to beg him to stay, but pride had not let her. If he did not think enough of her to remain of his own volition, she did not need him, she had thought. Pride stopped her now from running to him. She retreated back around the wagon. She turned away as she heard his voice.

He hollered before he reached the wagons. “Is everybody here? Is everybody all right?”

Marie responded, “We are fine, so far.”

“Where’s your menfolk?”

Marie said, “Frank is in the wagon, very sick. The rest rode off to the war. We don’t know where they are.”

Shipman’s voice was anxious. “I don’t see Annie. What about Annie?”

Marie did not reply except to tilt her head in Annie’s direction. Shipman brought his horse around the rear of the wagon where Annie stood. He swung to the ground as if in a hurry to grab her into his arms, but he held back. “Annie?”

She wanted to go to him but would not. She wanted to tell him she had sorely missed him, but she would not. Instead she looked at him in silence.

He said, “Soon’s I heard what happened at Goliad, I came a-runnin’ to help you. I went to your cabin, saw your tracks and followed them here.”

“What for? We’ve gotten along real good without you.” All the past weeks of sadness and resentment and anger were in her voice.

He answered resentment with resentment. “Maybe I shouldn’t even have come, then. Maybe I ought to’ve just stayed back yonder in Louisiana.”

“Maybe you should’ve.”

They stared at one another from three full paces apart. She ached to rush to him, to have him enfold her in his arms, but that stubborn Lewis pride held her where she stood. She looked into his eyes and saw there not anger but anxiety and hurt. She sensed that he wanted to apologize, but there was pride in the Shipman blood, too.

He said, “You look to me like you’ve put on a little weight.”

He had several days’ growth of whiskers to show for his long ride, getting here. She said, “You don’t look all that good yourself.”

Marie leaned down from her place on the wagon seat. Impatiently she declared, “We have all the children we can handle. We do not need you two to act as if you are six years old. You both want to hug each other, so do it and let us leave this place before the soldiers come.”

Tears blinded Annie as she stepped forward. Sly Shipman grabbed her into his arms and crushed half the breath out of her. “Annie Lewis! I was scared to death I wouldn’t find you at all.”