He leaned against the log wall for a moment to regain his breath and his composure. He found his hand slick from cold sweat and wiped it on his filthy cotton shirt. When he got over his fright he decided to kill one of the shoats for fresh meat. But he found a cured ham hanging from the ceiling. The people who had fled this cabin had not taken everything with them.

If they had left food, perhaps he might find better clothes than the brush-torn rags that hung from him in ribbons. He searched the cabin but found nothing he could use except an old blanket. At least that would give him some protection from the cold. He wrapped it around his shoulders as he had seen Mexicans wrap a serape. He built a small fire in the fireplace and cooked up some of the ham and some johnnycake from a bit of cornmeal he found. He would have given his right arm for coffee—a piece out of the arm, anyway—but there was none. If these people had even had any, they had taken it with them. If they were like the Lewises, coffee was a luxury not lightly come by and not often used except for special occasions, like Sunday gatherings of all the families, and not always then.

He ate the best meal he had enjoyed in weeks, then spread the blanket on a bed made of posts and a strip of rawhide laced back and forth, front to back and side to side. There was a risk that Mexican soldiers could find him, but he had been running that risk for weeks, laboring his way across the country a few miles a day. It appeared unlikely that soldiers had been here, or he would not have found any food in the cabin, or the blanket. More than likely he would have found no cabin, only charred ruins.

The night brought its damp chill, but he wrapped himself in the blanket and slept his best sleep in weeks. In morning’s first light he awakened with a start, not remembering for a moment where he was. He heard something rustling around outside the door. Sleep quickly left him. He flipped the blanket aside and moved to the door, opening it slowly and carefully, the rifle in his hand. The sow and her shoats rooted in the dirt beside the cabin, making considerable noise about it. He heard a rooster crow. Where there was a rooster there ought to be hens, and where there were hens there ought to be eggs. He had not eaten an egg since he had left home. He stepped outside, able now to see the place much more clearly than he had at dusk.

To his surprise he saw a sorrel horse standing by a crude set of pole pens, reaching its head across the top rail. He pulled back quickly against the cabin, wondering who the rider was. Then he saw that the horse wore no saddle, no bridle. It had wandered here, or more likely it belonged here. Probably the people who owned this cabin had left in a big hurry. The horse had been off grazing somewhere, and they had been afraid to take the time to go looking for it.