Isaac looked his brother squarely in the eye. There was nothing Finis needed so badly as a good whipping, but Isaac had never brought himself to do that to a one-armed man. He just said, “You go to hell, Finis,” and carried his plate out onto the dog-run so he could eat in peace. He could hear Finis inside, cursing first Nelly and then Luke, and Nelly railing back at him in her whining voice.

If I had a lick of sense I’d just go off and leave them, he thought. But the boy came and stared at Isaac while he ate, and Isaac knew there was at least one good reason he could never leave.

The image of Annie Lewis crossed his mind. He could not help making a contrast between her and Nelly. That led him to an even broader contrast between the Lewis family and the Blackwoods. There had always been a closeness among the Lewises that had never existed among his own battling kin. He wished for just once in his life that he could experience that kind of closeness.

He set down the plate and beckoned to the youngster.

“Come here to me, boy,” he said gently.

The boy declared resentfully, “You whupped up on my Uncle Luke.” He walked off into the yard, picked up a rock and hurled it at Isaac.

VIII

DURING THE summer James Lewis had no roof he could properly call his own. Andrew and Petra had intended to let him sleep with the children in one side of their double cabin, but Annie’s unexpected presence had changed that plan. Annie slept in the room with the children. James slept on the ground outdoors most nights. He was accustomed to it because of the many hunting trips that had kept him in the woods for a night or more back home, and because he had rolled his blankets on the ground all the way to Texas from Tennessee. When the weather was benign, that suited him. The air was always better outside than in a cabin, even one where chinks between the logs let the wind find its way through. When it rained, he could either sleep on the dog-run or climb up into the wagon and be protected by the canvas, still drawn down tightly over the wagon hoops. Andrew’s black dog was slow at first in accepting James as a member of the family but eventually began lying down beside James’s blankets, keeping him company through the night.

The first priority was planting. The families had to finish Michael’s and Andrew’s fields and break out enough land for cousin Frank to raise a crop and a garden that would feed his family, their animals, and Hope’s precious laying hens through the first winter. Because James was a bachelor without a family depending upon him, and Annie had been granted no land of her own, there was less urgency in their case. They could look to their brothers. The men and the three boys large enough to help combined their strengths, moving together from one farm to the other for the work. As Michael, Andrew, and Frank forced the wooden points of their plows into new ground on Frank’s place, James and the boys followed behind, dropping seed into the freshly turned earth. Frank’s two sons and Michael’s Mordecai had not been long in cementing a solid friendship that went beyond their being blood kin. The two fresh arrivals from Tennessee were the only boys Mordecai had had around him near his own age.