It was imperative that the crops be planted early enough to mature before frost bit them down. James remembered stories in the family—from before his own time—about his restless father Mordecai, ever itching to find new land, ever moving his wife and children without considering the length of the growing season. Sometimes only Michael’s skill with the rifle had kept the family from going hungry through the long winters. With Michael at home there had always been meat, even when there was no bread.

James was curious about their neighbors but saw little of them during those early weeks, for the neighbors had work of their own to do, work of the same urgency as the Lewises’. Visiting could come later, when the crops were planted and the weeds hoed out. There would be a lull of sorts before the harvest. Not until this lull would James have time to do much about putting up a cabin for himself and his sister Annie. James had always heard it said that one kitchen was too small for two women. He wondered how Petra and Annie kept on good terms with one another in such close quarters. He never saw Annie display the snappish side of her nature to Andrew’s wife; that seemed to be a sisterly trait reserved for James alone. Petra’s English improved considerably through her constant association with Annie, and Annie picked up a smattering of Spanish. James figured it was probably just enough to get her misunderstood and into some kind of trouble if she ever found herself in need of it and nobody like Petra was around to translate.

Hope’s baby came along in due time. As if there weren’t already women enough—Annie and Marie and Petra—plump Mrs. Willet, the Kentuckian, came over to provide midwife services. For a woman who displayed such a sweet and kindly face, it seemed to James that she could give an unreasonable number of orders and find an ungodly heap of things that the men ought to be doing to help. James decided it was time to see more meat hanging in the dog-run, so he went off hunting for a couple of days. When he came back, he found the Frank Lewis family blessed with another boy.

“Texas just keeps on a-growin’,” said Andrew Lewis, smiling. It seemed to James that Andrew smiled a lot. He always had, back in Tennessee. Michael had been the moody one. At times, he still was. The only time James saw him smile was when Marie unexpectedly came into his view, or Annie or the boy Mordecai. James supposed he would be moody, too, if he had lived through what Michael had, seeing his father killed in cold blood and himself being left to die on the prairie.

Times when Michael was around, James ached for conversation with him. But Michael had been taciturn back in Tennessee, in those years after that first disastrous trip to Texas with his father. He was older now, lines starting to show in his face, but that dark, quiet manner still clung as it had in his youth. In the absence of talk, James watched. He tried to do as Michael did, to look as Michael looked.