“I reckon I’ll go in. Finis told me to watch him.”

She led James into the bedroom side of the double cabin. It was a Spartan hovel to say the best for it. The fireplace at the east end was about as crudely put together as James had ever seen. He thought it a wonder that the cabin hadn’t burned. The furniture was rough and splintery, homemade by careless hands. The floor was of dirt. James could remember living in a dirt-floored cabin when he was small, but at least his mother swept it every day. This one showed no experience with a broom.

The woman motioned him toward a lopsided bed that was only a rawhide-tied timber frame and a cornshuck mattress. “Have yourself a sit-down. Let’s get that rope off of you and see what you look like.”

He saw two more children, one a boy of about two or so, the other a baby lying asleep in a crib.

It seemed to him that Nelly rubbed her hands against him a lot in the process of removing the rawhide rope. She leaned so near that he could smell her breath and feel the warmth that emanated from her large body. She said, “Ain’t no fat on your ribs at all. You’re thinner’n a hard-wintered pony.” When the rope all lay on the packed dirt floor she pulled his cotton shirt up to just beneath his armpits. She looked at him a minute, and he was not sure he liked what he saw in her eyes. It was hunger, of a sort.

She said, “You kind of put me in mind of Isaac. He never was one for no extra weight neither. I always kind of liked a man that was all muscle.” She rubbed her hand over his chest and his rib cage, ranging far beyond just the spot torn and angry from the bullet. She pushed gently against the hurt rib. He sucked in a lungful of air, letting it hiss between his teeth.

She said, “That hurt, didn’t it? Rib ain’t busted in two, but I don’t doubt that it’s cracked.” She cleansed the wound with corn whiskey, which made James want to climb the log wall for a minute until the fire burned down.

Luke protested, “That’s our drinkin’ whiskey.”

She tossed him the jug. “Then drink.” He did, a long double swallow, and then another, and a third after that.

Nelly took her time washing the area around the wound, her hands moving slowly, caressing. She dried him with a piece of cloth, taking her time about that, too. From a box she took more homespun cotton cloth and bound James’s ribs. The cloth was more comfortable than the rawhide rope had been. But her hands worried him. They moved up above the binding, and down to his leg where he had not been hurt. James had not had much experience with women, but it was clear to him that her interest went beyond any nursing instinct. He was not sure how to respond.