“How do you know what you say you know?”

“It ain't always dicks and slits, Tom. It don't work that way all the time.”

Tom took her by the arm and yanked her to him. “You tell me how you know about that.”

Ola May smiled. “You're so damned smart, you figure it out.”

He grabbed and yanked again, harder, pulling her off her feet and into him so her face was right up against his. “Goddamn it, Ola. If you're one of them, I will purely kill you, just to save the Old Man the trouble of doing it himself. I mean that. You can count on it.”

“You afraid I'm going to spoil the good Power name?” Ola laughed, though he could see the fear in her eyes as well.

“I mean it, Ola. This ain't no fooling around. You get those notions out of your head. It would be hard to do worse than Kane Wootan, but I believe you may have just found the way. You get those thoughts out of your head.”

“It ain't my head they're in, brother man.”

They continued on, not speaking of the incident. Ola went with Tom to the rodeos each week, helping with the money and liquor. In the day, she outworked most men, and at night, after the rodeo, she outdanced everyone else. There was no letup on Kane Wootan as far as Tom could tell, but there was always a line of cowboys waiting to dance with her, and when she went off into the corners with the other girls, the laughter got louder and, somehow, warmer.

Tom kept his eye on her. She moved around, unlike the unpopular girls, who were always nailed to the floor in some dark corner, hoping some cowboy, drunk or hapless enough, would seek them out and turn their lives around. Ola would be at the punch bowl one moment, gone the next. Then she would reappear in some other part of the building.

Tom took Sallie Reynolds by the arm as she came back into the barn.

“Why, Tom Power, are you looking to dance with me?”

“What was you doing out there with my sister?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“What was you doing with my sister?” He repeated the question, pausing and stressing each word, putting the greatest stress on “sister.”

“I don't believe that's any of your business, Thomas Power.”

He moved up on her, standing over her, though he was, himself, a short man. “You tell me.”

“All right. We were doing what women do, and that's private.”

“You don't need no help, doing that.”

“Well, Mr. Power. You go out and squat down on a rattlesnake.” She started to turn away but turned back to him. “Please.” She turned again and was gone.

What right did Ola May have, he wanted to know. What right?

CHAPTER TWELVE

1918