extent of the damage by the paleness of Daniel's face. He was in pain, she could see that. But the leg still seemed to be straight.
"It's fine. I know it's fine. I just bruised myself a little. I'm going to walk again. I'm going to ask the doc if I can take some of these bandages off. It will be easier to exercise if I'm not all wrapped up."
Daniel shifted his weight against the pillow and leaned over to look at his offending leg. He'd been wearing the same set of trousers for three weeks now rather than slit all his clothes up the side to accommodate the bandages, and this pair were looking worn.
Tyler came in behind Evie, holding Jose like a sack of grain beneath one arm. The six-year-old kicked and squirmed, but Tyler acted as if he weren't there. "Daniel's made of tough stuff. He'll survive if you'll get a little food into him. I managed to keep an eye on this nest of rattlesnakes, but I'm not getting near that stove of yours."
Jose squealed at being called a rattlesnake and started throwing punches, but Tyler upended him by the ankles and threatened to bounce him off the floor. The boy laughed with delight.
Evie watched this play dubiously. Tyler was wearing buckskins and boots, but his shirt was the white linen of a gentleman and not a cowboy. Still, he wasn't wearing the ruffles and waistcoat of the gambler, and she had never seen him in anything else before. And it wasn't just the clothes that were different. Could this be the same Tyler who had backed out and practically run when he'd returned to the hotel to find the children singing?
"What are you doing here?" she asked suspiciously as she accepted Daniel's reassurances and returned to the front room to fix dinner without Carmen's experienced aid.
"I've been asking myself that for the past hour. The question is, where have you been for all that time?' Tyler had dropped Jose, and the two boys wrestled on the floor at his feet. Maria toddled to the sewing basket by the fireplace, and began pulling out thread and needles to scatter them across the hearth.
Tyler appeared untouched by the confusion. He stood beside Evie, hands on hips, waiting for an explanation she didn't feel prepared to give. She slapped a bowl at his middle so he had to grab it, then poured in some cornmeal.
"If you're going to be underfoot while I'm fixing diner, you'll have to help. Add milk until it gets thick."
Tyler stared at the bowl as if it were a pig that had sprouted wings. Evie ignored his expression and turned back to the stove to add onions to the beans that had been soaking all day.
Refusing to be intimidated, Tyler set the bowl on the dry sink and began adding buttermilk from the pitcher. "What do I do with it now?"
"Mush it around so everything's moist, throw in a little sugar, some of that bacon grease in the can over there, and anything else that seems good." Evie wiped the onion juice off her hands onto her apron and reached for some of the dried chili peppers hanging from the shelf.
"Aren't you supposed to measure these things?" Tyler asked, looking at the sugar and grease with bafflement.
"Do you win at poker by counting cards or watching people's faces?" she asked, seemingly irrelevantly.
"I've spent years watching people's faces. I've never poked at a bowl of cornmeal before." Grimacing, Tyler threw in a lump of grease and a spoonful of sugar."
Throwing in the chopped peppers, Evie removed the bowl from his hands. "Then go entertain the children or keep Daniel company."
"All I wanted to know is where you've been." Tyler stepped out of her way, but not so far that she couldn't hear him.
"And all I wanted to know is why you're here," she replied. "Stalemate. Now scat. I've got to keep my eye on this stove."
She was in a flurry of motion, and Tyler stood back to admire the choreography. She was in one of her schoolteacher gowns today: no bustle, no flounce, no crinoline. The simple-figured cotton swirled around her ankles as she moved from stove to table to sink to cabinet. She sent Manuel out to bring in vegetables from the cellar and Jose to fetch a pail of water.
Tyler remembered the kitchen back home with black slaves singing and moving about, and his mother occasionally testing a dish and instructing the young girls