new life.
After he’d finished, she was still for a moment. Then she turned in his arms and kissed him. “Thank you for being honest,” she said. “I knew you were holding things back from me. But nothing you’ve said or done could change the way I feel about you. I do have one question.”
“Ask me anything. There’s nothing I haven’t told you.”
“Just this. Have you forgiven Benteen Calder?”
“No. Not yet.”
“Will you?”
“Not until he knows what he did to me—and not until he pays for it.”
“Then I wish you the best, Joe.” She sat up, covering herself with the sheet. “Now it’s time for you to go. If you can get clear of town before first light, you’ll have less chance of being trailed.”
He sat up and swung his legs to the floor. His clothes had fallen in a trail from the front room to the bedside. In the moonlit darkness, he found his drawers and pulled them on. When he stood and turned around, Sarah was out of bed, clad in her nightgown once more. She reached for her robe, which hung from a hook on the wall, and put it on.
“Can I make you some coffee?” she asked as if he were going off on some simple errand.
“I’d better not take the time,” he said, fearing that if he stayed any longer, he wouldn’t have the strength to leave her.
“At least, take some food,” she said, stuffing biscuits, cheese, and a few small apples into an empty flour sack. “There may not be much to eat where you’re going.”
“Thanks.” He finished dressing and took the bag. Knowing he’d have to leave soon, he’d already organized his gear outside and filled the canteen with water.
The pistol lay on the counter where he’d left it last night. “I want you to keep this,” he said. “I can’t imagine Everett wanting to hurt you, but somebody else might get ideas about a pretty woman living out here alone.”
“You’ll need it on the trail,” she said.
“I’ll get another one. Can you shoot?”
“Yes. What I don’t know about this gun, I can learn.” She sounded doubtful, but there was no time to teach her. Maybe just having the gun would be a deterrent. She’d talked about going to Chicago to find some work before the start of medical school in September. This might be a good time for her to leave. But that would have to be her decision.
She stepped into her shoes, walked outside with him, and stood watching while he saddled his horse and loaded his gear, including a bedroll that held his spare clothes. Before mounting up, he turned to her. “I owe you my life, and more. Will you be all right?”
She smiled up at him, the moonlight soft on her face. “I’m a big girl. I’ll be fine. And in case you’re wondering, I’m not sorry—not for anything. Godspeed, Joe.”
“You’re going to be a wonderful doctor, Sarah.” He gave her a quick, hard hug and swung into the saddle. At the gate he looked back one last time, to see her standing where he’d left her, her beautiful face in shadow. He would never stop loving her. But the best thing he could do for her was ride away and never come back.
With a wave of farewell, he nudged the horse to a brisk trot and headed up the road, bound for the vast, open grasslands of Montana.
Two months later
Mounted on his buckskin horse, Joe gazed out over the Montana prairie. As far as the eye could see the land was a waving sea of grass, summer green and high enough to tickle a cow’s belly. Broken with buttes, ravines, and coulees, it stretched all the way to the horizon, where the sky began—a sky so endlessly wide and blue, that it overwhelmed belief.
In the near distance, below the knoll that overlooked the grassy plain, longhorn cattle by the hundreds grazed and fattened after the long, arduous march from Texas. It was Joe’s job to make sure none of the new arrivals strayed from the herd or fell into the hands of cattle thieves.
If cows could think like humans, these animals would probably imagine they’d stumbled into paradise. The idle thought brought a smile to Joe’s lips. He was enjoying his own run of good luck. Two days out of Ogallala, he’d caught up with a shorthanded cattle drive and signed on as a drover. The rest of the way to Montana, through the Platte River Valley, into Wyoming,