The springhouse crouched in a copse of scrub oaks at the far end of the yard, but nothing was visible for all the branches, save a glimpse of light-stippled tin Nora supposed must be the roof, and a sliver of door, which jawed a little on its hinges, first this way, then that, clattering faintly where it slapped back off the jamb.
“What is it?”
“I don’t know, ma’am. Something’s stuck the door.”
“Well is it man or”—she veered at the last possible moment—“animal?”
But it was too late. “Beast,” Toby said. He had gone very still in the tangle of Josie’s arms, his whole mien more reminiscent of some thunderstruck little dime-novel urchin than a real child now, all of which deepened Nora’s unease into irritation.
“Between the pair of you,” she said, “we might as well be living on Herschel’s moon.”
She seized the shotgun from behind the kitchen door and crossed the yard, sunblind. Two agonizing courses of sweat had begun to race down her ribs. She could feel each distinctly, and really smell herself besides, a needless reminder of how long this entire household had gone unlaundered.
The springhouse was a hopeless early construction: an adobe half-dome that had supported a succession of failing roofs before Emmett finally settled on this ill-fitted tin sheeting that all but defeated the structure’s purpose. The door, which came into view as she rounded the huerta, was indeed open. There was something lodged in the jamb. She couldn’t quite make it out. But from here, it looked like a boot.
“Hullo?” She cocked the hammer. “Come out slow, you’re stood down.”
It would turn out to be a man, of course. Trespassers never failed to be. Women—even the Indian ones—were good enough to come by the front door. Roughnecks, on the other hand, were only ever surprised in transgression: sleeping in the barn loft, or breaking for the woods with an armful of eggs or—once—forcibly accosting one of Nora’s sheep. Time and time again, she had managed to keep her voice firm and her aim steady, knowing all the while that she was more afraid of these bummers than they were of her—a truth made glaring on the single occasion of Rob’s encountering one such drifter. A smallish man with a mustache so dirty it appeared almost green, he had emerged from the wreckage of their henhouse and stood staring at Nora with sullen, impassive eyes, and then advanced as though the shotgun she pointed at him were a fistful of flowers. But when Rob burst, hollering, from somewhere behind her, how that ugly little bastard had lit out! She’d never seen a fella so small take such bounding strides.
This, however, was different. Rob was not here. He was in town. He would not be putting in a sudden, timely appearance to rout this sonbitch. It was just herself now, and the gun—which she prayed had not been discharged since she’d last checked it—and the owner of whatever footwear her springhouse door was thumping against.
She tried again. “You’ll find nothing to rob here.” And then: “I can fix you a meal if you’ll only come out.”
Desma would be tickled by this ruse. Town stories had it that a dusty badman had shambled in off the flats one roasting afternoon and surprised Desma in the act of washing her linens. The roughneck was ball-jointed and thin as a cur, and looked like whatever had happened to him out there in the desert had been a hell of his own making. So when he fell to his knees and begged for a drink, Desma just said, “Hold up—can’t you see I’m on my way through something? You just wait one goddamn minute while I finish what I’m doing, mister, and then you’ll have my attention.” And went right on slapping her sheets against the washboard until the roughneck slumped over and died. “It weren’t my intent to kill him,” was all she had to say in the aftermath, “but I only had that last bit of water I needed to finish up the washing, and he didn’t frankly look like the caliber of man you’d waste spit on.”
But even the promise of sustenance did not prompt this enigmatic obstruction to budge from the springhouse door. Minutes went by. Nora shielded her eyes and looked back toward the porch. Josie still had her son strangleheld in the shade.
There was nothing left to do but go forward. A few