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“About four months.” Caleb saw an opening. “My mother-in-law is Sara Wilson. Maybe you know her.”

“Know her? I trained her. I thought her daughter worked at the hospital, though.”

“That’s Kate. My wife is Pim.”

He thought for a moment. “I don’t remember a Pim. Oh, the mute.” He shook his head sadly. “The poor thing. Nice of you, to marry her.”

Caleb had heard statements like this before. “I’m sure she thinks it’s the other way around.”

“On the other hand, who wouldn’t want a wife who couldn’t talk? I can barely put two thoughts together around here.”

Caleb just looked at him.

“Well,” Elacqua said, and cleared his throat, “I can pay a call if she’d like, just to see how things are going.”

At the door, Caleb remembered Pim’s letter. He asked Elacqua if he would mind posting it for him when the office opened.

“I can try. Those people are never there.”

“I was wondering about that,” Caleb said. “The town seems kind of empty.”

“I didn’t notice.” He frowned doubtfully. “Could be the mountain lion, I guess. That happens out here.”

“Has anyone been attacked?”

“Not that I’ve heard, just livestock. With the bounty, a lot of folks are out looking. Stupid, if you ask me. Those things are nasty.”

Caleb rode out of town. At least he’d tried to post the letter. As for Elacqua, he seriously doubted Pim would want anything to do with the man. The mountain lion didn’t concern him unduly. It was simply the price one paid for life on the frontier. Still, he would tell Pim not to take Theo to the river for a while. The two of them should stay near the house until the matter was resolved.

They ate their supper and went to bed. Rain was falling, making a peaceful pattering on the roof. In the middle of the night, Caleb awoke to a sharp cry. For a terrifying second he thought something had happened to Theo, but then the sound came again, from outside. It was fear he was hearing—fear and mortal pain. An animal was dying.

—

In the morning he searched the brush behind the house. He came to an area of broken branches; tufts of short, stiff hair, tacky with blood, were spread over the ground. He thought it might have been a raccoon. He scanned the area for tracks, but the rain had washed them away.

The next day he walked over the ridge to the Tatums’. Their operation was much larger than his own, with a good-sized barn and a house with a standing-seam metal roof. Boxes of bluebonnets hung beneath the front windows. Dorien Tatum greeted him at the door, a plump-cheeked woman with gray hair in a bun; she directed him to the far edge of the property, where her husband was clearing brush.

“A mountain lion, you say?” Phil removed his hat to mop his brow in the heat.

“That’s the word in town.”

“We’ve had ’em before. Long gone by now, I’d guess. They’re restless sons of bitches.”

“I thought so, too. Probably it’s nothing.”

“I’ll keep a lookout, though. Thank your wife for the johnnycake, won’t you? Dory really enjoyed her visit. Those two were writing messages to each other for hours.”

Caleb made to leave, then stopped. “What’s it usually like in town?”

Tatum was drinking from a canteen. “What you mean?”

“Well, it was pretty quiet. It seemed odd, in the middle of the day.” Now that he’d said it, he felt a little silly. “The town office was shut, the farrier, too. I was hoping to get one of the horses reshod.”

“Folks are usually around. Maybe Juno’s taken sick.” Juno Brand was the farrier.

“Maybe that’s it.”

Phil smiled through his beard. “Go round in a day or two. I bet you’ll find him. But you get hard up for something, you let us know.”

—

Caleb had decided not to tell Pim about what he’d found in the woods; there seemed no good reason to alarm her, and a dead raccoon meant nothing. But that night as they were cleaning up the dishes, he repeated his request that she and Theo stay close to the house.

You worry too much, she signed.

Sorry.

Don’t be. She turned at the sink to surprise him with a lingering kiss. It’s one of the reasons I love you.

He wagged his eyebrows cornily. Does this mean what I think it does?

Let me get Theo down first.

But there was no need. The boy was already asleep.

* * *

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