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I kept the children home from school and we got through the day somehow, all of us burdened by the sad blanket of quiet that settled over the house. Over and over, the children asked, “Why? Why’d Daddy leave?” and all I could say was, “The land. He’s doing it to keep the land.”

The next morning, my eyes gritty from not sleeping, I packed three lunches and gathered my cloth handbag. In our bedroom, I took out Isaac’s gold watch from the top dresser drawer. It had stopped; he must have forgotten to wind it before he left. I held it in my palm. Isaac always took it to town when he had business, but not this time. Likely he thought it might get stolen. I put it back in the drawer.

I told the children that I had business in town and that everybody was to mind Mary. “Mama!” they all said, their voices like howls. “What about school?” Putting on my coat, I told them to hush, I’d be back before dark and I expected all their chores to be done when I got home.

I walked down the rise, knowing my children were calling me, their scared faces pressed against the window. I had to do this, I told myself as I picked my way around the prairie-dog holes. The sun had come out and was melting the snow not caught up in drifts. Thin streams of water ran down the rise; at the bottom, it stood inches deep. Holding my coat high, I walked through the cold melt, my boots turning dark. Come night, I knew, the water would freeze, making a thick layer of ice. I walked up the next rise, slipping some in the wet snow, and then I was at the dugout.

I knocked at the door, calling to Manny Franks, the yellow-haired hired hand. He opened it. His suspenders hung down at his sides. Manny Franks had been eating his breakfast; he held a piece of bread. I stood in the doorway. “That other boy what helped with the cattle drive,” I said. “Do you know if he’s found work?”

“Don’t know,” Manny Franks said. “Last I heard, he was cleaning stalls at the livery. In Interior.”

“All right, then. Let’s find him.”

He grinned, showing a chipped front tooth. Likely the prospect of a friend’s company made him glad. Or maybe he was happy he wouldn’t be the only white boy working the DuPree place. He said, “Want me to hitch up the wagon?”

“Yes.”

Me and him headed to town that sunny morning, both of us sitting on the wagon’s buckboard, a blanket up to my chin. We were hardly on our way when I asked him if he knew the price of a train ticket from Interior to Chicago. His light-colored eyebrows raised, he gave me a surprised look.

“Do you?” I snapped. He told me and then said, “That’s why I hop freight cars.”

After that, neither of us had anything to say. Manny Franks, I supposed, had his own thoughts. As for me, I worked at the price of six tickets, doing the arithmetic in my head, wishing for a piece of paper so I could be sure. Then I thought about Isaac and how I carried hard feelings against him. Yet at the same time, I missed him so bad that it felt like somebody had shot a ragged hole through my heart. Just breathing hurt.

In town, we found Pete Klegberg in the alley behind the livery, drawing hard on a cigarette. He was an easy hire—ranching jobs were hard to come by, and my promise that Isaac would pay him in the spring was good enough.

That settled, there was one more thing to do in town. I told the boys to wait with the wagon, I wouldn’t be long. They nodded, standing in a patch of sun as they leaned against the wagon, short cigarettes hanging from the corners of their mouths.

I left those two white boys, knowing they were watching me as I walked down to the other end of the street. Here and there, horses were hitched to posts and there was a black automobile, mud-splattered, in front of the bank. As curious as that was, I believed there were faces in every window of every building and that it was me they were looking at. I was glad for my hat with its wide brim; it covered most of my face. It covered, I hoped, my shame.

Near the end of the street, close to the train depot, I stopped at the only two-story building