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“Luther was funny,” Liz said. “He was doing somersaults in the wash. You should’ve seen him. Grit was sticking all over his shirt. His hair too! He shook himself off like Rounder does after rolling.”

On the porch, Alise crouched low and tucked her head between her knees, eager to try a somersault. Liz gave her push and Alise flopped on her side, giggling. I loosened my sun-hat ribbons, hoping that would ease the headache that had come up from nowhere. Just like the memory that flashed through my mind.

Fourteen summers ago, I suddenly recalled, a squaw and her half-breed boy had showed up at our homestead. She had come looking for something. I tried to remember what it was, but as the memory began to take shape in my mind, I saw Mary coming up the rise. I leaned forward some. There was something new about her. She was all light and airy even though she carried Emma, squirming, on her hip.

“Mary?” I said, when she came up onto the porch.

She didn’t answer. She smiled in a loose kind of way like she had come across a secret that pleased her. Or like she had just been walking with a boy.

“Mary.”

“Ma’am?” There was a faraway look in her dark eyes.

“What’s gotten into you?”

“Nothing.” She kissed Emma on the forehead and giggled as she swung her to the ground.

“What’d you and that boy talk about?”

“Franklin? Oh, nothing much. Just about school, mainly. He’ll be going back in ten days. He goes to the same boarding school as Inez. Or where she used to go. Inez just graduated; smartest girl in her class. She’s so pretty, don’t you think, Mama?” Mary didn’t wait for my answer. “Franklin sleeps in a dormitory there with forty-nine other boys. In bunk beds. So does Luther. I think that would be so much fun, but he says it’s not, not really.”

“How old is he?”

“Fifteen. Just turned in July.”

Isaac would have a fit.

Just then the memory of the squaw and her half-breed boy came back to me. The boy’s face had chilled me. The squaw was swelled up with a baby. Isaac had run them off but they hadn’t gone far. They showed up the next day.

“Mama, I’m hungry,” Alise said.

“Me too, me too,” Liz said, Emma joining in with her, their high-pitched voices making me wince from the pain in my head.

“Enough,” I snapped. The girls stopped, pressing their lips to swallow their whines. I rubbed my forehead. I never wanted to see Mrs. Fills the Pipe again. She had insulted me in my own home; she had brought up ugly memories.

“Mary,” I said. “Go corral the horses.”

She smiled, her eyes still far off. Her mind was on that boy, I thought, that Indian boy. I narrowed my eyes at her. “Enough of that,” I said, startling Mary, bringing her back to herself.

At least empty bellies were a familiar worry.

7

ISAAC

It was the next afternoon when another wagon—coming from the west—stirred up a dust cloud. This time it wasn’t Indians; it was Isaac and John.

It should have been a homecoming to lift my heart. They were bringing water and supplies. But my nerves were in a knot. Mrs. Fills the Pipe and her ugly words about buffalo soldiers kept circling in my mind. So did the squaw what showed up at the homestead years back with her half-breed boy. But most of all, I thought about Isaac. He wasn’t going to like it when he heard about Indians sitting on our porch, and he wasn’t going to like it when he found out that I’d done the inviting.

The girls and Rounder went to the barn to meet Isaac and John, and I followed, not moving near as fast. There, Isaac brought the wagon to a stop and he and John jumped down. “What’d you bring, Daddy?” Alise said. “Candy?” and that started the excitement and the clamor that was always part of a homecoming. Mary and Alise got to guessing about what was in the supply boxes, and I was glad for all the noise. Maybe nobody’d think to mention Mrs. Fills the Pipe’s visit.

Liz clutched my leg. Her eyes were wide and stared at nothing. “Isaac,” I said, my hand going to the top of Liz’s head. John was standing near him. “Did you get water?”

“Buckets of it,” Isaac said, directing his words to Liz. “More than