Part 6
Wade stayed beside her until the trembling eased. Then he guided her back onto the deep bedding and checked the dressing.
“She’s standing,” Noah said, as though Wade might have missed it.
“I saw.”
Beyond the window, fire from the ridge colored the low clouds. Wade looked at it only once. He had driven the men from their camp, but he had also left Noah with a dying stove and a wounded horse. When he went to fetch wood, he carried enough to fill the box twice over.
By morning, Lark was resting. The fresh bleeding had stopped, and her breaths came deeper. Noah fell asleep with his hand beside her muzzle.
Wade washed in a basin near the door. The water turned cloudy around his raw knuckles. He scrubbed a little too hard, then stopped and stood with both hands submerged until the sting eased.
Outside lay the trail he and Tuck had made to the ridge and back.
He spent the day on repairs. The gate needed a new brace. Snow had piled on the barn roof. A porch board had split beneath him during the attack, and one cabin window needed covering. He worked where he could see the barn door.
Noah scarcely spoke. When Wade brought him food, he ate sitting beside Lark. When the mare shifted, he put his bowl aside at once.
Late in the afternoon, sunlight reached the barn floor. Lark lifted her head into it.
“She’s better,” Noah said.
Wade crouched beside him. “She’s got plenty left in her.”
“Will those men come back?”
Wade picked a strand of hay from the boy’s sleeve.
“They might.”
Noah looked at the new brace on the door.
“We’ll be watching,” Wade said.
Denise arrived near supper with a thermos and a folder. She inspected the porch post, ran a finger beside a bullet scar, and came inside without her usual greeting.
Wade put a cup in front of her.
She opened the folder and slid out a photograph.
He recognized the man before he read the name.
Russell Voss had hired him for a cattle drive years earlier. Wade remembered a clean coat, polished boots, and a man who’d let somebody else answer every unpleasant question.
“Voss?”
“Private buyer out of Idaho,” Denise said. “He’s organizing the captures. The reports we’re getting tie the horses to overseas testing labs.”
Wade sat down.
“The men at your fence were part of his supply crew,” she continued. “And the camp you hit last night was one of his transfer stops.”
“He’ll send more.”
“Maybe. The state and the bureau have what I can give them now.”
She watched him across the table.
“You can’t raise a boy inside a gunfight, Wade.”
“I’m trying to get him to the other side of one.”
“Then give me a chance to help you do that. No more going up there alone.”
He turned his cup slowly between his hands.
“You’ve always had a stubborn streak,” Denise said. “I’d rather not have to put that in a report about your death.”
Outside, Lark had come to the sheltered opening of her stall. Her head was raised, listening to Noah in the barn.
Wade looked back at Denise. “I’m not letting them take either one.”
She closed the folder, leaving the photograph on the table.
That night, he checked Lark before going to bed. She was warm beneath his palm. When he stepped away, she moved after him, pressing her neck lightly against his hand.
“Rest,” he said. “We’ve got chores tomorrow.”
In the cabin, Noah was sitting up on the cot.
“Can’t sleep?” Wade asked.
The boy shook his head.
Wade sat on the edge, careful not to crowd him.
“It’s quiet tonight.”
“That’s why.” Noah picked at the quilt stitching. “When it’s windy, I can almost hear my mama humming.”
“The tune you sang to Lark?”
He nodded. “She did it when storms came. Said prayers could go farther on the wind.”
Wade drew the quilt over the boy’s knees.
“Do you think she can hear me?” Noah asked.
Wade waited until he could trust his voice.
“Yes.”
Noah lay down. Wade stayed until his fingers relaxed their hold on the quilt, then lowered the lamp wick.
The weeks that followed took the hard edges off the snowdrifts. By March, water was running beneath the crust beside the barn, and Wade could hear it when he stopped hammering.
He was replacing the last damaged porch board when a purple flower opened near the fence. He noticed it because Noah had ringed it with pebbles to keep it from being stepped on.
Lark still favored her shoulder, but her coat had begun to lie smooth again. Each morning she followed Noah around the paddock while he talked. He told her his dreams, described things he wanted to build, and explained why the water bucket ought to live at the other end of the fence.
Wade moved the bucket.
Denise came once a week with mail and whatever news she could get. Voss’s crew had scattered after the fire. The bureau was investigating. There were forms, statements, and long stretches in which nobody called back.
One evening she found Wade painting a board across two sawhorses.
“Larkara,” she read. “That a place or a disease?”
“A place, if the paint dries.”
Beneath the name, he was lettering a smaller line: There’s room for you.
Denise stood beside him. “You taking in horses now?”
“Got stalls doing nothing.”
“And land.”
He dipped the brush. “That too.”
Laughter came through the open cabin window. Noah was trying to whistle, and every attempt was worse than the last. Lark answered from the paddock.
Denise looked toward the sound.
“You know you don’t get to call yourself a man who lives alone anymore.”
Wade set the brush across the paint tin. “I’m aware.”
She smiled into her coffee.
By the middle of April, she had spread the word. One afternoon, Wade heard a trailer coming slowly up the drive. Noah ran to open the gate while Lark stood beside the rebuilt corral.
Three injured horses and a frightened mule stepped down into the yard…
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