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But Clarence stared gravely into the lens. Della remembered teasing him about looking funereal instead of festive. Now she realized he’d known the road ahead would be difficult. Their wartime marriage would not be the pleasant, romantic fantasy that Della had envisioned.

What a fool she had been.

She had imagined scenes of welcoming Clarence home on leave with dozens of kisses before she led him into a parlor filled with gaily gowned ladies and dashing officers in immaculate uniforms. Or she’d seen herself traveling in a racing coach to meet him at some point near his regiment for a hurried but romantic rendezvous. During those rare moments when she chided herself for being too idealistic, she had envisioned herself sitting in a circle of brave young wives, sewing bandages, valiantly aiding the war effort.

A week after the photograph was taken, Clarence had returned to his regiment. She had seen him three times during the following year. There were no rendezvous, no gay parties. One by one, her pretty fantasies died and sank beneath the reality of duty and fear and the deprivation and devastation of war.

Della stared at the fading photograph for several minutes. Lord, what was this? Tears? She hadn’t wept in years and years. But she put her head on the table and cried for the solemn young man and the happy young girl who were gone forever.

Chapter 2

Della awoke gasping, her chest tight and her face wet with tears. Usually the dream stayed with her all day, an echo of slumbering grief and pain. Dreading the oppressive hours ahead, she wished she could remain curled in bed, but the animals needed to be fed, her garden tended, the ironing finished. Some days she cursed the drudgery that her life had become. Other days she blessed the chores for giving her a reason to get out of bed.

Sitting up, she tossed her braid over her shoulder, then swung her feet to the floor. Only then did she become aware of the noise of hammering—a homey, good sound that she hadn’t heard in a long while. And suddenly she remembered Mr. Cameron.

Curious, she went to the window and peered toward the barn. He was up on the roof, sleeves rolled to his elbows, nails in his mouth. His hat brim shaded his face from the morning sun, but she didn’t need to see his frown of concentration. The forceful swing of the hammer and the way he spit nails into his palm told her he was focused on the task. She also noticed he wore his gun belt even to repair her old barn roof.

Were the guns a holdover from the war? Or something else? It was none of her business, but the question teased her while she dressed, then brushed out her hair and twisted the heavy mass into a knot on her neck, taking a tad more time and care than she ordinarily did.

Ignoring why she wanted her hair to be especially tidy this morning, she turned her thoughts to breakfast. Her habit was to have a quick cup of coffee and sometimes a bite of leftover supper, but that wouldn’t do for Mr. Cameron. He impressed her as a breakfast sort of man. Oddly, the notion pleased her. Cooking for one person was hardly worth the bother, but the novelty of cooking for two made her eager to stoke up the old black stove.

The scent of frying ham and eggs sizzling in butter brought him down off the roof. Della heard him washing at the rain barrel beneath her kitchen window, and she set a cup of black coffee on the table for him.

“ ’Morning,” he said, stepping through the door. After removing his hat, he looked around for a place to put it, and Della remembered that he’d placed his hat and duster on the floor last night. She’d been too overwrought to think about it at the time, but now she flushed at her breach of manners. He would expect better from Clarence Ward’s wife.

“You can hang your hat on the pegs behind the door.” She watched him scan a child’s sunbonnet and apron hanging beside her shawl and old work hat before she turned back to the stove.
Don’t ask,
she pleaded silently.
Not yet.
“You could hang up your pistols, too.”

“I’ll wear them.” His voice was pleasant, but an undertone announced this wasn’t a subject for discussion.

Della pushed the ham slices to the side of the skillet and fried thick slices of bread in the grease. Men didn’t wear side arms at the table, it simply wasn’t done. She supposed he had his reasons. And she decided she didn’t care. The pleasant singularity of sharing a meal far outweighed etiquette, which hadn’t mattered for years anyway.

She placed a heaping plate before him, then sat down. “Did you get rained on last night?”

“I found a dry spot.”

“I hope you like your eggs hard fried.”

“Yes, ma’am, this is a fine breakfast and I thank you for it.”

“Least I could do, considering what you’ve done for me.” When he looked up with an odd glance, she added, “Bringing me Clarence’s letter, and then patching the barn roof.”

“You could use a hired hand,” he said after a moment.

“I had one for a while, several years ago. But he died, and I didn’t replace him.” She had a monthly income, but the sum didn’t allow for extravagance, and she’d discovered that a hired man ate enough to be an extravagance.

“How did he die?”

What a strange man. He seemed genuinely interested. “Doc Tally guessed it was a heart problem. Frank wasn’t a young man. When he didn’t come up to the house for breakfast, I went looking for him and found him dead in his bed.”

“Lucky man,” Cameron commented, finishing his eggs.

“Really? Dying isn’t my idea of good luck.”

“I meant dying in his bed.”

“Oh.” She thought about the pistols resting against his thighs. Cameron wasn’t a man who expected to die in his bed.

The dream flashed through her mind, images of a hearse seen through a heavy veil. To her surprise, the echo faded, not strong enough to withstand the presence of another person. Today she had someone to think about other than herself and dreams that were more than just dreams. And Lord, that was so good.

The fact was, she hadn’t made an impressive start when she first came to Two Creeks, Texas. The exorbitant post-war prices had necessitated finding work, and the only female job in town had been at the Silver Garter. In the beginning, the townsfolk had shunned her for working to put food in her mouth, but over the years, attitudes had relaxed somewhat.

Still, some people would always believe that she had sold more than drinks at the Silver Garter. But now a few women returned her nods, and a few men tipped their hats to her. Even so, she didn’t have a real friend. No one to talk to when the silence became unbearable. No one who cared about the small details of her life.

As if they’d had the idea at the same time, she and Cameron stood and carried fresh cups of coffee out to the front porch and sat in the wicker chairs facing the road. Away from the smells of cooking, she caught the scent of him. Shaving soap, sunshine, and that peculiar, indefinable male scent that always made her think of horses and sabers, cigars and brandy.

She sensed the solid heat of him close to her, and her stomach ached with gratitude. The simple pleasure of sitting on her porch sharing coffee with another person drove home the deep loneliness that she’d ignored for so long that she seldom noticed it anymore. But now, having Cameron beside her, the loneliness slammed against her ribs. She’d been by herself for so long, starving for another presence, for someone just to be there.

She glanced at him, then ducked her head in embarrassment. How transparent was she? Did he sense what it meant to her to sit beside him? To inhale the scent of a man? To speak if she wished and know that someone listened?

“Did the letter answer your questions?”

“No.” But he already knew that. She drew a breath and gripped her coffee cup. The moment of silent companionship had passed. Frowning, she turned her thoughts to the questions she pondered every day of her life. “Did . . . Clarence speak of me before he died?”

“No, ma’am. Your husband died quickly.”

So there was only the letter. Nothing further. She fixed her gaze on a hawk circling above the prairie and waited while the last vestiges of hope crumbled away. “Did he die bravely?”

“Yes.”

“He didn’t suffer.”

“Not that I saw.”

She’d always imagined she would have dozens of questions for whomever finally came to her. Yet she couldn’t think of anything to ask, now that she knew Cameron couldn’t tell her the one thing she needed to hear—that Clarence had forgiven her. The pain would continue.

“I always knew someone would come about Clarence,” she said softly. The hawk dived toward the short grass, then swooped again toward the sky, its talons empty. “I prayed that would be the end of it. I told God if Clarence had forgiven me, I’d never do another wrong thing in my whole life. I’d never miss another Sunday sermon. I’d never look back at the life I used to have. I told God, if he sent word that Clarence had forgiven me, I’d accept any hardship he wanted to add to the pile.” She looked down at her rough hands clasped around the cup. “Only a fool tries to bargain with God.”

“Your husband didn’t finish writing that letter.”

“You read what he said. He was tired, impatient, angry. But even if Clarence had written that he forgave me for saying such hateful words to a man facing a battlefield, that doesn’t change the fact that a good, decent man died believing he was unloved. Clarence Ward deserved better than that.”

Cameron didn’t look at her, he kept his gaze on the town road. Maybe he feared she would cry, but there were no tears in her eyes. She’d cried last night, and she always awoke from the dream with her eyes wet, but years ago she’d exhausted her lifetime allotment of tears. She figured she didn’t have many left.

“You know one of the worst things? I can’t remember what Clarence looked like.” Seeing him in their wedding photograph had been a shock. She would have sworn he was taller and that his face was square instead of round. Had his eyes crinkled when he smiled? What had his voice sounded like? For the life of her, she could no longer remember. The shame of it made her turn her face away.

“It’s been a long time,” Cameron said after a while.

“Some days it feels like yesterday.” She guessed it was the same for him. The war was still with Mr. Cameron, there in his wary gaze and hard, tight mouth, in the manner in which he sat his horse, in the way he seemed always to be listening and watching.

“Two men are riding this direction,” he said abruptly, standing and narrowing his eyes toward town.

There it was, proof of what she’d been thinking. Shading her eyes from the morning glare, she squinted, finally spotting a distant plume of dust. It would have been another five or ten minutes before she might have noticed if he hadn’t pointed it out. “How can you possibly know it’s two men?”

“Are you expecting anyone?”

The question made her smile. “No one comes out here. Why would they?”

He nodded, then went inside for his hat, returning with the old shotgun she kept behind the door. “Do you know how to use this?”

“Yes.” She frowned at the weapon, trying to remember how many years had passed since she had last fired it. She lifted her head. “Who are
you
expecting?”

A great weariness settled in his eyes and deepened the lines across his forehead. “No one. But they come anyway.” He shrugged and touched the butts of the pistols at his hips. “Stay on the porch,” he said over his shoulder, heading down the steps, “while I see if this is trouble.”

Not knowing what to expect, Della stood at the porch rail, cradling the shotgun. A sigh of relief dropped her shoulders when she recognized the two men riding down her driveway. “It’s just Hank Marley and Bill Weston,” she called. “About as threatening as prairie dogs.” Who had Cameron thought it was?

Cameron nodded, keeping his gaze on the men as they reined and swung to the ground. “Stop right there. Place your weapons on the ground.”

“It’s really him! That’s James Cameron!”

“We don’t have no weapons, Mr. Cameron.”

Hank Marley bobbed his head. “We heard you were in town, asking where Miz Ward lived. We came out to meet you so’s someday we can tell our children that we shook your hand.”

“Turn around slowly.” Cameron kept his palm on the butt of his right pistol and narrowed his eyes into slits, staring hard as they turned for his inspection.

Curious, Della set aside the shotgun and walked into the yard. Hank Marley and Bill Weston glanced at her and nodded, but she held no more interest for them than if she’d been a scarecrow. They studied Cameron as if memorizing his face, his expression, the way he stood with his boots braced and his hands near his guns.

“Is it true what that book said about the shoot-out in Dodge City?”

“Did you really bring down Kid Krider with one shot?”

Excitement raised their voices and the questions tumbled one after another. “Did you catch the Martin gang in Deadwood before you started bounty hunting, or was that after?” “What’s your preference, sheriffing or bounty hunting?” “Was you nervous at all when you faced down the Colt brothers in Laramie?”

Della stared, flabbergasted, as it dawned on her that James Cameron was famous. And apparently not comfortable with fame. He stood stiffly through the barrage of questions, silent, his face tight and his eyes chilly and distant. When Hank Marley and Bill Weston ran out of questions that weren’t receiving answers, Cameron thrust his hand forward, gripped their palms, then turned without a word and strode toward the barn.