“That explains quiet country,” Mara said.
“Not a quiet woman.”
“No.”
The answer came without argument.
“That part was mine to get wrong.”
Mr.
Pike suddenly found the mail ledger fascinating.
Mara studied Abel more carefully.
He was not charming.
He did not seem to know how to perform charm.
His coat was plain, his beard needed trimming, and there was dust in the seam of one boot.
He spoke like a man stacking stones: slowly, placing each word where he meant to leave it.
That could still be a performance.
She had met quiet liars too.
“What happens,” Mara asked, “if I embarrass you?”
One of the women near the ticket window inhaled sharply.
Abel considered the question.
“Depends.”
“On what?”
“Whether I deserved it.”
The little boy by the water barrel laughed before his mother silenced him.
Mara nearly smiled.
Nearly.
She pointed toward her carpetbag.
“Pick that up.”
Abel bent immediately, then stopped before touching the handle.
His hand hovered above it.
“You asking me to carry it?”
Mara looked at his hand, then his face.
“Yes.”
Only then did he lift the bag.
It looked absurdly small in his grip.
That tiny hesitation told Mara more than anything he had said.
Men who believed they owned a woman rarely asked permission to touch what belonged to her.
She took the advertisement from the ledger, folded it along its old crease, and returned it to her satchel.
Mr.
Pike glanced at the word Abel had written beneath the strike-through.
“Honest wife,” he muttered.
Mara snapped the satchel shut.
“No,” she said.
“Just honest.”
Abel’s beard moved with the beginning of a smile.
Outside the depot, his wagon waited under the punishing Colorado sun.
Two sturdy horses stood in the traces.
Mara stared beyond them toward the dark rise of the mountains.
Wolfjaw Mountain seemed farther away now that she had reached the town beneath it.
Forty miles.
Forty miles from the next train.
Forty miles from witnesses.
That thought cooled whatever relief she had begun to feel.
Abel placed her carpetbag carefully in the wagon bed.
Mara kept the satchel with her.
He noticed.
He did not ask why.
Before climbing onto the wagon seat, Abel said, “There’s another train east tomorrow.”
Mara looked at him.
