However, it was no cowboy in the yard, but a young woman who was wrestling with a wet bedsheet. She was trying to get it onto a makeshift clothesline strung between the back corner of the shack and the outhouse. The strong wind was hampering her effort, but she was putting up a fight.
He said, “The sheet is winning.”
Four
At the sound of his voice, she spun around, looking at him wide-eyed, her hand slapping against her chest where her breath seemed to have become trapped.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.” Thatcher took off his hat.
She recovered enough to close her mouth. In the process of hastily gathering up the flapping sheet, a corner of it dragged through the dirt, which made her frown. She dropped the sheet back into a cauldron of water, obviously her wash pot. As she wiped her wet palms on the skirt of her dress, she looked beyond him toward the road.
Coming back to him, she said, “Who are you?”
“My name’s Thatcher Hutton.”
“How’d you get here?”
“Train.”
“There’s no depot within miles of here. Why was the train stopped?”
“It wasn’t. I jumped off.”
Knowing what that implied about him, she raised her hand and shaded her eyes against the sun as she regarded him with even more wariness. “Out in the middle of nowhere?”
“It was the lesser of two evils.”
“What was the other one?”
“The men sharing the boxcar with me bore a grudge.”
The admission didn’t earn him her favor. “So I see.” She looked pointedly at the goose egg on his temple and his bandaged hand. She squared her shoulders and motioned him toward the road. “Well, you lived to tell of it. Get on now.”
“I’ve walked several miles, a
nd your place here is the first sign of civilization I’ve seen. What’s the nearest town?”
“Foley.”
He’d heard of it, but had never been there. But he hadn’t been much of anywhere before the war. “How far is it?”
“Five miles.”
Tapping his hat against his leg, he glanced over his shoulder at the road. “Five, huh?”
“At least.”
“I don’t suppose you’d be going that way any time soon.” He glanced toward the vehicles.
“No. Maybe you should’ve stayed on the train.”
“No, I needed to jump off.”
“How many of them were there?”
“In the boxcar? Three.”
“How did you get crosswise with them?”