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meat in his mouth. Wil was gone.
    A bloody trail led Cedar to the carcass of a wolf, whose throat had been torn out.
    He had killed his own brother.
    The fever lasted a full week. When he finally came to, he was miles away to the west, just outside a small town. He begged clothing and supplies from a Mormon family, who took him in and nursed him to health. Since he was more recently out of the universities and handy with matics, he repaired their boiler to repay the debt. Then he kept walking west, putting his past behind him.
    The jingle of a bridle and the sound of hooves brought Cedar back to himself, and his current state of nakedness. He dressed quickly, trousers and shirt dark enough that the dried blood on his hands would not visibly stain them. He dipped a second handkerchief in the bucket, wiped his face, jaw, and neck, and washed his hands. Then he rolled the handkerchief and tied it around his head against the cut.
    He didn’t know who was riding past, but the only people who came this far into the forest were looking to either end trouble or start it.
    He pushed his feet into socks and boots, lifted his hat from the hook. He left his goggles on the hook, and settled his hat over the kerchief on his head. Near the mantel he hesitated, and finally decided to tuck the watch into his pocket. He didn’t want it out of his sight.
    Then he took up his holster and gun, not a tinkered pistol, but a crystal-sighted Walker, gauged to the goggles he usually wore, and modified by his own hand for a faster reload. He strapped on the gun and holster and unbolted the door.
    The door had gotten the worst of the night, claw marks gouged knuckle deep all the way up to eye level. Something else he’d need to repair.
    Cedar stepped outside into the cool morning air that hung heavy with the honey spice of pines and pollen.
    A gray saddle mule made its way through the buzz and brush of late summer. On top of the mule rode a yellow-haired, light-skinned woman. Pretty. No, more than that, stunning.
    His heart skipped a beat at the sight of her and he felt as if a string had been plucked deep inside his chest, shaking off the ice that had numbed him for so long. Though it had been years since his marriage, and this woman did not resemble his wife, Catherine, an unexpected longing filled him.
    She was beautiful. And he found he could not bring himself to look away from her.
    Her eyes were deep brown, her face fine-boned and sweet. She wore a simple straw hat, with a sage-colored ribbon wrapped round it to match her paisley dress, as if for all the world she was out to enjoy a morning ride.
    But as she drew nearer, there was no mistaking the anger that set her lips in a hard line. No mistaking the flush to her cheeks that looked more from crying than the meager heat of morning.
    He didn’t recognize her, which surprised him. He thought he knew all the people in town.
    “Mr. Cedar Hunt?” she called out from a short distance.
    He blinked hard to end the staring he’d been doing, then walked a bit away from the door into sunlight.
    “Yes, ma’am.” He tipped his hat and wished he hadn’t. The band scraped the kerchief and got the cut bleeding again. “And who do I have the pleasure to be addressing?”
    She pulled back on the reins and stopped the mule. Not too close, which said a lot. She was a cautious woman. She did not dismount to his level. He would bet she had a gun hidden in her sleeve.
    Beautiful and smart.
    “My name is Mrs. Jeb Lindson.” She tipped her chin up, as if admitting such a thing usually brought on a fight.
    Jeb Lindson. The Negro who kept to himself out a ways on the southeast side of town. Mr. Lindson was a farmer and sometimes hired himself out to work other plots of land. Cedar recalled he was a strong man, and didn’t complain about hard labor, nor people’s manners toward him, so long as it brought him a coin or a quart of fresh milk.
    Cedar had done his share of roaming the area, and he’d seen the