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more likely to get it that way.”
    Missy clapped her hands together and her brown eyes flashed. “I want a finger ring, like Mabel Durant!” she exclaimed.
    “Missy, that’s a little rich for a preacher’s daughter,” her father gently chided.
    “You against women wearing jewelry, Reverend?” Chris inquired.
    “Well, I was a Quaker for quite a spell, and none of the women wore any jewelry—except wedding rings, of course—but I don’t see any harm in it myself. ‘All things in moderation,’ the Bible says, but...”
    Embarrassed, the minister dropped his gaze, and at once both his guests realized that Greene was not battling with his conscience but with his empty pockets. Chris said quickly, “Well, I’ll come to your party, Missy, and you can bet I’ll have some sort of pretty for you—can’t promise what, though.”
    “Goody!” Missy jumped up. “Remember, you promised to take me over to see the baby coon that Emily’s pa cotched her.”
    He got up and the two went outside, the child reaching up to hold on to his hand as they picked their way along the muddy road. Watching them disappear, Knox shook his head. “Strange the way he takes to that child. He never was much with kids, Chris wasn’t. ’Course, he always did like the girls...”
    “Did he—ever have a steady girl?” Caroline asked, a studied look of indifference on her face. She stopped cleaning up the table long enough to look out the window at the pair.
    “Oh, girls always liked him,” Knox shrugged. “He just went from one to another—like a bee buzzin’ from flower to flower.”
    “What do you think he’ll do—when he gets well, I mean?”
    “He’s not going to get well if he doesn’t quit drinking,” her mother murmured quietly.
    Knox turned to Rev. Greene. “You said Father wanted me to come home, but I can’t leave Chris here.”
    “Looks like you’ll have to. Nathan was pretty strong about it. But we’ll look after Christmas the best we can.”
    Knox said no more, but he went around with a frown all morning as he helped Dan with the chores. When Chris came back with Missy and went up to his room to rest, Knox finished milking the cow and climbed to the loft. “Father says I’ve got to come home,” he told him.
    “Been expecting it, Knox.”
    “I can’t do it, Chris!”
    “You can’t spend the rest of your life nursing me.”
    “But—”
    “Look—” Chris broke off when a coughing fit doubled him up; the hacking stopped only after Knox gave him a glass of water. “Knox, you see what’s going on. I’m not going to get any better.”
    That very thought had haunted the younger man, but he had pushed it out of his mind. Shaking his head, he argued heatedly, “Shut up, Christmas! You ain’t going to die!”
    “We all are.” A cynical smile touched the lips of Chris, and he looked at Knox with a knowing look on his thin face. “That prison did me in, I reckon. I won’t go home as an invalid, Knox. And I won’t get better, even if you stay. Go home—I don’t want you around to watch me die.”
    Knox shook his head stubbornly, but the more he argued the more adamant Chris became. Finally Knox left and went downstairs. Dan was gone; anyway, there was no point in talking with him. Knox struggled with the problem all afternoon, until Chris appeared wearing his coat and hat. Suddenly a thought hit Knox and he stood up. “I’m going with you,” he insisted. “I want to see Frenchie and Conrad.”
    “Come on, then. But it won’t change nothing. You still got to go home.”
    The faded letters on the weatherbeaten sign spelled out “The Red Horse,” though the crude drawing underneath looked more like a buffalo. The two men pushed inside the tavern. Knox spotted the trappers immediately. “Frenchie! Conrad!”
    A game was in progress at the far end of the long, narrow building, but at the sound of Knox’s voice, a squat shape quickly rose up from the group. “By gar! Look here who eet