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that the comment was a mistake. Mary jerked back as if she had been quirted.
    “How old were they, Charlie?” she asked.
    “Old enough to know right from wrong,” he said.
    “Answer my question!” Mary demanded—she was beginning to color up.
    “Twenty-one, at least,” he told her. “There were no trees nearby. We caught ’em with the stolen horses and hung them from a telegraph pole,” he said. “I don’t think it damaged the pole.”
    “You ruthless bastard, who made you a judge?” she asked.
    “But we caught ’em with the stock,” he stammered. Mary’s rages—and they were not infrequent—always baffled him. He had no idea what to do about them.
    “This is a raw place, and you’re a raw piece of work yourself, Charlie Goodnight.”
    “Well, I’ve not had your education.”
    “I was talking,” she said. “Please have the courtesy not to butt in.”
    “What do you want?”
    “I wish you could bring those boys back to life, but you can’t. So I’ll give you ten years, if I can stick it out.”
    “Ten years to do what?”
    “To make this into a proper county, with judges and courts and all that goes with a county. And after the courthouse I want a college, where people can learn their algebra. Do those two things in a timely fashion and maybe I won’t leave you for brighter climes.”
    “Not many climes are brighter than this place here,” he reminded her. “There is hardly a tree in thirty miles and very damn few clouds that could create cool.”
    “Don’t quibble, Charlie—it don’t become you,” she said. She turned to leave but stopped again.
    “Did you bury those boys proper?” she asked.
    Goodnight wondered how he could have blundered so—it was not for the first time, either.
    “We were in a hurry,” he mumbled.
    “Well, those lucky boys—they’ll never have to be in a hurry again.”
    She looked hard at the towheads, and walked away.
     

 
    - 19 -
    Bose had unsaddled Goodnight’s horse and was looking for a stray jar of turpentine. The jar had once had a proper plug, but the plug had got lost; Bose intended to replace it with a homemade plug, whittled by himself. While he looked he heard loud talk behind him, loud talk between Boss Goodnight and his missus. Bose knew better than to take too much interest in loud talk between husband and wife.
    When the talk stopped and Mary Goodnight went back into her shack of a schoolhouse Bose saw Boss Goodnight standing alone. He looked rather defeated, but, of course, such defeats weren’t permanent. And with Boss Goodnight such defeats were rare.
    After a bit he walked over to Bose.
    “Well, I lost that fight,” Goodnight said. “Did you win many fights with women, Bose?”
    “I don’t deal with women, Boss,” Bose said. “If there’s any around the Palo Duro I don’t see them.”
    “That’s what I meant,” Goodnight said. “You found a place of safety and I ain’t been so provident.”
    “Still, Miss Mary can cook,” Bose reminded him.
    Most of Mary’s friends called her Molly, not Mary, but Goodnight did not permit himself this intimacy, and Bose followed the practice of his boss; this despite seven years of courtship and eight of marriage.
    Mary had her playful moods though—sometimes she even liked to wrestle with him in bed—and she was surprisingly strong. Twice she made his nose bleed. He had never made her nose bleed, though once he did bruise her with his elbow.
    “How come you won’t call me Molly, like my friends do?” she asked, once.
    “Too shy.”
    “But I’m your wife . . . you pestered me till I gave in. There’s no reason you can’t call me Molly.”
    “Too shy,” he admitted, and it was God’s truth.
    “You don’t really want me calling you Molly, do you?” he asked, a day or two later.
    Mary didn’t answer; he didn’t call her Molly.
    As he was standing with Bose he remembered that Mary had asked him to bring some chalk, and he had remembered it despite Lord Ernle’s