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set him apart, too.
    â€œI must have moved the teapot myself,” Sierra said, at last, “and forgotten. Just as you said.”
    Travis looked unconvinced. “Right,” he agreed.
    1919
    Tobias carried the letter to the table, where Doss sat comfortably in the chair everyone thought of as Holt’s. “They bought three hundred head of cattle,” the boy told his uncle excitedly, handing over the sheaf of pages. “Drove them all the way from Mexico to San Antonio, too.”
    Doss smiled. “Is that right?” he mused. His hazel eyes warmed in the light of a kerosene lantern as he read. The place had electricity now, but Hannah tried to save on it where she could. The last bill had come to over a dollar, for a mere two months of service, and she’d been horrified at the expense.
    Standing at the stove, she turned back to her work, stood a little straighter, punched down the biscuit dough with sharp jabs of the wooden spoon. Apparently, it hadn’t occurred to Tobias that she might like to see that infernal letter. She was a McKettrick, too, after all, if only by marriage.
    â€œI guess Ma and Pa liked that buffalo you carved for them,” Doss observed, when he’d finished and set the pages aside. Hannah just happened to see, since she’d had to pass right by that end of the table to fetch a pound of ground sausage from the icebox. “Says here it was the best Christmas present they ever got.”
    Tobias nodded, beaming with pride. He’d worked all fall on that buffalo, even in his sick bed, whittling it from a chunk of firewood Doss had cut for him special. “I reckon I’ll make them a bear for next year,” he said. Not a word about carving something for her parents, Hannah noted, even though they’d sent him a bicycle and a toy fire engine back in December. The McKettricks, of course, had arranged for a spotted pony to be brought up from the main ranch house on Christmas morning, all deckedout in a brand-new saddle and bridle, and though Tobias had dutifully written his Montana grand parents to thank them for their gifts, he’d never played with the engine. Just set it on a shelf in his room and forgotten all about it. The bicycle wouldn’t be much use before spring, that was true, but he’d shown no more interest in it once the pony had arrived.
    â€œWash your hands for supper, Tobias McKettrick,” Hannah said.
    â€œSupper isn’t ready,” he protested.
    â€œDo as your mother says,” Doss told him quietly.
    He obeyed immediately, which should have pleased Hannah, but it didn’t.
    Doss, mean while, opened the saddle bags, took out the usual assortment of letters, periodicals and small parcels, which Hannah had already looked through before the mail wagon rounded the bend in the road. She’d been both disappointed and relieved when there was nothing with her name on it. Once, in the last part of October, when the fiery leaves of the oak trees were falling in puddles around their trunks like the folds of a discarded garment, she’d gotten a letter from Gabe. He’d been dead almost four months by then, and her heart had fairly stopped at the sight of his handwriting on that envelope.
    For a brief, dizzying moment, she’d thought there’d been a mistake. That Gabe hadn’t died of the influenza at all, but some stranger instead. Mix-ups like that happened during and after a war, and she hadn’t seen the body, since the coffin was nailed shut.
    She’d stood there beside the road, with that letter in her hand, weeping and trembling so hard that a good quarter of an hour must have passed before she broke the seal and took out the thick fold of vellum pages inside. She’d come to her practical senses by then, but seeingthe date at the top of the first page still made her bellow aloud to the empty country side: March 17, 1918.
    Gabe had still been well when he wrote that letter. He’d