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bargain.”
    â€œOr try to.”
    â€œAnd then?”
    â€œIt’s war, Hannah. We can blow the dam. Simpson can knock down fences, run off cows, and shoot the bulls. He’ll try to isolate you, pick off your friends one by one.”
    â€œHe’ll come for you first.”
    â€œNo, last. He’ll want me to watch. It’s you and the children that are most vulnerable. He’ll go after you.”
    She shuddered, and he let her lean against his side. His great strong hand held her tightly, and for a second the clock moved back. It was spring and they were thirteen again. But it didn’t last. She wriggled free and walked toward the door.
    â€œI’ll see what’s keeping the boys,” she told him.
    He stepped down from the veranda and stumbled over beside the swing. He felt his eyes moisten. It’s strange, he thought. How can two people who shared so much, loved each other so completely, have ever come to this? He wiped his eyes and stared out across the creek, toward the Diamond S and the town of Simpson, toward the white-haired old man who’d been the cause of so much pain.
    Blake hadn’t shed a tear in thirty years, not since the winter of 1850 when his mother died. At this moment he could have, possibly should have. For if all their buried dreams and grand plans for a boundless future weren’t worth crying over, nothing ever would be.
    A door slammed, and he shook himself out of the gloom. Two boys appeared on the steps, a tall, solid fourteen-year-old with straw-colored hair and a thin, somber-faced boy of thirteen. Blake felt his legs wobble a bit as he walked toward them. The boys stood frozen to the steps, unable or unwilling to move.
    â€œCarter? Zach?” Blake called to them.
    The eldest, Carter, nodded his head. Zach backed away a step.
    â€œI’m your father,” Blake announced.
    â€œOur father’s inside,” Carter said. “You left us years ago.”
    â€œZach?” Blake asked, reaching out for the younger boy.
    â€œWhy’d you come back?” Zach asked, moving behind his brother. “We don’t need you. We don’t want you.”
    The words cut like daggers through Blake’s heart. Never had he imagined they wouldn’t want him. Didn’t they remember the mornings they’d spent in the pond, the long rides into the hills, the nights he’d stayed up fighting their fevers or dosing a cough?
    He wanted to grab them both, hold them tight and try to explain. He longed to tell them he wanted them, he needed them. But it wasn’t in him. He stepped back and stared at them. His sons. How could he tell them he’d come back to help them?
    â€œMa said we should see you,” Carter said. “We’ve seen you.”
    Blake reached out his hand, but the boys backed away.
    â€œI wrote,” Blake mumbled. “Every birthday and each Christmas.”
    They stared at him with blank looks.
    â€œI sent money, all I could spare.”
    â€œIt’s hard to go hunting with a Yankee greenback,” Carter said. “You could’ve come for a visit, even a short one.”
    Now it was Blake’s time to stand silently, searching for words. How could he explain something he himself didn’t fully understand?
    â€œHow could you run from them?” Carter cried out with tearful eyes. Zach said nothing, but the smaller boy’s eyes were just as moist.
    â€œI’m not runnin’ now,” Blake said stiffening his spine. “Maybe after a time, you’ll find a way to understand.”
    â€œUnderstand what?” Carter asked accusingly. “How you left without so much as a good-bye? How you never once cared enough to ride by?”
    Never cared? Blake felt all the brightness, all the warmth within himself die. How many times had he stayed up wondering how they were faring, imagining what they looked like? How many sleepless nights came when a winter blizzard struck,