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for all that, she had been a good woman, not smart-looking or playful or gentle on the outside, but hard-working and wishful of good things for him. Was she alive now, she would follow the cow out in the morning to find where the young wild greens were growing, and so boil him a kettle of them along with a piece of fat meat. It wasn't exactly the fever that killed her; it was just as if her strength had run out. She had taken to bed and died in two days, knowing all the time she had to die and looking at him with fever-shiny eyes and neither of them able to say anything to each other but little, piddling things like never seen a nicer spring or wonder if Lije Evans sold his place yet so's to go to Oregon. He had seen old horses die like that. He had seen them go and lie down and give up and look at you with slow eyes while life leaked away.
   A plain-looking, goodhearted woman. He thought maybe he ought to feel worse at losing her, as if the way he felt wasn't fitting to her. He oughtn't to be thinking of young squaws and old days in the mountains. But he had always thought about them some, even while she was alive. Her being dead didn't make the thinking worse.
   Like everything else, feelings got mixed up, so that you could be sad and know you ought to be sad, and still be kind of light-spirited, too, as he was himself. Down in him, if he didn't watch against it, he felt free again. It was as if the world had opened up. He felt free, and it was spring, and the mountains stood sharp in his mind, and he could pilot a wagon train to Oregon as well as anybody. He took himself for an old fool, but maybe it didn't hurt to think he could begin fresh, or get back what had made the young years good. He was sad, sure rnough, but set up, too. Already he could feel the west wind in his face and see the cactus flowering. He was glad he didn't have to explain to anyone -to God, for instance- the way it was with him.
   It had grown so dark he couldn't see the people at the cabin, except when a head moved across the lighted window. He could hear their voices, though, the throaty talk of men holding themselves in while they sat around outside the cabin with a bottle and the higher voices of women coming from inside. Down toward the barn the hogs were uneasy, making a noise like growling, which some folks would say was a sign of storm.
   "'Nother thing," Evans said. "There's a preacher takin' the night at the Tuckers'. Tucker wanted I should ask you do you want him to preach the funeral."
   "I left it all to him."
   "But he didn't know about this preacher. The preacher just drifted in. A Methodist, Tucker said he was."
   "One's as good as another, I reckon. She would want a preacher."
   "Funeral in the morning," Evans said, not asking a question but telling what he knew. Summers nodded.
   "Be best."
   Summers kept on nodding.
   "Preacher might want a piece of money, Dick. 'Course, we could sing a song and Harry Barlow could read Scripture and say a prayer, and we could let it go at that?"
  "Let the preacher come, Lije. I figured Tucker would get one out of Independence, a Campbellite if he could, for that's the way his mind runs."
   "I'll tell Tucker. This here preacher's bound for Oregon, or so I hear."
   "That so?" Summers got off the stump. "I better see how the women done." He walked with Evans to the cabin.
   The men fell silent as he passed through the sitting circle, and the women hushed and stepped aside when he entered. They looked flushed and livelier than usual. He thought, without faulting them, that there was nothing like a death to bring women to life. They spoke low or just nodded to him -all except Mrs. Evans- and he knew they were uneasy with him around, remembering maybe how full of chatter they had been or wondering what he would say. There was a joint of meat on the kitchen table, and greens, and a white-flour pie and a pan of corn bread and a pile of other stuff.