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horses their head and his captive audience the benefit of his wisdom on several Montana matters, Toby had bounced from sack to sack until he was sitting practically on the coattails of the adults. From that close range, he could not resist. When Father stopped to draw a breath, Toby had his question ready for Rose:
    "How'd you get so many pretty names?"
    Swift as anything, she looked at him over her shoulder. "So many?"
    "Uh huh. Rose and Lou and Ellen."
    When all of us but Toby had had our laugh, Rose—smiling that effective smile once again—turned half around to him. "My poor husband always said Llewellyn is the Welsh way to spell Jones, there were so many with his same last name. Here, I'll write it into your hand. That way you'll always carry it with you."
    Toby blushed with pleasure as she recited each letter and traced it with her finger into the palm of his small hand. I could tell Damon had been itching to ask something, too. But he simply nodded to himself as if Toby had taken care of it all.
    "Now shut your eyes, say
kafoozalum,
and close your hand tight."
    Toby did as she instructed.
    "There," Rose proclaimed. "You won't ever forget me now."
    "You're going to have an admirer there, Mrs. Llewellyn," Father said with a wink at Toby.
    "Oh, could you make it 'Rose,' please, sir. I try not to use the other, it's just too—" She let that trail off to wherever things too sad to talk about end up.
    I watched Morris Morgan fasten a considering look onto her, then give her a pat as though he was remembering her travail.
    "Rose it is, then, if you'll denominate me Oliver," Father concurred. "While we're at it we may as well make it unanimous." He shifted the reins to his left hand and thrust his right toward Morrie for a confirming shake. I see them yet, each settling back on the seat of the wagon after that handclasp performed under the warm gaze of Rose. Father's weather-tanned face, with its work wrinkles running down his cheeks, like a
copper coin a bit melted. Morrie smoothing his mighty mustache as if it was newly found. Neither of them possessing any notion of all they were being introduced to with those first names.
    Maybe it was the loosening of address, like a necktie tugged free of its knot. Maybe it was Morrie's way of listening with monkish attention as though comparing the vocabulary of the next monastery over with his own. Maybe it was utter relief that at last we had a housekeeper, at least aboard the wagon. Or all of the above. Whatever was brimming in him, Father was expansive as he now speculated, "Morrie, I suppose you're traveling on through, once Rose gets established? I hear things are booming on the Coast."
    "Actually, I thought I might seek something here."
    "Ah?" said Father, clearly thrown. Homesteaders came in every shape and size, but Rose's tailored brother plainly was the exact opposite of agrarian. "What are you good at?"
    "Intriguing question, Oliver," Morrie commended as if it had never occurred to him to undergo such self-examination. In a thoughtful tone he proceeded to do so for us now. "Whist. Identification of birds. A passable reciting voice, I'm told. Latin declensions. A bit rusty on Greek, but—"
    "Oliver surely means your recent field of work," Rose took over. "The leather trade," she identified it as if Morrie's own job description might elude him.
    Quick as a whip, though, he put in: "I handled the kid glove end of things, didn't I, Rose."
    "Our family enterprise," she said sadly, "it—" She gave her head that little shake. "After my poor husband—" This time she drew a chest-heaving breath. "Everything went."
    Morrie rapidly followed that with:
    "Oliver? You have provided for Rose most generously." Drawing a breath of the same dramatic dimension as hers—could something like that run in the family?—he went on: "We were hoping you could be of assistance in my depleted situation, too. I am not afraid of work."
    Father waited warily, to see if the