The next morning, shortly after breakfast when all the other boarders had cleared out, he used the telephone in the central hallway to place a long-distance call to the bank in Dallas where Trey Hobson worked. He had to wait for five minutes for the local telephone office to get through.

A lady with a smooth and polite voice answered with the name of the bank. Thatcher asked to speak to Mr. Hobson. “May I ask who’s calling?”

Thatcher gave her his name. “He knows me. Up till the war, I was a hand on his daddy’s ranch. I didn’t learn about Mr. Hobson till yesterday. I phoned to tell Trey how sorry I am.”

“Please hold on, Mr. Hutton. I’ll get him to the phone.”

She came back about a minute later, still smooth and polite. “Regrettably, he’s in a meeting, Mr. Hutton, and can’t talk right now, but he said to tell you that he’s relieved and glad to know that you made it back from the war, and that it was very kind of you to call about his father.”

“Okay. I have a number here, if he gets a chance to call me back. It’s in Foley.”

He gave her the information and hung up, disappointed but not surprised that Trey was unavailable to talk to him. Mr. Hobson had shared more interests with Thatcher than he had with his son. Although Trey never would have wanted to switch places with Thatcher, Thatcher felt he might have resented the relationship that had developed between Mr. Hobson and him. But then again, Trey had never warmed to any of the cowhands, regarding all of them as nothing more than hired help.

His trunk arrived two days later. Thatcher picked it up at the depot and opened it in the privacy of his room. He’d placed his most cherished possessions on top, so they were the first things he saw when he raised the lid: a tooled leather gun belt with holster and a shiny Colt revolver with a stag horn grip. They’d been Mr. Hobson’s gift to him on his eighteenth birthday. From that day forward, he’d strapped it on every day until he’d packed it in the trunk. The pistol had been what he’d reached for when he saw the rattlesnake poised to strike Harold.

For the next week, he went about his business, but without enthusiasm. He slogged through each day, the finality of his mentor’s death catching him at odd times, and he would experience the crushing impact of the news all over again.

The more permanent residents of the boardinghouse continued to be standoffish. He sensed that they still harbored doubts about his innocence regarding Mrs. Driscoll. He didn’t mind them keeping their distance. He didn’t feel like making meaningless conversation.

However, one evening after supper, he was invited to join a round of poker being played out on the porch. The stakes were diddly, but a dollar was a dollar, so he anted up. He won five hands straight. Then, to avoid antagonizing the others, he lost the next two hands on purpose before excusing himself.

The landlady made no secret of her dislike and mistrust of him, but she accepted his rent money for the second week.

* * *

Laurel was certain the preacher knew the appropriate scriptures by heart. He was old. No doubt he had performed this rite hundreds of times.

Nevertheless, he held his Bible open in the palm of one hand and pretended to read the passages. Although they came from several books of both the Old Testament and the New, he never turned a single page. It would have been awkward for him even to try. In his other hand, he was holding an open umbrella above his head.

Rain drummed on it so loudly, it made his creaky voice nearly inaudible.

Low, dark clouds had created a false dusk at midmorning. The rain fell straight down in oppressive monotony. Even so, Laurel welcomed the miserable weather. On the day she was burying her daughter, even one ray of sunshine would have seemed obscene.

Pearl had died less than twenty-four hours ago, but there had been no reason to postpone her interment. There was no one to host a wake, and no one to invite even if one had been held. The undertaker had an infant coffin in his stockroom. The plot next to Derby’s was available. No purpose would have been served to delay the inevitable.

The preacher closed his Bible. “Please join me in prayer.”

Beside her, in spite of the rain, Irv removed his hat before bowing his head. Because she couldn’t bear seeing the tiny coffin being pounded by the rain, she bowed her head and tightly closed her eyes as she joined the preacher and her father-in-law in reciting the Lord’s prayer.

Two grave diggers hunched inside rubber rain capes had been standing by. They moved in immediately after the amen and began lowering the casket. Laurel, unable to watch it being buried, turned away.

The bleak trio made their way back to their cars. Irv had driven them to the cemetery in her roadster. When they reached it, they thanked the preacher, who looked relieved that the brief service wasn’t being prolonged. He made a hasty departure.

Irv and she rode home in silence. Their footsteps echoed in the hollow silence of the house as they let themselves in. “You want me to put the kettle on, make you some tea?”

Laurel wanted to decline the offer, but Irv looked so distraught, she thought that perhaps he needed a task to alleviate his despair. “That sounds nice. Thank you.”

She removed her hat and sat down at the table. He brewed her tea. He took his secreted jar of whiskey from the cabinet. “A touch of this wouldn’t hurt you.”

“No thank you.”

He poured some of the moonshine into a glass for himself. “You hungry?”

She shook her head. He sat down across from her. They sipped their beverages. After a lengthy silence, he said, “I was tore up when Derby died. But nothing like this. This hurts something awful.”

Looking across at him, she watched his eyes fill.

“Derby died of his own choosing,” he said, gulping a breath. “That baby girl didn’t.”

Then a terrible sound issued from deep in his throat, and he began to cry. Laurel left her chair in a rush, knelt beside his chair, and placed her arms around his shoulders, drawing him to her. They clung to each other as he wept. She murmured to him all the banalities that would cause her to scream and run mad if anyone were saying them to her. Yet he seemed to derive comfort from them.

He cried himself out. As he wiped his wet face with the large handkerchief he always carried in his back pocket, he looked embarrassed. “I haven’t carried on like that since Derby’s mother passed. It helped a little to get it out. What can I do for you, Laurel?”