strange choice in horses.â
Newt twisted around and saw that the Circle Dot horse was lying down, full out on its side with its eyes closed. Only the heave of its belly showed that it was alive.
âThat gelding looks in good flesh and not too hard used,â she added.
âI guess heâs tired,â he said. âAnd Iâm coming to think heâs a bit peculiar.â
âHow did you come by him?â
âIndians gave him to me.â
âIndians?â
âComanche, I think.â
âYour guardian angel must really be something. I never heard of them doing anyone a good deed.â
He helped her drag her husbandâs body to the grave. It was something on the order of a miracle that she had managed to get it from the river to the wagon, given how petite she was.
As if she read his thoughts, she said, âI rolled him in that tarp and drug him behind one of the horses. Broke my heart to treat him that way. He was always good to me.â
A bit of the tarp came unfolded, revealing her husbandâs head. Newt was pretty sure the man was past caring about how he was treated, by his wife or otherwise. One of Cortinaâs bunch had put a bullet above his left eyebrow and a second one right through his teeth. He quickly covered the manâs head before the woman had to take another look at him. It was best that she remembered him as he had been and not how Cortina had left him.
Digging the grave had sapped what little strength Newt had left, and he and the old woman took turns at the shovel, covering the body. She was a scrappy worker.
âSorry, maâam. Usually Iâm more of a hand than this.â
She nodded. âYouâve got the shoulders for it. Not bad-looking, either, once you look past all those scars youâre packing.â
âThank you, I guess.â
He took a close look at her again. His first impression was that she was old, but it was hard to tell if she was a well-preserved sixty or a hard-used fifty. She had the mannerisms of a lady, but the sharp, up-front talk of the frontier. His own mother had been a woman like that.
âWhatâs your trade when youâre not manhunting?â she asked.
He shrugged.
She laughed, but no matter how she tried, she couldnât hide the sadness in her voice. âOne of those, huh? Knock-around man. Jack-of-all-trades?â
âWhatever it takes to put food in my belly and some cover over my head.â
âSpeaking of cover. Youâre going to boil your brains if you donât get a hat.â She reached down on the ground where her husbandâs hat had fallen when they were dragging him over. âTake this if it fits you. Amos wasnât half your size, but he had a head like a watermelon.â
Newt tried on the hat, and it fit him like he had picked it out himself. It was an odd hat to have belonged to an emigrant farmerâblack and broad brimmed with a hitched horsehair hatband. He took the hat off and turned it in his hands, examining it more closely.
âSpeaking of occupations,â Newt said, âwhat was it that your husband did?â
âKind of a rounder himself. Trying his hand at farming was a recent thing and only because I was tired of him being gone all the time. He was a lawman by calling and trade, you might say. He was a city marshal here and there. We lived most everyplace in Texas you can imagine. Then he was a U.S. Deputy Marshal and later he worked for those Rangers some. One of his friends out in Tucson already had him a job as deputy sheriff there if he wanted it. You know, to give us something to help get by until we settled in and found a farm.â
âSounds like a good man.â
âThere isnât a lawman in Texas that didnât know my Amos. He was a well-liked and respected man, even if I sound like Iâm bragging.â She dabbed quickly at a tear at the corner of her eye.
Newt wondered if Cortina knew he had shot