Chapter 1 — Morning Along the Brazos
Gus woke before the light came and listened to the house. The fire had gone down in the stove. Maggie's breathing was slow beside him. From the back room came the small sound the baby made when he turned in his sleep without waking, a sound Gus knew the way he knew the creak of any board in the house. Beyond the wall and the porch and the yard, the Brazos was running, and he listened to it before he sat up.
He swung his legs out and set his feet on the floor. The pine was cold. He pulled his trousers on in the dark and laced his boots by feel and went out into the kitchen.
Maggie was already up. She had the lamp lit and the coffee on, and the small cast-iron pan was warming over the second burner. She had tied her hair back with the brown ribbon she favored when she expected to be working. She looked at him without saying anything and poured the coffee.
He took the cup from her and let it warm his hands. The steam came up through the lamplight in a slow pale column.
"He woke up twice in the night," she said.
"Did he."
"Around three. And then again before you got up."
"You didn't wake me."
"There wasn't a need to."
He drank the coffee. It was strong and bitter the way she made it every morning of his life. Outside the window the dark was gone gray at the edge above the cottonwoods.
"Levi's down at the barn," she said.
"He's early."
"He's been early all week."
He looked at her. She did not look back at him. She was at the stove with her hand on the pan handle, turning her wrist, considering the heat.
"What is it," he said.
"I don't know yet."
"Weather?"
"Maybe. The river was loud last night."
He waited to see if she had more, and when she did not he set the cup down and reached for his hat from the peg by the door. The kitchen smelled of coffee and warming iron and the faint salt of the bacon she had not yet started.
"I'll be back for breakfast," he said.
"Sam's out at the corral."
"All right."
In the back room Ellie coughed once in her sleep and was quiet. Maggie tilted her head toward the sound and then turned back to the pan.
"Take a coat," she said.
"I'm taking one."
"It's colder than yesterday."
"I felt it."
He took his coat from the chair and went out.
* * *
The morning had not broken yet. The yard was still in the kind of half-dark that holds the shape of things without their color. Frost stood in the grass along the fence line, and his breath came white when he crossed the yard toward the barn. The river noise was steady from the south, neither louder nor softer than it had been when he had heard it from the bed.
The barn door was rolled back already. Inside, a lantern hung from the post by the tack room, and Levi Reed was standing at Buck's stall with the saddle blanket over his arm. He turned when Gus came in.
"Maggie said you were down here early," Gus said.
"Couldn't sleep."
Levi was a square-shouldered man in his early forties, dark-haired, with a jaw that had been broken and reset crooked years back from a horse-fall. He moved with the economy of someone who had never wasted a motion in twelve years of working alongside Gus.
"River was up in the night," Levi said.
"How much."
"Hand and a half from where it was Tuesday."
"Rain?"
"Not here."
Gus took the bridle from the peg and went into Buck's stall. Buck was a buckskin nineteen years old, beginning to gray at the muzzle. He stood without moving while Gus slipped the bit between his teeth and ran the headstall up over his ears.
"You taking him to the crossing," Levi said.
"And the south pasture."
"Want me along."
"I'd rather you start the north fence. The wire's been slack since the wind last week."
"The wire's been slack on the south end too."
Levi handed him the saddle blanket and Gus settled it on Buck's back and ran his hand once down the spine to feel for any rough place where the blanket sat. There was none. He set the saddle on top of the blanket and reached under for the cinch.
"Sam's at the corral," Levi said.
"Maggie said."
"He's been at it since before I came down."
"He doesn't sleep when there's weather coming."
"Is there weather coming."
"Maggie thinks so."
Levi did not answer that directly. He stood at the stall door watching Gus tighten the cinch, and when Gus was done he handed up the rein.
"I'll see you for the noon meal," Gus said. He led Buck out into the yard, where the cold took him in the chest the way the cold did every morning of every winter, and he was glad of the coat.