“I don’t know. But I see lights over there sometimes at night, and one evening when I was down at the creek, I looked over and saw a man walking between the house and barn. I have no idea who he was. At that distance, with the sun going down, he was just a shadow.”
“When was the last time you saw him?”
Maggie thought for a moment. “I don’t know. It’s been a while. A week, maybe?”
“Probably just a squatter. Or maybe it wasn’t even the same fella you saw those different times. Lot of folks on the move right now. They travel for a while, stop off at a place like that just long enough to make it a pigsty, then hit the trail again.”
“Maybe.”
“Tell you what,” Will said. “If you’re interested, we’ll take a ride over there tomorrow and have a look.”
“I’d like that, Will. I’d like that a lot.”
And suddenly, the feeling was upon him again, the sense of something between them, or the potential for there to be something.
“I’d like it, too, Maggie,” he said, and froze there, looking at her, not knowing what else to say or do.
She looked at him. He looked at her. The bugs seemed very loud.
After a few heartbeats, her smile brightened, growing less genuine. “All right, I’d best turn in if we’re going to go exploring tomorrow.”
“Sounds good. I could use some shuteye, too. I was on the road for a long time.”
He started to follow her toward the bunkhouse, but she spun around and put a hand on his chest, stopping him in his tracks.
“Oh no you don’t, Will Bentley. Give me a few minutes before you come inside. I have to get out of these clothes and won’t have you peeking at me while I’m naked.”
Will’s face burned like a branding iron. “Oh… I…”
She smiled at him again. “I’m not a little girl anymore.”
“I know.”
She turned and went to the door with a little sway in her hips, then looked back over her shoulder at him. “Oh really? I’d started to wonder if you’d even noticed.”
Then she slipped inside the bunkhouse, leaving him alone in his confusion with that sense of possibilities swirling around him as his inflamed mind imagined what Maggie was doing—and looking like—just beyond that door.
“Pshaw,” he said, whacked a palm against his forehead, and strode off through the darkness to get his mind off these things.
A short time later, he reached the bank of Curry Creek and the end of Maggie’s property. On the other side, a hundred yards back from the creek, was the dark shape of the Kitner place.
But it wasn’t completely dark, Will realized, seeing the faint shimmer of light from within the house. Someone in there had a coal oil lamp turned low.
Who are you?Will wondered, and at that instant, as if the man inside had heard Will’s thoughts, the light went out.
He had half a mind to sneak over and take a look.
But no. That would be a good way to get shot, and he did not want to get shot again.
He’d wait until morning then mosey over and introduce himself. Which still might be dangerous. There were a lot of folks moving through the country these days. Desperados, some of them. Thieves, murderers, rapists.
He should insist that Maggie stay behind.
But even as the thought occurred to him, he couldn’t help grinning. Because he sensed that Maggie still had just enough of that wild, exasperating child left in her to refuse any such suggestion.
They would go together then.
The notion did not bother him.
