They stayed in the woods until dark clouds began forming above the ridge crest. By then she'd searched out all the ginseng that could be found and gathered what other plants she'd wanted as well. As she and Jacob made their way out of the woods, Rachel's back already ached, and she knew it'd be sorer come morning. But the cabbage sack was a quarter filled, at least two pounds worth of roots she'd sell to Mr. Scott after they'd dried a month in the barn. Jacob was wide awake now, worming inside of the bundling, making it harder to hold the sack and mattock with her left hand.

"It ain't far now," she said, as much to herself as the child. "We'll put the mattock in the shed and take the Widow this bloodroot."

As they entered the pasture, Rachel heard dogs barking somewhere in the far woods and wondered if they were the same ones she'd seen at the cemetery. She walked faster, remembering a story she'd heard about wild dogs carrying off a child set down at a field edge. The child had never been found, only the bloody tatters of its blanket. Rachel watched the tree line until they were out of the pasture. She leaned the mattock against the shed, and they walked on to the Widow's cabin.

"I brought you some bloodroot," Rachel said, "for keeping Jacob the other day."

"That's sweet of you," Widow Jenkins said, accepting the handful of plants and placing them in the sink.

"I've got witch hazel too if you've got need of it."

"No, I've got a gracious plenty of witch hazel," the older woman said. "Did you dig up much sang?"

Rachel opened the sack and showed her the roots.

"How much you figure it worth when it dries?"

"I'd reckon Scott to give you ten dollars," Widow Jenkins said. "Maybe twelve if his lumbago ain't acting up."

"I was thinking it would be more than that," Rachel said.

"Before that stock market busted up north it might have been, but cash money's rare these days as sang."

Rachel stared at the hearth a few moments. The Widow always put some apple wood on the fire, not because it burned good but for the rosy color it gave off. A fire with apple wood in it is pretty to look at as any painting, the Widow claimed. Rachel felt the weight of Jacob in her arms and compared it to the cabbage sack's lightness. The weariness of carrying the child across the pasture and ridge, hardly noticed before, overwhelmed her. She set Jacob on the floor.

"That'll barely get us to spring," Rachel said. "As soon as I wean Jacob, I'll have to go back to work at the camp."

"I don't think you ought to do that," Widow Jenkins said. "I don't even like it that you go down there for Sunday church."

"I've sold the cow and horse and the saddle," Rachel said, "and now some varmint's stealing my eggs. There's nothing else I can do."

"What makes you think you can get your job back when there's folks lined up for every job in that camp."

"I done good work when I was there," Rachel replied. "They'll remember that."

Widow Jenkins leaned over, grunted softly as she lifted Jacob from the floor. She sat down in the cane back chair she kept by the hearth and settled the child in her lap. The fire's hue reflected in the old woman's spectacles, wavering in the glass like rose petals.

"You think that man is going to help you and this young one out," Widow Jenkins said, speaking in a soft flat way so it wasn't like a question or opinion but something that was simply the truth.

"Even if I was to think that, it don't matter as far as me going back," Rachel said. "I got to have some money to live on. That camp's the only place I know where there might be a job."

Widow Jenkins sighed and shifted Jacob deeper into her lap. She stared at the fire, her chapped lips pressed tight as she gave the slightest nod.

"So you'll keep Jacob if they'll hire me?" Rachel said, then paused. "If you don't, I'll find someone else to."

"I helped raise you so I can help with this one too," Widow Jenkins said, "but only if you wait till this boy's a year old. That way he'll be proper weaned. I won't take no pay for keeping him either."

"I wouldn't feel right if you didn't take some pay," Rachel said.

"Well, we'll worry about that when the time comes, if it comes. Maybe things will get better before then."

Widow Jenkins jostled Jacob with her knees. The child giggled, raised his arms outward as if balancing himself.

"But if it comes to that, this chap won't be no bother," Widow Jenkins said. "Me and him will get along fine."

When Rachel got back to the cabin, she spread the ginseng out on the cabbage sack so it could dry. The crows had settled into the trees and the squirrels tucked deep in their nests. The woods were hushed and attentive, the trees seeming to huddle themselves closer together, as if awaiting not just the rain but some story about to be told.

"We best find that guinea egg before the rain comes," she told Jacob. "We can check on the bees too."

They went into the woods behind the house, pausing first at the white bee box set at the wood's edge. Unlike during warm weather, Rachel had to lean close to hear them, their shifting huddle soft as a drowsy wind. The bee box's paint was chipped and fading, and she'd have to fix that by spring because white soothed the bees almost as much as smoke.

You have to tell the bees he died. They'll leave if you don't, Widow Jenkins had told Rachel the day of her father's funeral. It was something the old folks believed, and though Rachel wasn't sure if it was true or not she'd done it. She'd taken off her dark mourning clothes and put on a worn linen dress, then walked out to the shed to find the cheesecloth veil. It was white as well, made of muslin. By then almost all of the bees had returned for the night, only a few coming and going as she'd approached the box. Rachel remembered how she'd slowly opened the super, especially how clear and clean the smell had been, like moss on a creek bank. She'd spoken to the bees calmly, her voice merging with their own slurry voices. Afterward, as she'd walked back to the house in that late-June twilight, it had struck Rachel that someone at a distance might see her and easily mistake her for a bride. She'd also thought how, if that distance had been one of months instead of furlongs, taking her back to those winter middays she'd spent in Pemberton's bed, she could have imagined the same herself.

Jacob whined and Rachel felt the first drops of a cold drizzle.

"We better get that egg," she told the child.

It took a few minutes, because the guinea was good at hiding them, but Rachel finally found an egg in a wither of honeysuckle vines. Rachel pulled the bundling over Jacob's head, because the drizzle had quickened, tinged with ice that stung her face. She walked into the barn and set Jacob on a bed of gathered straw. The whispery sound of the drizzle hitting the tin roof made the barn feel snug, as if its broad-beamed shoulders had shrugged closer together.

Rachel went to the shed and unwound the hook and line from the fishing pole and returned to the barn. With the fish hook's barb, she chipped a small hole in the egg, then guided the hook's barb and shank into the yolk until no metal showed. Rachel delicately placed the egg back on the straw and tied the six feet of fishing line to a nail head. All this trouble because she was living so close to the bone a few pennies mattered, Rachel told herself bitterly. She and her father had had hard times before. When Rachel was seven they'd lost a milk cow that had eaten cherry leaves, and when she was twelve a hail storm had destroyed the corn crop. But even in the leanest times there'd always been a few dollars left in the coffee can stowed on the pantry's top shelf, a cow or horse in the pasture yet to be sold.

Sell it, it'll fetch a good price, Mrs. Pemberton had said when she'd handed Rachel the bowie knife. And it probably would, perhaps even as much as the ginseng, but Rachel couldn't abide doing what Mrs. Pemberton had commanded her to do. She'd sell the shoes off her feet before taking the knife out of the box trunk and selling it. Widow Jenkins would say Rachel was just being prideful, and maybe Preacher Bolick would agree, but she'd had enough proud shucked off her the last few months to believe God wouldn't begrudge her keeping just a little.