These women were helpful but reserved-suspicious, I believed, of what they saw as eastern refinement: my education, my manner of speech, my obvious fear of the West and its environs. Yet they did their best with me and explained about the settlement, a rough and loose confederation of cabins, bound together by little more than vague proximity and a few points of social contact: the church, which lacked any sort of clergyman unless an itinerant wandered through; a rough imitation of a tavern called the Indian Path; a mill; and Mr. Dalton’s house. He owned the whiskey still, which made him something of a grandee.

I struggled to feel at ease, but Andrew seemed to have no difficulties. These Westerners valued competence above nearly all else, and he impressed our neighbors with his skills that day. Of these men, two in particular interested me. One was a man my own age, not yet thirty by my estimate, one of the few to keep his face free of whiskers, though it was possible that he could not grow them. He was handsome in a rugged sort of way, with wide eyes that seemed forever lost in thought. He had assisted in the hard labor of building the half-faced camp, and in so doing he had exhibited extraordinary strength. More than once he had been called over by some great bull of a man who wanted this smaller man’s assistance in rolling a log or pulling an unmovable lever. Yet, though he exhibited in a thousand ways signs of great strength and no aversion to using it, his interactions lacked the open ease that most men exhibit with one another. At times he and Mr. Dalton exchanged a quiet word, but mostly he kept to himself. Now that the time of merriment had come, he neither ate nor drank as much as the other men but only sat by Mr. Dalton’s side, sipping his whiskey while others gulped, smiling politely at jokes while others guffawed and brayed laughter.

The second man piqued my interest also because he was so different. He was no older than Mr. Dalton, but while the great Irishman’s power rendered him ageless, this man had something of a scholarly look about him and seemed to me almost old. He wore not the rough clothes of a border man but the practical breeches and shirt and coat of a successful tradesman of the middle rank. He kept his gray hair long and his beard short, and perched upon his nose was a pair of little round spectacles.

He sat upon the ground with the other men, and he drank his whiskey with them, but I observed that on several occasions he turned to look at me. When our eyes met, he turned away and reddened slightly. I have been gazed upon by men before, sometimes in the predatory manner of a Colonel Tindall, but here was something else. I did not know what it was precisely, but it neither frightened nor offended me.

The other women noted his interest as well, and while they talked and gossiped, one creature, a rugged and meaty woman they called Rosalie, with hair somewhere between straw and white, let out a snort. She told me she was not yet forty. She had once been, perhaps, pretty, but now her face had been leathered by the elements, her hands calloused and sun-spotted. “That Scotsman should learn to keep his eyes to himself or I reckon your husband will relieve him of one of them.”

“Who is he?” I asked.

“He was a schoolteacher,” said another woman, older and thicker than the first and with but three or four teeth in her head. “In Connecticut, they say. But there was a scandal with a married woman. And now here he is, gawking at you like you ain’t got a husband right before him.”

“He don’t belong here,” said Rosalie, “and would never have no companionship neither if it weren’t for Dalton. He and the Scot make their whiskey together and are friends, like. But then Dalton has his own way with friends.”

All the women tittered at this, and I suppose if I had felt more at ease with their company I should have asked about this secret, but as they did not volunteer I did not inquire. I think they did not like my reserve, and one of these women whispered something in the ear of another, and she, in turn, looked at me with face frozen for a long moment before she burst out in laughter.

I loathed this feeling of being unwanted and longed to join the gathering of men. I would have even consented to drink their whiskey if necessary. As I lamented my state, the Scottish gentleman, whom they called Skye, rose from his seat and approached our fire. The women began a fresh round of whispering and laughter but fell into an awkward silence as the man came toward us and took a seat in the dirt next to me.

“I beg your pardon, Mrs. Maycott,” he said, in a Scots brogue that reminded me of my father, “but we haven’t met. I am John Skye.”

“You’ve met her husband, I’ll wager,” said Rosalie, igniting a general laughter.

“Maybe she’ll take it kindly if you give her your Shake Spear,” said one of the others.

“Lord knows Annie Janson weren’t impressed,” cried a third, to much amusement.

“Might I have a private word with you?” he asked of me.

I looked at the faces about me and knew they disapproved, but I could not live my life for their favor. I pushed myself to my feet and he followed, and we walked away from the women’s fire, listening to their cackles and their hooting. We did not step far, remaining close to the men’s fire. Andrew looked at me and smiled and then returned to a conversation with Mr. Dalton. Never had there been any mistrust between us on this score, and certainly he could not have mistaken my interest in Mr. Skye and found it inappropriate. Andrew would have seen the thing for precisely what it was and found amusement in it; here, among the rough and unlettered folk of the West, I had found perhaps the only person of a literary turn.

“Your husband tells me you are a great reader of books, Mrs. Maycott,” he said. “I wished to let you know that I am lucky enough to possess no small number of volumes, and I should be happy to lend you what you wish.”

“You are kind,” I said, “though I am not sure a roofed patch of forest floor is the best place to bring so precious a thing as a book.”

“You’ll have your own home soon enough. Your husband will fell some seventy or eighty good trees in his spare time, and when these are assembled we will have a cabin-raising party. If he is industrious about it, you should be inside doors within a month or two.”

I laughed. “A month or two sounds to me like a long time to be outside-of-doors.”

He coughed into his fist. “I am fortunate enough to be in possession of a large home, in which I live alone. I have two stories and several rooms. You may, if you wish, pass the time there. I have already made the offer to your husband. The two of you may stay with me.”

I sensed that he wished to add that if I chose to stay while Andrew worked about the property, I should be most welcome, but he did not yield to the temptation. Instead, he offered me a crooked smile in which his teeth, very white for a man his age, glistened in the light of the fires.

“It is a funny thing, is it not, people such as ourselves cast adrift in a place such as this?”

“How can you be certain that you and I are people of the same sort?” I asked him, though not unkindly. He addressed me with an attention that was not entirely appropriate, but the great difference in our ages, and the proximity of my husband not many feet away, made me feel there could be no danger in it.

I looked over at the beardless young man, who continued to sit with the others and yet somehow hold himself aloof. “Pray, who is that gentleman?” I asked Mr. Skye.

He let out a guffaw. “Mrs. Maycott, there are no gentlemen in the West. That man, however, is Jericho Richmond. He is Mr. Dalton’s friend.”

“Does he have but one? I thought I had observed that you are Mr. Dalton’s friend.”

“Indeed I am. My life should be far more difficult without his friendship. Jericho, however, is Dalton ’s very good friend. They live in the same home.”