Miss Pfeffer kept glancing toward the door, concerned for him but still dubious, so he lurched away from her then and staggered toward a farther room, clutching at the doorframe for support. “Oh, but it pains me so!” he sobbed.

“Oh, dear me—” Miss Pfeffer sprang after him. “Yes, you dear child, lie down, use my bed there, it’s—”

“Oh, no ma’am, you’re too kind. Any old place on the floor will do me…” Dingus sagged into her arms.

“But you are hurt! Here, I insist!”

So he let himself be led to the already turned-back bed, tumbling across it. He lay on his side, with his feet over the edge. “My boots,” he sighed. “I jest ain’t got the strength to—”

“Here, here, let me—” Miss Pfeffer set down her lamp, kneeling to the first of them. It came free easily, exposing the soggy, bloodstained sock. “Oh!” Miss Pfeffer cried. “Oh, it’s all—”

“Yes’m. I lost considerable amounts before I got to the doc.”

“Oh dear! Dear me!” She removed the other boot, rising to hold it in consternation. The color had drained from her long face, such color as there had been. “Your clothes. Do you think you ought to—”

“Yes’m, I’d rest far more comfortable. Only”—Dingus blushed, lowering his eyes—“I’d take it right kindly if’n you’d leave. I can manage, I’m sure I can—”

Miss Pfefier’s own face was averted. “But you’ll call me, if you’re too ill—”

“Yes’m.”

He undressed leisurely then, hearing her pace elsewhere in the house. Now and then she mumbled something. When he extinguished the lamp, calling out to her, she pranced back into the room anxiously.

“I hope you’ll forgive the lamp being off without your permission,” Dingus started then. “But my daddy would think badly of me, if’n I were lacking my proper clothing in a lady’s presence without the light was out. Oh, my poor daddy—” Dingus commenced to sob. “Right before my very eyes, this very day, they shot him down like a dog, and I won’t never kiss his dear furrowed brow again—”

So Miss Pfeffer hovered above him now. “You unfortunate soul. How did it happen? Will it help you to talk about it?”

Dingus sobbed and sobbed. “It were rustlers. They took our cattle, even every last helpless little calf that my daddy toiled so hard to care for. And then they set fire to our ranch, too, that my daddy homesteaded with the sweat of his tired, lame shoulders. Oh, it were jest unbearable!”

A hand stroked his own in commiseration. “And to think they would take up arms against someone of your age!” Miss Pfeffer shuddered. “But your mother, don’t you have a—”

“Oh,” Dingus wailed, “don’t make me talk about my mother, please! That were too sad, I still can’t think about it without I start to weep worse’n ever!” The hand bad started to lift; Dingus clutched at it desperately. “And it’s all the more sadder here, too, because you remind me of her. Not that you’re anywheres near as old as her, but jest that you’re beautiful the same way. And kind, too, and refined. But then those dreadful Comanches come, and they dragged her out into the fields, and they bound her to four stakes in the ground, and then they—” Dingus emitted a choked gasp. “But it ain’t a fit thing to relate before a woman. It were God’s pure mercy that she died within the month. I weren’t but eleven…”

“Dear heaven! And now you’re all alone—”

“All alone on God’s earth, yes’m. But I’m safe here. Only—”

“Yes, what is it?”

“I’m so cold. All of a sudden, my wound hurts right bad, and I feel this terrible chill. I can’t hardly keep from shivering.”

“Wait, here, let me—”

Dingus felt the additional blankets being spread across him. “But them must be what you would of slept with yourself,” he protested, shaking now. “I c-c-couldn’t take y-y-yours.”

“Oh, dear, it is bad, isn’t it?”

“Yes’m. I sure wish I had a brother or some kin here. My mommy always used to tell me that were the only way to stop a ch-ch-chill, to sleep all huddled up close to your brother. Excepting it were Apaches that kilt him. When I were nine. They — they—”

Dingus shivered and shivered. “Oh, heavens,” Miss Pfeffer said in the darkness, talking as if to herself now. “Oh dear me. But I must, yes. It is only charitable. Christian. I must—”

He waited until he was certain, hearing the rustling. Then he cried, “Ma’am, ma’am, what are you doing?”

“Hush now. That chill could be the death of you.”

“Oh, I know that, ma’am. I could go to my reward before the night is past, I don’t doubt that I could. But I done stripped down completely out’n my—”

“But that’s how it must be done.” Dingus felt the blankets being drawn aside, waiting without a move as she drew him into her embrace. “Of course,” she said, “you feel feverish too. Indeed. I think perhaps if you would turn over, then I could cover you more fully.”

“Oh, dear,” Dingus said. “Is that the only way it will save me? Because I can’t stay nohow but on my stomach, alas, what with this wound I got. Would it work to keep me warm the same way if’n I was the one who climbed on the—”

“Yes, I believe so. It’s the transference of the body’s heat which is important. Here. Wait, and I’ll—”

“This sure is a kindness, ma’am. I’m feeling considerable warmer already. But I’m right embarrassed too. What I mean, I’ve never been in the same bed with a female person, of course, but isn’t this how — I mean the way — I mean—”

“Heavens, I don’t know either. Do you think this is all that—”

“Well, I certainly never expected you would know, ma’am, not a respectable unmarried lady like yourself. But what I would guess, it probably has got something to do with — well, not meaning anything, but jest sort of hypothetical, I reckon I would have to adjust my position a trifle, sort of like this — I mean if I were growed up enough and we were married folks and all, which is the only circumstances under which I would give a passing thought to such things…”

“Of course. But hypothetically, yes, if we were, do you imagine it’s anything like—”

“Well, this could be it, maybe. But next I would most likely have to arrange myself like this, and then sort of like…”

“Like that?”

“I reckon so. And then I’d—”

“Oh, dear. Oh, dear me—”

“Don’t you reckon that would be how it—”

“Well, I don’t know, but — but—”

“Oh. Oh, well, hang it now—”

“What is it? What are you doing? Oh, don’t! Please don’t, I—”

“Well, now, I jest can’t help it, ma’am, I truly can’t. Durned if’n that chill ain’t come back over me, worse’n ever. Why, I jest think I’m about to start shivering so I can’t stop for nothing—”

Perhaps he heard her. In any event he dozed only fitfully, vaguely conscious that she was pacing. Moonlight was streaming through a window then, and later he would definitely recall a vision of her standing over him, wringing her hands. “What have we done?” she was wailing. “What have we done!” But then he turned away from the disturbance.

Or perhaps he saw her when she was dressing also, or heard her when she decided, talking only to herself. “I’ll have to ask someone,” she said. “Because there must be a man of the cloth in town, surely. The sheriff would know. Yes, I’ll ask Mr. Birdsill.” But if he heard he gave no sign.

Yet when the pain woke him he seemed to know instinctively, knew even before he became aware that the blankets were coarser now, the bed more lumpy. What told him first was the ache itself, which was in his temple. Then, when he lifted a hand to touch the soreness, he knew without question, since his other hand was jerked upward by the movement, fixed fast to the first by the ancient rusted iron manacles.

He was in his woolens, but he could see his clothing where it lay in a pile on the cell floor. He found the tender lump behind his ear then too, and he moaned once, less in realization of his new predicament than from ineffable, sad resignation. “Oh, Dingus, you jest never ought to have gonter sleep,” he said aloud.