"Lorie, you don't know her, you ain't expected to attend the funeral," Tinkersley said.

"I want to attend the funeral, but I'd rather you didn't accompany me," Lorena said.

"But you didn't know the woman," Tinkersley said. He felt a sudden deep need to stay with Lorena. Seeing her had reminded him of the regret he had nursed for years, when he'd left her and lost her. He had even journeyed to the little town of Lonesome Dove, where he heard she worked, hoping to get her back. But he came too late. She had left with the cow herd and the cowboys, for Montana.

Now, through a miracle, she had stepped off the train in Laredo, right in front of him. He didn't want to leave her. When she told him she didn't want him to accompany her to the funeral, he fell back a few steps, but he didn't let Lorena out of his sight.

The cemetery was just a plain piece of ground, dusty, without a bush or a tree to lessen its plainness. Most of the grave markers were wooden, and many of them had tilted over, or fallen flat altogether. One of the whores, the smallest, a slip of a girl with curly brown hair, had a beautiful soprano voice.

When she sang "Amazing Grace," her voice rose over all the other singers, the other five whores and the few churchwomen. Her voice was clear as the air. They sang "Rock of Ages," and then "Will the Circle Be Unbroken." Three hymns at a funeral was unusual, Lorena thought. Yet, despite the cutting wind, the mourners seemed reluctant to leave. When the women finished the last song, they looked around, wondering if they should sing more. It was odd, Lorena thought, that no one was hurrying away.

The young whore with the beautiful voice finally spoke to one of the churchwomen, and the women began to sing "There's a Home Beyond the River." The young soprano poured her heart into the song.

No doubt she had an inkling of how Mrs.

Plunkert had felt. That, at least, was Lorena's view. The girl's voice was so strong and pure that it silenced the other singers. One by one, the other whores and the churchwomen fell silent, and the beautiful voice of the whore with the curly hair soared on, in lonely lament for the lost life of a woman the young whore had not known, and perhaps had not even met.

When the song ended, the mourners turned away from the grave, and an old Mexican man with a shovel began to push in dirt around the coffin.

"At least she had a right pretty funeral," Tinkersley said. He fell in with Lorena as she was hurrying back to the station, anxious to secure her valise. Tinkersley was seeking to make small talk, or any talk, that would persuade her to allow him to stay with her for a while.

"Get away from me, Tinkersley," Lorena said. "You done nothing but hurt me, when we was together. I don't want you to be walking with me.

I'm here to find my husband." "But, I bought you pretty dresses," Tinkersley protested. "I took you to the fanciest shop in San Antonio." "So you could sell me for a higher price," Lorena reminded him. "Get away from me. I don't like remembering none of that." "Lorie, I was just hoping we could visit," Tinkersley said. "I know I done you badly.

I came back to find you, but you were gone north with Gus McCrae." Lorena didn't speak to Tinkersley again.

She just ignored him. He walked with her, pleading, until they were nearly back to the station, but Lorena didn't say another word. She scarcely noticed him, in his slick coat, nor did she listen to his excuses or his pleas.

She felt a great longing to be with her husband.

Most men would make excuses all day and all night for their failings, but Pea never did. When Pea did something that hurt her feelings, he accepted his error and suffered for it until she had to take him in hand and try to coax him and tease him back into a good humor. She had to convince him, each time, that what he had done was only a small error, not the unforgivable act he believed it to be. Marriage was often vexing, that was all.

Now, with the funeral over, she wanted to gather such information about where Captain Call might be as she could. She wanted to catch up with Pea and bring him home, before one of the bad men in the world did something to hurt him.

It was not until that night, in her small, chill room in the drafty hotel, that Lorena's thoughts returned to the dead woman and the funeral.

She remembered the young whore who could sing soprano, and a deep sadness came with the memory.

In a building not far away, the young whore with the beautiful voice was back being a whore. The churchwomen who had spoken to her at the funeral wouldn't allow themselves to speak to her in their day-to-day lives. She was just one of Tinkersley's whores, as Lorena herself had been, once.

The only thing that was true in the four hymns the girl had sung was the music itself, Lorena thought.

Neither the whore nor the dead woman over whose grave she'd sung had received any grace at all, to draw upon; nor did they have any rock to stand on; nor any circle to shelter or protect them.

As to the home beyond the river, Lorena didn't know. She just wanted to find her husband and bring her children back from Nebraska. She wanted the six humans she was responsible for to be back again in their home, where she could watch over them.

At the telegraph office in the late afternoon, she had been given one good piece of information by the elderly fellow who worked the telegraph.

Several telegrams had poured in for Captain Call, instructing him to hurry to San Angelo. Joey Garza had struck there, only the week before.

The next morning, at breakfast--she was the only woman in the small hotel dining room-- Lorena happened to overhear a conversation that sent her heart leaping. Two Texas Rangers were at a table talking, and she heard the name Call mentioned.

The Rangers had looked at her hard when they walked in and saw her alone in the dining room, but Lorena had not sent her children away and traveled so far to be balked by hard looks from lawmen.

She got up and went over to their table.

"Excuse me, I heard you mention Captain Call," she said. "My husband is his deputy.

I'd be grateful if you'd give me any news of the group." The men looked surprised. The larger one rattled his spoon in his coffee cup; he was uncomfortable talking to women in public places.

"Don't know much, ma'am," he said, finally.

"Call nearly killed a sheriff in Presidio. They don't know yet whether the man will live. Call was getting his deputy out of jail and just went wild. He got his deputy and an old Indian he uses to track down bandits." "That's my husband. He oughtn't to have been in jail, he's never broken the law," Lorena said.