"She ought to have loved him," Sally said.

"Ought don't count for as much as a gnat, when you're talking about love," Clara said. "She didn't. You seen her. She didn't even care for Martin. We've already given July and Martin more love than that poor woman ever gave them. I don't say that to condemn her. I know she had her troubles, and I doubt she was often in her right mind. I'm sorry she had no more control of herself to run off from her husband and child and get killed."

She stopped, to let the girls work on the various questions a little. It interested her which they would pick as the main point.

"We want July to stay," Betsey said finally. "You'll just make him run off, being so stern, and then he'll get butchered up too."

"You think I'm that bad?" Clara asked, with a smile.

"You're pretty bad," Betsey said.

Clara laughed. "You'll be just as bad, if you don't reform," she said. "I got a right to my feelings too, you know. We're doing a nice job of taking care of July Johnson. It just gripes me that he let himself be tromped on and can't even figure out that it wasn't right, and that he didn't like it."

"Can't you just be patient?" Sally said. "You're patient with Daddy."

"Daddy got his head kicked," Clara said. "He can't help how he is."

"Did he keep his bond?" Betsey asked.

"Yes, for sixteen years," Clara said. "Although I never liked his drinking."

"I wish he'd get well," Sally said. She had been her father's favorite and grieved over him the most.

"Ain't he going to die?" Betsey asked.

"I fear he will," Clara said. She had been careful not to let that notion take hold of the girls, but she wondered if she was wrong. Bob wasn't getting better, and wasn't likely to.

Sally started to cry, and Clara put her arms around her.

"Anyway, we have July," Betsey said.

"If I don't run him off," Clara said.

"You just better not!" Betsey said, eyes flashing.

"He might get bored and leave of his own accord," Clara volunteered.

"How could he get bored? There's lots to do," Sally said.

"Don't be so stern with him, Ma," Betsey pleaded. "We don't want him to leave."

"It won't hurt the man to learn a thing or two," Clara said. "If he plans to stay here he'd better start learning how to treat women."

"He treats us fine," Sally pointed out.

"You ain't women yet," Clara said. "I'm the only one around here, and he better spruce up if he wants to keep on my good side."

July soon returned to work, but his demeanor had not greatly improved. He had little humor in him and could not be teased successfully, which was an irritant to Clara. She had always loved to tease and considered it an irony of her life that she was often drawn to men who didn't recognize teasing even when she was inflicting it on them. Bob had never responded to teasing, or even noticed it, and her powers in that line had slowly rusted from lack of practice. Of course she teased the girls, but it was not the same as having a grown man to work on-she had often felt like pinching Bob for being so stolid. July was no better-in fact, he and Bob were cut from the same mold, a strong but unimaginative mold.

When she came down from washing her face, she heard talk from the back and stopped dead on the stairs, for there was no doubt who was talking. The chord of memory that had been weakly struck by the sight of the horsemen resounded through her suddenly like an organ note. No sound in the world could have made her happier, for she heard the voice of Augustus McCrae, a voice like no other. He sounded exactly as he always had-hearing his voice so unexpectedly after sixteen years caused her eyes to fill. The sound took the years away. She stood on the stairs in momentary agitation, uncertain for a second as to when it was, or where she was, so much did it remind her of other times when Augustus would show up unexpectedly, and she, in her little room over the store, would hear him talking to her parents.

Only now he was talking to her girls. Clara regretted not changing blouses-Gus had always appreciated her appearance. She walked on down the stairs and looked out the kitchen window. Sure enough, Gus was standing there, in front of his horse, talking to Betsey and Sally. Woodrow Call sat beside him, still mounted, and beside Call, on a bay horse, was a young blond woman wearing men's clothes. A good-looking boy on a brown mare was the last of the group.

Clara noted that Gus had already charmed the girls-July Johnson would be lucky to get another bowl of soup out of them as long as Gus was around.

She stood at the window a minute studying him. To her he seemed not much older. His hair had already turned white when he was young. He had always made her feel keen, Gus-his appetite for talk matched hers. She stood for a moment in the kitchen doorway, a smile on her lips. Just seeing him made her feel keen. She was in the shadows and he had not seen her. Then she took a step or two and Augustus looked around. Their eyes met and he smiled.

"Well, pretty as ever," he said.

To the huge astonishment of her girls, Clara walked straight off the porch and into the stranger's arms. She had a look in her eyes that they had never seen, and she raised her face to the stranger and kissed him right on the mouth, an action so startling and so unexpected that both girls remembered the moment for the rest of their lives.

Newt was so surprised that he scarcely knew where to look.

When Clara kissed him, Lorena looked down, nothing but despair in her heart. There the woman was, Gus loved her, and she herself was lost. She should have stayed in the tent and not come to see it-yet she had wanted to come. Now that she had, she would have given anything to be somewhere else, but of course it was too late. When she looked up again she saw that Clara had stepped back a bit and was looking at Gus, her face shining with happiness. She had thin arms and large hands, Lorena noticed. Two men were walking up from the lots, having seen the crowd.

"Well, introduce your friends, Gus," Clara said. She had a hand on his arm, and walked with him over to the horses.

"Oh, you know Woodrow," Augustus said.

"How do you do?" Call said, feeling at a loss.

"This is Miss Lorena Wood," Augustus said, reaching up to help her dismount. "She's come a far piece with us. All the way from Lonesome Dove, in fact. And this young gentleman is Newt."

"Newt who?" Clara asked.

"Newt Dobbs," Augustus said, after a pause.

"Hello, Miss Wood," Clara said. To Lorena's surprise she seemed quite friendly-far more so than most women were to her.

"I don't know whether to envy you or pity you, Miss Wood," Clara said. "Riding all that way with Mr. McCrae, I mean. I know he's entertaining, but that much entertainment could break a person for life."

Then Clara laughed, a happy laugh-she was amused that Augustus had seen fit to arrive with a woman, that she had stunned her girls by kissing him, and that Woodrow Call, a man she had always disliked and considered scarcely more interesting than a stump, had been able to think of nothing better to say to her after sixteen years than "How do you do?" It added up to a lively time, in her book, and she felt she had been in Nebraska long enough to deserve a little liveliness.

She saw that the young woman was very frightened of her. She had dismounted but kept her eyes cast down. July and Cholo walked up just at that time, July with a look of surprise on his face.

"Why, Sheriff Johnson," Augustus said. "I guess, as they say, it's a small world."

"Just to you, Gus, you've met everybody in it now, I'm sure," Clara said. She glanced at July, who so far hadn't spoken. He was watching her and it struck her that it might be because she was still holding Gus's arm. It made Clara want to laugh again. In minutes, the arrival of Gus McCrae had mixed up everyone, just as it usually had in the past. It had always been a peculiarity of her friendship with Augustus. Nobody had ever been able to figure out whether she was in love with him or not. Her parents had puzzled over the question for years-it had replaced Bible arguments as their staple of conversation. Even when she had accepted Bob, Gus's presence in her life confused most people, for she had soon demonstrated that she had no intention of giving him up just because she was planning to marry. The situation had been made the more amusing by the fact that Bob himself worshipped Gus, and would probably have thought it odd that she had chosen him over Gus if he had been sharp enough to figure out that she could have had Gus if she'd wanted him.