She munched her corn bread for a while. She seemed to be amused, though Roscoe couldn't figure out what might be amusing.

"How big was your family?" she asked.

"There was just four of us boys," Roscoe said. "Ma died young."

Louisa was watching him, which made him nervous. He remembered that he was supposed to be thinking about the prospect of marrying her while he finished the cornbread, but in fact his appetite was about gone anyway and he was having to choke it down. He began to feel more and more of a grievance against more and more people. The start of it all was Jake Spoon, who had no business coming to Fort Smith in the first place. It seemed to him that a chain of thoughtless actions, on the part of many people he knew, had resulted in his being stuck in a cabin in the wilderness with a difficult widow woman. Jake should have kept his pistol handier, and not resorted to a buffalo gun. Benny Johnson should have been paying attention to his dentistry and not walking around in the street in the middle of the day. July shouldn't have married Elmira if she was going to run off, and of course Elmira certainly had no business geting on the whiskey boat.

In all of it no one had given much consideration to him, least of all the townspeople of Fort Smith. Peach Johnson and Charlie Barnes, in particular, had done their best to see that he had to leave.

But if the townspeople of Fort Smith had not considered him, the same couldn't be said for Louisa Brooks, who was giving him a good deal more consideration than he was accustomed to.

"I was never a big meat eater," she said. "Living off corn bread keeps you feeling light on your feet."

Roscoe didn't feel light on his feet, though. Both his legs pained him from where the root had struck them. He choked down the last of the corn bread and took another swallow on two of the cool well water.

"You ain't a bad-looking feller," Louisa said. "Jim was prone to warts. Had 'em on his hands and on his neck both. So far as I can see you don't have a wart on you."

"No, don't believe so," Roscoe admitted.

"Well, that's all the supper," Louisa said. "What about my proposition?"

"I can't," Roscoe said, putting it as politely as he knew how. "If I don't keep on till I find July 1 might lose my job."

Louisa looked exasperated. "You're a fine guest," she said. "I tell you what, let's give it a tryout. You ain't had enough experience of women to know whether you like the married life or not. It might suit you to a T. If it did, you wouldn't have to do risky work like being a deputy."

It was true that being a deputy had become almost intolerably risky-Roscoe had to grant that. But judging from July's experience, marriage had its risks too.

"I don't favor mustaches much," Louisa said. "But then life's a matter of give and take."

They had eaten the corn bread right out of the pan, so there were no dishes to wash. Louisa got up and threw a few crumbs out the door to her chickens, who rushed at them greedily, two of them coming right into the cabin.

"Don't you eat them chickens?" Roscoe asked, thinking how much better the corn bread would have tasted if there had been a chicken to go with it.

"No, I just keep 'em to control the bugs," Louisa said. "I ate enough chicken in Alabama to last me a lifetime."

Roscoe felt plenty nervous. The question of sleeping arrangements could not be postponed much longer. He had looked forward briefly to sleeping in the cabin, where he would feel secure from snakes and wild pigs, but that hope was dashed. He hadn't spent a night alone with a woman in his whole life and didn't plan to start with Louisa, who stood in the doorway drinking a dipper of water. She squished a swallow or two around in her mouth and spat it out the door. Then she put the dipper back in the bucket and leaned over Roscoe, so close he nearly tipped over backward in his chair out of surprise.

"Roscoe, you've went to waste long enough," she said. "Let's give it a tryout."

"Well, I wouldn't know how to try," Roscoe said. "I've been a bachelor all my life."

Louisa straightened up. "Men are about as worthless a race of people as I've ever encountered," she said. "Look at the situation a minute. You're running off to catch a sheriff you probably can't find, who's in the most dangerous state in the union, and if you do find him he'll just go off and try to find a wife that don't want to live with him anyway. You'll probably get scalped before it's all over, or hung, or a Mexican will get you with a pigsticker. And it'll all be to try and mend something that won't mend anyway. Now I own a section of land here and I'm a healthy woman. I'm willing to take you, although you've got no experience either at farming or matrimony. You'd be useful to me, whereas you won't be a bit of use to that sheriff or that town you work for either. I'll teach you how to handle an ax and a mule team, and guarantee you all the corn bread you can eat. We might even have some peas to go with it later in the year. I can cook peas. Plus I've got one of the few feather mattresses in this part of the country, so it'd be easy sleeping. And now you're scared to try. If that ain't cowardice, I don't know what is."

Roscoe had never expected to hear such a speech, and he had no idea how to reply to it. Louisa's approach to marriage didn't seem to resemble any that he had observed, though it was true he had not spent much time studying the approaches to matrimony. Still, he had only ridden into Louisa's field an hour before sundown, and it was not yet much more than an hour after dark. Her proposal seemed hasty to him by any standards.

"Well, we ain't much acquainted," he said. "How do you know we'd get along?"

"I don't," Louisa said. "That's why I offered just to give it a tryout. If you don't like it you can leave, and if I can't put up with you I expect I could soon run you off. But you ain't even got the gumption to try. I'd say you're scared of women."

Roscoe had to admit that was true, except for a whore now and then. But he only admitted it to himself, not to Louisa. After some reflection he decided it was best to leave her charge unanswered.

"I guess I'll bed down out back," he said.

"Well, fine," Louisa said. "Just watch out for Ed."

That was a surprise. "Who's Ed?" he asked.

"Ed's a snake," Louisa said. "Big rattler. I named him after my uncle, because they're both lazy. I let Ed stay around because he holds down the rodents. He don't bother me and I don't bother him. But be hangs out around to the back, so watch out where you throw down your blanket."

Roscoe did watch. He stepped so gingerly, getting his bedding arranged, that it took him nearly twenty minutes to settle down. Then be couldn't get the thought of the big snake off his mind. He had never heard of anyone naming a snake before, but then nothing she did accorded with any procedure he was familiar with. The fact that she had mentioned the snake meant that he had little chance of getting to sleep. He had heard that snakes had a habit of crawling in with people, and he definitely didn't want to be crawled in with. He wrapped his blanket around him tightly to prevent Ed from slipping in, but it was a hot sultry night and he was soon sweating so profusely that he couldn't sleep anyway. There were plenty of grass and weeds around, and every time anything moved in the grass he imagined it to be the big rattler. The snake might get along with Louisa, but that didn't mean he would accept strangers.

Hours passed and he still couldn't get to sleep, though he was plenty tired. It was clear that if the sleeping didn't improve he was going to be dead on his feet long before he got back to Font Smith. His eyelids would fall, but then he'd hear something and jerk awake, a process that went on until he was too tired to care whether he died or not. He had been propped up against the wall of the cabin, but he slowly slid down and finally slept, flat on his back.