"Is this a local delicacy?" Roe Farley had asked, gesturing to the open jar. After a morning of cutting cordwood, his shoulders were achy and several nasty blisters had formed on his right palm. He had no idea that so much effort—and skill—was involved in chopping wood or he would never have volunteered. The noon break had not come a moment too soon and Jesse had sent him ahead to the house to have his hand tended. The young woman beside him shrugged slightly as she gently rubbed sticky yellow salve that smelled of goldenseal and tallow along his palm. "It's just piccalilli. Folks around here eats it." The young local female, to Roe Farley's thinking, was a rather nice-looking woman. Not pretty, of course, in the way that fine genteel ladies appeared, but neat and scrubbed free of dirt she had a certain earthy appeal. She was tall. At least taller than a woman ought to be, he thought. But she wasn't excessively thin. Her bosom was quite generous and her backside typically rounded for a descendant of Scotch-Irish peasant stock.
