Grace was at the end of the second row of cots, sitting up, her baby resting in her lap. The woman looked tired but also relieved. She offered a small smile as Sara approached.“He’s fussing a little,” she said.Sara took the baby from her, laid him on the adjacent cot, and unwound the blanket to examine him. A big, healthy boy with curly black hair. His heart was loud and strong.“We’re calling him Carlos, after my father,” Grace said.During the night, Grace had told Sara the story. Fifteen years ago, her parents had moved out to the townships, settling in Boerne. But her father had had little luck as a farmer and had been forced to take a job with the telegraph crews, leaving the family alone for months at a time. After he’d been killed in a fall from a pole, Grace and her mother—her two older brothers had long since moved on—had returned to Kerrville to live with relatives. But it had been a hard life, and her mother, too, had passed, though Grace shared no details. At seventeen, Grace had gone to work in an illegal saloon—she was vague about her duties, which Sara didn’t want to know—and this was how she’d met Jock.
