Emery to the boarders drifted into sleep. But Old Man Wetherell could still be heard walking about, his footfalls, steady, but not loud enough to keep anyone awake. Sophie lay, despite her exhaustion, staring into the darkness as the long hours of the night began to pass and Wetherell walked ceaselessly back and forth. Who was he? Had he killed someone? Was there some other crime in his past? Where was his wife? His children? He had come West before Sophie was born, according to Mrs. Emery, but he had ridden south, crossing the border to the United States before the border was even demarcated, when the Indians were still wild and dangerous, and to run into them alone was certain death. She saw him racing through the night, the moon lighting his solitary course across the hard pan and burnouts of the territory south of Bone Pile, his horse foaming from under his saddle. She imagined that terrifying, exalted passage south and ever more west, crossing the Missouri, through the Bitterroot that she had only heard of but thrilled to the name.
