I STARED AT MY COFFEE in its cup. My eyes were all prickly and there was a big lump in my throat.

“After Jace lost his family,” said Stonewall, “he sold the farm and took the money and headed West. Invited me to join him. But everyone said we would soon be fighting for our freedom so I said I would stay. He said he didn’t have no fight left in him. Wished I had listened. That battle at Shiloh almost made me lose my Faith.”

Stonewall had just said more in five minutes than in all the time I had known him.

“Why did Jace become a gambler?” I said. “He is rich, so it’s not just for the money, is it?”

Stonewall pondered this for a moment. Then he said, “I reckon Jace plays to forget. He told me once that when he is playing poker, the past and the future ain’t there. Only the moment he is in.”

I nodded. It was like what my Indian ma had said.

Stonewall drained his coffee & glanced around. Then he leant forward.

“Don’t you never tell Jace I told you,” he said to me, “but I reckon you remind him of his own kids.” His ugly face contorted into a frown. “The fact that you ain’t nothin like them is good, too. He don’t feel he is betraying their memory by feeling kindly towards you.”

“Does Jace feel kindly towards me? Someone told me he said I was as bothersome as a deer tick.”

Stonewall frowned at the table for a moment, then shook his head. “He didn’t say that about you. I said that. About Violetta. He didn’t like that one bit. Specially as I said it to her face.”

“So Jace likes me?”

“Course he does. Long as you don’t crowd him, spy on him or tell him what to do.”

“One thing puzzles me,” I said to Stonewall.

“Yeah?”

“How can Jace love Violetta?”

Stonewall shook his head. “At first he didn’t. He was just using her as a smokescreen so people like Stewart would think he was in Carson for a Toll Road, not the Corporation Bill. But she worked her charms on him real good. I reckon Love trumps Brains.”

“But she is not True to him,” I said. “Can’t he see that? A woman ought to be True to Jace and not Play him False. Especially not with someone like Jack Williams.” I added this last under my breath but Ping had just returned from the outhouse and he must have heard me.

“Jack Williams?” he said, pulling up his chair. “They still have not caught killer.”

“What did you say?” I asked.

“Jack Williams,” he replied. “Someone shot him last week. His funeral was yesterday.”