For a time, s*x seems the only solace for Abel Munday. I want so much to give him more, but hold back, fearing I might become like others who’ve chased him off. We often sleep wound together in his bed, and this alone is progress. I am proud I don’t crowd him.
I don’t ask more about his past, though I’m powerful curious. What I do is marvel how far he’s come from such awful circumstance. We occupy ourselves with gold, having good days and bad. I dig hole after hole until the shore is a wreck.
“Come spring I want to move the rocker upstream,” says Abel over supper one evening. We’re having beans and biscuits because the store is low on goods due to heavy rain keeping wagons from getting in.
Time slips us into December, and one day when we’re working in mean cold, snow starts to fall. “We
