“Mama, what are you doing?” Addie asked, utterly confused. She dismounted and led her mare toward her mother.
“Waiting for the devil,” the woman answered, never bothering to look up, instead staring toward the opposite side of the small canyon, toward where Melinda would soon be riding down the narrow path to the canyon below.
Addie’s mouth went dry. Her mother’s religious devotion had been a source of contention in her family for as long as she remembered. Even as a small child, Addie had felt a difficult to define fear when her mother spoke so lovingly of her fire-and-brimstone preacher grandfather who had traveled the evangelical circuit of New Mexico and Texas. Young Addie had never admitted aloud to anyone how relieved she was that the man had died before she was born. She felt bles
