Chapter 91

Both were apple-cheeked, as was appropriate to their name, and shy. Curtis was a fair man burning brown beneath the prairie sun. His wife was quite pretty when compared to his ordinariness. An uncle already established in New York City had paid their passage from London, but in the hard times following the war, their presence had been a burden, so they immigrated west.

Crow was a man not yet thirty whose dark Absaroka features arranged themselves in a pleasing way. He was fit and finely muscled, again reminding me of a warrior rather than a farrier and horse tender. His father had been a scout at Fort Ramson until he retired and returned to his native hills. Crow remained behind because he had never known the old country. He spoke some Lakota, and Matthew regularly addressed him in that tongue until Mary called him down for the practice. It wasn’t polite to exclude others from the conversation, she claimed, which was not the real reason for her objection, of course.