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to carry on much of a conversation. It had been a monotonous trip. George seemed moody, cold, uncommunicative. He had answered all her questions, but he hadn’t tried to pretend he wouldn’t have preferred to ride in silence. At times his answers had verged on rudeness. Clearly he had another side, one not nearly so pleasant as the face he showed in Austin.
    And he had demons, too. She could tell he had been wrestling with something for the last two hours. At first she thought he might tell her about it, but now she knew he wouldn’t. George was not the kind of person to confide in others. He rode with his eyes straight ahead, oblivious to his surroundings.
    And to her.
    Rose had heard about the brush country, but she’d never seen it. Now she wondered how anything, man or beast, could live in such a place. They seemed to be traveling between impenetrable thickets that extended as far as the eye could see. Sometimes miles went by before they came to an opening, a small savannah in this tangle of mesquite, chaparral, prickly pear, wild currant, cat’s claw, and a dozen other varieties of low-growing trees, bushes, and vines, all bearing sweet-scented flowers and succulent berries, and nearly all armed with vicious thorns. Rose didn’t know how cows and deer, even pigs and turkeys, could hide in such a briar patch. She couldn’t conceive of how a man and horse could ride into that tangle and come out alive.
    After living in a town all her life, she was unnerved by the isolation of the brush. She hadn’t seen a house all day. It was as though they were the only people on the face of the earth. She didn’t know if she could survive this far from people. Not with George acting as though he were made of wood.
    A widening path drew her attention from the brush. Rose could make out a building in the distance. She felt her pulse quicken.
    “It’s not much of a house,” George warned her. “We had hardly moved here when the war broke out. With Pa and the two oldest boys gone, Ma was lucky to hold things together.”
    Rose realized, a little surprised, that he had never mentioned his parents before. “I thought…you never said…you led me to believe…”
    “Ma died three years ago. The house will be entirely your responsibility.” They might as well be discussing some military maneuver for all the feeling she could sense in his voice. He didn’t even look at her.
    “Your father?”
    The hesitation was barely perceptible. “We think he was killed in Georgia, not too long after the battle for Atlanta.”
    Rose didn’t know how to respond. The tone of George’s voice exhibited such a mixture of emotions—cold observation and throbbing anger—she thought it better to ask no questions.
    The ranch did nothing to support her flagging spirits. It consisted of a house, which at a distance appeared to be made up of two very large rooms with a dog trot in between, and two corrals. A blooded bull occupied one.
    George followed her gaze. “A family in Alabama gave us the bull for helping them out. Jeff and I kept him between us all the way to make sure nobody would steal him. At night we slept in shifts. The steers we can breed from him can make us rich.”
    As they drew closer, the house looked even more pitiful. Bedraggled chickens scratching about for a meager existence didn’t improve the landscape. A milk cow grazed a hundred yards from the house. Her sorry condition made her fit right in with the setting. A person could starve and die out here and no one would ever know.
    “I’m afraid things have been let go since Ma died. Thetwins have been too busy with the herd, and the young ones never mind a mess.”
    “Young ones? You said seven men.”
    “We’re only six just now. No one’s heard from Madison.” His voice faltered, but only for a moment. “The twins are seventeen, Tyler’s thirteen, and Zac is almost seven.”
    “He’s practically a baby,” Rose exclaimed, her sympathy aroused for any child forced