“Corin?” she whispered, putting her hand out to shake him slightly. She could not see his face, could not make him look up at her. “Where’s his hat? He’ll get a chill!” she shouted at Hutch. She didn’t know her own voice; it was too high, too brittle.
“Mrs. Massey, come now, step aside. We have to get him inside the house. Quickly now!” Hutch told her sternly, trying to steer the horse around her.
“Where’s Strumpet? What happened to Corin-what’s wrong with him? Tell me!” she asked, frantic now. She knotted her fingers around the horse’s reins, pulled its head around, stopped it walking past with its precious cargo. Hutch said something terse, and Joe swung down from his horse, taking Caroline’s hands and freeing the reins. Joe shouted something, his voice loud and deep. Caroline paid no heed. More men arrived, to take the horses, to gather Corin up. Caroline stumbled behind them to the bottom step of the house; she fell, and could not rise again. She could not remember how to walk, how to make her legs bend or her feet rise or fall. Strong hands lifted her and even though they bore her in the direction she wanted to go, she fought them savagely, as if she could resist what was happening, and make it not so.
They laid Corin down on the bed. Caroline dried his hair carefully with a linen towel, peeled his wet shirt from his torso and pulled his sodden boots from his feet, splattering rainwater onto the floor. She fetched clean blankets and covered him thickly. His hands were like ice and she held them in her own, feeling the familiar calluses, trying to rub some warmth into them when she had none to give. She brought a bowl of the rabbit stew, steaming and fragrant, and set it by the bed.
“Won’t you have some? It will warm you,” she murmured to him.
“He was riding hard after a big dog coyote. It was the last one we were going after, since we’d seen the rain coming in. Strumpet-she always was the quickest. Fast on her feet too-and that’s not the same thing. She was nimble, that mare. Quick thinking. I never saw a horse and rider move so well together as Corin and that mare…” Hutch spoke in a low monotone; his eyes fixed on Corin and his hands working in circles, wringing and twisting and wringing again. Caroline hardly heard a word he said. “But then, with no warning she just went over. High in the air, heels right up over her head. Whatever she stepped in, and I think it was some sinking sand, she never saw it coming or she’d have avoided it for sure. Corin was thrown down hard and… and then Strumpet came down on top of him. It was so fast! Like God reached down and turned that poor horse over with a flick of his finger. Her two legs were broke in front. Joe shot her. He shot her and we had to leave her out there for the damned coyotes. That brave horse!” He broke off, tears coursing down his cheeks.
Caroline blinked. “Well,” she said eventually, slowly, like a drunken person. “You’ll have to go and fetch her back. Corin won’t have any horse but her.” Hutch looked at her in confusion. “Is the doctor here yet?” she asked, turning back to the bed. A dark water stain was ruining the silk squares of the quilt, seeping out around Corin. Patches of angry color bloomed beneath the skin of his chest and arms, like an ugly blush. His right shoulder sat at a wrong angle and his head lolled to the left, always to the left. Caroline slipped her hands beneath the blankets to see if he was warming up, but his flesh was cold and solid and wrong somehow. She lay her head close to his and refused to listen to the quiet, terrified corner of her mind that knew he was dead.
They buried Corin on his own land, at the top of a green rise some hundred and fifty feet from the house and a good distance from the sweet-water well. The parson came out from Woodward and tried to persuade Caroline that it would be more seemly for the burial to be in the churchyard in town, but since Caroline was too numb to answer him Hutch had the final say, and he insisted that Corin had wanted to be buried on the prairie. Angie Fosset and Magpie were responsible for Caroline’s attendance that day, and for lacing her into a borrowed black dress that was too big and hung from her thin frame in folds. They also found her a veiled hat with two long, black ostrich feathers that swept out behind her.
“Have you written to his people, Caroline?” Angie asked, pulling a brush through Caroline’s matted hair. “Sweetheart, have you written to his mama?” But Caroline did not answer her. She had no will left to draw breath, to form words. Angie shot Magpie a dark look, and took the Ponca girl aside for a whispered consultation that Caroline did not attempt to overhear. They led her up the rise to stand by the graveside as the parson read the sermon to a crowd of ranchers, neighbors and a good portion of the population of Woodward. The sky was tarnished. A warm wind shook the wreath of white roses on the coffin and carried a few sprinkled raindrops onto the congregation.
When the proper prayers were said and done, Hutch walked a few steps to stand at the head of the coffin. The mourners waited, eyes turned respectfully downward, and when Hutch did not speak they waited some more, glancing up at him from time to time. Even Caroline, eventually, raised her shrouded eyes to see what was happening. Then, at last, Hutch pulled in a long breath and spoke in a deep voice, soft and steady.
“The minister here has made a pretty speech, and I know he meant for it to be a comfort. And it may well be a comfort to some, to think of Corin Massey gone ahead of us into the kingdom of heaven. I daresay that, in time, I might be able to draw some comfort from that same thought. I hope he likes it there. I hope there are fine horses, and wide green spaces for him to ride. I hope the sky there is the color of a spring dawn over the prairie. But today…” he paused, his voice cracking. “Today I hope that God will forgive me if I object to him taking Corin from us so soon. Just for today, I think we can feel hard done by that our great friend has gone. For we will miss him sorely. I will miss him sorely. More than I can say. He was the best of us, and a fairer or a kinder man you could not hope to meet.” Hutch swallowed, two tears sliding down his cheeks. He wiped them away roughly with the back of his hand, then, clearing his throat, he began to sing:
“Where the dewdrops fall and the butterfly rests,
The wild rose blooms on the prairie’s crest,
Where the coyotes howl and the wind sports free,
They laid him there on the lone prairie.”
His song was as mournful as the empty wind and it blew right through Caroline. She felt as insubstantial as air, as intangible as the clouds above. Her eyes returned to the pale wooden casket. Nothing about it spoke of Corin, nothing about it reminded her of him. It was as if he had been wiped from the earth, she thought, and it seemed an impossible thing to have happened. She had no photographs, no portraits of him. Already his scent was fading from his pillow, from his clothes. Hutch, Joe, Jacob Fosset and three other men stepped either side of the coffin, gathered the ropes into their weathered hands and took the strain. The parson spoke again but Caroline turned and stumbled away down the hill, the folds of the borrowed dress trailing her like a dark echo of her wedding gown. She could not bear to see the weight on those ropes, the tension in those hands. She could not bear to picture what was weighing that coffin down; and the blackness of the open grave awaiting it appalled her.
“Don’t you leave her alone for a second. Not for a second, Maggie. She was lonely enough when Corin was alive, God help her,” Angie whispered to Magpie as she got ready to depart after the funeral. Caroline was standing right next to them, but Angie guessed that she did not care. Angie turned to her, put firm hands on her shoulders. “I’ll be back on Tuesday, Caroline,” she said, sadly, but as she opened the door Caroline found her voice at last.