It was the deep end of summer. Our corn shined like gold beneath a setting sun and stretched as far as the eye could see. With a hand to shade my eyes, I watched Jake McCord ride toward me on the path from his ranch. A fresh breeze flirted with me on the porch, foretelling a cool summer evening.

I was comforted by the blessings of rich soil and a collection of helping hands, who couldn't fit into the world, but found a solace on my homestead. The fields and forts between us made us feel insulated from the war between the states.

Skye became my trusted friend and confidant. She was a far cry from the half-breed child raised in a whorehouse. In the late night hours beneath an oil lamp, I taught her how to read with my Bible. When she came to the place where Nicodemus was told he needed a second birth, she readily accepted a new life. She was determined to find a greater purpose in her life.

Mr. Greeley got along famously with Horace who understood animals and even talked to the horses and pigs. But when it came to Horace, he was elusive on where he came from. Maybe it was woman's intuition, but now and then his accent betrayed him. But on my homestead, I held the notion that one's past wouldn't matter if they lived good in the present. But I was wrong. Sometimes the past circles back like a pack of wolves who smell fear.

As darkness fell, Jake approached. He dismounted and tethered his horse to the railing of the porch. I was glad to have him back from the war that seemed to have claimed more than a piece of his mind. I held my son who fell asleep over my shoulder.

Jake pulled his hat and let the locks of his hair fall then took a knee in the Nebraska dirt. He ran his fingers through the soil and looked at me where I could see the reflection of his oft times, somber blue eyes. "You got the richest soil between here and the Rockies."

"I reckon it makes you wonder what the poor people are doin'?"

His face formed a crescent smile. "Well, I reckon it makes you something of baroness."

"I prefer a down to earth title. It sounds like I have fangs and claws." If only he knew how much I've fallen for him since he had come back from the war. "Do you reckon the war will come this far?"

Jake kept his eyes on me while on one knee. "The war is turning in the north's favor. But the Sioux have me worried."

"Raids?"

"We got word of a massacre at Spirit Lake, Iowa."

"War is coming from one direction or another. Seems peace can only live in our hearts when we let it."

He looked at me like he did before his stint in the army. He looked at me with that glint his eye. I wondered what he really had in mind. Did he love me like man should? Would he propose?

I was ready set my son inside to his own bed when laughter filled the fresh air. oil lamps burned bright within. I didn't want to tread on their level of goodwill my help had with each other. We all deserved a bit of revelry, if but for a moment.

Jake noted the laughter. "Seems they know how to make hay."

"What about you Jake. You know how to make hay? Maybe cut a rug?"

Horace, the one who saved Jake from the battle of Shiloh, struck up a note on his fiddle. Suddenly, I heard the clapboard floor move and the noise was like small claps of thunder under my feet. With my son over my shoulder and with the palm of my hand to his back, I decided to put him in the basinet on the porch. Then my eyes wandered past Jake where my husband's grave was near the oak tree.

It was then Jake looked down, then at me with those sad eyes. My husband's grave must have been like a millstone around his neck.

I decided to break the trance between us. "You got a dance in you there, Mr. McCord?"

His eyes sparked. "I'm not sure I recall how to dance."

"Like riding a horse. Some things you don't forget."

Jake strode toward me with his shy smile.

As Jake stood before me on the last step of the porch, I prodded his sensibilities. "You trust me to show you where to put your feet?" I said this as the music seemed to move the boards and float beneath our feet.

"Yes, your baroness."

"I promise not to bite. It's time to put the past behind us, so there should be no room to doubt our future."

With our hands raised, we clasped each other's. Before I knew it we whirled in our own world on the porch. We kicked up a breeze that swept through me. As he drew me into him the heat of his person and the mint of his breath took me. I hadn't thought it possible to love another man, but that night it seemed not only possible-but destined. We all needed someone to love.

Suddenly the music stopped. We stopped dancing. He tugged on my backside and kissed me.

A voice called out from beneath the moon. It startled us both. My thought ran toward my child. I picked him up from the basinet, ready to rush inside for my shotgun.

Jake turned toward the voice and sounds of men on horseback. I knew Jake had set his revolver down, but he turned to them as he often does and faces the unknown. "If you folks were on the road to town, I reckon you got lost."

The leader of the pack drew close with his chestnut horse. This man was close enough, I could smell the smoke of an earlier fire on his clothes, and I could see his gray coat, a proud confederate the same color of the soulless look to his eyes. "Would there be a man named Horace here, if you don't mind me asking?"

I took advantage of the moment and opened the door where all stood when they must have spied our strangers. I gave Skye my son and took my shotgun. I swallowed a ball of fear. "Horace, these men claim to know you."

"Sorry, Ma'am." He was about to give his fiddle another lick, when he set it down on the table, his eyes widened where he could see a band of men on horses. He didn't look surprised. "I reckon, I will go see what all the fuss is about."

I nodded with a nervous smile. "Best if you do."

Skye put my son to bed and hidden from view, took the flintlock from its hiding place in the corner beneath a blanket. Mr. Greeley slinked backward and looked as if he wanted to shrink. From where I was, I couldn't see Jake. But I feared he might try something foolish in the dark.

The leader of the pack called out. "Horace! I know you're in there. Come on out. We got business with you."

Horace tugged on his beard. He looked at me like a scalded dog.

The wolves were at our door in gray coats. They smelled our fear. But I wanted them to smell the smoke from our guns. If only I knew where Jake was from the door where I stood.

Horace moved toward the door. "Wouldn't go nowhere near the Black Hills on my own, not without you feller's."

"What's this all about, Horace?"

The men laughed to see Horace in a union jacket. "So that's how you got away with it." Someone said, cloaked in darkness.

Horace looked at me. The guilt was evident. "I brought Jake back. We all played dead. I found a blue coat and traded with a yank. He had no more use for it."

Horace stepped outside on to the porch. I almost forgot to breathe, as I kept my shotgun from view.

The man with a rust-colored beard inserted himself, as his horse reared up. "Where's the map?"

Horace shuffled toward them. "It's in my head. You think I'd hand it over? Just like that. I got a memory like an elephant, major."

One of the men cried out. "He's lying to save his skin."

Horace stood on the porch. "You have to trust me. Like I aim to trust you."

"I'm feeling all warm and fuzzy inside. Get on your horse, Horace. We need to get and make camp between here and the Dakotas."

I needed to make my voice heard. I let him see my gun. "You got your man! You got what you came fer."

The major lifted from his horse with his revolver cocked at me. The hair on my neck bristled. Fingering my trigger didn't help none with it pointed at the floor. I didn't know where Skye was with the flintlock, but I knew she had enough grit in her eye to back me up.

Jake was surrounded by the men on horses. But he cleared the air with his old friend. "Horace, you had a place here. You had folk who didn't care what side of the war you were on. You don't think I knew?"

Horace looked at me. I reckoned he'd seen the venom in my eyes.

Horace tried to explain, as he stood on the porch between the captain and me. "I was a dead man, and then I came across Jake in the weeds. If I hadn't carried him to the field surgeon, he would have died. We needed each other that day, ma'am."

"Then take your freedom with you," I said.

The major barked. "We just need some food and blankets. Then we will be on our way. We know how to be civil. We didn't come her to torch your place." One of his men knifed a pig in the pen. The squeal of it filled the cabin.

I spied Jake from the door with his hands in the air. I figured he knew what I knew, that if they went too far with us, they would be hunted down from town. A fire would only send someone a signal. It gave me a thread of hope. But if they were going into Sioux country for gold, then they were just digging their own graves.