“I’m traveling, ain’t I?”
“Right back to here. That’s all.” Luke blew into the water. “What’s in it?”
“You don’t watch me now! This finery ain’t for men to see— except in the dark.” She pulled wide the mouth of the bag and under spreading hair, arms deep, looked into the dust and flowers. For a moment, as the sun drew her scalp tight and turned the silver metal of her hair into powder, she slept and hands hung gently. Then, eyes closed, she straightened the layers and before tying shut the bag, stroked and settled whatever filled the bottom.
“People gave me these things. I’ll keep it with me.” On the other side of the wood and paper wall the old mother and her elder son were quiet. Ma listened for the splash of bare feet on the floor. The heat began to rack her shoulders and she heard only the scraping of the cowboy’s fingers in the basin. He filled it again, trailing slowly down the sand and back.
“He’s washing twice,” thought Ma. She waited, thinking suddenly that she could have had it done in the cabin with the right man driven out from town and her own friends packed into the doorway. The sun brought it to mind, but the feeling passed as she thought of entering those streets that lead to church. She knew that in a moment she would want a long space to cover, a good many miles before sundown.
“Listen,” the water dried on the cowboy’s cheek, “you ain’t aiming to take my mother to this wedding?”
“Yes, I’ve none to turn to.”
Luke tilted the basin, poured, then stopped. He looked up — sky and desert shone tearless, clear, white — and rubbed his eyes. He dropped the bar of soap into the water and swept out the razor. He honed it once or twice against the sun, held it to a side of dry whisker, flourished and pulled. His young face had the acid smell of skin drawn under ingressive heat rays and his fist — it could pull a horse twice round on startled hoofs — was tightly fastened on the crook of the razor. After each stroke he held it outstretched vertically between his eyes. He aimed. The bright scroll on the blade that could twist the trickle of blood, turned white against his cheek.
Placing the razor on the wash box, careful to keep the steel edge free of the wood, he went into the cabin with shoulders hardly moving as he walked.
Before he came back, Ma saw the Indian child, too small to be a maiden, spying around the corner of the milk hut. The fingers of one hand spread stark and wild against the sod.