“You just out for an evening walk?” he finally asked.

The setting sun put sparkling highlights in her blonde hair when she nodded. “The way the ladies are feeding me, I figured I’d better get out and get some exercise, or I’ll be rolling by the time this baby is born.”

The night air was so still that Sloan could hear a dove cooing in the distance and a coyote howling somewhere beyond the cemetery. Then the thump of an oil well as it started pumping overshadowed every other sound.

“What’s that noise?” Ginger asked.

“Oil wells. If you listen, you can hear several different ones starting to work. There’s one on my property and two at the very back of the land that the Carson sisters own, way back behind the Banty House,” he answered.

“So that’s where they get their money,” she mused.

“Some of it,” he replied.

“I wondered how they could live on what they made from moonshine and jelly,” she said.

“Connie sells her jelly and jams, all right, but they use the moonshine to barter with. That’s what upset them so much when their hairdresser died. They’d been paying her with shine. Kate says it’s against the law to sell homemade brew, but she can’t find a single place that says she can’t barter with it.” He chuckled. “I’m not sure that the law is really written that way, but I’m not about to argue with Kate.”

“You are a smart man, Sloan. I wouldn’t disagree with Kate, either. If she wants to make moonshine and use it for haircuts and shampoos, I ain’t sayin’ a word.” Her brown eyes twinkled with humor.

“So where are you going next?” he asked.

“As far as wherever my paycheck takes me. I don’t expect much, and I sure won’t never find anyone who’ll treat me like I’ve been taken care of since I got here, but I’ve got some good memories,” she answered. “Do you ever get the urge to go somewhere else?”

“Been there, done that, got a pair of well-worn combat boots to prove it.” He held up a foot. “So, no, ma’am. I’m content to be a hermit right now.”

“If I was goin’ to settle in one spot, I wouldn’t mind this being the one,” she said.

“But? I hear a but in your voice,” Sloan said.

“But until now I ain’t never been outside of Kentucky, and I want my baby to have more than I did,” she told him. “I got to see Tennessee, Arkansas, and a little of Oklahoma before I got to here, though, so that’s something.”

“How did you wind up in Hondo?” he asked.

“I ran out of money in Oklahoma City, so I hitched a ride with a trucker and wound up in Dallas. He gave me some money when he let me off, and I asked the ticket person how far I could get with that amount. She said I could make it to Hondo, which was west of San Antonio, so I paid the price and had enough left to buy a sandwich and a carton of milk for my lunch,” Ginger explained.

“That’s sure traveling by faith,” Sloan said.

“Faith has nothing to do with it. Determination to get as far away from Kentucky as I can is the right word,” she told him.

“I had that feeling when I went into the military right out of high school. I couldn’t wait to get away from Texas,” he admitted.

“And now you don’t want to go anywhere? What happened?” she asked.

“Life happened.” He wasn’t ready to go into detail about what had happened in Kuwait. Part of it was classified, anyway, and like his granny said so many times, “Let sleeping dogs lie.”

“Amen to that,” Ginger agreed, standing. “I’d better get on back to the house.”

“Tinker and I are going that way. Mind if we walk with you?” Sloan asked.

“Not a bit, but I have to warn you, I don’t go too fast these days,” she answered.

“Tinker doesn’t either,” Sloan replied.

Tinker took his cue from Sloan when he stood to his feet and started back to the house. Sloan whistled, and the dog whipped around and plodded along between him and Ginger.

He tried to think of something to start a conversation, but nothing came to mind. When the Banty House was in sight, she finally said, “I can’t imagine a white community and a black one living this close together and still being segregated.”

“It was the times,” Sloan said. “Mission Valley was all black. Rooster was less than a mile up the road and was all white. The residents met at the grocery store in Rooster. Each little town had their own churches and schools since those weren’t integrated back then, and other than buying groceries, each side pretty much kept to itself.”

“I read about such things in history classes in school, but I can’t wrap my mind around that kind of prejudice,” Ginger said. “I’m glad that I live in today’s world instead of that one.”

“Me too,” Sloan agreed. He’d seen prejudice when he was in Kuwait for those two tours, both inside the military and out, so he knew it was still in the world, but if Ginger wanted to believe it was all gone, he sure wasn’t going to burst her bubble.

They reached the sidewalk leading up to the house, and she turned around to face him. The sun was nothing more than a sliver of orange on the horizon, but the shadows and light blended together to form a halo right above her head.

“If Tinker needs to rest again, you could sit on the porch swing with me for a little while. I suppose it would even be all right if I offered you a glass of sweet tea or lemonade,” she said.

He heard a familiar sound, and his pulse kicked into high gear. He glanced down just as Ginger took another step and her foot landed right behind a six-foot rattlesnake’s head.

“Don’t move,” he said. “Don’t take another step, or even breathe.”

“What?” She looked up at him with questions written all over her face.

“You are standing on a snake. If you can, put more pressure on your foot, but don’t pick it up for any reason,” he whispered as he pulled his pocketknife out and flipped the longest blade open.

“What are you going to do?” She gasped when she looked to the side.

“I’m going to cut its head off, but you have to be still and put pressure on the body to hold it still, or else it could bite one of us,” Sloan told her.

The snake’s body and tail twitched and jerked as it tried to free itself from her weight. When it wrapped its tail around her ankle, all the color left her face.

Sloan dropped to his knees and laid the blade of the knife in the narrow space between the head and Ginger’s foot. Tinker must’ve realized what was happening because he began to growl and bite the snake. The creature writhed even more, as the dog tried to kill it by chewing on its middle while Sloan worked on holding it down right behind the head and slicing away with his knife. One slip of the knife and he’d cut the edge of Ginger’s foot. If that happened, she would no doubt jump and the rattler would turn and sink its fangs into Sloan’s hand.

“I’ve got a leg cramp,” Ginger said.

“Just another second or two.” To say that Sloan was sweating bullets was an understatement. He hadn’t been so tense since he’d come home to Texas in a numb state, devoid of any kind of emotion.

“Please hurry,” she said.

He could hear the sob in her voice just as he got through the last of the skin and used his knife to flip the critter’s head out to the side of the road, so Tinker wouldn’t mess with it. “It’s all right to take a step forward,” he said as he wiped the blade of his knife on the grass beside the road and straightened up.

Ginger blinked a couple of times, then let out a whoosh of air and started to fall forward. He tossed the knife on the ground and caught her. If she hadn’t been pregnant, he might have thrown her over his shoulder like a bag of feed, but he scooped her up like a bride and carried her up the sidewalk to the porch. He managed to ring the doorbell, and time stood still. Ginger was still breathing, but fainting like that couldn’t be good for the baby. In reality, Kate opened the door within a minute, but it seemed like hours to Sloan.

“What happened?” She motioned him inside.

“She fainted.” Sloan’s voice sounded to him like it was coming from a tunnel as he crossed the foyer and headed toward the living room.

“Put her on the sofa in the parlor.” Kate barked orders to the others. “Connie, get a cold rag. Betsy, bring the smelling salts.”

By the time he’d crossed the room and gently laid her down, Connie was hurrying back across the floor. Betsy came from a different room carrying a small bottle in her hand. Both of them rattled off questions so fast that it made his head swim.

Connie sat on the edge of the coffee table and began to wash Ginger’s face. Her eyelids fluttered yet didn’t open wide, but when Betsy waved the contents of the bottle under her nose, she sat straight up and started coughing.

“Good girl!” Betsy quickly capped the smelling salts and set them on the mantel above the fireplace. “Now, tell us what happened.”

“Do we need to call the doctor or take you to the emergency room?” Betsy asked.

“She stepped on a snake.” Sloan hovered close by the end of the sofa.

“Sweet Jesus!” Kate groaned. “I’ll get the snakebite kit.”