Chapter 159

Judah's voice was soft as he told Hope the story of his first wife. "My pa was sixty-two years old when he married my ma. She was a little bitty thing, only eighteen at the time. But she seemed happy enough with him. He'd been a fur trapper all over the West before he headed back to civilization for a while, met my ma and decided it was time to have a few kids, try his hand at bein' domesticated." He turned and looked at her briefly, and though Hope wondered where in the world this story was going, she kept her mouth shut and listened.

"We moved to the Wyoming Territory when I was two or three. Civilization didn't quite take to Pa the way he hoped it would. So we settled on the edge of the world, just us and bears and wolves and other critters liable to eat us if they took a notion.