The team had been hitched to the wagon before dawn, but Virgil still hadn’t left. As Laura Miller folded and sorted the new fabrics for display, she could see the stout draft horses through the front window of the store. They stood, patient as time itself, in the first light of the day. Laura liked this frontier town best in the morning. If she were to walk Grantham’s two streets now, she would undoubtedly see bodies. Almost all of them would be sleeping off a drunk, but one or two might be dead, of overwork or disease or from that lethal combination of being too quick with a mouth yet not quick enough with a pistol. Grantham was a boom town, flush with silver. That made it a hard place for honest folk to get a good night’s sleep. But at dawn, wasn’t every place born anew? And if you squinted, and were careful to step over the drunks and look past the w****s, you could see the potential of the place, the potential of the West. This was a place to grant new hope for saints and sinners, miners and cowboys, outlaws and lawmen, w****s and mothers. And everyone, no matter who they were, wanted for a thousand things to make their dreams real or bring an end to their nightmares. Most of the time the things they needed were simple like shovels and pans, beans and thread, rope and coffee, cartridges and knives. Which meant that all of them, good and bad alike, needed the Miller General store. In contrast with the patient horses outside, her husband Virgil hadn’t stopped pacing. She wanted to say that she had never before seen a man move so much without actually going anywhere, but she knew to hold her tongue. She loved him, and knew him to be was a worrier. As Virgil paced the length of the store, he checked the shelves, straightening things that had already been straightened. He looked upstairs to where their daughter slept, and out back at their son, gathering wood. Laura folded a sample of the new Gingham and pretended she wasn’t watching her fierce man and his tender conundrum. She had never seen Virgil afraid of anything, at least not while facing it. But since the children had come, he had become a worrier. Grantham was a rough, wild town, and she knew the last thing he wanted was to have his son turn out like him. Virgil had been a wild, murderous falcon of a man when they had met. Every time he went on a journey, they both remembered that falcons were never tamed for life. A falcon would always go back to the wild. She had snared him with all the subtle and ancient ties that women use to capture wild men. She had done it, at first, because she had needed him to survive, but now she realized, the cords that bound them together were woven from the stuff of her own heart. She had trapped them both in the same snare. Virgil looked to the wagon, then paced back to pour more coffee from the pot on the cast-iron stove. Mac came in with the firewood and dumped it in the bin next to the stove. By noon, they’d have the doors open and the heat of the day would be oppressive, but night in the high desert was cold no matter the time of year. “Pa, you want I should come with you?” Virgil smiled, his sharp face softened by love. “No. I need you to stay here and look after the store.” She thought it a foolish thing to say. Mack was still so young, but boys were fragile at his age. And her husband knew how badly his son wanted to be a man. As he took in the words, Mack straightened nervously, nodding, taking the responsibility seriously. With this new respect, Mac dared a question. “Pa, when you get back, can we shoot the big gun?” he asked, looking to the Sharps .50 rifle hanging high on the wall above the vertical rack of smaller caliber rifles and carbines. “Not until you’re full-grown, if then. But ain’t much point in it.” Virgil resumed pacing, but Mac continued to look at him so insistently, he stopped and resumed his answer instead. “They were used to hunt buffalo, and th