Private München was as good as his word, cutting out each newspaper pattern, giving her tailoring tips, and demonstrating a superior way to make knife pleats. Mary moved the sewing machine into the room adjacent to the duty sergeant’s office and sewed in there. When the German tailor tired of cutting fabric, they traded duties.

Beyond the blessing of working with a talented tailor for longer hours, Mary hoped that Sergeant Blade would feel at liberty to drop by, something that could never happen in the Mastersons’ quarters, because he had no business there.

To her delight, Rowan stopped in several times a day. He never seemed to mind holding out a skirt to make certain the pleats were even, although he wouldn’t wrap it around himself. When she made a mistake and had to rip out a seam, he obligingly did that for her so she could move quickly to another task.

“Did you help your mother sew when you were a boy?” she asked, on the third day of dress production.

“My parents died of typhoid, and I was raised in an orphanage,” he told her as he concentrated on the seam. “No brothers or sisters. Just me.”

When she was silent, he didn’t even look up. “Mary, if your eyes get blurry with tears, you’ll run over your fingers when you sew.”

“How do you know I’m crying?” she asked, as she sniffed back tears.

He did look up then. “I know you pretty well. You have a soft heart.”

“It’s no crime,” she said and blew her nose.

“Hardly. I think it’s charming.”

What could she say to that?

Then he stopped coming. Two days passed, and she found herself looking out the window so often that she sewed the wrong side of the material to one of the skirt panels.

Sobered up, Private München was a true Prussian taskmaster. “Fräulein Blue Eye, focus the mind.”

She gave him a tragic look, which allowed the man to relax his standards, as far as fabric was concerned.

“Fräulein, he’ll be back.”

“I don’t know who you’re talking about,” she assured him.

Sergeant Blade returned the following day. Private München was ironing pleats in the duty sergeant’s office next door.

Rowan came in quietly and sat in München’s chair. There was no overlooking the sorrow in his eyes. Mary stopped treadling and gave him her attention.

“What has happened?” she asked, wondering if she was prying or if he had come to her—whether he knew it or not—for sympathy.

“It’s a bad business. The wife of one of my Ree scouts is dying.” He hitched the chair closer. “The surgeon doesn’t know what to do, but she’s losing weight and in pain nearly all the time now. I like Bill Curly and Mathilde, and I’ve been sitting with them.”

“Is there anything I can do?” Mary asked.

“Not really. I guess I don’t care much to be sad by myself.”

She thought of the longhouse back home, when families used to all live together and bear one another’s burdens. She remembered sitting with other cousins, aunts, and uncles, bored and tired, but aware even as a child that families drew together in times of grief.

The sergeant seemed to take heart as Mary told him about the longhouses and the smokes, sweats, chants, and tears. “I used to think it was alien somehow, since we lived in a modern house with wood floors and hinged doors,” she said.

“You don’t think it is alien now?”

She shook her head.

“What changed?”

“I did.” She said it softly, as if trying out the words. She found them to her liking and repeated them. “I did. I want to go home.”

He sighed at that, which told her heart more than words could have. She glanced at the locket watch pinned to her shirtwaist. Her back ached from doing close work, and the afternoon light was fading fast. She knew she should be heading back to the Masterson quarters soon to hear Victoria’s complaints about everything, but she didn’t want to.

“Let me go with you to your scout’s house. Maybe I can help.”

“It’s pretty humble,” he said.

“Why would that bother me?”

“Let me get your coat.”

He insisted on holding her hand as they crossed the footbridge over the Laramie that separated Suds Row from the main garrison. “It’s icy,” he said, although she couldn’t see any ice.

Her arm crooked through his now, he took her past the attached quarters for the families of sergeants and corporals down a trail that led to another attached row, this one for scouts. Beyond that, she saw ragged tipis and wondered if the Laramie Loafers existed there.

“I don’t even know what a Ree is,” she said to Rowan as they hurried along, night coming fast.

“Arikara. They hate the Sioux with a great loathing and make excellent scouts, among those Bill Curly. His wife is Mathilde, the daughter of a French trapper and—I think you’ll like this—an eastern Indian.”

“Oh, I do,” she said. “Children?”

“Three girls.”

He tapped on the door of the house on the end, then opened it and ushered her in.

To feel shy would have been a waste of time, as three little girls, all tidy with hair in neat braids, swarmed over the sergeant. He picked up the smallest and tickled her, which made her giggle and lean into his chest.

I love this man, Mary thought suddenly as she watched him. I do not want to live without him. She looked around, hoping she hadn’t spoken out loud, and found herself regarded by a thin woman propped up with pillows. The woman gestured to her, and Mary sat beside her bed.

She introduced herself, remembering how her papa taught her. “I am Mary Blue Eye of the Genesee Valley Seneca, Keepers of the Western Door.”

To her surprise, the woman nodded. “Sarge has told us about you. I am Mathilde Frere of the Oneida.”

“My goodness, we are nearly neighbors!” Mary exclaimed.

“Years have passed since I have been in the land of Ontario,” Mathilde said. Her tired eyes took on a wistful look. “Is it as beautiful as ever? Not so much wind? Green in summer?”

“Yes, yes, and yes,” Mary said, which made Mathilde laugh and hold her stomach. Mary leaned closer. “People here have no idea, do they?”

Mathilde’s eyes brightened. “We know. May I call you sister?”

Mary nodded. She understood Indian relationships.

“Hold my hand, and I will close my eyes.”

Mary did as Mathilde asked. She looked around the single room, with three small rolls of bedding against one wall, a dish cabinet made of what looked like an apple crate, and a table and stools. Everything was in its place.

“Lean closer.”

Mary obeyed.

“My man is going to ask your man to build me a coffin. Sarge will find it hard.”

How calm she was. Mary felt tears gather and spill onto her cheeks, quietly, quietly, because that was the Seneca way. She looked at Mathilde and knew it was the Oneida way, too.

“You are far from home, Mathilde,” she managed, after monumental effort.

The dying woman shook her head. “Home is here with my man and my children,” she whispered. “You will understand someday. You are still young.”

Not as young as I was, Mary thought, touched to the depths of her soul. She glanced at the little girls, who sat close together on the floor while the oldest one handed around what looked like jerky. Beyond them sat the scout and the sergeant, the scout’s hand on the sergeant’s back. As she watched, Rowan nodded, then leaned back, as if trying to distance himself from what she knew he must have just agreed to do.

She returned her gaze to Mathilde, then wiped the woman’s face with the damp cloth on the nearby table. She wiped around Indian eyes much like hers and hair wispy now but probably once as full and dark as her own. Disease was exacting a cruel toll, but Mary saw no complaint. She thought of uncomplaining, patient Spider, undefeated by Badger.

“Your mother trained you, too,” she whispered and received a tiny smile in answer. So did mine, Mary thought. I must thank her when I see her in a few months.

The men stood up. “Go now,” Mathilde said.

Mary rose, but Mathilde did not release her hand. “One thing.”

She sat again and leaned close.

“If you have a picture of your valley, could I borrow it?”

“Sergeant Blade will bring it back tonight.”

They left the house hand in hand, with no pretense about ice or snow. “I’m going to build a coffin,” Rowan said after they crossed the footbridge. “God help me, but life is hard.”

His arm went around her. She hesitated, then put her arm around his waist.

“Walk me home,” she said. “I don’t want to go there because the lieutenant and Victoria are either really silent or they are carping at each other. It’s not a good place now, and I don’t like it.”

“I wish you had a choice.”

“Come inside with me, please. I promised Mathilde a picture of home.”

The lieutenant and Victoria were sitting on opposite sides of the postage-stamp parlor in stony silence. Sergeant Blade saluted, and his superior raised a languid finger to his forehead in return.

“I’ll only be here a moment, sir,” he said.

Mary felt her stomach ache. They must have interrupted them in mid-quarrel. She hurriedly took her favorite painting of the Genesee Valley off the wall in her room. Mama had insisted she take it with her. “So you don’t forget us,” Mama had said.

She thought of Mathilde so far from her green heaven in Ontario above the border, the white man’s line that separated one country from another, when every Indian in the area knew that drawing a line meant nothing. Ah, well.

She handed the small painting to Rowan, who ushered her out the door with him.

The porch was cold and windy, but far better than the parlor, where Mary suspected a brand-new marriage was coming apart.

“Tell Mathilde she can keep it as long as she needs it,” Mary said. “What will you line the coffin with?”

“The quartermaster clerk said there is plenty of bed ticking. I’ll try to stop by to see you at the guardhouse, but I fear I must hurry with a coffin.”

“I’m on schedule now, thanks to your German tailor,” she said, walking him down the porch steps, loath for him to leave her.

“I would like to have taken you to the calico ball,” he said.

She nearly said, There will be other dances, but there wouldn’t be, not if she was returning to New York. She gave the darkness overhead a quick glance, looking for wisdom or courage or maybe both, but there were only stars and a rising moon.

“I would have gone gladly,” she said, “even in this work dress.”

He started to say something, then closed his mouth. She touched his arm and hurried inside, only because her feet were cold and there was more web to spin.