When I sighted the ranch, I drew up on the trail and looked across the bottom.  There was a rocky ridge where the Mora River cut through, and the ranch was there beside it.  That light over there was home, for home is where the heart is, and my heart was wherever Ma was, and the boys.

Walking the appaloosa down the trail, I could smell the coolness rising from the willows along the Mora, and the hayfields over in the big valley called La Cueva.

A horse whinnied, and a dog started to bark, and then another dog.  Yet no door opened and the light continued to burn.  Chuckling, I walked my horse along and kept my eyes open.  Unless I was mistaken, one of the boys or somebody would be out in the dark watching me come up, maybe keeping me covered from the darkness until my intentions were clear.

Getting down from the saddle, I walked up the steps to the porch. I didn't knock, I just opened the door and stepped in.

Tyrel was sitting at a table with an oil lamp on it, and Ma was there, and a girl who had to be Tyrel's wife.

The table was set for four, and I stood there, long and tall in the door, feeling my heart inside so big I felt choked and awkward.  My clothes were stiff and I knew I was trail-dusty and mighty mean-looking.

"Howdy, Ma.  Tyrel, if you'll tell that man behind me to take his gun off my back, I'll come in and set."

Tyrel got up.  "Tell...  I'll be damned."

"Likely," I said, "but don't blame it on me.  When I rode off to the wars I left you in good hands."

Turning toward Tyrel's wife, a lovely, dark-eyed, dark-haired girl who looked like a princess out of a book.  I said, "Ma'am, I'm William Tell Sackett, and you'll be Drusilla, my brother's wife."

She put her hands on mine and stood on tiptoe and kissed me, and my face colored up and I went hot clean to my boots.  Tyrel laughed, and then he looked past me into the darkness and said, "It's all right, Cap.  This is my brother Tell."

He came in out of the darkness then, a thin old man with cold gray eyes and a gray mustache above a hard mouth.  There was no give to this man, I figured.  Had I been a wrong one I would have been killed.

We shook hands and neither of us said anything.  Cap was not a talkative man, and I am only at times.

Ma turned her head.  "Juana, come get my his supper."