The knocking against our door was desperate and hurried, and when I swung the door wide Philip was struggling to catch his breath. His propped himself up, his arms serving as tandem joists between his ribs and his knees while his chest heaved. He must have run the entirety of the road leading from the town to our farm.
"I have news, " he declared, panting "regarding our new stranger." Something deep in my own chest heaved imperceptibly. My stranger. I disguised my hunger for details as enthusiasm for Philip's story, and ignored the surprise and small guilt that registered.
"Please sit." I offered him the worn rocker on the porch, but agitation kept him on his feet.
"He says he's from Abilene... in town looking for work. If he is, he's a cowboy for certain. Nobody from Texas accidentally finds himself in Kansas. He must have come up on a cattle drive and stayed, or been left behind." Philip's words carried a dull, hollow edge. Plainly his interest, too, ran deeper than mere curiosity. "Curtis neglected to file charges, so the stranger has rented a room at the Inn. Has your Pa heard anything about him?"
I hadn't mentioned the fight to Pa and Pa had made no mention of a charismatic stranger to me. In spite of three quarters of the population of Morrison having born witness to the fight I held it like a treasure, a secret not destined to be shared. If anybody other than Philip had showed up on my thresh hold to discuss it, I would have denied ever having been a party to it. It was not altogether unheard of for me to bring supper to Pa at the Saloon, though it was far from customary. As of late he'd been taking his nightly meals from the kitchen at the Inn to avoid diminishing our own paltry resources.
"He hasn't said anything to me." I answered. There was a magnifying glass hovering over me, and under it my skin was transparent as glass. Taking supper to Pa tonight would surely come under severe scrutiny. I would be exposed for what I really was, a malcontent drawn like a moth to the simmering intrigue of a charming stranger, a runaway yet to take her flight. With Philip, scheming had always been safe. Philip had been to Europe, lived in France, returned a gentleman and a business owner. Were he to fall in love with me, sweep me away, back to Paris, no one could accuse us of being irrational. Besides, hardly anyone suspected the truest of my intentions, and those who may have never asked questions or tried to breath reason into my living day dream.
A question unfolded within me. I had never much bothered with opinions of others before now, why was it that only in my imagined absence did the unspoken words of the town haunted my virtue?
I watched as Philip regained his composure. His breathing steadied, but one thin blue vein in the side of his neck still throbbed.
"There isn't much work here for a cowboy." He stared at me, but his words were a warning directed at an unseen audience.
"There's the Bingham Ranch." I said.
Even in the leanest of times somebody is prospering, and in Morrison Station in the middle of a year long dust storm, that somebody was Andrew Bingham and his bank. He had financed more than half of the growth of the town. People had given him everything they had, more than they had in an effort to save their homes and farms. When the creeks and shallow wells went dry those same people pulled their stakes and hung their heads, and Andrew Bingham collected abandoned land like buttons. He sold most of it to the railroad, and saved the rest for rainier days. Drought be damned, he expanded his own homestead, investing in 1,000 head of cattle, and was in currently in the process of breaking a team of wild horses taken in from the plains. We measured his wealth by the gallons of water he had shipped in every week.
Philip's face twitched, contorted involuntarily, corrupted his soft, boyish features. The thin vein continued to throb as he clenched his jaw.
"What is it?" I asked. He seemed so unlike himself. A shiver rippled over his entire body. He reminded me of our old silver hound and the way he sprayed water from his coat after a dip in the river.
"Nothing," he said coldly. "I have to get back to the shop."
"Oh Philip, please stay. Have you eaten anything?"
"No, I can't. I really must go." His eyes softened with concerted effort for his part. "Thank you, though. Come by the shop tomorrow after work. We can compare more notes then." His departure was brisk and unceremonious.
I stood on the porch, a pillar, for some time after he left, ruminating. The encounter with Philip didn't feel right. An emptiness washed over me where I had expected gratification or longing. He wasn't himself, and I wasn't mine, but the trigger was elusive. The harder I tried to corral a reason, the more I flailed through muddy thoughts.
I walked inside and prepared a plate to bring to Pa.
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