Traveler

Being on the lookout for any life as far as critters go, she draws him in by saying, “Usually Chester makes a fuss about having a stranger around. Gets me to wondering about you.”

She wants it all at once and instead of pouring out such a life had, he gives enough to sooth her curious ear. “I am nothing more but a hired hand.”

The expression on her face goes with what she says to him. “He had a horse and a covered wagon, that man.” Her eyes fall off his, and after a long second gone by, she gives him a side look that offers the opportunity to ask her, “And the fairgrounds?”

Away from her side is her arm leveling out that has her saying to him, “That curve up ahead bends into Walker pass that takes one straight to the fair.”

Close now, he thinks, and in keeping in stride with the clopping hooves of Chester the mule, silence between the two reigns the airwaves.