Free Thirteen Moons by Charles Frazier

silver bracelets chimed faintly.
    I unbuttoned the coat and opened it wide. My winnings jingled in the pockets. I said, Here.
    The girl stepped in close to me and I closed the coat around us. My arms circled her, and I put my hands on her back, the points of her thin shoulders, and then her narrow waist, though I could hardly feel a thing about her through the thick wool. She stood against me with her arms straight at her sides. She leaned her hard forehead against my own, for we were of a similar size. We stood together shivering. I could smell her scent, some attar or fragrant water. Lavender. I held her and it was like falling down a well.
    I said, I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time.
    At the moment that sentence fell spang from my mouth, I knew it was both foolish and true, though neither served as excuse for the other.
    She said the obvious. You just met me.
    —Nevertheless, I said.
    —Nevertheless, she said.
    I said, You’re mine.
    Of course, that girl was Claire. But I was not to know her name until some years later. I could have stood there and held her forever.
    Except for my little sick mother, I’d had no experience with love in my life, neither incoming nor outgoing. Lately, since love had seemed an impossibility, I had steeled myself against it. But I held Claire, and that was that forever. Something was sealed. Desire abides. It is all people have that stands proof against time. Everything else rots.
    She turned her head away and looked through the slats to the round moon shining through. She said, Wind Moon.
    There was a sound outside. Stealthy steps in the dark. A number of people sneaking.
    She said, You better run.
    I was not at all ready to run, but she broke away and shoved me toward the gap at the low end of the springhouse where the water flowed out. Someone burst through the door. I scrabbled on hands and knees in the water, tiny gritted stones shifting under my palms as I bent toward the low sill.
    A hand seized my collar. I wriggled under the framing, and the grey coat stripped off me like skin from a skeleton. I ran, zagging among dark grabbing figures until I snatched my budget by its straps at full speed like a horseman at a gander pull. Various confused bawls and yaps, the sounds of clamorous pursuit, faded behind me. I more fell than ran down the bluff toward the river, a dirty plummet broken by saplings, shrubbery, weeds, and wildflowers. And when I hit bottom, I ran lovelorn up the river road, my back to the grey dawn.

3
    I WANDERED FOR DAYS THROUGH THE MOUNTAINS, FOLLOWING whatever paths led west, trying to remember my uncle’s directions. I walked horse trails, footpaths, the runways of deer, and the remnants of buffalo trails nearly as faint as the sign ghosts leave in their passage through the night air. Not knowing exactly where I was going, I suspended expectations on time of arrival.
    I bemoaned the loss of the girl, my horse, my coat, and my money. I didn’t sleep well and had taken a cramping stomach ailment that frequently left me squatting in the woods, shitting and admiring the scenery. I was wrung out by the third day, twisted down to almost nothing. I thought I was hopelessly lost, though I kept walking a grown-over scratch through the forest so faint it might have been imaginary. It went climbing up a bold creek filled with green boulders and white water. A severe-looking dog emerged from the woods and crossed the creek and stood staring at me as if it expected something. I guessed it to be an Irish wolfdog or some like breed. Wirehaired and long-legged and colored like smoke. It stood panting in the trail with a ring of old grey hemp rope at its neck showing it had not always run wild. I said, This is a public courseway. You go whichever direction you will.
    The dog looked at me as if I hadn’t spoken, and I figured he was probably Indian and was unaware of the English language. When I set out walking, he fell in behind me like we were travel