Free Wild Rose by Sharon Butala

There, composed, the châtelaine again, she turned to face the visitor.
    At last he drew up a few feet from her, not yet climbing down from the buggy, the horse waiting patiently, flicking its ears at flies, tired from its journey from town or from wherever it had come in this heat, the younger, unsaddled horse fastened by a rope halter to the back of the buggy pulling back as if testing if he might now be free, and finding he was not, watching fearfully.
    “Who are you?” the man in the buggy asked, a puzzled expression passing across his features and leaving behind a countenance that seemed to her implacable. As if as soon as he had asked the question, he knew the answer, and didn’t like it.
    “I am Madame Hippolyte, wife of Pierre Hippolyte. We are the owners of this homestead.” His eyes had taken on a dangerous glitter: Her instinct told her to back into the cabin and bar the door, but wait, she told herself, not yet. She hoped Pierre hadn’t taken his rifle; this she hadn’t noticed. During the rebellion he had taught her to shoot, but since then she hadn’t touched the gun. But surely Pierre, who loved his Winchester rifle and was as fine a shot – bringing in feasts of deer or antelope – as he wasn’t a handler of horses, wouldn’t go off without his gun.
    She worked to keep her eyes steady on the stranger, who held the reins loosely in his hands, not moving, staring down at her, then lifting his head to look purposefully around at the buildings, as if she weren’t there, the crop ahead and to his right, and then, further out to the wide prairie he had just crossed in the smothering, late August heat.
    “Hippolyte’s wife,” he muttered, sounding somewhere between disgusted and resigned. He looped the reins around the rod attached to the footboard, climbed down, and stood facing her. He was of average height, but heavy-bodied and short legged, his face not as sun-darkened as Pierre’s, but well-lined, although she could see no hint of grey in his thick brown moustache. She straightened even further, if such were possible, facing him squarely although it took all her courage to do so, as he took off his wide-brimmed hat, holding it in both hands with a humility that belied everything else about him. She saw he had not come to harm her, and this caused her uneasiness to grow even more.
    “Pierre, mon mari – he is – is he hurt? Is he – dead?” she asked. At this the stranger grinned a twisted, unpleasant grin, then quickly wiped it away.
    “Mrs. – uh – Hippolyte,” he began. “I sure do hate to tell you this, but your husband” – here he paused – “has sold me your farm. The land, the buildings, the crop, the animals. Even the contents of your house.” He had looked closely into her face all the time he spoke; now he glanced away from her.
    She took a step backward, put one shaking hand against the doorframe to support herself, tried to speak, but found she couldn’t control her jaw to form words. She could make no sense of what this stranger had just said to her. Or rather, she knew very well what he had said, it was only that it was such a shock, and all the many meanings and consequences of it were racing through her mind at the same time, tumbling about like swift foxes playing; she could not catch one of them and hold it; she would faint from the tumult.
    “We have been here nearly four years,” she managed to say, hearing, helplessly, the irrelevance. The stranger had reached past her, Sophie so overcome she didn’t even flinch at the thick body inches from hers, the heavy arm brushing her forearm as he reached for the latch behind her to open the door.
    “You better sit down,” he said. From deep inside the cabin, Charles emitted his waking cry for her. She hurried through the main room to the bedroom behind it and as she picked him up, the shaking diminished. Holding him tightly, she returned to the other room where the stranger pulled back one of the straight-backed