Slim, serious, with straight black hair falling across his forehead and the guarded eyes of somebody who had learned too early to watch adults before trusting them.
Beside him sat a girl perhaps eleven years old holding a toddler wrapped in a red-and-brown blanket.
Two younger children sat near the tailgate.
All five had warm brown skin and dark hair.
The youngest boy coughed.
Clara knew that cough.
Too deep.
Too wet.
She straightened.
The man driving the wagon pulled the horses to a stop.
He looked nothing like the drifters who occasionally appeared in Red Hollow asking for work and disappearing after payday.
This man belonged somewhere.
That was the first thing Clara thought.
He was probably thirty-eight or thirty-nine.
Tall.
Broad through the shoulders.
Dark beard.
Weathered brown hat.
Long coat bleached lighter across the shoulders by sun and dust.
His boots were scarred.
His hands looked like hands that repaired fence wire, delivered calves, swung axes, and dug frozen troughs.
His face was handsome, although not softly.
Too much weather.
Too much exhaustion.
His light-colored eyes moved across Red Hollow as though measuring everything.
Buildings.
People.
Distance.
Then they stopped at the coughing child.
The man turned.
“You all right, Samuel?”
The boy nodded too quickly.
“Yes, sir.”
Clara frowned.
He was not all right.
Reverend Samuel Alden stepped out from the general store.
“Nathaniel Cole?”
The stranger climbed down.
“You Reverend Alden?”
“I am.”
They shook hands.
The Reverend looked toward the wagon.
“You made better time than expected.”
“Road stayed dry.”
“And the children?”
“Hungry.”
One of the little girls answered immediately.
“Very.”
The older boy gave her a look.
She shrugged.
Nathaniel almost smiled.