Song Yet Sung

Patty shelters from pouring rain in an old hunter’s lean-to near Blackwater Creek when Stanton enters. They both wonder where Joe is. Patty lies and says that Odgin was injured and Hodges took him to a doctor. Stanton is disturbed by Patty’s fury and the dead calm look in her eyes.

Stanton explains that Joe left a note to meet him at the Indian burial grounds, where he went with the slave who had harbored Liz. Patty says they have to move fast, since there are other search parties around.

Patty and Stanton head off down the trail and soon Stanton finds Joe dead in a clearing. Patty’s fury increases and her face takes on a look Stanton has never seen on a woman before, that oystermen call “bay face” which “usually described a man who’d had a horrible life change and was waiting on the bay to swallow him […] Such a man did not fear death but welcomed it” (325).

Patty puts on Joe’s boots. Stanton finds a damaged gun and recognizes it as Denwood’s pepperbox. Patty refuses to bury Joe and says that Stanton is welcome to whatever money Joe has in his pockets. Patty rides away, thinking that Stanton will likely be dead soon the way things are going, and she can get Joe’s belongings when she picks over Stanton’s body.