Bedding her could be anything from tenderness to riot, but to take her when she was a bit the worse for drink was always a particular delight. Intoxicated, she took less care for him than usual; abandoned and oblivious to all but her own pleasure, she would rake him, bite him - and beg him to serve her so, as well. He loved the feeling of power in it, the tantalizing choice between joining her at once in animal lust, or of holding himself-for a time- in check, so as to drive her at his whim.

I shook so that it was some time before I realized that he was shaking too, and for the same reason. I don't know how long we sat there on the dusty floor, crying in each others arms with the longing of twenty years spilling down our faces.

If she was broken, she would slash him with her jagged edges, reckless as a drunkard with a shattered bottle.

Harmless as a setting dove," he agreed. "I'm too hungry to be a threat to anything but breakfast. Let a stray bannock come within reach, though, and I'll no answer for the consequences.

There are things that I canna tell you, at least not yet. And I'll ask nothing of ye that ye canna give me. But what I would ask of ye---when you do tell me something, let it be the truth. And I'll promise ye the same. We have nothing now between us, save---respect, perhaps. And I think that respect has maybe room for secrets, but not for lies. Do ye agree?

I have lived through war, and lost much. I know what's worth the fight, and what is not. Honor and courage are matters of the bone, and what a man will kill for, he will sometimes die for, too. And that, O kinsman, is why a woman has broad hips; that bony basin will harbor a man and his child alike. A man's life springs from his woman's bones, and in her blood is his honor christened. For the sake of love alone, I would walk through fire again.

Any piece of good music is in essence a love song.