Hanna Kane stood a little shaky in the last rays of the evening sun. There on a ridge above the Upper Leon River were the remains of a rough wooden cross. She had insisted that her brother and young son bring her to this place where her husband had died last fall. Hundreds of river crossings behind him had been no help when this one went bad: a freak accident while riding a young horse with cattle. She had known all along that her son had told her the truth, but she had wanted to believe he would come home. She saw now that big Sam Kane was dead, and he would not be coming home again. Hanna Kane was thirty-four years old.