"You realize," his voice echoed up to the second floor, "that this house is like, half an acre all by itself, right?" Branch had temporarily parked himself on the only piece of furniture in her living room; it was a couch, brown, cushy, and possessive enough that he had to fight with it in order to stand.

"Actually, it's closer to a fifth of an acre."

Eileen leaned over the railing of the second floor loft and grinned at him, glowing in the daylight. The windows in her front room were monstrous, soaring things, literally two stories high. They faced east, and she could see the smoke trail from Connelly's house from where she stood. There was going to be a four-wheeler trail between the two houses before the winter was out. She and Branch had already decided.

Branch stretched, craned his neck to look up at her. "What are you going to do with it all?"

"Wreck it." She grinned. "I throw magnificent parties!"

"You're a liar."

Eileen stuck her tongue out at him and stumped down the stairs. He'd hauled three or four duffle bags inside from her truck and piled them at the foot of her stairs. She plucked the green one from the pile and started dragging it up the stairs.

"Well at least the kitchen's nice," Branch drawled. He admired the marble counter tops over an arm-load of boxes.

"True that."

They hauled the rest of her kit inside, and he thanked GOD the living room set had a fold-out couch because the woman would have been sleeping on the floor otherwise. He wasn't about to tolerate that.

"Have you ordered anything else? Bedroom furniture? Kitchen, whatnot?"

"Not yet. Was gonna…." She paused and huffed for breath, wrestling with one of the diamond-plate steel boxes as she dragged it across her front porch. "Was gonna order them online."

He rolled his eyes. "Cause you're going to be able to pull a connection fast enough clear out here for THAT."

She smirked. "Check your phone, Branch."

He was hesitant, but he did. Full bars. Huh.

She was still expectant, like she was waiting for the other shoe to drop. He raised an eyebrow at her.

"You don't have ze interwebz on your phone?" She was almost childish in the query.

"No. There's never been enough juice or enough need for it."

"Shame." She sighed and went back underneath her hair and continued to wrestle with the box. Branch carried three boxes around her and through to the kitchen before she finally asked for help.

"Where's it going?"

"The basement." She picked up the back end, he picked up the front end, and between the two of them, they managed to make the descent without further incident. The basement was featureless at this point. No divisions of space, no shelves, no nothing.

"What do you have IN there?"

She popped the lid and showed him the equipment. He cocked his head, pegged her with a look.

"Well I have to make a living somehow, Branch."

The silence was cloying, hanging off of the banisters and choking up on Eileen's crouched form on the basement floor.

He shook his head. "You realize they hung you out to dry once already…."

"I'm not working for Central Intelligence any longer, Branch."

He turned and glared, rubbing his filthy hands across his knees. "Because working without the cover of an agency is any SMARTER…."

"It's just ANALYSIS, Branch."

"It'll get you killed without shelter, too."

She sighed, steadying herself on the lid of the box as she stood. "Listen. History aside, I am one of the finest analysts to come along in the last three decades. MI6 is already in. It's just data processing. Money trails. Things like that."

He ran a hand up through his hair. It was so much more. It was ALWAYS more with these people. She KNEW that.

"You need to find a safer occupation."

"I'm going to be in a basement in Wyoming. There's nothing OUT here. There is no REASON to bother with me."

He stomped back up the steps, leaving her to fight with them on her own. Eileen knew all too well what she was getting into. Branch had every reason to be upset with her.

She settled in, careful, quiet around town, and Durant moved over and made room

for her. Ruby made it a point to speak to Eileen on the street any time she saw her, and they became friends. They traded books - Ruby handed Eileen a couple on the history of Absaroka County and Eileen handed her a copy of The Things They Carried, and later The Pillars Of The Earth. They would hash the books out over coffee at the diner.

She had a couple of moving trucks get lost and have to ask locals for directions to her house, but that wasn't entirely out of the ordinary. She traded the ancient Lariat she'd been driving for a 2005 F-250 (paid CASH, too!) and based on the fact that she was buying fencing supplies in town it was assumed she was going to put horses on the property. There wasn't enough ground or water to run cattle. Slowly, slowly, people began to understand that this new woman wasn't too awful weird after all.

Branch didn't say much about her, but Vic watched. The Ferg kept her in his periphery because The Ferg kept a LOT of things in his periphery. Walt ignored her for the most part, and things went on like usual.

One evening Branch pulled up to his house to find Eileen camped on his front porch. She was wearing clean jeans and her leather jacket. He'd seen that jacket before. He knew exactly what that foretold.

"What?"

"Alcohol?" She waved a bottle at him, unopened.

His one good grin eased across his face. He hadn't been expecting this from her for a while yet. "Come on. I have a better idea."

She ratcheted herself up out of the chair, set the bottle on the porch railing, and followed his lead.

He let his inner teenager out of the box and they hit every high spot and waterhole between his house and town. The swimming holes were 'for next year,' but with frost in the air, that big Wyoming sky was getting absolutely breathtaking and the high spots were necessary. "For your education," he said. Eileen stood with her head tilted back, mouth open at the heavenly spectacle.

They wound up at The Red Pony playing pool, dead sober and cat-calling one another like kids. Henry Standing Bear took note and said nothing. The strongest thing either one of them drank was black coffee. Branch THRASHED Eileen four rounds out of five. She blamed it on everything from too much extraneous noise to her back trying to go out on her. The Red Pony rarely closed before 2AM on weekends, but neither one of them were interested in closing anything down. They were just playing hard. Around midnight, Branch finished his coffee and steered his friend for the swinging doors.

It wasn't until the cold bit her cheeks that Eileen realized she'd pulled her hair back from her face. Branch had moved beyond her to open the driver's side lock on his car before he noticed that she'd stopped, a hand half-raised to her face. Her eyes were wide.

He cocked his head. He knew.

"It looks good that way," Connally remarked, and started the car.