“Where’s everyone goin’?”

“Where’s Hannah?” Clara said. “What did she tell them?”

“You ain’t plannin’ to take a kid’s word for nothin’, are you?” Joe Simpson shouted. “She’s sick in the head! You can tell by lookin’ at her she ain’t right.”

I didn’t know what truths Hannah had revealed, but Phoebe wasn’t makin’ any kind of fuss, so whatever she said, it must a’ been bad.

I didn’t care for these Simpsons. They’d not only taken up the better part of my afternoon, they probably killed Gina and the rest of the group that left Springfield on Wednesday.

I felt like shootin’ ’em right then and there.

But I didn’t.

It wouldn’t a ’been right.

Not to mention I’d a’ felt terrible if the little girl heard me shoot ’em.

So I sat on my horse and guarded Joe and Clara Simpson while the wagons rolled north, toward Copper Lake. I offered ’em no water, nor did I speak a single word to ’em.

I sat there on my horse and waited a full hour before emptyin’ my pistol in ‘em.

 


 

 

 

27.

 

“What happened to the oxen?” Phoebe said, when I caught up to her and Rose.

“I cut ’em loose,” I said. “Four oxen are hard enough to keep up with. We don’t have the manpower to care for six.”

“Will they survive?”

“They will.”

“Where will they go?”

“They’ll either follow us at a distance or head to Springfield, I reckon.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Oxen are pretty good about locatin’ water,” I said.

“What about the covered wagon?”

“I left it there. Why do you ask?”

“It might have constituted a fair dowry,” Phoebe said.

“Dowry?”

“For Hiram.”

“Who’s Hiram?”

“Hiram Pickett.”

“Who?”

“My betrothed.”

“Your what?”

“My husband-to-be, you dolt.”

“Well, I didn’t think any thoughts about a dowry,” I admitted.

“I’m just trying to be practical,” she said. “It seems a waste to leave a perfectly good wagon on the prairie.”

“I thought about bringin’ it with us to sell,” I said, “but I didn’t want to upset the little girl.”

“Her name is Hannah.”

“Of course.”

“Say it.”

“Her name is Hannah,” I said.

“You have no idea what she’s been through,” Phoebe said.

“Was she their daughter?”

“No.”

“Then I don’t want to know,” I said.

I spurred my horse and galloped two hundred yards in front a’ them and kept that distance between us ’til we made camp an hour south of Copper Lake.

While I rode, I thought about Rose, and how she sometimes gets feelin’s about things and people that others don’t. She calls it intuition, but whatever it is, it makes her a great travel companion. Also, she’s uncommon good in the woods. She can find her way from one end to the other in pitch dark. I’ve seen her sniff out water, tubers, and medicinal roots, too. I doubt anyone’s better in the woods than her. She claims it’s because she grew up in a forest in Florida back in the pirate days, but that’s just stories, like the ones she tells about all them husbands she claims to have married. Hell, the girl’s only twenty. She couldn’t a’ known Gentleman Jack Hawley the pirate, or done all them things she claims. But I don’t contradict her. If I did, she might stop tellin’ her stories. And her campfire stories are the best I ever heard!

Rose is the finest nurse you could hope to have. Her knowledge of potions will match any big city doctor’s. A year ago I caught a grazin’ gun shot on my arm, outside a bar in Springfield. It weren’t enough of a wound to barely hurt, so I thought little of it. Just poured some whiskey on it and went to bed. By the next night it was all swollen and oozy and hurt like the dickens. I’d seen cowboys die from wounds that looked like that, and never understood how such a little scratch could do so much damage. I got worried enough to go see Doc Inman.