Chapter One #2
Pike’s eyes moved over him, taking in the patched shirt, the thin shoulders, and the bag at his feet. “You planning to take the California road?”
“That’s the thought.”
“Long way for a boy alone.”
“I’m no boy.”
“I know,” Pike said. “But the thought worries me. People won’t treat you like a man.”
When Clay left the smithy, he had the rifle wrapped in burlap, the cooking things tied together, and the sack of canned food cutting into his shoulder. A pair of children from the orphanage spotted him near the well and ran after him.
“Clay,” said Jessica, breathlessly, “Miss Della told me you’re leaving.”
“Miss Della told everyone, it seems.”
“Are you?”
Clay looked at them. Jessica was dotted with freckles. Her little brother, Paul, had a scabbed knee and a shirt buttoned wrong.
“Soon,” Clay said.
“Where?”
“West, maybe.”
Mary looked toward the orphanage. “Will you come back?”
“I’ll try,” he said.
Near evening, Clay was summoned to the livery at the edge of town. The place belonged to Mr. Booth, who had lost two fingers on his left hand and never let anyone forget it. Clay had repaired a broken stall latch there last spring in exchange for a loaf of bread and a pair of old boots.
Mr. Booth stood in the yard brushing down a bay mare.
“She bites,” he said without looking up.
Clay stopped at the gate. “Good evening to you, too.”
“She does. Best warn a man.”
The mare was small but strong through the shoulders, her coat the color of dry tobacco. One white sock marked her left foreleg. She flicked an ear toward Clay and went on chewing.
“That her?” Clay asked.
Mr. Booth kept brushing. “Her name’s Nell.”
“She yours?”
“Was.”
Clay looked at him.
“Bad leg,” Mr. Booth said. “Not hers. Mine. I can’t ride out with stock no more. She needs work.”
“She’d pull a wagon?”
“She’ll pull better than half the geldings in this county. Don’t let her fool you. She’s got sense, which is more than most men.”
Clay came closer and held out his hand. Nell sniffed it. Her breath was warm against his palm. She had a small scar on her nose.
“You’re giving her to me?” Clay couldn’t believe it.
“I’m lending her to you until you’re too far away to return her. I still got the wooden ones you carved for me in the kitchen. All six of them.”
Clay smiled. “Then you still owe me five, right?”
“Don’t get clever.”
“Thank you, Mr. Booth,” Clay said, stroking the mare’s neck. “That’s really too much. I promise I won’t run her hard.”
“See that you don’t. Feed her before you feed yourself if you have to. A horse quits, you’re walking. You start walking, you’ll learn what distance means.”
“I know how to care for one.”
Mr. Booth’s face changed slightly. “Jesse taught you, did he?”
“Some.”
“Then remember what he taught you.”
Clay looked down at Nell’s worn leather halter.
“Yes, sir.”
Mr. Booth led the mare into the stable and brought out a small, weathered wagon from behind the shed. One sideboard had been replaced with fresh pine. The wheels needed grease, but they were sound.
“Was my wife’s garden cart,” he said. “She used it for melons and feed sacks. Don’t go looking offended. It’ll hold what you own.”
Clay walked around it once, checking the axle, the iron rims, and the tongue. “It’ll hold more than I own.”
“That’s usually the way of it.”
For the next hour, he showed Clay a cracked trace that needed replacing and made him hitch Nell twice before he was satisfied.
Clay worked without speaking much. His hands knew the buckles and knots.
When he’d finished, Mr. Booth stood beside him in the yard, both of them watching the mare lower her head to the trough.
“Franklin ought to have given you more,” he said.
Clay kept his eyes on the water rippling beneath Nell’s muzzle.
“He gave me a month.”
The livery owner spat into the dirt. “You need a bedroll.”
“I’ve got one.”
“You’ve got an old blanket from the orphanage. Ain’t a bedroll.”
Before Clay could protest, Mr. Booth went into the house.
He returned with two wool blankets, a canvas ground cloth, and a rolled oilskin tied with twine.
“My wife used these,” he said. “She’s been dead five years. They’ve been in a trunk since.”
Clay took them, but he did not put them into the wagon at once.
“You sure?”
The man’s mouth tightened. “Boy, if you ask me that again, I’ll take them back.”
“All right.”
“Good.”
Clay spread the blankets in the wagon, then laid the rifle along one side beneath the burlap. He set the canned food in a crate Mr. Booth had given him. The pot, pan, cup, and spoon went beside it. There was room left. Not much, but enough.
Enough for what, he did not know.
As the light went down, Mrs. Alvarez arrived carrying a cloth bundle of jerky and dried apples.
Behind her came Pike’s wife with a small jar of rendered fat, a sewing kit, and three clean bandages.
The preacher’s eldest son brought a coil of rope.
Old Mr. Baines from the feed store gave Clay oats for Nell and a sack of cornmeal.
Nobody made much ceremony of it.
They set things in the wagon. They told him how to keep food dry and where the road north was worst after rain. Mrs. Alvarez gripped his chin once, turning his face toward the last of the light.
“You shave when you reach California,” she said. “Not before. You’ll cut your throat.”
“I’ve shaved before.”
“Poorly.”
“That’s true.”
She patted his cheek. “You write if you can.”
Clay nodded.
The people gathered around the cart were not kin to him. They had no reason to be. Yet they stood in the livery yard as if this had been arranged long ago, as if a place had been kept for this day among the oats, harnesses, and iron tools.
Clay looked from one face to another. His throat tightened. He bent to fix a strap that did not need fixing.
When he stood again, he said, “I’ll make good use of all this.”
Nell shifted in her stall. The wagon waited beneath the darkening sky, its boards pale and plain.
Clay put one hand on the sideboard.
A month, Franklin had said. Clay looked toward the north road, though he could not see it from here.
He would not need a month.