Chapter Six
Clay found the last match at the bottom of his tobacco tin.
He held it up between thumb and forefinger. The head was rubbed pale from being carried too long. One more fire, perhaps, if it did not break.
Tucker sat on the wagon tongue. His heels knocked softly against the wood. His hearing had come back completely; he no longer watched Clay’s mouth when he spoke.
“You got more?” he asked. “I wanna light my own fire too.”
Clay looked at the cold ashes under the breakfast pot.
“No.”
Tucker considered this. “Could make a fire with sticks.”
“We could.”
Around them, the camp stirred itself awake. A few horses stamped and shook off the dew. Oxen breathed white into the morning. Someone’s baby cried two wagons down, then stopped when a woman began to sing under her breath.
Noah Granger came out from behind his canvas with a bucket in each hand, and Charlotte followed him carrying a folded blanket over one arm.
“You boys eat yet?” she called.
“Not till we make a fire,” Tucker said. “Or two!”
Charlotte gave Clay a look.
“I need matches,” Clay said.
She nodded toward the far edge of camp. “Then you’ll be wanting Mr. Kane’s wagon.”
Clay followed her gesture, chewing his tongue. Everett Kane was not a man he had been drawn to.
The wagon stood apart from the others, where the trees thinned toward the road. It had a clean blue canvas cover and iron-rimmed wheels that had been greased recently. A painted board hung from one side.
KANE’S TRAIL GOODS
PROVISIONS. TOOLS. POWDER. MEDICINE.
Several men stood there already. One held a tin cup and argued with the man behind the wagon bed. Clay could not make out the words, but he heard the hard edge in them.
“Who is this Everett?” he asked. “He talks like he’s the trail boss, but he ain’t.”
“A trader, so they tell me,” Noah said.
“A peddler is what I heard,” Charlotte corrected. “Though he’d call himself a trader. ”
“He carries useful things,” Noah said.
“And charges twice what they are worth.”
Clay watched Everett. His coat was better than anyone else’s in camp—dark wool without patched elbows or shining seams. He did not look like he had slept on the ground in months.
“Why’s he out here?” Clay asked.
“He’s run this road before,” Noah said. “More than once, I hear. Goes west with a full wagon, sells to folks who planned poorly, got robbed, or lost things in weather. Then he digs for gold a spell. Goes back east. Starts over.”
“Selling to hungry people.”
“Selling to people who need what he’s got,” Noah said.
Clay did not answer.
Tucker slid off the wagon tongue. “Can I come?”
“No.”
“I won’t touch anything.”
Clay looked at the boy’s solemn face. Tucker had spent most of yesterday in Charlotte’s wagon, helping her shell beans and asking Noah whether an ox could remember a person’s name.
But whenever Clay went anywhere, Tucker appeared close behind him.
He had done the same at the orphanage, though he used to be small enough to hide in Clay’s shadow.
“You stay here,” Clay said. “Help Mrs. Granger with breakfast.”
Tucker’s eyes went to Charlotte, and she nodded.
Tucker sighed as if he had been set a grave burden, then took up a small sack of beans from beside her feet.
Clay crossed the camp with three silver dollars in his pocket and his rifle resting against his shoulder.
He had earned the money in Natchez over the years doing odd work: mending fence rails, hauling feed, fixing a shutter at Mrs. Bell’s house, and carving a new handle for Mr. Lomax’s hammer.
It had taken him a year to save it. The coins felt heavier now than they had in his hiding place near the orphanage.
A man in a faded cavalry coat stepped away from Kane’s wagon with a small packet clutched in his fist. He spat into the dirt.
“Robber,” he said.
Kane heard him. “You’re welcome to go without quinine.”
The man turned back, his face red. “You charged me sixty cents.”
“You didn’t have to pay it.”
The man looked as though he might swing at him. Then he saw the three other men near the wagon, all watching, and walked away.
Kane leaned his elbows on the lowered tailgate.
He had arranged his goods with care. Boxes of cartridges.
Nails in canvas sacks. Coils of rope. Tin cups and coffee pots.
Needles, lamp wicks, bars of lye soap. Salt pork wrapped in paper.
Small brown bottles with handwritten labels.
There were tins of peaches and beans, jars of molasses, and sacks of flour tied tight against damp.
Clay hated to admit it, but it was a fine store.
Kane looked him over. His eyes paused on Clay’s rifle, then came back to his face.
“What do you want, boy?”
Clay had been called worse by men who weighed more, but he did not care for the way this one said it.
“Matches.”
Kane reached beneath the tailgate and brought out a wooden box. “Two bits.”
Clay stared at it. “For one box?”
“One fresh box.”
“I bought three for that in Natchez.”
“You’re a long way from Natchez.”
Clay took out a coin but did not hand it over. “Folks would have a better chance if you sold fair.”
Kane smiled a little. It did not change his face much. A woman’s laugh came from behind the wagon. It was not a cheerful sound. It rose too sharply, then stopped.
The young woman, Anna, sat on a folded blanket near the rear wheel.
She had light brown hair pinned high, though some strands had blown across her face.
Her dress had been green once, but mud marked the hem and the bodice was pulled tight where it ought to have sat smooth.
She held a silver-backed mirror in one hand and used the other to draw a line of color across her mouth from a small tin.
Clay looked away at once.
He had seen women wearing dresses. He knew what a woman looked like.
But he had not spent much time near one who was not old enough to remember him as a child or young enough to chase after the toys he made.
The girls at the orphanage had been girls, mostly.
They had pulled his hair and called him gappy-toothed when they were cross.
He had never had a sweetheart. He had never even held hands with anybody except in church when the minister told them to pray.
The woman saw him looking away and laughed again.
“Well,” she said. “This one has manners.”
Kane glanced back at her. “Anna, quit making noise.”
Clay held out his palm. “I’ll take the matches.”
Kane put the box in it only after Clay gave him the coin.
The box was dry. Clay could smell the sulfur through the thin wood. He put it inside his shirt.
“Need powder?” Kane asked. “Or coffee? I’ve got a little left.”
“No.”
“Come back when you do.”
Clay turned away.
He walked back through camp without hurrying. He could feel Kane watching him until the trees cut the wagon from sight.
Samuel was crouched beside a fire pit near the Grangers’ wagon, shaving curls from a stick with his knife. He did not look up as Clay approached.
“How much?” he asked.
“Two bits.”
Samuel’s knife paused.
“For a box of matches.”
“That’s what I said.”
Samuel made one more clean cut through the wood. “Kane charge you for the air around his wagon too?”
“Likely would if he could cork it in a bottle.”
Samuel laughed without humor.
Clay crouched by the ashes and opened the box. The matches lay in two neat rows. He took one out carefully, struck it on the rough strip, and touched the flame to the nest of dry grass Samuel had gathered. It caught at once.
Tucker appeared at Clay’s shoulder as if he had been waiting for the fire all along.
“Did you buy them?”
“I did.”
“Can I light one?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’ll burn your thumb.”
Tucker folded his arms. Charlotte hid a smile as she hung the pot over the growing flames.
Samuel glanced toward Kane’s wagon. “You told him your mind?”
“A little.”
“Don’t tell him too much of it.”
Clay looked at him. “Why?”
“Men like Kane don’t mind being disliked. Gives them something to count. But they remember who dislikes ‘em.”
Clay watched thin smoke slip between the pines.
“You know him well?”
“Not well. Seen his kind.”
“That ain’t knowing him.”
“No,” Samuel said. “It’s knowing enough.”
By midmorning, the camp had begun to pack for the road.
Canvas flapped. Harness chains clinked. Women wrapped cold biscuits in cloth.
Children were called by name and called again.
Clay checked the cinch on his horse, then the straps holding the wagon cover.
Tucker carried two tin cups from Charlotte’s wagon to Clay’s without being asked, which he did slowly and with grave care.
“Don’t drop them,” Clay said.
“I won’t.”
Clay looked over the boy’s head toward the far side of camp.
Kane had not packed. His wagon remained where it was.
Three men had gathered beside it: the fellow in the cavalry coat, a narrow man with a yellow mustache, and another with a scar lifting one cheek toward his eye.
They stood close to Kane, speaking low. Anna sat with her back against the wheel, watching the road.
The man with the scar passed Kane something small. Clay could not see what it was. Kane closed his fist around it, then opened a sack of coffee beans on the tailgate as though that had been the business between them.
Samuel came to stand beside Clay.
“You seeing what I’m seeing?” Clay asked.
“I see men talking.”
“You don’t think it looks wrong?”
Samuel adjusted his hat. “I think it looks like men who don’t want to be overheard.”
Kane said something that made the yellow-mustached man grin. Anna rose and went inside the wagon.
“Why would they travel with us if they’re not part of the group?” Clay asked.
“They travel beside us. Not with us.”
Clay felt the answer sit badly in him. He had been alone with Tucker before finding the Grangers and the wagon party. He knew what it was to be outside the circle of a fire. But these men did not look left out. They looked as if they had deliberately set themselves apart.
Noah climbed onto his driver’s seat and gathered the reins. “We moving, or are you boys planning to grow roots?”
“Moving,” Clay said.
He helped Tucker up onto the wagon bench.
Tucker settled himself beside Clay, then leaned close. “That man with the store said I was a stray.”
Clay looked down at him.
“He said that?”
“Not to me. I overheard him.”
Clay clicked his tongue softly to the horse. The wagon creaked forward.
“You’re not a stray,” he said.
Tucker watched the road ahead. “What am I, then?”
Clay had not expected the question. The trail ahead shone pale between the trees. Wagons rolled out one by one, leaving deep marks in the damp earth. Somewhere behind them, a woman called for her husband to wait.
“You’re Tucker,” Clay said at last. “That’s enough.”
Tucker was quiet for a few yards, then he nodded once, as if Clay had given the proper answer.
They joined the line. Samuel rode near the front with two other men. Noah and Charlotte’s wagon went ahead of Clay’s. Beyond them, the road bent north and disappeared over a low rise.
As they passed Kane’s wagon, Clay kept his eyes forward. Still, he heard Kane call out prices to somebody. He heard Anna laugh once more, then the sound fell behind with the blue canvas and the dark pines.
Clay touched the matchbox through his shirt.
It was a small thing. Out on the road, small things had a way of costing too much.