Chapter Eight
Clay had deserved the slap. He had put his hands on her without asking, then kissed her in front of half the wagon train. It had seemed like the only thing to do when Everett was standing over her, but that did not make it right.
Sarah’s mouth was set in a hard line. A loose curl had fallen across her cheek. She pushed it back impatiently.
Clay looked away.
“You don’t have to look so miserable,” she said.
“I ain’t miserable.”
“You look it.”
“My face always looks like this.”
That almost brought a smile from her. Almost.
A voice called from the far end of the resting ground.
“Mr. McCall?”
Clay turned.
Noah stood beside a gray mule. Charlotte sat on the wagon seat with the reins in her lap. Two milk cows were tied behind the wagon, swinging their tails at flies.
“Yes?” Clay called.
Noah lifted an empty barrel. “Our water’s run low. These old girls need more than we’ve got, and Charlotte’s knee is acting up. Would you have a mind to help me fetch it?”
“Of course.” Clay glanced toward the creek below the rise. It ran brown-green between cottonwoods, broad enough to water stock if a person was willing to haul. “I’ll get my pails.”
Sarah stepped forward. “I’ll help.”
Clay looked at her. “That so?”
“Yes.”
He put on a thoughtful look. “You mean to work for me as a wife should?”
Her gaze was sharp enough to cut leather.
Clay grinned. “Jesting.”
“You ought to be careful; your mouth is going to get you in trouble,” Noah said.
“I’ll take my chances.”
Charlotte made a sound that might have been a laugh. “Go on, both of you. And bring enough water so that Noah quits fretting over those cows.”
“I do not fret,” Noah said.
“You fret over everything with four legs.”
Clay fetched two buckets from the side of his wagon and another pair from the Grangers’. Sarah took two before he could reach for them.
The trail to the creek had been cut deep by wagon wheels. Dry grass brushed their boots. A lizard darted under a flat stone. Above them, low clouds clung to the western hills, bruised purple at their bottoms.
Sarah walked beside him with her eyes on the path.
“You’re not from this train,” Clay said.
“No.”
“Were you traveling alone?”
Her grip tightened around the wooden bucket handles. “I was.”
“That’s a poor way to cross the country.”
“I have a horse, and I found a wagon.”
“I saw.”
“I have a rifle too.”
“I saw that as well.”
She looked at him. “Then why ask?”
Clay stepped over a washout where the earth had crumbled away. “Because those things don’t necessarily make a person safe. I would have learned that if I hadn’t found my way.”
Her expression closed.
He wished at once he had said it differently. It sounded too near to a lesson, and he had no business patronizing her.
“You shoot?” he asked.
“I’m a natural.”
That brought his smile back. “I’d like to see it.”
“You’d like to see me fail.”
“No, ma’am.”
“I’m not a ma’am.”
“Then I’d like to see it, Sarah.”
She did not answer. But the hard line of her shoulders eased a little.
At the creek, Clay set down his buckets and knelt at the muddy edge. The water ran clear beneath the surface where it moved quickest. He filled the first bucket slowly, skimming away bits of leaf and silt with his hand.
Sarah crouched a few feet from him, her skirts spread over the damp ground. She had calluses on her palms.
“You know to take it from there,” he said.
She gave him a sidelong look. “What did you think I’d do? Drink it straight from the mud?”
“I didn’t know.”
The creek moved around a half-sunk branch. Sarah filled her bucket, lifted it, and nearly lost her footing in the slick bank. Clay caught the handle before it pulled her down.
For a second his hand covered hers.
She looked at him. Her eyes were blue. There was gray in them, like rain caught in a deep well.
Clay released the bucket first.
“I had it,” she said.
“I know.”
“You don’t have to keep doing that.”
“Doing what?”
“Saving me.”
He set his bucket on the bank. “I was keeping you from falling in a creek?”
She gave him a look.
They carried the buckets back in two trips. By the time they reached the Grangers’ wagon, sweat had soaked the collar of Clay’s shirt, and Sarah’s face was flushed, but she did not complain.
Noah took the water with a murmur of thanks and poured it into the trough fashioned from a split log. The cows drank with their ears flicking, their broad tongues working at the water.
Charlotte offered Sarah a square of dried apple from a little cloth bag.
“You’re good to help,” she said.
Sarah hesitated before taking it. “Thank you.”
Clay saw the change in her face at the words. It was gone nearly at once, but he had seen it.
Charlotte patted the wagon seat. “You rest a minute.”
“I’m all right.”
“That wasn’t a suggestion.”
Sarah looked as if she might argue, then sat.
Clay wiped his forehead with his sleeve. “We ought to get some food sorted before the light goes.”
Samuel crouched near a fire pit beyond the wagons, holding a blade to a willow branch. He looked up when Clay spoke. Samuel did not waste words. Clay had liked him from their first talk.
“We’ve got flour,” Samuel said. “Beans. Mrs. Granger has salt pork.”
“Not enough for all these people.”
“No.”
Clay looked toward the trees. “There’s signs of deer down by the creek. Saw tracks when we came in.”
Samuel rose. “You want to hunt.”
“I do.”
“I’ll come.”
Sarah got down from the wagon seat. “So will I.”
Clay turned his head. “You just carried water.”
“And?”
“And you don’t need to prove anything.”
Her chin lifted. “I’m not trying to.”
Samuel’s eyes went from one to the other. There was no change in his face, but Clay had the feeling he was enjoying himself.
“Bring your rifle,” Samuel said to Sarah, as he untethered a mule.
Clay looked at him.
Samuel shrugged. “She says she can shoot.”
Sarah gave Clay a small, satisfied smile.
They found the deer less than half a mile beyond the creek, grazing in a hollow thick with sage and scrub oak. Samuel motioned them down behind a fallen log.
There were two does and a young buck—not much more than a forked horn. Clay studied them. They needed meat, but he disliked taking more than they could carry or use before it spoiled.
He pointed to the buck, then toward a fat doe.
Samuel nodded.
Sarah lay flat beside them, resting her rifle over the log. Clay watched her settle the stock into her shoulder. She did not fidget. Did not look afraid.
The buck turned broadside.
Clay fired.
At the same instant, Sarah fired too.
The buck dropped hard. One doe ran three strides, stumbled, and went down in the grass.
For a moment no one spoke.
Then Samuel said, “Well.”
Sarah pushed herself upright. She tried to look unconcerned. “I told you.”
Clay looked from the fallen deer to her. “You did.”
“We ought to see if they were clean hits,” she said.
“They were.”
“You can’t know that from here.”
“I know.”
She got to her feet and walked toward the doe before he could say more.
Samuel waited until she was out of hearing. “She shoots better than you.”
Clay glanced at him as he cracked a smile.
“By an inch, maybe.”
“Then I’ll have to practice.”
They dressed the deer where they had brought them down. Clay worked quickly, keeping his knife clean and his cuts close. Sarah stood nearby with Clay’s rifle over one shoulder and her own held loose in her hand. She watched him without turning away.
“You’ve done that before,” she said.
“Yes. I hunted some. Jesse taught me.”
“Your brother?”
Clay’s knife paused against the hide.
“Not my brother by blood,” he said. “Might as well have been.”
She did not press him. He was grateful for that.
Samuel loaded one side of the mule they had brought with them. “Enough talk. We’ve got hungry people waiting.”
Back at camp, the smell of fresh blood brought the dogs near.
Clay waved them off while Samuel divided the work.
Men gathered wood and set stones around the fire.
The women washed pots in the creek water and sorted beans.
Charlotte cut strips of meat with steady hands while Noah salted them.
Sarah rolled her sleeves back and helped a woman named Violet Harper knead flour into a rough dough.
Clay saw her laughing at something Violet said.
It surprised him how much he wanted to hear it again.
Tucker came running from the wagon where he had spent most of the afternoon with the kindly couple who traveled two places down. He had a tin cup in his hand.
“Clay,” he said. “One of the ladies said I could stir the beans.”
“Then you’d better stir them.”
“I did. She says I stirred too hard.”
That got a laugh from Sarah before she could stop it.
By sundown the day’s wariness had loosened around the cooking fires. Children chased each other between wagon wheels until their mothers called them close.
After people had eaten, Samuel set five empty tin cans along a fallen log at the edge of camp.
“Need to see what kind of shots we’ve got,” he said.
Clay knew what that meant. Men who had been sitting too long wanted something to do with their hands. A few gathered with rifles. Others stood behind them, calling wagers they had no money to settle.
Samuel went first. He knocked down three cans from thirty paces.
Sarah stood with Violet and Charlotte beside the nearest wagon, arms folded. Clay caught her looking at him.
“You going to shoot, McCall?” Harlan asked.
“I reckon.”
He took his rifle from where it leaned against the wagon.
The wood was worn smooth beneath his hand.
He did not care for showing off, but knew he was being watched.
The train had watched him since he’d claimed Sarah as his fiancée.
If he was going to put himself between her and Everett, he could not look uncertain.
He lined up at the mark.
The first shot struck the leftmost can and sent it rolling.
The second hit the next before it stopped moving.
He took the third, fourth, and fifth. Each shot was clean. The last can jumped off the log and disappeared in the weeds.
For half a breath, there was only the ringing echo rolling back from the trees.
Then men shouted. Tucker whooped loudest of all. He ran to Clay and seized the back of his shirt.
“I knew you’d get them,” he said.
Clay lowered the rifle. “Did you?”
“No.” Tucker grinned. “But I hoped.”
Samuel gave Clay one firm clap between the shoulders. “Good shooting.”
Sarah stood apart from the others. She looked at him with an expression he could not read, her lips slightly parted.
Then Everett spoke from near his supply wagon.
“Beginner’s luck.”
He sat on an upturned crate with one boot braced against a wagon wheel. Anna was beside him, wrapped in a red shawl despite the warmth from the fire. Everett had a bottle in his hand. His eyes were flat in the firelight.
“Any kid can hit cans when there’s no wind,” he went on. “Doesn’t make him a marksman.”
Clay set the rifle down beside his wagon. “You’re welcome to try.”
Everett’s mouth curled. “I’ve got nothing to prove to you.”
“No,” Samuel said from behind Clay. “You don’t.”
Everett looked at Samuel. For a moment Clay thought he might rise. Then he drank from the bottle.
The camp began to move again. Children were put to bed. Clay helped Samuel bank the fires and make sure the meat was covered for morning. When he finished, he went to check the mule’s tether.
The dark had settled thick beneath the cottonwoods. A few lanterns burned near the wagons. Beyond their yellow circles, the land was only black shapes.
“You made a pretty show today.”
Everett stood ten feet away. He had left the bottle behind, but he carried the same sour smell.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Clay said.
“Don’t play simple.” Everett stepped closer. “That girl. Sarah.”
Clay’s hand stayed loose near his side. “What about her?”
“You aren’t engaged.”
The words sat between them.
Everett studied Clay’s face as though he expected it to give something away. “You never saw her before today. I saw it. Doubt you even remember her name.”
Clay felt something tighten in him.
“Walk away,” he said.
Everett gave a low laugh. “Or what?”
Clay looked at him. “Or I’ll stop asking.”
For a long moment Everett did not move. Then he spat into the grass near Clay’s boot.
“Keep your eyes open, boy,” he said. “A man can lose a great deal while he’s distracted.”
He turned and walked toward his wagon.
Clay watched until the dark took him.
Only then did he breathe out.
From the nearest wagon came the soft sound of someone shifting beneath a blanket. The creek kept moving beyond the trees, carrying itself west through the night.
Clay picked up his rifle and went to sit beside Tucker’s wagon until the boy was asleep.