Chapter Nineteen
Everett sat beneath the lean-to he had made from his wagon canvas and watched the rain drip from its edge.
The storm had passed two days before, but the ground still held water. Mud sucked at boots. Beyond the camp, the road ran pale and cut up between the pines.
His wagon was gone. Not damaged. Gone. Long gone.
He had found himself another one, but some things couldn’t be replaced.
He had saved what he could carry. The rest had burned or been crushed in the scramble.
Years of buying, hauling, and selling gone in one night while Clay stood there with that boyish face and gave orders as if he had been elected by God Himself.
Everett spat into the wet dirt.
Across the clearing, Clay’s people had made a camp; he could see them from afar. Their wagons stood close, wheels chocked with stones. Weak stock. Every bit of it. Clay had gathered them like stray dogs, then expected the rest of the party to honor him for it.
He turned to his own camp. They had set up the fire a little way down the slope, and kept the smoke down so the enemies couldn’t see.
Baxter squatted by the fire, scraping mud from the sole of his boot with a knife. He was a broad fellow with a broken nose. Dean lay nearby with his hat over his face. The third man, Mick, worked a strip of leather between his fingers.
Everett looked at each of them.
“You boys intend to sleep all day?”
Baxter glanced up. “No call to move till you say.”
“There’s always a call to move.”
Dean tipped his hat back. His eyes were bloodshot. “You found another wagon to sell?”
Everett’s hand closed around the tin cup beside him. “Mind your tongue.”
Dean smiled without much humor. “Just asking.”
Everett stood. The lean-to was low, and he had to duck beneath the canvas. He walked to the edge of the trees where the others could not hear them over the hammering of pots and the children’s noise.
The three men followed.
“They’re headed toward the settlements,” Everett said. “They’ll be feeling safe before long. That’s when folks get careless.”
Baxter wiped his knife on his trouser leg. “McCall don’t look careless.”
“No. He looks like a babe.”
“They shot you.”
“They grazed me.”
“He put a ball through your hat.”
Everett’s jaw worked.
Baxter had the sense to look down.
Everett shifted his weight. The wound still pulled when he walked.
It had begun to close, though the flesh around it stayed hot and sore.
He would carry the limp for weeks. Maybe longer.
Every step reminded him of that blond-haired orphan with his rifle in hand, choosing not to kill him as if mercy made him better.
“You all saw what he has,” Everett said. “People at his fire. People doing as he asks. Food, guns, animals. And that girl. He’s running the whole operation. Harlan has given the whole trail up to a cocky kid. He was always weak. ”
Mick’s eyes lifted. “That Sarah…”
“Yes.”
“She’s got a mean look for a lady so beautiful.”
“Pfft, she’s alone except for him.”
“Not alone if McCall’s calling himself her husband.”
Everett gave a short laugh. “That’s a tale for the camp. You think a woman like that belongs to a boy who never had so much as a proper roof over his head?”
It was a waste. There were uses for women like her. Men paid to have things returned to them. Fathers, uncles, husbands. A young woman with blue eyes and clean hands could be worth more than a wagon full of flour if a family believed she had run into trouble.
Everett had asked enough quiet questions to know she came from Arkansas. Little Rock, someone had said. She had an uncle there. A hard man, by all accounts.
“She’s worth money,” Everett said.
Baxter looked toward Clay’s camp. “You planning to take her?”
“I’m planning to take what belongs to me after Clay stole it.”
“What’s that?”
“My due.”
No one answered him.
Everett stepped closer to Baxter. “You want provisions for the rest of the road? Or you want to die out here in the dirt? This is nature out here, boys; you ain’t in the cities anymore. Nature is cruel, but it don’t starve. Understood?”
Baxter’s expression changed first. It wasn’t loyalty, but hunger.
Dean pushed himself upright. “What’s the plan?”
Everett looked toward the wagons.
“We watch them. We learn their habits. Clay can’t stand guard every hour of the night, no matter what those fools think. When the chance comes, we take the girl. If anyone gets in the way, we handle it.”
Mick swallowed. “That’ll bring trouble.”
“Trouble is already here.”
The wind moved through the wet branches overhead.
Everett rested his palm against the pistol at his belt.
“Clay thinks he made a name for himself,” he said. “We’ll see how long it lasts.”
***
By morning, the camp had packed itself into motion.
Clay awoke to a horse breathing hard beside the wagon.
For a moment he thought it was Nell shifting in her traces. Then he heard the rough pull of strange breath and opened his eyes.
A gray head filled the space beyond the wagon’s narrow side opening. One white-rimmed eye stared in at him.
Clay reached for his rifle.
The horse jerked back at the movement. Its bit clinked. He heard hoofbeats in the road and the faint creak of saddle leather before he got outside.
The rider was already disappearing between the trees.
“Clay?”
Sarah’s voice came from within the wagon.
She had slept curled beneath one blanket near the rear, her boots tucked under the edge to keep them dry.
Since her wagon had been taken, there was little room for either of them.
Clay had taken to sleeping against the front board with one shoulder going numb before dawn.
“It’s nothing,” he said.
She pushed the blanket aside and sat up. Her hair had come loose from its braid. “That did not sound like nothing.”
“Somebody rode too close.”
“Everett?”
Clay looked down the road. The trees stood still now. No sign of horse or rider remained except fresh prints in the soft ground.
“Could’ve been.”
Sarah climbed down, tying her hair back with a strip of faded blue ribbon. She wore her revolver at her waist. She had begun doing that even when she went for water. Clay had not told her to stop.
Tucker came stumbling from Violet’s wagon with one suspender hanging loose.
“What happened?”
“Horse wanted to look at Clay,” Brady said behind him.
Tucker considered this. “Maybe it thought he was handsome.”
Clay looked at him.
Tucker shrugged. “Some horses can’t see too good.”
Sarah tried to hide a smile and did not quite manage it.
“Get your boots on,” Clay told Tucker. “Both of you stay where Violet can see you.”
Tucker scowled, but he went.
Samuel was kneeling by his fire, pouring coffee into a cup. He took one look at Clay’s face and set the pot down.
“What is it?”
“Rider came through close enough to put his horse’s nose in my wagon.”
Samuel rose. He had his coat on but no hat yet, his dark hair flattened on one side from sleep. “Everett?”
“I don’t know.”
“You think it was meant to frighten you?”
Clay studied the tracks. “Meant to show us they can get close.”
Samuel followed his gaze. “That’s worse.”
Behind them the camp went on with its morning business. Charlotte fed sticks into a cookfire
Clay had wanted this road. He had wanted the open country and a wagon of his own, the kind of days Jesse used to talk about when the older boys lay awake after lights out.
He had not thought much beyond the next bend.
Now there were people sleeping beside his wheels. Children. A woman who could shoot better than most men he knew, though she had no place to go if Everett came for her. An old widow who had lost her husband three days ago and still set out two cups each morning before remembering.
He rubbed a hand over his face.
Samuel watched him. “Say it.”
“If we stay separated like this, we’re weak. We need watchers but I feel we’re getting thin.”
Samuel gave a single nod. “I’ll speak to the group.”
“I’ll do it.”
“You’ll make it sound less like an order.”
Clay looked at him. “Is that meant kindly?”
“It is.”
They called the camp together after breakfast. There were not many of them left. The loss of Noah had taken something out of the group, though no one said so. His empty place spoke volumes.
Clay stood beside the tongue of his wagon. He did not climb up where everyone could stare at him. He hated the thought of making a speech. Still, people quieted.
“We had a rider at the wagon before daylight,” he said. “Could’ve been Everett. Could’ve been one of his men. Whoever it was, they came close.”
Violet drew Brady nearer. Tucker stood with his hands in his pockets, watching Clay without a word.
“We have to be careful. We need to stay alert. Get sloppy, and we’re done for.”
A man named Eli, who had joined them after the split, said, “We can’t keep looking over our shoulders every mile.”
“No,” Clay said. “But we can keep from handing Everett an easy chance.”
“He’s got men.”
“So do we.”
Eli looked around at Samuel and the others. “Not enough.”
“Enough men to stand beside each other,” Clay said.
Eli’s mouth shut.
Clay said, “Samuel and I will take the first watch tonight. After that, we’ll make a list.”
Sarah stood near the fire with her arms crossed. “And the women?”
Clay looked at her. “What about them?”
“Some of us know how to hold a gun too.”
A few of the men shifted. Samuel’s mouth twitched once.
Clay said, “Then you’ll be on the list if you want.”
“I want.”
“I thought you might.”
The day’s work took them down the road at a steady pace. The sky cleared into a hard blue. Water dripped from the branches long after noon. Wheels sank in soft places, and the oxen strained. Clay walked beside Nell more than he rode, one hand on her neck when the track narrowed.
Sarah kept near the wagon. She did not ask whether he thought Everett would come. She did not need to. Once, when Tucker and Brady raced ahead to throw sticks at a stump, she caught Clay’s sleeve.
“Are you afraid?” she asked.
He looked down at her hand, then at her face.
“No,” he said.
She waited.
He sighed. “I’m thinking.”
“That’s worse than fear for you.”
“Likely.”
Her fingers slipped from his sleeve. “Don’t do anything foolish on my account.”
Clay gave her a sideways look. “That leaves me with very little to do.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
She frowned at him, but there was no force behind it. Then she walked ahead to call the boys back from the road.
They made camp before full dark in a hollow where a small creek ran between stones. The horses were tethered close. The wagons formed a broken half-circle, tongues turned inward. No fire was built beyond what they needed for cooking, and those were kept low.
Samuel took the first outer place beneath a stand of firs. Clay kept nearer to camp, walking slowly between the wagons with his rifle in the crook of his arm.
The night had a cold edge to it. The creek made a steady sound over rock. From Clay’s wagon came the muffled scrape of Sarah turning beneath her blanket. Tucker snored on the other side of the wagon bed, the sound loud for such a small boy.
Clay checked the horses again. Nell flicked an ear toward him and went back to chewing.
Samuel appeared from the trees an hour later.
“Nothing,” he said.
“Nothing here either.”
They traded places.
The woods beyond the camp were black under the fir branches. Clay moved carefully, placing his boots where the ground looked firm. He stopped often to listen.
A twig snapped somewhere to his left.
He brought the rifle up.
Nothing followed. No hoofbeat. No voice. Only the creek and the wind.
Then, far off through the trees, a woman screamed.
It came once, sharp and cut short.
Clay was already running toward camp when Samuel’s answering whistle sounded from the dark.