Nick.” He looked at the boy, who rode with such ease. “Did he just show up?”
“I guess,” Tommy said, unsure. “He’s kind of secretive, but you might know that.”
“Do I ever.”
Tommy laughed, and the sound punched Joe hard. It sounded just like his mother’s full-throated laugh. “He said you talked funny. Where are you from?”
“Virginia, lad, and you’re the one who talks funny.”
Both the captain and the boy smiled at each other, humoring him, obviously.
“I was walking to school one morning and noticed a bit of paper in the low branch of a tree. I stopped to look at it.” Tommy’s eyes filled with tears, and he expertly moved his horse out of the line.
Captain O’Leary halted the troop and called dismount and walk. They all dismounted and Joe walked beside Tommy, his arm on his shoulder now.
“It was from Mama,” the boy said, tears on his face. “I read it, and then read it again, and hid it in my books.”
“She wrote you every week, son.” Joe hadn’t meant that to slip out, but Tommy didn’t seem to mind. He leaned closer. “Every week, without fail.” Then it was Joe’s turn to falter. “She … she still does.” He glanced at O’Leary and noticed the captain having his own struggle.
“There was another letter the next morning, a little farther on, and then another farther on. By the end of the week, I was out of sight of my house and my father. Aaron stepped out from behind a shed then.”
“He’s quite a hulking presence. Did he frighten you?” Joe asked.
“A little,” Tommy admitted, “but he had another letter in his hand, and I wanted it.” He spoke to Captain O’Leary. “We can ride now, sir. I don’t mean to slow you down.”
They mounted and rode steadily on. Tommy was silent then, and Joe respected his silence. When they stopped briefly at noon, the boy sat cross-legged and close to Joe, eating his hardtack and cheese.
“After that, Aaron walked me to school every morning, once we were out of sight of the house. He told me I wasn’t to say anything to anyone, and I didn’t. He also said he’d take me to Mama when the time was right.”
Joe nodded, the time right for something else. “Lad, I married your mother in April.”
He decided that Tommy was probably going to amaze him as much as Suzie did. “Aaron thought you might do that if …” He stopped.
“If what, lad?”
“If you worked up your nerve. Sorry, sir, but that’s what he said.”
Captain O’Leary shouted with laughter and flopped back on the grass. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Major, Nick Martin had your number, same as the rest of us!”
“Was I that obvious?” Joe exclaimed.
“Aye, even to a crazy man.”
Tommy grinned and looked away. When he turned back, his face was serious, the grown man painfully evident in the child’s face. “You’ll treat her kindly,” he said, and it was no question.
“Cross my heart, Tommy. I can do no less.”
With a sigh, the boy leaned against Joe, and the post surgeon felt the last callus drop away from his own hesitant heart.
They rode into the afternoon, Tommy having no trouble with the steady but rapid pace. In midafternoon, a small party of Cheyenne decided to get surly, which meant dismounting and hunkering down while the troopers fired back, not wasting a single bullet. Joe wrapped himself around Tommy, who clung to him, frightened but determined not to show it.
When a sadder but wiser war party rode off, Joe enlisted Tommy to hold a trooper’s hand while he slit the man’s pant leg and doctored a flesh wound. Tommy turned pale as Joe worked, but hung on.
“We’re a little hard on you,” Joe apologized, wiping his hands on the grass when he finished. He signaled for the trooper’s bunkies to help their comrade back into his saddle.
Tommy’s eyes were wide. He let out a breath he must have been holding since the fight began. “This is a whole lot more exciting than Carlisle, Pennsylvania,” he declared, which made Joe smile.
They camped that night at Hunton’s roadhouse, so empty without its owner, dead in an Indian raid, even though his employees still carried on. When Tommy was comfortable by the campfire, he continued his story, the part that had been nagging Joe since Nick Martin disappeared.
“How did your father die, Tommy? Can you tell me?”
He nodded, but still took his time. “It was a month after Aaron started walking me to school. He said he