The Book of Lost Friends - Lisa Wingate Page 0,135

again. There was noise nearby. Voices. “Go,” he told me. “You can’t help them from a pine box, and that’s where you’ll end up. I’ll send them along, if I can.” He turned me from the shadows toward the light and shoved me and said, “Don’t turn back.”

I ran through the streets and didn’t stop and didn’t catch a full breath till we’d rolled the freight wagons out of Fort Worth town.

We were still at our meet-up camp with the freighter line from Weatherford when a stout-built white man rode in, leading behind him Juneau Jane and Missy Lavinia on a big bay horse. He wore a cowboy’s clothes, but the horses had the tack and brands of a Federal regiment.

“From Moses,” the man said without looking at me.

“But how’d he…”

A quick shake of his head warned me I ought not ask questions, then he helped get Missy and Juneau Jane into my wagon before he went on forward to fix it with Penberthy. And that was all. Don’t know what was said, and Penberthy never made a mention of it in all the days after.

Now we’re young dogs in a pack, we three and Gus McKlatchy, who drives the wagon front of ours. We’re low in the peck, but Penberthy’s crew of drivers and wagon guards is mostly young, and more than half are colored or Indian or mixed blood. We three don’t gather much notice. We get the trail dust, and the ruts at the water crossings, and the haze of churned-up grass and chaff that hangs over the prairie like a cloud after a half dozen wagons pass. If the Kiowa or the Comanches come upon this freight train, they’ll take our wagon first, from the back. Likely we won’t live to see what happens after. Our scouts, Tonkawas and colored men who lived with the Indians and married with them, travel out beside, and before and behind on their quick, sturdy ponies. They watch for signs. Nobody wants to lose the freight.

Nobody wants to be dead, either. Gus didn’t lie about the risk of it.

At night, they tell stories in the camp. Dead by Indians is a particular bad dead. I’ve been showing Juneau Jane how to work the pistol and the carbine rifle that Penberthy give us to use. I even put the cartridges in Old Mister’s derringer, case we get desperate enough to find out if it’ll still fire. Evening after evening, Juneau Jane shows me and Gus letters and words, learns us about how they sound and how to write them, while she keeps on with The Book of Lost Friends. Gus ain’t as quick to pick it up as me, but we both try. There’s men on this train that’re missing people, men who lived as slaves in Arkansas and Louisiana and Texas and Indian Territory before the war. There’s folks in the towns we pass through, too, so we find plenty of chances to learn new words.

Time to time, some fresh names to add to the book even come to us from strangers on the road. We share talk or a camp and a meal, gather tales of Lost Friends or information about the way ahead of us, or get word of Indian troubles, or bad patches where road agents or them Marston Men look to rob and steal, or the nature of the rivers and watercourses. It’s a mail wagoner on one of our last camp nights who warns us to take care in this area. He tells of horse thieving and cattle thieving and a range war twixt the German ranchers and the Americans that went in with the Confederates during the war.

“The Germans formed themselves a vigilante gang, call it the Hoodoos. Busted down the jail door in Mason a while back to get their hands on some fellas that’d been locked up for stealing loose cattle. Nearly killed the sheriff and a Texas Ranger. Shot one man in the leg, who had not a thing to do with the cattle, but was jailed for riding a stolen army horse. Poor sap was lucky they didn’t hang him that night, too. The Hoodoos had strung up three of their prisoners before the sheriff and the Texas Ranger got it stopped. Now, the Hoodoos have