pickets, toss heads and twitch ears. Juneau Jane takes the halter of a big gelding and strokes its nose. “They have a sense of something,” she says.
I think about Indians and panthers and coyotes and the Mexican gray wolves that howl on the prairies at night. I hold Missy’s old reticule close, feel the weight of the derringer tucked inside. It’s some comfort, but not much.
Elam Salter comes into our camp, and that’s more comfort, yet. “Stay between the rocks and the wagon,” he tells us, and then talks quiet with the men on the other side of the wagon. I watch their hands and bodies move, pointing, looking.
One of the soldiers hangs a blanket between two cedar trees for our necessary, and another cooks on a small stove at the wagon.
There’s none of Elam’s friendly talk or smiles that night.
When we bed down, he’s disappeared again. Don’t know where he goes or if he sleeps. The dark just grabs him up. I don’t hear or see him after that.
“What does he search for?” Juneau Jane asks as we settle in a tent with Missy twixt us. I tie Missy’s ankle to mine, case she’d take a mind to get up and wander…or I would in my dreams.
Missy’s asleep quick as she can get flat on the blanket.
“Don’t know what he’s after.” I think I scent smoke on the wind. Just a hair of it, but then I ain’t sure. Our cookstove’s been out for hours. “Reckon the night’ll pass all right, though. We got five men looking out after us. You and me been in tougher spots.” I think of the swamp and not knowing if we’d live to morning light. “We ain’t alone, at least.”
Juneau Jane nods, but the lantern light through the cloth shines on a brim of tears. “I have left Papa. He is alone.”
“He’s gone on the other side of the door. He ain’t in that body no more,” I tell her. “You sleep now.” I pull the blanket up, but I don’t find rest.
Sleep finally comes like a summer dry river, a trickle that’s shallow and splits around rocks and downed branches and tree roots, dividing and dividing, till by morning it’s the thin bead of gathered morning dew, dripping lazy off the army tent overhead.
On rising, I think I smell smoke again. But there’s barely enough fire in the stove for coffee, and the wind scatters it the other direction.
It’s only your mind, Hannie, I tell myself, but I make sure we all three get up together and go behind the blanket to see to our necessary. Missy wants to pick snowball flowers there, but I don’t let her.
Elam Salter comes in from wherever he’s passed the night. He looks like a man who ain’t slept. He’s keeping watch for something, but he don’t ever say what.
We eat pilot biscuits, dunking them in our cups to soften them up for chewing. Missy fusses and spits hers out. “You’ll go hungry, then,” I tell her. “You need to eat for—” I catch for the baby in my throat, and swallow hard.
Juneau Jane meets my eye. This baby won’t hide much longer. Missy ought to visit a doctor, but if her mind ain’t better soon, any doctor we ask will want to send her away to the asylum.
When we move out, Elam points his dun gelding up and across a rise. I see him there with his spyglass as the sky breaks a full dawn that’s like coals from the underside. Red-pink and rose yellow and lined in gold so bright it stays in your eyes when you blink. The sky is wide as the earth, from one end to the other.
Elam and the horse look at home against that fire, against that wide alone. Our wagon circles the hill and wobbles down into a rough draw, and Elam disappears bit by bit.
I keep watch out one side of the wagon, then the other, trying to hold on to the sight of him, but he’s soon gone and we don’t see him again, rest of the morning.
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