the calèche. “You want us to roll the wagon off in the river, Lieutenant? She’s heavy enough, she’ll sink mighty good. Nobody know any different, come mornin’.”
A man clears his throat. When he talks, I try to decide if he’s the same one who took Missy and Juneau Jane in the building hours ago. “Leave it. I’ll have it disposed of before morning. Load the horses onto the Genesee Star. We’ll wait until we’re past the mouth of the Red and over the state line into Texas to sell them. The gray is the sort too easily recognized nearby. An ounce of care saves a kettle of trouble, Moses. Remember that, or it’ll be your hide.”
“Yas’ir, Lieutenant. I remember that.”
“You’re a good boy, Moses. I reward loyalty as verily as I punish the lack of it.”
“Yas’ir.”
Somebody’s light-fingering Old Ginger and the gray! My body comes full alive so quick I can barely keep from jumping out, hollering. We need the horses to get us back home, and beside that, I was left to watch out for the stock and the carriage. If Missy Lavinia don’t do me in, Old Missus will when she finds out. I might as soon be sunk in the river right alongside of that calèche, and take John and Jason and Tati with me. Dead from drowning’s better than starving to death. Old Missus will make sure we can’t get work nor a meal anyplace. Some way, this mess with Missy Lavinia will be all my doing, before it’s over.
“You find her driver boy yet?” the man asks.
“Nah, sir. Reckon he run off.”
“You find the boy, Moses. Get rid of him.”
“Yas’ir. I do that directly, boss.”
“See that you don’t stop until it’s done.”
The door opens and closes and the Lieutenant goes into the building, but Moses stays. The alley’s so quiet, I don’t dare even get my legs bunched under me to run.
Can he hear me breathing?
These men ain’t just some horse thieves. There’s doings here that’s worse by far. Something tied to that man Missy and Juneau Jane went to see, Mr. Washburn.
My leg twitches all on its own. The jingling harness buckles and chains go quiet, and I feel Moses looking my way. Heavy steps grind the stones in the alley, come closer one at a time, careful. A pistol slides from its holster. The hammer draws back.
I swallow my breath, press into the wood staves. This how I die? I think to myself. After all these years of toil, I don’t grow more than eighteen years old. Don’t have a husband. No babies. Just dead by the hand of a bad man and dumped off in the river.
Moses is right on me now, trying to see in the shadows. Hide me, I beg that old hogshead and the dark. Hide me good.
“Mmm-hmmm…” He makes the sound deep in his throat. His smells—tobacco, gun sulfur, wet wood, and sausage grease—dance up my nose.
Why’s he waiting? Why don’t he shoot? Should I bust out, try to get past him?
Old Ginger nickers and paws, nervous, like she knows this is trouble. Like she feels it the way animals do. She snorts and squeals, and dances over the shafts to take a kick at the gray. The man, Moses, must’ve stood them too close together. He don’t know them two horses ain’t familiar. Old boss mare like Ginger, she’ll put a young rowdy gelding in his place, first chance she gets.
“Har!” Moses moves away to settle the horses. I weigh out my chances on running or keeping hid.
He stays with the stock, and I hold still. Seems like hours I wait for him to calm the horses, then check up and down the alley, knocking over stacks of crates and kicking up trash piles. Finally, he fires off a shot, but he’s far down from me. I wrap my arms over my head and wonder if that bullet’s coming my way, but it don’t. No more follow after it.
A window slides up just over my head, and the Lieutenant hollers at Moses to