Текст книги "Boone's Lick"

Автор книги: Larry McMurtry

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"We won't have to be uncomfortable long," Ma informed him. "Come Monday morning early I'd like to be on the move."

"Good Lord, that's just two days, Mary Margaret," Uncle Seth said. "I'll be hard pressed to get my affairs settled up in just two days."

Ma didn't seem concerned.

"What you can't settle you'll just have to leave," she told him.

47

"Mary Margaret, we've lived here for sixteen years," he reminded her.

"That's a long time."

"It is, but it'll be over in two days," Ma said. "And the only people I'll miss are those in the graveyard: my mother and my sister and my boys."

When Ma mentioned the graveyard even Uncle Seth knew it was no time for jokes.

"I trust you've found us a boat," Ma said. "I would like to make some of this trip by boat–I fear it would be too much wear and tear on the wagons to do it all overland."

"Not to mention the wear and tear on the mules and the people," Uncle Seth said.

Just then, through the door, we heard the click of buggy wheels, coming up the trail. Ma's first thought was of Uncle Seth.

"Are you in trouble, Seth?" she asked. "Did you kill somebody in your brawl?"

Neva, who was curious about everything, had already run out the door.

"It's Aunt Rosie!" she yelled.

Ma was closest to the door. "She's hurt–go see to her, Seth," Ma said.

There was such alarm in her voice that we all ran outside. Aunt Rosie was stretched across the seat of the buggy in a bloody dress. She was so beat up I hardly recognized her–both eyes were swollen shut. The blood was from a split lip. The old buggy man who met the trains and riverboats was driving. When Uncle Seth tried to ease Aunt Rosie out of the buggy she gave a sharp cry.

"Ribs," she said.

"Shay, go to the creek and get a bucket of water," Ma said.

"I'll kill whoever done this," Uncle Seth said.

"No you won't–the sheriff done it," Rosie said. "Joe Tate. He's not like Sheriff Baldy."

"Hurry, Shay–mind me," Ma said. "We need the water."

By the time I got back with the bucket of water Ma had made Aunt Rosie a comfortable pallet by the fireplace. She soon had water heated and it wasn't long before she had cleaned the blood off her sister.

"I can't do much about the ribs," Ma said.

"I'll go fetch the doctor, then," Uncle Seth said.

He was standing over Rosie with a dark look on his face.

"Don't let him go, Mary," Rosie said at once.

48

"Send Sherman."

"I suppose I'm free to go to town if I want to," Uncle Seth said, but both women shook their heads. Even Neva shook her head, though I don't know what Neva thought she knew about it.

"No you ain't–not when you're this mad," Ma said.

They stared at one another, over Aunt Rosie: Ma and Uncle Seth. I could see he was strongly inclined to go out the door. I didn't know why a sheriff would want to beat up Aunt Rosie, but I agreed with Uncle Seth that he deserved to be killed for it.

"Seth, you just calm down," Rosie said–her voice wasn't very strong. It reminded me of Sheriff Baldy's voice, just before he fainted.

"Calm down, with you half dead?" Uncle Seth said. "I guess I won't–not until Joe Tate's answered for this deed."

"That new preacher stirred him up–it's happened before," Aunt Rosie said. "New preachers always think they have to start preaching against whores."

"I suppose it helps them at the collection plate," Ma said.

"Preachers . . . they should shut their damn traps!" Uncle Seth said.

"But a preacher couldn't stir up a sheriff to do such as this unless the sheriff was mean to begin with. Joe Tate's just a damn bully."

"Listen to me, Seth," Ma said. "We're leaving this place in two days. It may be that we'll never be back. We have a long trip to make and we'll need your help. I can't allow you to march off and shoot the sheriff, or pistol-whip him, or whatever you have in mind."

"Plenty, that's what I have in mind," Uncle Seth said. He cast his eyes down, so as not to have to face Ma, and started for the door.

"Seth!" Ma said–Ma could speak stern when she needed to, but I had never heard her speak quite this stern.

Uncle Seth stopped, but he didn't turn around.

"If you walk out that door I'm through with you," Ma said. "I wash my hands of you. I swear I'll take these younguns and go find Dick myself, and if we all get scalped, so be it."

Uncle Seth stood where he was for a minute, stiff and annoyed.

"Mary, are you teasing?" he asked, finally.

"What do you think, Rosie?" Ma asked. "Am I teasing?"

"She's not teasing, Seth," Rosie said.

Then she laughed a funny little laugh that must have caused her ribs to twinge, because she coughed in pain at the end of the laugh.

49

"Mary Margaret's not much of a teaser," she said.

"Oh, she can tease with the best of them, when the mood's on her," Uncle Seth said.

"Leave Joe Tate alone!" Ma said. "We don't need worse trouble than we've got."

"I've never been much of a hand for taking orders from females," Uncle Seth said.

There was a silence that wasn't comfortable– such a tense silence that even Neva shut up, for once.

Then Uncle Seth turned from the door as if he had never intended to go out it. He made as if he felt light as a feather, all of a sudden–though none of us believed that. Still, we were all glad when the silence ended.

"There's Rosie McGee," he said, in a softer tone. "What do we do with her, when we start this big trip you're determined to go on?"

"Why, take her with us, of course," Ma said. "Did you suppose I planned to leave my sister in a place like this?"

That surprised us all–and pleased me, I must say. I wouldn't be having to leave Aunt Rosie so quickly.

That seemed to ease Uncle Seth's mind.

"All right, Mary Margaret," he said. "But Joe Tate don't know how lucky he is."

"Go on–get the doctor, Shay," Ma said, and I went.

I ran all the way down the hill but then had to look in three saloons before I found Doc, who was a little tipsy. When I mentioned that it was Rosie who was hurt he got right up and came with me, but he had such trouble hitching his nag to the buggy that I finally did it for him.

"Let's hurry, Rosie's a prize," he said, offering me the reins. Twice more, on the way, he mentioned that Aunt Rosie was a prize. He doctored her cuts pretty well but shook his head over the matter of the ribs.

"They'll just have to mend in their own time, Rosie," he said.

The next night, while making his midnight rounds, Sheriff Joe Tate got trampled by a runaway horse. The horse came bearing down on him in a dark alley and knocked him winding–one hip was broken, plus his collarbone and several ribs; besides that, he was unconscious for several hours and could make no report on the horse or the rider, if there had been a rider.

I don't know what Ma or Aunt Rosie thought about the matter, but G.T. and I suspected Uncle Seth, who had gone to the saloon as usual, that night.

When G.T. asked him about it, Uncle Seth just looked bored.

"He should have carried a lantern," Uncle Seth said. "Any fool who wanders the streets at midnight without a lantern ought to expect to get 50

trampled by a horse, I don't care if he is a lawman. It's only common sense to carry a light."

He never changed his story, either. To this day I don't know if Uncle Seth was on the horse that trampled Sheriff Joe Tate.

15 THE morning before we left I went down to the lots alone about sunrise, to feed the mules–I always liked being out early, if I was awake. The world just seemed so fresh, in the first hour of the day. The river, usually, would be white with mist–then the big red sun would swell up over the world's edge and the light would touch the church spire and the few roofs of Boone's Lick. All the roosters in town would be crowing, and our three roosters too. The mules seemed glad to see me, though I imagine they would have been glad to see anyone who fed them. In the wintertime the frost would sparkle on the ground and on the trees.

Sometimes, when I got back to the cabin, Ma would allow me a cup of coffee, once she was satisfied that I had finished my chores.

G.T. was a late sleeper, and Neva too. Sometimes I'd get to sit alone with Ma for a minute, before the day got started.

Unless the weather was wet Uncle Seth slept outside, in a little camp he had made not far from the cabin. He had spent so much time on the open prairies, with the stars to look at, that he could no longer tolerate the confinements of a roof.

"I'd like to spend as many nights as possible looking straight up at heaven," he said.

"Looking is all you'll get to do," Ma said. "You're too bad a sinner to expect to get any closer."

I didn't understand that, since about the most sinful thing Uncle Seth did was get drunk–since he was sleeping outdoors anyway, his getting drunk didn't bother anybody. Ma wasn't churchly, anyway–maybe her calling him a sinner was just a joke between them.

This morning, though, I got a kind of lonely feeling as I was walking down to the lots. The lonely feeling stayed with me all through my chores, although it was a lovely morning. I saw several skeins of Canada geese flying north, above the river, in the direction we would soon be going ourselves, the whole bunch of us, from baby Marcy to Granpa Crackenthorpe, piled in our wagon, on top of the sacks. Uncle Seth had arranged for a flatboat to take us all the way to Omaha, which was way upriver, I guess.

"After that, it'll be chancy travel," Uncle Seth informed us all. "I may not be able to find a boat willing to haul four mules and a bunch of crazy people into the Sioux country."

The geese soon circled around and landed on the river–it was the wrong time of year for them to be going very far north. But thinking about the north just fit in with my lonely feeling. I had never lived anyplace but our cabin. I knew every tree and bush for a mile or two around, knew the way to Boone's Lick, knew most of the folks who worked in the stores. I knew the river, too–in the summer I could even figure out where the big catfish fed.

51

Now we were leaving the only place G.T. and Neva and I had ever lived.

The fact of it almost made me queasy, for a while, though part of me was excited at the thought of traveling up the river and over the plains, into the country where the wild Indians lived, where there were elk and grizzly bears and lots of buffalo. It would be a big adventure– maybe Ma would find Pa and satisfy her feelings about his behavior–that was a part of it I just didn't understand, since there was no sign that Pa was behaving any differently than he had ever done.

Still, I was leaving my home–the big adventure was still just thoughts in my head, but our home was our place. The river, the town, the mules, the stables, the cabin, Uncle Seth's little camp under the stars, the wolf's den G.T. and I found, the geese overhead, the ducks that paddled around in big clusters along the shallows of the river, even the crawdads that G.T. trapped or the turtles that sank down, missing their heads, after Uncle Seth shot them–the white frost in the fall and the sun swelling up from beyond the edge of the world: all that, we were leaving, and a sadness got mixed in with the thought of the big adventure we would have. All around Boone's Lick there were cabins that people had just left and never came back to-many had emptied out because of the war. Once the people left, the woods and the weeds, the snakes and the spiders just seemed to take the cabins back. Pretty soon a few logs would roll down, and the roof would cave in. Within a year or two even a sturdy cabin would begin to look like a place nobody was ever going to come back to, or live in again.

The thought that our cabin might cave in, become a place of snakes and spiders, owls and rats, made me feel lonely inside, because it had been such a cheerful place. It had been, despite the babies dying and Granma dying and Ma's sister Polly dying. Though I was there when the dyings happened I didn't remember them clearly; what I remembered was Granpa playing the fiddle and Ma singing, and her and Uncle Seth dancing around the table, on nights when Uncle Seth was in a dancing mood, which he seemed to get in at least once a week. G.T. fancied that he could play the Jew's harp, so he would join in, wailing, when Granpa played his fiddle.

"I won't live in a downcast house," Ma said to us, more than once. "It's not fair to the young ones."

Even so I felt downcast when I looked at the wagon full of sacks and boxes and realized we were really leaving. Our cabin would soon be just another abandoned place–if we didn't find Pa and get back to Boone's Lick soon, it would begin to fall down and cave in, like all the other abandoned cabins people had left.

I guess everyone must have felt a little bit like I was feeling, that day. There was usually a lot of talk going on in our family–joshing, bickering, fussing–but everyone kind of kept quiet that last day–kept to themselves. Ma had an absent look in her eye, as if she had already left and was just waiting for the day and the night to pass, so we could load ourselves in the wagon and head for the boat. Aunt Rosie had made good friends with baby Marcy–they were so thick already that Marcy could hardly even tolerate Uncle Seth, a fact that irked him a little.

The day seemed a lot longer than most days–it passed with everybody mostly being quiet. Aunt Rosie's bruises had all turned purple, and she had to move carefully when she stood up.

52

"This baby thinks I'm a clown, with purple eyes," Aunt Rosie said. "I expect that's why she likes me."

"She used to like me, before you turned her head," Uncle Seth said.

There was a full moon that night. G.T. wanted to go coon hunting, but I wasn't in the mood. Ma spent most of the night in the graveyard, sitting on her bench–Aunt Rosie came out and sat with her for a while. She brought Marcy, who made quite a bit of progress with her crawling–she was soon crawling around amid the little gravestones. Uncle Seth was restless–he didn't approve of Marcy being allowed to crawl wherever she wanted to go.

"You ought to keep better watch–she could get on a snake," I heard him say–but the two women paid him no mind. Marcy kept crawling and Uncle Seth finally walked down to Boone's Lick, to visit the saloons.

I6 IT takes just a short minute to leave a place, even though you've lived there for years. Ma fed us each a bowl of mush and told us to get in the wagon. G.T. and I helped Aunt Rosie climb up–she was mighty sore.

Ma handed her baby Marcy. Granpa had strapped on his pistol, in order to be prepared for attack, but once in the wagon he didn't say much. Since we were just going down to the docks to locate our boat, Neva and G.T.

and I walked. Sometimes we'd visit the docks two or three times a day, just to see what was going on. Usually somebody would have caught a big fish, or a paddle steamer would have blown its boiler, or some soldiers would be standing around, waiting for a boat to take them to one of the forts upriver, or some men would be gambling with dice–something worth watching would usually be happening at the docks.

Ma shut the door to the cabin and that was that–she didn't look back.

"Scoot over," she told Uncle Seth, who had climbed up on the wagon seat.

He had been waiting, holding the reins to the team. We had sold two mules to get traveling money, but we still had Nicky and Old Sam and Ben and Montgomery, which was more mule power than it really took to pull one wagon. Ma said it was better to have too many rather than not enough.

Uncle Seth had not been talking much–if he had had a long night in the saloon, his tongue didn't begin to get loose until around noon–but he was taken by surprise when Ma told him to scoot over.

"Why?" he asked.

"Because I'm driving the team," Ma said.

"Why?" Uncle Seth asked again. "What do you know about handling mules?"

"Enough," Ma said.

Aunt Rosie thought that was funny–she laughed–but it seemed to make Granpa Cracken-thorpe a little anxious. He began to work his gums.

"It's a wonder he don't take a bed slat to you," he said.

Once he saw that Ma was determined to drive, Uncle Seth scooted over and handed her the reins.

53

"I didn't raise her up to be that sassy," Granpa assured Uncle Seth.

"I guess it must just be a natural talent, then," Uncle Seth said.

Ma gave no sign of having heard either comment. She clucked at the mules and we left our home. Ma set a brisk pace too–even Neva, a fast walker, had to trot to keep up with the wagon as we went spinning down to Boone's Lick and right on through it. Newt and Percy Tebbit were sitting in front of the jail. They both looked surprised to see us go whistling by. Percy was so surprised he dropped the plug of tobacco he had been about to stick in his mouth. Uncle Seth didn't say a word to the Tebbits and they didn't say a word to him. Sally, Uncle Seth's gray mare, who was tied to the back of the wagon, whinnied when we passed the jail, and a horse that was hitched outside the saloon whinnied back.

"That's Bill Hickok's nag–I guess he's having himself a toddy," Uncle Seth said.

"I don't see the boat," Ma said. "I see a canoe, but we can't get this wagon in a canoe. Where's our boat, Seth?"

We could all see that there was no flatboat waiting for us.

Uncle Seth was as startled as anyone to discover that our boat was missing. There were usually several boats in sight, going upstream and downstream, big boats and small, barges and steamers of various kinds.

Sometimes Neva and I would sit on the dock most of the day, just watching boats. If they were going downstream they were bound for St. Louis, where Neva and I planned to go someday–that would have to be when we were grown.

This morning, though, there were no boats on the river at all. A canoe with a few blankets in it was pulled up onshore and an Indian in an old hat, wearing leggings and a thin shirt, stood by it, untangling a fishing line.

From the docks we could see a long distance, up-and downriver, but no boats were in sight.

"This is a vexation for sure," Ma said to Uncle Seth. "You told me they'd be here."

"Well, they're late, the scamps," Uncle Seth said, with an embarrassed look. Here we were ready to travel hundreds of miles and find our pa–

only there was no boat, or even anyone to ask about the boat except the one Indian man.

"Ask him if he's seen our boat, Seth," Ma said.

"Why would he be able to see something that we can't see?" Uncle Seth inquired. I thought it was a good point. There was just no boat in sight-

–the Indian couldn't change that.

Four mules, a gray mare, and a wagon full of people make a certain amount of noise, and the Indian naturally heard it. He turned and looked at us–

his look was not unfriendly, nor was it friendly, either. He was more interested in getting his fishing line untangled than he was in us–I suppose that was normal, since he'd never met us.

54

"If you don't ask him I will," Ma said. "Here we are ready to go and our boat's lost."

"People who work on water don't keep time as well as people who work on land," Uncle Seth explained.

"Well, they should!" Ma said. She stared down the river, as if she could make the boat appear just by staring–only she was wrong.

"I expect they're just stuck on a sandbar, around the curve, and will be here as soon as they get unstuck," Uncle Seth said. He knew how impatient Ma was, and how vexed she got when events didn't go off on time. It even happened with baby Marcy, who had been in no hurry to be born. Ma finally got tired of waiting and went off in the woods to the cabin of an old medicine woman–Choctaw, Uncle Seth said. She must have been good at her medicine because Ma took a potion of some kind and delivered baby Marcy that night.

Of course, baby Marcy was already there–she just happened to be inside rather than outside. The boat was different: it wasn't there.

"I expect it'll show up within the next few minutes," Uncle Seth said, uneasily.

"He's a cheerful one, ain't he?" Aunt Rosie said. "My bet would be that it never shows up."

"Of course it will–I paid our passage," Uncle Seth said.

"All of it?" Ma asked. "No–I ain't a fool. Half of it," he said. "Neva, go ask the Indian gentleman if he's seen a boat," Ma said.

"A flatboat," Uncle Seth said. "It had a fence around the deck to keep the animals from jumping off."

I was shy around strangers, and Neva wasn't, which is why Ma asked her to go quiz the Indian. Even so, my feelings were hurt–I was the oldest, and it should have been my job. But Neva trotted right down to the Indian, a medium-sized man.

Probably it was his canoe pulled up on the bank. Neva asked her question and the man, who had finally got his line untangled, listened to her patiently. When Neva came back he followed, a step or two behind her.

"It burnt–that's that," Neva said. "I guess we'll have to go back home."

"I thought Seth was being too cheerful," Aunt Rosie said.

Sally, Uncle Seth's mare, whinnied again, and Mr. Hickok came loping up.

"Here's Bill–I guess he finished his toddy," Uncle Seth said.

"Why hello, Charlie, hoping for a perch for breakfast?" Mr. Hickok said, speaking to the Indian man. He tipped his hat to Ma and Aunt Rosie.

"I may find a fish a little later," the man said. "Right now I was going to explain to these people that the boat they were expecting burned last 55

night. I think all the people on it made it to shore. I was passing and helped two of them who were tired of swimming."

"Damn the luck!" Ma said. I had never heard her curse before.

"Yes, it was bad luck," the Indian said politely.

"You could introduce us, Bill, since it seems this gentleman and you are friends," Uncle Seth said, in an amiable tone. I believe, with Ma so angry, he was glad of the company.

"Oh, ain't you met?" Mr. Hickok said. "This is Charlie Seven Days, of the Lemhi people, from up near the Snake River, I believe–Charlie's a far piece from home."

"What people?" Uncle Seth asked, stepping down from the wagon seat.

"Lemhi–Shoshone," the man said in a careful tone, nodding to us all.

"I've heard of the Snake River, but it's out of my territory–so far, at least," Uncle Seth said.

"Charlie has the knack of turning up just when you need him," Mr. Hickok said. "He got me across a patch of thin ice once, during the war, and if he hadn't, I believe the Rebs would have caught me."

"Well, if he had a boat, we'd need him," Ma said. "We can't all fit in that canoe."

"Seen any boats, in your travels?" Uncle Seth asked.

"There is a steamboat tied up at Glasgow, which is not too far, but I don't know if it is a good boat, or if you could hire it," the Indian said.

Glasgow was several miles up the river–if we were going to take our wagon across the plains we ought to at least be able to take it that far.

"What brought you this far south?" Mr. Hickok inquired. "I thought you usually favored the northern climes."

"The Old Woman sent me to find her son," Charlie Seven Days said. "She thought he might be in St. Louis–but he's not in St. Louis. I think he may be in California, but I'm not sure. Now I have to go back and tell her he is still lost."

"What's he talking about?" Uncle Seth asked. "What old woman?"

"The Old One–the one who went with the first captains," Charlie said.

"Lewis and Clark, the woman who went with them–I forget her name," Mr.

Hickok said. "I believe she lives on the Snake River somewhere, which is where Charlie's from."

"Is that in the direction of Wyoming?" Ma asked.

"Yes," Charlie said.

56

"Then you're going the same direction we are," Ma said. "Why don't you come with us? I'd feel more comfortable if we had a guide who knew the country."

That proposition didn't seem to surprise Charlie Seven Days, but it sure surprised Uncle Seth.

"A guide?" he said. "What do you think I am, if not a guide?"

"My brother-in-law," Ma said.

"But we just met this fellow," Uncle Seth said. "He may have plans of his own."

Ma's proposition didn't seem to faze Charlie Seven Days at all.

"I could take you as far as South Pass," he said. "That is where I must go north, to find the Old Woman. She is afraid her son might have died."

"What do we do about your canoe?" Ma asked Mr. Seven Days.

"We could just go back to the cabin and wait until the next good flatboat shows up," Uncle Seth said. I don't think he liked the quick way Ma took to Charlie Seven Days.

"No," Ma said. "We left. We're gone. I'm not go– ing back. If I have to drive this wagon every step of the way to Wyoming, then I will."

Charlie Seven Days was considering the question of his canoe, which sure wouldn't fit in our wagon. "I don't want to leave this canoe," Charlie said. "We might need it up the river–sometimes the big boats get stuck.

I will paddle up to Glasgow and meet you there–it's only a day, for you, if you travel steady."

"You don't have to worry about the steady travel," Uncle Seth said. "If there's one thing I know about Mary Margaret, it's that once she starts traveling she'll travel steady."

"Getting her to stop long enough for my naps, that'll be the problem,"

Granpa said.

"I ain't able to sleep sound in a moving wagon," he added.

"I will meet you at the dock in Glasgow," Charlie said. "You should be there about sundown."

Then he got in his canoe and paddled away.

"This is your doing, Bill," Uncle Seth said, still exercised about Ma's decision. "Now we're saddled with an Indian we don't know a thing about."

Mr. Hickok was not disturbed.

"Seth, I done you a favor–there's no better man to travel with than Charlie," he said. "They say he knows every creek and varmint den in the west, and I believe it."

57

"Thank you for your introduction, Mr. Hickok," Ma said. "We had better be on our way now–I mean to make Glasgow by sundown."

Ma clucked, and the mules moved. In a minute she had the wagon turned and we were on the north road. As we passed Mr. Hickok he tipped his hat three times, once to Ma, once to Aunt Rosie, and even once to Neva, who blushed when he done it.

"This departure is sure a heartbreaker for good old Boone's Lick," he said. "There'll be a drastic shortage of pretty ladies, now that the three of you are taking your leave."

"Well, Bill, at least you got a horse," Aunt Rosie said. "I guess you can just ride off yourself, if you're so lonesome."

17 I DOUBT we'll ever see that Indian again," Uncle Seth said, when we were a mile or two up the north road.

Nobody answered him.

"He may have fooled Bill Hickok but he didn't fool me," he went on. "I suspect that story about the boat burning, too. That boat was floating on water–they could have just splashed water on it, if it was afire. For all we know this Charlie Seven Days could have massacred the boatmen–

that boat's probably drifting down toward St. Louis now, with everybody on it scalped."

"I didn't see a knife," Aunt Rosie said.

"Oh, an Indian's always got a knife about him somewhere," Uncle Seth said. "Mary Margaret, I wish you'd let me drive these mules."

Ma wouldn't, though. She just ignored Uncle Seth, and when Granpa Crackenthorpe tried to get her to stop the wagon under a shade tree for a few minutes, so he could nap without being jostled, she ignored him too.

"We'll never get to Wyoming if we stop all the time," she said. "What's the matter with you, G.T.?"

He had been looking down in the mouth all day–I think leaving home had upset him.

"He's homesick, the oaf!" Neva said.

G.T. tried to slug her–they tussled for a while. G.T. was having to sniff back tears.

"I didn't know you were such a homebody, G.T.," Aunt Rosie said.

"Didn't neither," G.T. said, still sniffing.

"Well, if I ain't even gonna be trusted to drive the team there's no reason for me to bounce along in such a rude conveyance," Uncle Seth said.

He jumped down, unhitched his gray mare, and rode off.

"You're too rough on Seth," Aunt Rosie said, to Ma.

58

"Think so? I don't," Ma said.

Actually I agreed with Aunt Rosie. Ma was real short-tempered with Uncle Seth–we all noticed it.

"I hope Seth comes back, but I don't know why he would, the way you treat him," Granpa said. "A brother-in-law will only put up with so much at the hands of a woman."

We left the docks in Boone's Lick not long after sunup, but the sun just kept on climbing. Soon it was right overhead. Aunt Rosie handed Marcy to Ma, who nursed her while we were clipping along– not fast, of course, but steady.

"When do the rest of us get to eat?" G.T. asked– he was still looking low.

"I'll feed you," Aunt Rosie said, since Ma had her hands full with the mules and the baby. A little horse meat jerky and a spud was all we got.

By then Uncle Seth had been gone three hours and there was no sign of him. The north road passed some pretty heavy woods, a fact which made G.T. nervous.

"There could be a whole crowd of bears in woods that thick," he commented. He was squeezing his rifle hard, as if it were a live thing that might slip away.

I didn't care for thick woods either, though it was bandits I mostly worried about. Several people had been robbed on the Glasgow road–if some of the Millers came at us I didn't know what I would do. Mule travel was monotonous, though. Despite his need not to be jostled when he slept, Granpa Crackenthorpe was sound asleep, snoring his scratchy snore. Aunt Rosie was nodding too. Neva crawled up by Ma, who let her drive the team for a mile or two, while she nursed the baby a second time. That struck me as unfair.

"I guess I can drive a team," I said, to remind them that I was still the oldest boy.

"I know that, but right now I'm training your sister," Ma said. "You're the lookout–I'm counting on you to warn me if you see anything out of the ordinary."

Ma had barely finished appointing me lookout when I saw something pretty out of the ordinary: a large man with a frizzy beard nearly down to his waist was sitting on a stump by the road. He was dressed in a brown robe, like priests wear, and was trying to get a sticker or something out of one foot. So far as I could tell he was barefooted–I didn't see any shoes. In fact I didn't see any kind of satchel or bag anywhere or anything: the man was just carrying himself. He wasn't quite as old as Granpa, but he wasn't young either.