“Get inside that wagon!” David roared.

  We all scrambled for what to do next. But it was too late. The earth trembled and seemed to tilt to the left. I squinted through the darkness. Hundreds of dark forms burst through the rail of the horizon and pounded straight for us. Their horns stretched wider than the spread of my arms. They looked like shadows, or demons. The cattle were stampeding.

  2

  It sounds cheap, but really I don’t know what happened next. The herd came straight at us. They missed myself and the driver by pure dumb luck. I ran a good distance and flung myself down in a bed of mesquite. The earth pounded like an Indian drum, and a taste like ashes filled my nose and mouth. My teeth rattled in my head. I tried to listen for sounds, any sounds, but nothing came through the noise of the charging steers.

  For long minutes they poured over the prairie, snorting and stamping and leaving swathes of pulpy earth in their wake. Then the cracks of gunfire pierced through the rumbles, followed by shouted Spanish and English all mixed together. Thinking of of Mary’s Indians, I feared the worst.

  “Giss out!” hissed the driver, pushing me with his rifle. “Giss out!”

  “You get yourself,” I hissed back.

  A man was screaming, and a horse was screaming over him, and Mary Harmin was screaming the loudest. The driver decided to take his chances and leave our hiding place. He sprinted off. I watched him. One of the enemies must have seen him, and the barrel of the gun he held. The blue moon made just enough light to draw a bead. A bullet punched through the driver’s shirt with enough force to send him sprawling. He looked almost funny, as if he’d just tripped over a rock. After that I buried my face in my hands and didn’t look up. They could kill me or scalp me or do whatever they wanted. But they couldn’t make me watch.

  The fighting went on a little longer. And then the hoof beats faded, leaving nothing but the choking dust. And after that, a horrible, final silence.

  For a long time I waited in the scratchy grass. Out in this wild country, the night swallowed everything- sounds, people, smells.

  At last I got up. I walked to the shattered crib of the wagon hulking on the ground like a dead animal. The moon reflected off the nodding prairie grass in a sweet way. But there was nothing sweet about anything else, especially that silence.

  “Mary?” I croaked.

  I felt around in the wreck. Hoping for a little hand to reach out. A little head of fuzzy dark hair, anything.

  Nothing.

  Dumbly, because I didn’t know what else to do, I started pulling pieces of the wagon out.

  I found my little suitcase. Mary’s needlework. The barrel of bacon was gone, along with Mary’s jewelry, and the bags. A splinter of wood almost opened my leg.

  If I could get some shelter under the shattered frame, I could hunker down for the night and figure out what to do when morning came.

  So that was what I did. I crawled right under there and put my head on Mary’s great overcoat, the one she had stopped wearing months ago but insisted on bringing to California.

  Mary was gone. David was gone. I was out here all alone and no one would be coming to help me. What would I do? What would I do?

  My wrist touched on something cold. I felt around. The thing was hard and rectangular, no longer than my little finger.

  Even in the darkness it gleamed; holding it to the sliver of moonlight I could see well what it was.

  A single bar of solid gold. David Harmin’s gold.

  The wagon held nothing else.

  The next morning I climbed out of the wreckage with a gold bar in my pocket. A red dawn broke in the East. Looking out at that flat country, which seemed to move on for a million miles to the end of the world, I had to force back the urge not to cry. Getting out of here alive would need some courage. And probably a miracle.

  I determined the best thing to do was to get everything I needed for a long walk. But the wreck didn’t hold much, and I couldn’t carry much by myself anyway. The barrels of fresh water had been busted open or stolen. The barrel of bacon, likewise. In the end I got nothing but my little carpet bag and bonnet. I started walking in the trails of the cattle.

  The morning wound on. The sun came up. I walked.

  There came a point where I thought I’d gone crazy. I walked until I couldn’t see the wagon shell, and then there was nothing else to show what direction I was going or what direction I had come from. It all looked the same. The same green grass went on for miles and miles and miles, and soon even the rough prints of the cattle blended into the earth around them. The grass the steers had trampled to nothing had sprung right back up overnight.

  I just kept going. Figured eventually I would run into something.

  But it was that something that ran into me.

  It seemed out here on the prairie the only thing you could rely on was your hearing. I didn’t have Mary’s talent for it, but the rumble of hooves were by now a familiar sound.

  My heart froze, but my legs kept moving. Just keep walking. It could be the renegades. It could be the cowboys. Either way, I had no choice.

  What I’d thought was many horses turned out to be just two. Atop the big buckskin horse was none other than Cal Sampson. He slowed the buckskin to a canter, and stopped in front of me.

  I stopped walking.

  “Miss,” he said, touching his hat. That made me, and his companion, start a little. White men didn’t touch their hats to negro girls.

  “Good afternoon, sir,” I rasped.

  He eyed me under the brim of his hat, as if I were a strange, fantastic creature that had sprouted up from the grass. I squinted back at him. Already the front of his shirt was dark with sweat. He had some dried blood on the leather vest, and his gloves, such as they were, looked equally frightening. The holsters at his waist made faded impressions on the fabric of his trousers, where they had hung and rubbed against his thighs for years. Each holster held a long-barreled revolver.

  “Miss?” he repeated, louder.

  “Eh? Uhm- beggin’ your pardon, sir.”

  “You alright?” he said.

  I gathered my scattered wits. “No, sir,” I replied. “I am not alright.”

  His companion spat. “We best get a move on, Cal. The cattle ain’t about to corral themselves.”

  He ignored this. “Lady, you got any idea where you’re goin’?”

  “No,” I said.

  “You’re headin’ straight for Kiowa territory.”

  “Kiowa?”

  “Indians, Miss.”

  “Oh. I thought...” I licked my lips and frowned. “I thought I was heading West.”

  They pursed their lips and looked at each other as if I’d said something very funny.

  “What happened to your party?” asked the other cowboy. This was the one who had first given us the warning. I didn’t like the look of him. He had black hair and a thick black mustache, which drooped at the corners. One of those white folks with a mean streak. I could just tell.

  “Gone, I expect,” said I. “I woke up and they was gone.”

  “Gone,” repeated the cowboy. He looked meaningfully at Cal Sampson. An irritating smile still twisted up his face. I didn’t see the joke. “Well, sorry we can’t help ya more. But we got a passel of cattle to wrangle.”

  “It’s alright,” I said coolly. “I can keep walking.”

  Cal Sampson stared at me. As if trying to work something out. Now I was no longer a fascinating creature, but a puzzle to be studied. Slowly, he led the horse towards me. With a little movement he scooted back in the saddle.

  “You can ride?” he said.

  “Yes sir,” I said. “That I can.”

  “Get on up.”

  I looked at him. Echoes of advice filled my head. I could almost hear my Poppa spinning in his grave. I’d be dumb as a post to trust a white man. And more than one? Together? Out of the question.

  Cal repeated himself. I shook my head.

  “No, sir.”

  The other cowboy kissed his teeth and spat a rope of phlegm in the grass. “Aw, Cal,” he said.

  “You scared of us?” said Cal Sampson.

  “I’m scared of any man I don’t know,” I said.

  “You should be scared of runnin’ out of water,” he said. “Dyin’ of thirst out here. The hunger. The cold. Sorry Miss, but I can’t let you wander off here on your own.”

  “There’s worse things than dyin’ of thirst,” I said.

  He caught my meaning. With a dry little smile, he said, “That’s fair. But if that’s what you’re ‘fraid of, you’d do better to come with me than wait for someone else. Maybe they’d be worse than me.”

  I saw his point. He offered his hand and I took it. He held the horse in hand as I dug my foot in the stirrup and swung myself over the side. I nearly missed, she was so dang big, but Cal held my waist and dumped me in the space in front of him.

  “She’s a gentle one,” I said, patting the buckskin.

  “Her name is Big Girl.”

  My rescuer turned to his partner. The other man’s expression was not welcoming.

  “We better hurry,” said Cal Sampson. “The boys will wonder where we run off to.”

  “Wait,” I said quickly. “What about the others? There was a lady- and a man. David and Mary Harmin.”

  “We looked,” said Cal shortly. “The comancheros got ‘em before we did.”

  “So- it wasn’t Indians?”

  “No,” said the other cowboy. “Nothin’ of the kind.”

  And then they were finished with me and my questions. They kicked the horses on. The miles of prairie disappeared behind us.

  ᢇ

  We rode for many hours, falling in with the other cowboys some time before noon. Cal said nothing, but the others took little signals from him, and held their tongues. Whatever they had to say, they would wait until he pitched camp to say it.

  We rode through the heat of the day, through dry and scratchy chaparral, at the flanks of the herd. Cal let the pace fall to a trot. He didn’t say anything to me, and in fact seemed to not notice I was there. He smelled like sweat, leather and sagebrush. Where his chest touched my back, I felt a spreading warmth, like having my back to a low fire.

  The sun dipped in the sky, and the cowboys followed it. Only when the blazing yellow began to deepen to a red did they make to stop. There were five other men with us. But I didn’t learn their names until later. As soon as they stopped and dismounted, they erupted.

  “And just what you plan to do with her, Cal?” demanded one. He had the reddest hair I’d ever seen and the worst complexion I’d ever seen.

  “I told y’all my reasons,” said Cal. “I don’t savor repeatin’ myself.”

  Cal Sampson stood a good three inches taller than the tallest man in the camp. The size of his feet were almost as long as my forearm. And he had a big voice, too, the kind of voice that makes you sit up and pay attention. He used that voice like a whip.

  They were pretty scared of him. But I guess the presence of a negro woman was enough provocation for them to risk his anger.

  One of the cowboys spat. “We got a week to make it to Baxter Springs. We don’t need no delays.”

  “This ain’t a delay,” said Cal. “It’s called bein’ decent.”

  “So what horse she gonna ride on, then?”

  “We got an extra. She can use Dewey’s.”

  “You know how Dewey felt ‘bout those people-”

  “Well Dewey’s dead, ain’t he?” said Cal. His voice raised a fraction. “Now if you all got somethin’ to say ‘bout how I run things on this drive, you better come to me one by one like a man. I ain’t repeatin’ myself.”

  They retreated. He turned his back to them and began working the saddle off the mare. I stood there, feeling like a fool, and feeling real nervous.

  How could I fit in here- or better yet, become invisible? The second Cal went out of sight the other cowboys would try and do some mischief to me. I wonder if Cal knew that too.

  He dumped the saddle on the ground. I took a seat near him. He leaned against it, long legs stretched out. He shot me a glance, and looked away. From his pocket he pulled a round of wood, and this he started whittling with a penknife into a lumpy shape. All around the camp the other men threw down what little they had and laid out top of it, as if the wind might pick it all up and blow it away. The cook, a salty old Mexican named Miranda, went out to look for buffalo dung.

  “Mister Sampson,” I began. “I’m just wonderin’ what it is you plan to do with me.”

  Cal didn’t take his eyes off the wood round. “We’re gonna drop you off in Baxter Springs.”

  “Oh.”

  “I reckon you can get a way back to wherever the hell you came from.”

  “Boston.”

  “No wonder you talk so damn funny.”

  I stared at him. No surprise that an uneducated white man would be sore that someone like me had some schooling and talked decent!

  “You ought to go back for Mrs. Harmin and her husband,” I said.

  “I ought?” he said, flicking a pair of bright green eyes up at me.

  “Yes,” I said. “She could be in trouble.”

  “Oh, she’s in a lot more than trouble, if the comancheros got her. They’re long gone by now, girl. Ain’t nothin’ I can do about it. Just be thankful it was her and not you they threw over that saddle.”

  I felt myself growing cold. “She’s a good woman.”

  “I don’t doubt it.”

  “She’s got no chance against them.”

  “No. And neither did you. So ain’t you glad you’re here with us, than over there?”

  He was a handsome man- more handsome than I wanted to admit. He had very light blonde hair, a chiseled jaw, and a generous dusting of gold beard over his chin. The hands that held the knife and the wood were strong, thick-fingered, and very calloused. He drew the blade of the knife over the surface, almost lovingly, like it was the most important job in the world. I was very afraid of him.

  “I’m still waitin’ on a thank you,” he told me.

  “A thank you?”

  “For gettin’ you out of there.”

  “I appreciate it,” I gritted.

  Cal Sampson seemed like the kind of man who didn’t smile often. He did now. But I couldn’t imagine what was so funny.

  “Why’d you go to the trouble?” I blurted. “Seems like it wasn’t so popular an idea.”

  “I wouldn’t leave a woman alone,” he said. “Ain’t nothing else to it. These fellas here don’t got these kinds of principles. Can’t say I blame ‘em. They grew up in dust country. Wasn’t no ladies out in dust country- wasn’t no manners or etiquette for ‘em to learn.”

  “Were they rangers?”

  Even as far as Boston we had heard of the rangers of the frontier.

  “Some,” said Cal. “But they was bad at it.”

  He pointed with the butt of the knife. “That’s Tim Barlow. He’s the youngest. Shoots like a damn Apache.”

  Tim was stroking the barrel of a Paterson revolver. He had a cock eye and a curling upper lip, but was in the middle of his youth, when ugliness still had a chance to fade away to something nicer. He caught my gaze and grinned.

  “That’s Tucker Mayfield,” said Cal, pointing to a squat man with thick black hair. “He’s the tail rider.” I was glad to look away from Tim. Tucker Mayfield was engaged in the very serious task of scratching his bald spot. He squinted at the white stuff under his fingernails, and when he thought no one was looking, began to bite them.

  Cal then pointed out Butch Allison, who had shot a man in Oklahoma and got away with it, Guts, who could eat anything under the sun, cooked or raw, and Saint, the man who had first ridden into the Harmin camp to warn us of the raiders. Then there was Stu Little, who drove the flank of the herd, and his partner Jim Bowers.

  Adding the Mexican cook Miranda, who came back with a shirt full of buffalo chips, that made their company nine strong.

  Miranda used the chips to start the fire. He got out a big cast-iron stave from the back of his wagon, and drove this into the ground with a mallet. A one-handled pot went over the stave’s hook, dangling over the fire. This he began to fill from a little cask of water.