Papa came up to my wagon.

  “Minnie.”

  “Yes?”

  “Sorry. They ain’t used to you, that’s all. I’ll talk to Ben.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I’ll be sleepin’ near you, make sure no one does you harm.”

  Was that a risk? I bit my lip. “Alright.”

  He cleared his throat. “And. I just want to say. I ain’t too keen to marry you off to the first suitor. But if you’re happy, I’ll do everythin’ to see you’re set up nice.”

  “Thank you, Papa.”

  Papa set his bedding down at the foot of the wagon and laid his large body out. Unlike me and Mama, Papa could drop to sleep quick as you could snap your fingers. In minutes his breathing had deepened to snores.

  Out in the open under the wide, spinning sky of stars, I felt terribly alone. My thoughts were no company. And my body twisted and turned at the thought of another warmth, sleeping in the grass. If there was a time to stop that aching in my chest it was now. I wanted to feel how I had felt those weeks ago. I wanted to feel his Maleness sliding over my body again. I slid out the other side of the carriage, dangling until the grass met the soles of my feet. The smell of the camp washed over me. Moving like a ghost, I drifted to the hobbled horse herd.

  Sure enough I found him there, not yet asleep and not really awake, dozing in the grass. But lands, he was tall. I crouched next to him and touched his arm.

  His eyes flew open instantly.

  “You.”

  “Sh-sh,” I said. “Not so loud.”

  He sat up, ready to back away from me. “What do you want?”

  To know why you kissed Lucille Beck. To know why you pushed her away. To know why I hate you to the end of the world. To know if you want to touch me again.

  “To talk,” I said.

  His gaze darted back to the wagon, to the sleeping cowboys, to my father.

  “You want him to string me up?” hissed Jake.

  I put a hand on his chest. He was deliciously warm. “I just want to talk.”

  “About what?”

  He put a hand over mine. I felt his slow, steady heartbeat kick into a gallop. He stroked my knuckles. So I wasn’t the only one.

  “About this,” I said. “About you touching me.”

  “Look, Miss Minnie,” said Jake. He seemed to be forcing the words out. “You’re- you’re awful pretty. I’ll admit it to anyone. But if you’re seen with me your Pa will have my guts for garters.”

  “You kissed Lucille,” I blurted.

  “How do you-”

  “I saw.”

  He worked his jaw. “That was different.”

  “Did she make you do it?”

  “No one ‘makes me’ do anything.” Jake’s grip fastened suddenly on my wrist.

  “Why are you here?”

  “To talk-”

  “What’s the real reason?”

  “Because I’m cold.”

  “Have my blanket,” he said.

  “No. I want you.”

  Jake took a deep breath in, like steam hissing from a hot griddle. “You don’t know what you want.”

  “I do.”

  He reached out for me. “A minute only, you hear?”

  He drew me down to his chest. One hand felt my hair delicately, marveling at the texture. His other hand came to rest on the curve of my thigh. There it stroked a line to the swell of my buttocks and back. The loneliness was spreading from my rotten core, eating me up. But maybe Jake was lonely, too. Maybe we were alike in that way.

  “You feel all woman,” he murmured. “All soft and sweet-smellin’. I can’t say no to you.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. You bring it out of me. I don’t know if it’s ‘cause I ain’t used to the attention. From any woman, not just you.”

  “You had many women, Jake?”

  “Not in the way you’re imagining.”

  Lucille Beck.

  “And not Lucille,” he said flatly. “She was after me the day before- before I got in that fight with Henley.”

  “You kissed her.”

  “You never kissed anyone before?”

  “No,” I said, offended.

  “That’s a shame. You miss out when you think you’re too good for things.”

  “Don’t insult me,” I said, aggrieved.

  He chuckled. “Are you too good for me, Miss Minnie Sampson?”

  “Yes,” I said certainly.

  “Then why you crabbin’ me over some girl I kissed the once?”

  “I’m not jealous,” I said. Lying. “Lucille Beck would jump at a carrot if she could get a ride out of it.”

  He barked a raspy laugh. “That’s horrible.”

  It was. I felt sorry for having said it.

  “Anyway,” said Jake, “I stopped seeing her.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “I wasn’t playin’ you false.” He cleared his throat. “That night in the barn...”

  Suddenly I did not want to hear an explanation. He was here with me, and Lucille was not.

  I said: “I’m getting married soon.”

  “I heard.”

  “I don’t know how it’s supposed to be between a woman and a man. I don’t know anything.”

  “I guess your husband will teach you.”

  I whispered a thought I had only entertained in the darkest corners of my heart: “I don’t know if I want to get married.”

  “Most girls don’t,” said Jake.

  “Do you?”

  “I’m old enough,” said Jake. “But too poor.”

  “Maybe that doesn’t matter.”

  The hand resting on my bottom tightened possessively. I snuggled closer to his chest.

  “What do I have to do?” I said softly.

  He cleared his throat. He seemed to be holding back some violent impulse. And knowing that made me bolder. How far could I push Jake? How far did I want him to go?

  “Do for what?”

  “In bed. For my husband.”

  “Aw, Minnie.” His voice was a rasp. “Don’t ask me that.”

  “You’re a man. You would know.”

  “Lie back and please him, I guess,” he said.

  “Do I get pleased too?”

  “If he’s any good.”

  I licked my lips. My heart was hammering fit to explode. “Are you any good, Jake?”

  He tried to push me away a little. But then he changed his mind. I scooted up, looking into his face. His eyes shone into mine, the blue so clear in the deep night it looked like the surface of a mirror.

  “I can’t tell you that,” he said.

  “Oh.”

  I paused. “Can you show me?”

  “Hell, Minnie-”

  One of the cowboys grunted, belched, and turned over in his blanket. We froze. Jake’s arms tightened, holding me immobile against him. His heart thundered in his chest. For a long minute we listened, guilty, expecting the sky to fall.

  The cowboy went back to sleep. Jake’s hold on me relaxed, but he was breathing hard.

  “You want me to show you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tomorrow. Find me tomorrow.”

  “No. Tonight. Please.”

  “I’ve been wound up just layin’ next to you,” he said, and his hand trailed up and grabbed one of my breasts. Hard. I moved closer, thrusting my chest out, offering both. Manhandle me, I thought. Use me, kiss me, suck me, bite me. Make this burning in my body stop. I’ll be yours. He groaned deep in his throat.

  “If we do it tonight I’m fit to bust.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He cleared his throat. “You’re too innocent, Minnie.”

  Innocent. I was a good girl. But good girls didn’t hug up on men they weren’t promised to. Good girls didn’t let men touch their breasts, didn’t lie alone with them in lonely pastures at night.

  “Your Pa’s been good to me,” he added softly.

  “He won’t know.”

  “You’d tell him. I know the way of it.”

  Annoyed, I said, “You don’t know me, then. I’m not a snitch.”

  “Hey, hey.”

  He pulled me back down. He smoothed the hair from my forehead and kissed my skin. Then he said, so low I hardly caught it, “I always thought you a fine thing. Pretty, I mean. Real nice to look at.”

  “You’re just sayin’ that.”

  “I’m not. But you’re right. We hardly know each other at all.”

  I blurted, “Do you think I’m a whore?”

  “No.”

  His own mother had been a whore. I remembered the Adult Whispers. I pressed closer to him. “Do you want me?”

  “You know I do.”

  I took his hand and put it on my breast again. He paused for a moment, then deftly undid the loose stays at my bodice. His hand slid through the folds and drew out my breast. His breath was ragged.

  “Just the once,” he muttered, almost to himself. “And then we got to stop.”

  He took my hand and drew it down, placing it at the fork in his legs. Some long, hard muscle was there, pulsing under the fabric. Instinctively I knew what it was, though in the moment it confused me. Why did between my legs suddenly clench and dampen?

  “You feel that?” said Jake quietly.

  “Yes,” I whispered.

  “What do you feel?”

  “It’s you. I think. It’s your...”

  He laughed softly. “Yeah. You know what it does?”

  “No.”

  He slid our intertwined hands above my head. I wished I could see better, but in the darkness the only light was the little moon-reflection in his pale eyes.

  His head angled down and he caught my mouth. It was slow and tentative, but quickly became something else. Something broke open inside both of us. Suddenly I was grabbing at his shirt, pulling him flush on top of me. Suddenly his hands were thrusting under my dress, grasping both fabric and skin. He pinched the soft interior of my thighs. His tongue slid along the seam of my lips, which opened quickly to receive him.

  The kiss went on and on. But I could hardly pay attention to it. His hands were doing something else beneath my dress. They had come to the parting of my legs. I pulled away sharply.

  “Easy,” he breathed. “Easy.”

  With his elbow he nudged my knees aside. His fingertip circled the slick opening of my pussy, dipping in and out. He watched my reaction.

  I realized then he really did think me beautiful. He was staring at the swell of my breasts spilling out of my bodice. The skirts rumpled prettily around my waist. My legs opening for him, only him, practically ready to be ravished. There were two fingers now. And they-

  “Oh!”

  He covered my mouth with his. I didn’t know what to do with my hands. Somehow I found myself working on the buttons on his shirt. Then I couldn’t do anything at all. His fingers were moving, Jake was moving, I was moving. It was fire shooting through my veins; or perhaps it was a hot core moving in my center. I was making sounds I had never heard.

  And Jake, the muscles of his arm coiled and tense, moving faster, faster...

  He covered my mouth when I started to whimper too loud. He held me steady through each shuddering, juddering wave. Then, when it was done, he pulled his fingers out of me. Looking me in the eye he put them slowly in his mouth to taste my salty-sticky-sweetness. I could only lie there, quaking.

  He took my hand next and placed it again on his groin. The muscle there was pulsing, pulsing. I had a clue now.

  He let me stroke it. I wanted to see what I was touching, but that would lead to something even more frightening.

  He seemed to read my mind. He said, “Did you like that?”

  “Yes...”

  “If I took this out I could do it to you,” he said. “It would feel even better.”

  “But-”

  “Then you wouldn’t be a virgin,” he said. “And you couldn’t get married.”

  Marriage? I didn’t care about that now. I wanted to.

  “I want to,” I whispered fiercely. “I want to. I do.”

  He kissed me. Now, slowly, following a path down my throat, his lips found the swell of a brown breast and opened. He suckled on me, slow and hard, his hands exploring again. I let him do whatever he wanted, drowning in a new bliss that had no name.

  But the Act Itself, he kept away from me. Even after I lost my mind and begged him for it.

  “No, Minnie,” he said. “We can’t.”

  And he really meant it. Which I guess said more about Jake McCoy’s honor than all the gossip and expectation in the world.

  Some hours later the sky faded into a soft blue. A horse’s whickering took me from sleep. I realized the hands wrapped around me were not my own. Jake’s deep breathing had hypnotized me into a deep, dreamless trance. The thought of being caught brought me instantly awake. I leaped from his arms and hurried back across the field.

  The next day Pa tasked Jake to ride lead for the spare horses, putting a good distance between him and the rest of the party. Papa returned with a storm cloud in his eyes; his mouth twisted in a frown. He trotted next to my wagon, his brow knotted, contemplating something that had nothing to do with the road ahead.

  When we pulled off for a rest it was high afternoon. I knew Pa would have liked to keep going until four, but riding with women always slowed his pace. Ladies were just Not Equipped for hard riding. I thought, as I watched him checking the saddles and stores, chatting with the cook, that I really didn’t know my father at all. I could predict his reactions but not his inner thoughts. He wasn’t an easy man to know. Does a girl ever know her own father?

  He came up to me with his brow still knotted. And I knew then he had saved our talk for last, dreading it.

  “Minnie,” he began in a low voice, “I know you ain’t the dishonest type.”

  What did he know?

  “Yes, Papa.”

  He beat out his hat, avoiding my eyes. “Your Ma gave me charge to look after you. You know what you’re goin’ to your Uncle Sam’s for, and what that means. I won’t have anybody sayin’ my daughter is damaged goods.”

  I waited, my face overheating.

  “What is goin’ on between you and Jake McCoy?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  He sized me up. “I won’t have you lyin’ to me, Minnie. Did he make presumptions on you?”

  “No.”

  The lie was bald and obvious. I had practically stammered it. Papa ran a hand through his pale gold hair, which in parts had already began to gray.

  “I’m disappointed in you, Minnie.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Papa wasn’t a fool. After that Jake got assigned permanently to minding the spare herd. Papa watched me closely, keeping me near him during meals, at night when we all slept, and when we rode in the day. The days went by, and we reached Uncle Sam’s before the first blush of Autumn began to show.

  While Pa’s men went to town to resupply and get men for the drive, I was taken to Uncle Sam’s.

  Uncle Sam lived on a piece of land in the town called Floyd. Floyd was neither very rich nor very poor. Most black folks there were mostly runaways from Texas. Uncle had got a sweeter deal than they. He owned his own barn and a few animals. The house itself was immense; Papa had loaned my uncle money to build it. It was near town, and the fields were adequate for Uncle’s small family. I didn’t think they ever went hungry.

  As for the man himself; my Uncle Sam Bell was a bit small, like Mama. He had a lame leg so he took to sitting down whenever he could. Black farm hands did most of the work. Uncle let them sleep in the old shed and didn’t pay them. They ate off him for free.

  His wife Thelma came to greet us. She was a bulging, short-sighted woman. She was nothing like Mama. Her skin was yellow-tinted, unlike mine, and she wore her loose hair out in drop curls, like every day was a church service.