“No reason, except that it shows things happen to us we never plan on.” Harrod bent and picked up a stone, but it wasn’t flat enough and he dropped it. “Take me, for instance. I’ve done things I can’t believe I did. Nearly always, I did them for money.”
Nate set down his Hawken and dipped both hands in the water. “I try to get by with needing as little as I can.”
“Wish I could. But I’ve got me a few vices. I like to drink. I like whiskey an awful lot. I like cards on occasion, and now and then I pay the painted ladies a visit. All that takes money.”
“You could always give them up.”
“I wish it were that simple. My vices are as much a part of me as what ever virtues I have.” Harrod sighed. “Precious few, I’m afraid. No, I’ll do just about anything for money except hurt women. That’s the one thing I’ve never done and won’t ever do.”
Nate cupped water and pressed his hands to his face and welcomed the relief it brought from the heat. Through his fingers he said, “But you’d hurt a man for money. Is that what you’re telling me?”
Harrod selected a rock as big as his fist. “As a matter of fact, it is. I’m being paid extra in this case, seeing as how the man is more dangerous than most and the gents who hired me want him alive.”
“ ‘This case’?” Nate started to turn. He saw the frontiersman’s reflection in the water, saw Harrod’s arm sweep down, and the back of his head exploded with pain.
His last sensation was of pitching into black emptiness.
“Well, this a fine how do you do,” Emala complained. “Our Chickory went missing. Mrs. King went after him and never came back. And now Mr. King and that Harrod are overdue.” In her anxiety she plucked at her dress and fiddled with a button.
“Want me to go look for them, Ma?” Randa volunteered.
“And have you taken captive by some red devil? I should say not.” Emala planted her thick legs. “The three of us will stay right where we are until someone shows up.”
Samuel had been quiet a while, but now he said, “I don’t think that’s smart.”
“What would you suggest?”
Samuel stared to the west at the reddish orange ball a few hours from setting. “It’s been so long, they must be in some kind of trouble. You two wait here while I go look for Chickory and Mrs. King.”
“Without a gun? What will you do if they are in danger? If it’s Indians, you wouldn’t stand a prayer.”
“We can’t sit here doin’ nothin’.” Samuel turned to the horses, but he only took a step when his wife had his arm in a vise.
“No, you don’t. I’ve lost my boy today and I’m not losin’ my husband, too. The only way you’re gettin’ on that animal is if you lift me up with you.”
“I’m strong but I’m not that strong.”
Randa, anxious to end their bickering, stepped between them. “Why don’t we go together?”
That was what they did, in single file, with Samuel in the lead and Randa bringing up the rear.
Emala gazed about them with eyes as wide as saucers. “Lordy. I see now why you like havin’ that gun. These woods are spooky even in the daylight. We never know but that one of them big bears or a bunch of hungry wolves or a pack of them big cats will jump us.”
Randa said, “Mrs. King told me they’re called mountain lions. And they don’t go around in packs.”
“How can they be mountain lions when the highest thing we’ve seen in weeks was a puny hill? Maybe they’re mountain lions in the mountains, but here they’re prairie lions or maybe plains lions or even grass lions, but they sure ain’t mountain lions.”
“I could use wax to plug my ears,” Samuel said.
Emala took exception. “There you go again, speakin’ ill of me. And you don’t even have the courtesy to do it behind my back.”
Randa wished she had some wax, too. She remembered how nice her parents were to each other back when they were slaves, and she wondered why they argued so much now that they were free. It seemed to her it should be the other way around. She shut out their squabbling and admired the scenery. The blue-green of the river, the various greens of the trees, yet another shade of green for the grass, and over all the brilliant blue of the sky. She never saw anything like this back on the plantation.
Nate King had told her that the sky back east was different from the sky in the west. How that could be, Randa couldn’t fathom. To her, sky was sky. Why should it change from one place to another?
Out in the river a fish broke the surface, spawning ripples. Randa couldn’t begin to guess what kind it was. In Georgia she had known every animal and plant by name. Out here so much was new, it was like learning how to live all over again.
A big yellow and black butterfly fluttered past, and Randa grinned. To find such beauty in the midst of so many perils…Winona King mentioned once that there were just as many dangers in the mountains, but that the valley they were bound for was a paradise where they could live in peace the rest of their days.
Randa would believe it when she saw it. From the time when she was old enough to remember, life had been hard. Granted, the most danger she was ever in as a slave was when Master Brent took a liking to her. But no place on earth could be as wonderful as Winona King made King Valley out to be.
Suddenly Randa realized her mother was talking to her.
“…bad enough your father treats me so shabby, I won’t have it from my children. Now you answer me and you answer me this second. You don’t want me riled.”
“Sorry, Ma,” Randa said. “I was thinkin’ of how our life was before we ran away.”
“No sense in livin’ in the past, girl. We’re free now and we’ll have to make the best of it.”
Samuel said quietly, “Hush, woman.”
“There you go again!” Emala was stupefied. “Now that we’re free I will talk when I feel like talkin’ and there isn’t a thing—”
By then Samuel had turned his horse, reached out, and clamped a hand over her mouth. “Hush!” he said again. “Someone is comin’.”
They all heard the thud of hooves. Riders were approaching at a gallop. Quickly, Samuel reined toward the Platte River. Up ahead, part of the bank had washed away, leaving a drop of some ten feet. He rode to the cutoff and motioned for his wife and daughter to do as he was doing.
Emala balked. “Will you look at him? Hidin’ down there when it could be Mrs. King and our Chickory.”
“It could be Indians, too,” Randa said.
Emala ficked her reins and flapped her legs and got her horse down next to Samuel’s.
Samuel placed a hand on his belt where his pistol should be. He moved it to the hilt of his knife.
The drumming grew louder.
Samuel bent low. Randa copied him, but Emala sat there straight as she could sit. “Get down, woman.”
“I have a cramp.”
“What?”
“In my leg. From when I slapped it against this horse. It hurts somethin’ awful.”
Randa asked, “Would you rather it was an arrow in your leg, Ma?”
Emala bent, but she wasn’t happy about it. She wasn’t built for bending. She was too thick across the middle—she liked to think of herself as pleasantly plump—and besides, her bosoms were so big that she had to press them against the horse’s neck and get its sweat all over them. The only sweat she liked was her own. “What did I ever do to deserve all this sufferin’?”
Then the bank seemed to shake and the water to stir and riders flew past above them.
Samuel twisted his head to look. He counted four, all white, men he never saw before. One was short and one was young and another had a bushy mustache and held a shotgun. The last man had a hard cast to his face. They went by fast, staring straight ahead.