“Horses,” Jeremy said without hesitation.  Charlotte stared at him.  She was certain that he didn’t even know what a sketch was and he didn’t know how to write.

“Horses it is.  I’ll write about the mare.”

“Horses wouldn’t have been my first choice,” Ada said.  “I guess I’ll write about Jack.”

“Who’s Jack?”

“Miller Dawson’s horse,” Ada said and kept her eyes down.

“I’ll write about the cavalry horses,” Brewster said.

“And I’ll write about Cairo,” Jeremy said.  “I even know some of the words.” Charlotte smiled.

In the afternoon as they were preparing to take the animals out, the bugle sounded.

“Target practice,” Brewster said.

“How lovely.  Let’s find out where that is and go in the other direction.”

They were seated in a circle, the horses and cow grazing peacefully around them and Grace playing in the grass.

“We should talk,” Charlotte said, her voice turned serious.  The time had come.  They all watched her.  “It’s not good not to talk.”  She’d so recently experienced what it meant to have someone ask and listen and care.  “I know it’s hard, but we’re all in this together now.  Tell me about the wagon train.”

There was silence.  Ada pulled Jeremy onto her lap and put her arms around him.  The silence grew longer.

Brewster was the one who broke it.  “Pa got the fever,” he said.  “He was only sick for two days before he died.  They helped us bury him.  We put rocks over the grave to keep out the wolves.  Ada made a marker.”

“With his name on it like the one we saw.”  Charlotte nodded.  She could still see all the women huddled around it on the trail.

“Ma wasn’t so good after that.  But there was trouble.”

“From Fiona’s husband,” Ada said and her young girl’s face had turned hard.  “They made him the captain just because he was so loud and bossy.  He said a woman like Ma with that many children would keep them all from getting over the mountains in time and people would die because of it.  We had a river to cross and the men had to stop and help us, but he got lots of people upset about it and they said we should turn back.”  She stopped and laid her cheek on top of Jeremy’s head.

“When we got to the next river, Ma wouldn’t let anybody help her.  She had her choler up, that’s what she called it when she got angry.  Miller Dawson said there were strong currents, so he’d strung a line across from one side to the other that people could follow.  I put Jeremy on my back and held onto the line.  Lots of people did it that way.  Ada took Grace and Ma came behind her in the wagon.”  Then Brewster stopped.  Jeremy suddenly turned his face into Ada’s shirt.