At the noon hour, when the horses required a break, Charlotte moved wearily forward to unhitch the team.  He was already there.  “Get some sleep,” was all he said, and she did, climbing into the wagon, gone before she’d pulled the blanket over her.

For the afternoon, without asking her he took the reins, creating a disconcerting image, his appearance so much at odds with that of the wagon.  The iron wheels, board sides, plain stretched canvas spoke of a rough and simple man, a woodsman, a farmer.  All this member of the tribes could possibly have in common with such people were his hands on the reins.

Charlotte saddled the mare and trailed behind, watching the dragonflies alight on tender shafts of bluegrass, listening for the sound of a bird, any bird.  Once, she heard the scream of a hawk, but couldn’t place him in the sky’s endless pale blue reaches.  Shading her eyes, she turned into the sun, and then couldn’t see anything.

It was peaceful anyway, to be rolling steadily forward with the land passing under her like the waves under a ship at sea.  She let her mind drift off into oblivion.

Close to the end of the afternoon, weary again, she drew the mare up alongside the wagon.

“Are we near a place to stop?” she said.

“Not much farther.  When the swallows fly low like that, they’re headed to water.”

She’d gone into such a monotony-induced trance that she hadn’t even noticed the swallows flipping dark to light as they darted through the air.

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“It’s a very old camping place,” Charlotte said.  Blackened rocks and ash-colored earth gave evidence of many fires down the long years.

“This was a hunting trail for the tribes that lived here.”

“Where are they now?”

“Mostly gone to the agencies, their land ceded, the old ones dead.”

Charlotte held that thought in her mind while she led the horses down along the bank to stand in the clear cold water and drink their fill.  She imagined her own small strange tribe one day going the same way, forcibly disbanded and removed from their land, but not without a fight.  Chace Yellow Cloud untied his horse from the wagon and pulled out his bow.

“I’ve got food,” she said.  “You don’t have to do that.”

“I’ll be back.”

“Do you know something?”

“I know so many things,” he said and was gone.

She picketed the horses to let them graze then gathered enough wood to start a fire.  Till he came back, she didn’t know what more to do.  In the meantime, she washed out some petticoats and hung them over the back of the wagon to dry.

He returned with two grouse.  Charlotte prepared the plump birds and roasted them over the open fire.  The sunlight was beginning to filter at an angle through the trees when the tin plates were clean again.