“I have a large amount of supplies and that was intentional,” Charlotte said.  “All of it’s meant to sustain me and my supposed benefactor, which would have been Ellis.  Now, due to some unknown misfortune on your part, it’s you.”

“I have dried buffalo meat.”

“You and everyone else.  That would be a useful thing if it were actually food, which it isn’t.  Why is this a problem?”

“I don’t think about why.  It just is.”

“Well here’s what.  I’m making you breakfast in the morning and if you don’t eat it, I’ll dump it on the ground.  If that seems reasonable to you, fine.”  She put a hand to her head.  She had something more important to talk about and now she’d completely lost her train of thought.  Then she got it back.

“Guns,” she said, noting with satisfaction his suddenly guarded expression.

“What about guns?”

“I’ve got more than a few.  I don’t understand what my father was thinking, except that maybe he wasn’t.”  Charlotte climbed up on the seat of the wagon.  “They’re all here easy to get to.  I’ll hand them out one at a time.”

“What are you doing?” he said.

“What good are they stacked up in there and you knowing nothing about them if there was ever trouble?  Are you going to leave that to me?”

“I see your point.”

“You saw it too quickly.”  But she started retrieving the guns.  The first were repeating rifles.

“Wait,” he said.  He’d put two down on the ground without looking at them, and was holding the third.  “What is this?”

Charlotte frowned.  “Two are Henrys and one’s a Spencer.  That’s the Spencer, I guess.  He gave me a lecture about them but everything ran together.  A seventeen-round magazine maybe?  Is that possible?”

“I didn’t think so, but that’s what it is.”

“How do you feel about it?”

“I don’t even know yet.”

“Listen to me.  This may seem strange, but I’m giving it to you and it’s like breakfast.  If you don’t take it, I’m putting it down on the ground and leaving it here.”

“Are you always like this?”

“If you say the word difficult, I will scream, I promise you.  Here, you also have to take one of the Colts.  Believe it or not, I’ve got two.”

“You’re just giving me these guns.”

“For purposes of safety, yours and mine both.  Look at it that way.”  She stopped for a moment, struck.  “A thought just occurred to me.  The first thing they’ll do is separate me from every one of those guns by about a mile anyway.”

Chace Yellow Cloud still had his hands on the Spencer.  “What’s your father’s name?” he said.

“Samuel Duchesne, but why?”

“I want to remember it.”