The light began to fade. He brought in the horses and tied them up close to the wagon, put out the fire, prepared for the night. He laid down his saddle and unrolled a blanket. Charlotte longed for sleep. She hesitated, one hand on the back of the wagon.
“Last thing I need for you to know. Sometimes I wake up screaming.” Let him do what he would with that information.
15
15
In the gray light before dawn, Charlotte sat bolt upright and wondered what had awakened her. Then she knew. It was the sound of the sentinel’s bugle that she’d gotten enough used to hearing, or dreading, that she woke even without it.
The member of the tribes had preempted her plans for breakfast with trout fresh from the stream. She panfried them. They were delicious.
“I’m not saying anything,” she said.
“Good, that solves one problem. It’ll be easier traveling now but we’re in disputed country. Keep your eyes open.”
“Disputed how?”
“Displaced tribes put here by the government. Plus the renegades always out there somewhere on their own.”
The conversation set Charlotte on edge.
Still, the slow journey by wagon produced its familiar rhythms. In the morning, she took the reins. The day was warm. Tiny insects hovered in swarming clouds. The trail stayed close to the creek meaning the swallows were always there, chittering as they rose and fell in swift, darting arcs, a flash of white followed by a band of ruddy gold and midnight blue.
She used the swallows to keep her mind focused on the present, the hard-packed trail, the quaking aspens and understory thick with the possibility of berries. The rifle lay beside her in case she spotted dinner, though she knew any hope of that was futile. First, Chace Yellow Cloud would see anything long before she did, and second, he would likely react unfavorably to a shot ringing out behind him. She trained her eyes on the passing landscape anyway, trying not to let her thoughts settle on images of displaced tribes and renegades.
Charlotte began to understand that her current benefactor was very much like her previous one. As the trail grew more visible, he grew less so. Often he traveled so far up ahead that she lost sight of him. Now and then he eased his horse off into the brush, disappearing altogether. Thus far he’d appeared again before she grew uncomfortable. He didn’t seem concerned for her safety, so she decided not to be either, but it remained disconcerting nevertheless.
In the afternoon, he asked that she keep the reins. “Is something wrong?”
“No.” He took his rifle instead of the bow. She could anticipate what was coming and decided not to complain. She began to drift again, allowing her mind to wander. Travel was slow but that was good. Let Fort Randall remain someone else’s bad idea, off in a very hazy land far away.