“You’re cooked if he does,” Rand Clemson said, not harshly. “If Samuel went into town, and he ain’t already dead, he’s been captured. There’re ways of making the tightest-lipped men talk. I know of what I speak, son. I was about your age during the Blackhawk War.”

“Samuel would never give me up.”

“I ain’t sayin’ he would. Even if he don’t, folks around here know you and him are tighter than two ticks on a hound’s butt.”

This was true. Neighbors David Clemson and Samuel Pritchard had been inseparable since they were knee-high. It was Pritchard who gave Davey his nickname, “Ditch,” after a particularly spirited stud named Backbreaker threw the ten-year-old into a hog wallow when the stubborn youth tried to do what most men in the county would not: mount and ride the cursed horse.

“The men who killed Samuel’s pa, and burned his home, are Union men,” Rand Clemson explained to his son. “I ain’t, and everybody knows it, especially with a boy fighting for the Confederacy. Neither Burnell Shipley, nor his sheriff, are going to take what Samuel and you did sittin’ down. Those riders will be back. I’m sorry, David, but we have no choice. If you want to stay alive, you have to skedaddle.”

Ditch knew his father was right.

Rand handed the bedroll to his son, along with a powder horn and a leather purse containing percussion caps and fifty rounds of .54 caliber ball. Ditch began to reload the Hawken.

Rand went to the hearth and removed a stone from the mantel. From the cavity it concealed, he withdrew a small cloth bag.

“Here’s nearly forty dollars in gold,” he said. “It’s all I got. Take it and go. Stay off the roads. If I were you, I’d get on the river and float west to Kansas City. Buy a horse and go south to Arkansas. Your brother Paul’s thereabouts, fighting along with Shelby’s boys. Maybe you can find him and together you two can head out west? I hear tell there’s money to be made out there, iffen you’ve got a sharp mind and a stout back.”

“What about you?”

“Don’t worry about me. I’ll get along.”

“But you’ve got no stock left,” Ditch protested, “and I’m taking all your money and your only gun?”

Ditch suddenly remembered the Navy Colt in his belt, the one Pritchard took from Bob Toole’s dismembered hand. “Here.” He handed the pistol to this father. “It’s got four balls left in it.”

“I won’t ask how you got it,” Rand Clemson said, accepting the weapon. “Now, get away and don’t come back. Missouri ain’t no place for a young man to stay healthy anymore.” He hugged his boy. “I love you, son. Good luck.”