But then there had been a party—or at least a sort of party. As the wagons had squared away for the day’s journey westward, Francis’s mother called him from helping his father hitch some oxen to the yoke and tongue of the wagon. He went to the rear, where she was, and there, sitting on the tailgate, was a cake. He had no idea how she had done it—her stove was way back in Missouri, too heavy for the wagon. And he had not seen her doing anything special on the buffalo-chip fire that morning—but there it was, a cake. And easily one of the nicest cakes he’d ever seen.

“Happy fourteenth birthday, Alphonse,” she said, with a smile. She had always called him Alphonse. His father always called him Francis.

For a long moment he didn’t answer, just stood staring at the cake. Then he thanked her, knowing it would do no good to ask her how she’d done it. She would just answer, “Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” as she always explained things that seemed impossible to Francis.

“Would you like a piece now?” she asked. “Or would you rather wait until tonight? The train is going to stop early today. Mr. Ballard wants to check all the wagons before we get to the mountains.”

He wanted a piece so badly his mouth was watering, but he knew that wasn’t what she expected, so he hid his eagerness. “We could have a sort of party,” he suggested. “I could ask Ike and Max over and maybe offer them some cake.” Ike and Max were the only other two boys in the train. There were five girls, but they kind of kept to themselves after Max threw a garter snake on one of them.

“That’s a good idea,” his mother said, nodding. “I’ll wrap it in muslin and save it for this evening.”

He could tell that he had pleased her. In all truth, he didn’t really want to share the cake with Ike and Max. Oh, they were nice enough, but they weren’t really friends. It just happened that they were the only other boys, and Francis was more or less forced to do things with them. Ike would have been all right except that he talked funny and did things in an odd way. He said “thee” and “thou” and his folks always made him wear black clothes and a black flat-brimmed hat. Francis’s father had said they were Quakers from the East somewhere, and that they all talked like that, but Francis still found it hard to get used to somebody calling him “friend” all the time.