“How about you, Frank?” James asked.

Frank’s blue eyes sparkled. “If I grinned any bigger my face would bust and fall off. You ever see a prettier country?”

“Looks about the same so far as Louisiana.”

“You’re just goin’ by what you see. I go by what I can feel. And I feel like this is a day we’ll remember the rest of our lives. I just wisht them people that dropped out behind us had stayed all the way to see it.”

The Lewises had thrown in their lot with a considerable string of wagons when they left Tennessee, but one by one the other travelers had reached their destinations or turned away onto other trails. Since Natchitoches there had been just these two wagons, just these Lewises, bound for a new life in a new land. James knew Hope missed all that company, for she had made a lot of new friends among the other wagon people. So had Annie, for that matter. But in truth James felt almost relieved that they were all to themselves now. It heightened his sense of responsibility, his sense of a challenge met and mastered. He had been but a ten-year-old boy when Michael and Andrew had left. He had to shoulder a lot of the responsibilities that had been theirs. He was a man now, and this trip gave him a chance to demonstrate it. He felt that Michael would approve. Michael’s approval was important to him.

He dropped back a minute to check on Frank’s two boys driving the loose stock, and to marvel at the pair of rough wooden cages that held Hope’s precious laying hens at the rear of the wagon. He had thought for sure that those hens would get out somewhere along the way and make a meal for the wolves. Frank’s books and Hope’s chickens—quite a combination.

As he rode by Annie’s wagon again, she asked anxiously, “How’s Hope lookin’?”

“She looks fine to me,” he said, knowing Annie was telling him in her own way that they ought to stop soon for Hope’s sake. “She could probably travel half a day yet.”

He heeled the bay horse into an easy lope, putting the wagon behind him before Annie could offer any more advice. He slowed the animal as soon as he was safely out of earshot, for he had inherited a love of horses from his father. He would not push one to the point of exhaustion without a strong reason. Horses were valuable property here in Texas, people said. A man would be a fool to abuse one, especially one as willing and able as Walker. James had raised Walker from a colt out of Uncle Benjamin’s stock, had broken and trained him under his uncle’s wise teaching. There hadn’t been a better horse within twenty miles, maybe thirty. James had matched him in races several times against various horses brought up—stolen, probably—by the young Blackwood boys. They had never finished within a length and a half of Walker. The bay would have folks in Texas blinking their eyes, too.