Hitching Annie’s team, Shipman said, “You’ll camp tonight on this side. Sometime tomorrow afternoon you’ll come to a place where the river shallows out, and you can cross over without much trouble.”

James asked, “How’ll we know the place? Is it marked?”

“Not exactly. Nobody wants to let the authorities know about it, because there’s been folks crossin’ it both ways. But there’s the leavin’s of an old cabin that some fool let catch afire, and a burned-up tree that stood beside the cabin. The ford is about two hundred yards farther on. You’ll know when you come to it.”

Annie did not say anything, so Hope said it for her. “You would not reconsider and go along with us, Mr. Shipman?”

“Ma’am, I got to go to Natchitoches and see about a new stock of tradin’ goods and some pack mules. Apt to be a while before I can get my others back from my Cherokee friends.”

“A pity,” James said, not meaning it. “We was just beginnin’ to know one another.”

Shipman said, “When you get across the river, it’d be a kindness if you’d take pains to smooth over your tracks the first little ways. That’d help others who might cross later. What the authorities don’t know ain’t apt to get anybody hurt. Besides, it might keep them from trailin’ after you.”

James would not want to admit he had not thought of that. He supposed he lacked the devious mind of a man like Shipman who made his living dodging detection.

Shipman waved to the boys, shook hands with the men—Frank first—and tipped his hat to the two women. Hope smiled and thanked him. Annie just nodded, a little cold. She had little to say as they moved south on a dim trail that paralleled the river but was never quite in sight of it. James suspected the trail had been used mostly by people like Eli Pleasant and Sly Shipman, who had no wish to be seen from the other side.

And people like us, he thought.

That idea gave him pause, for it put him in the company of smugglers. But of course the Lewises were not smugglers; they were just illegal immigrants. He gathered from what Shipman said that Texas had a lot of those.

The trail had not been used heavily. At times it was so dim that it was not actually a trail at all. Often he had to pick a slow and cautious way through rough, washed-out terrain and deadfall timber that threatened to stop the wagons. Annie curtly asked him if perhaps he had lost the trail entirely.

“You can’t lose somethin’ that nobody ever found in the first place,” he retorted.

He became half convinced that Shipman had sent them on a fool’s errand, but every so often he would find enough of a trace to indicate that others had negotiated this same route. If they had, he could.

He noticed the bay horse’s ears turn suddenly forward. The animal had a knack for seeing everything that moved. James blinked, sweat burning into his eyes from the effort of picking a path. He saw half a dozen horsemen moving toward them from downriver. He wondered for a moment if Díaz might have brought soldiers across in defiance of treaty prohibitions. Well, if he had, there was little they could do on this side except threaten. Here, east of the Sabine, the Lewises were on their own country’s ground.