“They can sure have a fight with me if they want it.”

Shipman’s voice held a tone of reproach. “Fightin’s easy to talk about when you’re a long ways off, but it can get damned bloody when you’re right there in the middle of it.” He turned away from James, moving his dun horse back to Annie’s wagon. He rode along and tried to talk to her. He did not appear to be getting much response. James would have given a right smart to know what he was telling her, but he would not compromise his dignity by dropping back to listen. He let his mind run free over this big, rich-looking land and his plans for making part of it his own.

Shipman was still with them when they stopped for night camp beside a spring he had said would be there. Smuggler Spring, he called it, voicing his disapproval of the name.

If the shoe fits—James thought.

Shipman ate more supper than anyone else. Afterward, he and Frank enjoyed swapping jokes and tall stories. Frank gloried in having a new audience for some that everyone in the family had already heard many times. James had not seen his cousin glow so much since the last of the other wagon people had pulled away. Shipman told stories James thought must be outrageously exaggerated about life in what he called the neutral strip, about adventures shared with old Eli Pleasant, about narrow escapes from the military authorities on both sides of the border.

Annie said little but listened with rapt attention. James suspected that if Shipman were to ask her when he turned back tomorrow, she would probably swallow her resentment and go with him. But he felt confident that Shipman would not ask her. He did not appear the type to be burdened down by a woman, especially one as full of sass as Annie could be at times when things did not go her way.

Suspicious of Shipman’s intentions, James rolled out his blankets not far from Annie’s. He was almost disappointed that nothing untoward happened during the night because the vigil kept him from getting much sleep. Shipman slept at a considerable distance from the wagons and, so far as James could tell, never left his blankets once. At dawn they were all up, the women fixing breakfast while James and Frank and the boys prepared to break camp.

James saw Shipman hurriedly saddling his horse. The smuggler swung up onto the dun’s back and rode into camp, his eyes showing strain. “Folks,” he said, “I’m afraid I can’t stay for breakfast. I’m fixin’ to see just how fast this dun of mine can run.”

Annie was dismayed. “What’s the matter?”

Shipman said, “I’ve got to apologize, ma’am. I misfigured the way Sergeant Díaz was goin’ to figure. He’s right yonder with his whole detail, comin’ this way in a good smart trot.”

James felt his heart leap as he saw the horsemen coming across the prairie, no more than two hundred yards away.