I’m about to point out that we can’t know what they stole if we didn’t see what the poor girl was buried with in the first place, but I decide it won’t do any good.

Mr. Joyner says, “Truly, these savages have no fear of God nor love of the white man.”

Jefferson rides off on the sorrel mare.

I almost ride after him, but I’m not sure he wants company. I’m not sure I want company either.

I don’t know what to think about the Indians. Seems to me we don’t really know anything about them. We don’t even know what we don’t know.

I avoid the Joyners when we stop for lunch. My appetite is gone, anyway. I keep thinking of that poor girl, with no family, out here all alone and even her grave dug up.

By the time we’re moving again, I’m regretting my decision to skip lunch, and hunger makes me even grumpier. When I see Jefferson riding toward me, I almost steer Peony away. A strange look on his face makes me pull her up instead.

“What is it?” I ask

“They’re saying it’s cholera,” he whispers.

A chill rolls down my spine. Mama told me about cholera. “Where?” I ask. “Here?”

“It’s what killed that girl we found. Cholera morbus. There was a sign on the grave.”

I didn’t see any sign. They must have moved it before I got there. “Morbus? What does that mean?”

He shrugs. “I think it means they’re dead.”

Cholera usually springs up in big cities. A wagon train isn’t a big city, but it’s definitely dirty and crowded. We’re all jammed together, treading over the same ground and cooking and sleeping, hour after hour, day after day, in the same tracks as the wagons before us. It’s not like a barn that I can muck out and clean up. It’s just muck.

“Are you sure?”

“They were trying to keep it quiet, but some of the Arkansas men already have it. They’ve moved away from the rest of the wagons, but they’re afraid to go too far because of Indians.”

“Too weak to go too far either, I reckon.”

“I reckon.”

I don’t know who is buried in that grave we left behind this morning, but now I know why they put the body up high, where everyone could see it. Not as a memorial, but as a warning.

Mr. Bledsoe, the Arkansas sheep farmer, catches the cholera and sickens fast. So fast that Jasper says he was probably sick already—maybe even in the early stages of consumption. Whatever the reason, within a day he’s flat on his back and must be tended by his men.