When I was his age, Mama would hand me things—mixing spoons or bits of fabric or a whisk broom—depending on the task she was working on. She said that children were happiest when they felt useful. “I’m busy all day and I have to do lots of work,” I say to Andy. “If I let you keep it, will you guard it for me? Maybe it will give you strength and courage too.”

He nods again.

“It’s an important job.”

“I’m big.”

“I know you are, or I wouldn’t have asked. So, will you do it?”

“Okay, Lee.”

We reach the wagon. Mrs. Joyner clutches him to her chest for a moment, but he squirms away and runs to the water barrel to drink and wash up. Olive hops down, and though she stares after her baby brother, she throws her arms around Mrs. Joyner’s waist, who squeezes back.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Mrs. Joyner tells me over her daughter’s head. “That’s a family heirloom.”

“Well, I don’t have any family out here,” I say.

“He might lose it.”

“He’s a good boy. I trust him.”

I do not trust him to keep my locket. Not one bit. But the locket is doing its work, and even now, I feel it close by. So long as he wears it, I’ll know exactly where he is.

“Darling?” comes Mr. Joyner’s plaintive cry. “What’s going on?” He sounds even weaker than yesterday.

“I better go see to him,” Mrs. Joyner says.

As I watch her clamber into the wagon, my hand comes up to clutch the locket, but of course it’s not there.

Chapter Twenty-One

At dawn two days later, the Arkansas crew finds Mr. Bledsoe, the sheep farmer, dead in his wagon.

Major Craven calls off travel for the morning. Mr. Bledsoe’s men dig a grave, and after we all view his earthly body, they wrap him in the bed comforter he died in, which is noticeably fouled anyway, binding him up with strips of cloth.

I barely spoke two words to Mr. Bledsoe, but my heart is heavy. He did nothing at all to get himself killed. Just pointed his boots west. It could have happened to any of us.

Reverend Lowrey reads from his Bible about death and resurrection and follows up with a prayer. We all think he’s done, and Mr. Bledsoe’s men stoop to roll him into the hole. Mr. Joyner, whose health has improved enough to attend, excuses himself and dashes away to take care of his personal business.