“Your first time?” I say. “I thought you said you were a doctor!”

“I said I want to be a doctor.” Jasper scrubs his hands again. Triumph fills his face. A man lies near death in his wagon, but Jasper is grinning from ear to ear. “That’s the exciting thing about California—we can all go there and be whatever we want to be.”

I peel off the white shirt and toss it back to Henry. “Well, if he lives, then I guess you really are a doctor.”

“What do you want to be, Lee?” Jasper says. His face is euphoric enough to make me wonder if he snuck some laudanum, but the look he’s giving me is pointed and strange, like he’s searching for a specific answer, one I’m not ready to give voice to.

“Right now? I want to be asleep.”

All three laugh at that. Jasper says, “You know, you helped save two lives today.”

“And if I don’t lie down right now, I’m going to die.”

I can tell Jasper wants to talk more—he’s all wound up from what he’s just done, and I don’t blame him—but I can hardly stay on my feet. I make my good-byes and stumble away.

Jefferson is still asleep under the Joyners’ wagon. I flop down beside him, exhausted, but I can’t sleep for thinking about the preacher’s wife and little Andy wandering around lost and my own baby brother and the Major and even Athena the cow. Above it all rises the possibility, both wondrous and frightful, that the college men have realized I’m a girl. And they didn’t seem even a little bit angry.

When I wake, the Major is still alive. He does not die that day. Or the next.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Summer brings blazing sun and hot winds. The horizon shimmers gold with long, waving grass all dried out and gone to seed. Above it is a sea of sky, crystal blue and stretching forever. The Missouri men insist we’re near the mountains, and indeed, our trail has a slope to it, so gentle you’d never know until you stop the wagons without braking them and watch them roll back a piece. For several weeks, we make excellent time, and on July 3, we make twenty whole miles in one day.

Frank Dilley is so pleased with our progress that he announces a half day’s rest to celebrate Independence Day. We roll out before the sun rises.

“I’m going to go ride with the Hoffmans,” Jefferson says after we’ve mounted up.

“Oh.” It’s such a pretty day, and I was looking forward to riding together. “All right.”

“Do you want to come?”

“I . . . Okay.”