He looks up finally, and I gasp, for his right eye is the color of spring violets and swollen shut. “Now,” he says.

“Oh, Jeff, what happened? Was it your da? I’ll kill him if he—”

“Come west with me.”

The sorrel mare is tethered at the bottom of the steps. Two saddlebags hang over her sides, and Jefferson’s long rifle rides high in its saddle holster near her withers. “That nugget you gave me. I should’ve given it back, but . . . I just came from Free Jim’s store. He bought it off me. Gave me enough to buy a stake in a wagon train.”

“It never belonged to me. It was yours to do with as you wanted.”

“Then come to California with me. You could sell this place to Mr. Gilmore today.”

A vision passes before my eyes: clear mountain brooks sparkling with gold flecks, nuggets winking up from pine needle–choked earth, game so plentiful you’d hardly have to leave your back porch to shoot. For a girl like me, California is the Promised Land.

“Leah, we’d have enough money to buy our way there if you sold—”

“I . . . I don’t know.” Is that what his marriage proposal was about? Finding someone to help him buy his way there?

“Mr. Gilmore has had his eye on this place for years,” he insists.

I shake my head. “Doesn’t matter. I’m just a girl, and I can’t sell what I don’t own until I get my hands on Daddy’s will, proving the place is mine.” I’m not sure how I’ll do that. Uncle Hiram was the one who drew it up, years ago. “This is my home, Jeff. I’ve worked so hard to build it into something nice. I don’t know what’s going to happen to me, or how I’ll run this place, but . . .”

He steps forward until his body fills the doorway. When did Jefferson become so large? “Then let’s just go.”

Oh, dear Lord, but a hole is opening up in my heart again, just like the one that started gaping wide when I saw Daddy’s boot in the snow. “I have to go to the funeral, and then I have to sort through Mama’s and Daddy’s things, and then there’s my chickens, and . . .”

He plunks his hat back on his head. “I know you, and I know you want this. When you change your mind, find me in Independence, Missouri. I’ll wait a spell for you. Can’t head west until the prairie grass starts to grow, anyway. Otherwise, the sorrel mare will starve. But I can’t wait too long either, else I meet winter in the mountains.” His lips press into a firm line. “I’ll wait for you in Independence as long as I can.”