After taking the wagon apart, we heft and slide the wagon box onto the boat. Then we fill the box with all the other pieces—the wheels, the tongue, the bonnet. Next, we bring the oxen aboard. There are four teams of two, which seems like a lot for one wagon, but when you’re moving a whole household, I guess that’s how many you need. The huge beasts don’t care for their stalls, and they have a lot to say on the matter, but once they’re settled in and we spread some straw, they seem resigned.

“Where’s the rest of it?” Captain Chisholm asks once the wagon and oxen are all safely aboard.

“There’s more?” I gasp.

“You have a problem, son?”

“Course not.”

He grins.

Suddenly my plan to go all the way to California with nothing but Peony and a saddlebag seems like the height of tomfoolery.

By evening, more supplies and more animals have arrived, including a pair of fine horses and a hound dog with white patches and drooping ears, who licks my hands and face as if we’re long-lost friends. I scratch his ears and rub his scruff, thinking about Nugget. I hope she’s a comfort to Jefferson on the road, the same way Peony is a comfort to me.

“Coney, get over here before I whip your hide.”

It’s Mr. Joyner, dressed in a fine black suit with a yellow silk cravat. Standing prim beside him is a pretty blond woman in a blue calico dress and a lace shawl. One hand clutches an embroidered satchel, full to bursting; the other grips the shoulder of a girl in blond braids who can’t be more than six years old. Another child, a towheaded boy of about four, stands half hidden in her voluminous skirt, though he dares to peek out at me. I wink at him, and he turns away fast, burying his face in his mama’s skirt.

Even the two children carry bulging satchels. At the family’s feet is a huge luggage trunk, which will probably take all four of us to haul inside and which Coney the dog is now giving a thorough sniffing.

Red Jack shares an amused look with me before grabbing a couple of satchels. “That’s a fine rocking chair we just loaded,” he says by way of conversation.

Mr. Joyner nods solemnly. “I’m having my whole house disassembled and floated downriver on another flatboat,” he explains as we work. “When it reaches New Orleans, it’ll be loaded onto a ship and sent down to Panama, where it will be trucked across the isthmus and then loaded onto another ship and transported up the coast to California. We’ll have our own familiar home waiting for us—walls and all—when we get to San Francisco. We’re only bringing with us those things essential to our overland journey.”