likely never understand, he thought again now as he closed his burning eyes and tried for more fitful sleep that afternoon in the narrow ravine. He felt the ride more in his old bones than either of the younger men would ever realize.
Getting on in winters now—too many robe seasons behind him to go acting like some young bull who could ride all day and make love all night.
How he had longed for Toote to be curled under the shade of the willow with him as it grew hotter and the ants and beetles found his fragrant, sweaty body too much to their liking.
They saddled at sunset and rode that night until sunrise then hid and slept and kept watch until they rode again a third night beneath the swallowing prairie sky lit only by starshine and a late-summer moon that too quickly sailed overhead.
By the third day Hattie had begun to come around. It had taken time, day by day, hour by hour of the torture. But by the evening of that third day of hiding out the sun, as they were resaddling, refilling canteens at the little stream that Shad said they would follow south to the Solomon River, the girl had suddenly shaken her head, looked up and around at the sinking rose light in the sky, and found Riley Fordham tightening the cinch on his horse nearby.
Hattie started screaming, leapt to her feet, her throat filled with terror as she darted off—and ran right into Shad Sweete: the big man was a frightening stranger—surely part of Jubilee Usher’s band of Danites.
It took a long time for Jonah to calm his daughter, cradling her in his arms as she collapsed there beside the little creek bordered with elm and alder and plum brush. Jonah had waved the other two men off while she sobbed, muttering incoherently as the laudanum released its grip on her. Rocking her against him, he murmured soothingly into her ear.
The sun had fully torn itself from the sky that evening before she tore herself from her father’s embrace. She stared fully at last into his bearded face, touching him, kissing him, not really believing it was her own pappy. Then the terror caught in her throat as she remembered the two others who had been with her father. She turned, finding the pair seated close by.
“He’s one of them,” she whispered, pointing to Fordham.
“Riley Fordham, Hattie. He’s took care of you before.”
She said, “I never knew his name, but—I’ll never forget his face.”
“Riley—come on over here now,” Hook said. “The other’n, Hattie—he’s like a father to me now. Taught me, kept me alive a time or two. And they both saved our hides a few days back when I was busting you free of the ones had you prisoner.”
“You remember me, Hattie?” Fordham asked as he came to kneel nearby.
She nodded shyly, sliding behind her father. “Never knew your name.”
“I’m Riley.”
Hattie glanced sheepishly at Jonah, then stuck out her hand to the man. Fordham took it and shook.
“You’ve got good manners, Hattie Hook.”
“Her mama taught all the children good.” Hook choked on the sour ball of pain the thought of the boys caused him.
“He … Riley protected me, Pappy,” she explained in a whisper, holding her father all the tighter. “I never … without him—”
“Jonah, time we was going,” Sweete suggested. “We only got so much dark these summer nights. Let’s use every minute we got.”
“I did not introduce myself,” Hattie said. “Mr.—?”
“Shad Sweete,” he replied with a big grin, bending at the waist gallantly there among the dried grass and rustling plum brush to accept her tiny hand. “Much pleased to meet you, Miss Hattie.” Then he kissed the back of that filthy, alabaster, rope-burned hand.
“You see what he did? He kissed my hand, Pappy!” she exclaimed, suppressing a giggle.
Hook smiled at the old mountain man before Sweete turned to his horse. “That’s right, Hattie. Shad Sweete’s full of surprises.”
“First town ought’n to be Salina,” Shad Sweete had told them.
“We’ll find a rail stop there, won’t we, Jonah?” Fordham asked.
“For certain we will,” Hook replied. “You still want to do what you set your mind to do?”
“I do. I owe Hattie for running out on her—like I told you that first night as we rode south from Dobe Town. I’m gonna watch over her for you, Jonah. That’s a promise. She’ll be safe while you go fetch the rest of your family.”
Hook had smiled, then glanced at Sweete, who nodded approvingly. “Looks like you got yourself a stepdaughter, Riley.”
“More like my little sister.”
By noon the sixth day they were riding into the outskirts of Salina, Kansas—a town smelling of new-cut lumber and weathering sideboards, of cattle dung and horse apples and the sweat of honest men at labor on this midsummer’s day. The commerce of the east probing west, ever west.
They stopped at a plain-fronted, two-story clapboard house set off the main street away from the whir of things, where hung a sign in a yard overgrown with too much ragweed and prairie bunchgrass. A rap on the door brought a fleshy woman wiping her flour-dusted hands on a dingy apron.
“Afternoon,” Riley said, smiling and setting his tongue for charm. “My name’s Fordham, and this here is Jonah Hook.”
The woman nodded to each, her eyes coming back to the girl standing between them.
“And this is Hattie, Mr. Hook’s daughter.”
“Hello, ma’am,” she greeted the woman softly.
“Hello yourself, young lady.”
“Could we ask a favor of you?” Fordham inquired.
“Room-and-board prices posted on the sign by the door,” she said, cutting him off.
“No, ma’am. We just want to know if Hattie could use some of your water, a clean towel, and a little of your lye soap to freshen up, a young lady and all … if you don’t mind.”
She was not long in eyeing the girl down, then up, once more, and determining the child was badly in need of a good scrubbing. “You come on in, young lady. We’ll take you up to my room where we’ll freshen you right up. You fellas, just make yourself comfortable on the porch here. I’ll send my girl out with some lemonade for you.”
The good part of an hour later, Hattie reappeared. While not washed, her dingy dress had been nonetheless dusted, and the many small tears repaired by the hand of a fine seamstress. The young woman stood before them, freshly scrubbed, cheeks rosy, eyes gleaming and bright, her hair washed, brushed, and newly braided, finished off with a scrap of ribbon.
“Her teeth were something awful, you ought to know, Mr. Hook,” the woman said.
Riley grinned at Jonah when Hook sheepishly covered his own mouth with a hand.
“We thank you for seeing to her teeth too,” Hook mumbled. “Lord, Hattie—it’s been so many years. You’ve growed so. And look at you now!”
“What do we owe you?” Hook asked the landlady.
The woman looked at the girl, then Jonah and Riley, and finally the big man in greasy buckskins. She gave Hattie a gentle hug, then a playful slap on her rear.
“You go ’long now, Hattie. It was my pleasure, fellas. You all take care of that little lady now. She’s something real special.”
Hook brought his hand up to shake the woman’s. “Real special. Thankee, ma’am.”
They led their weary horses back onto the main, dusty street, not finding it hard to locate the rail station, where they counted their assets after inquiring the cost of a ticket east.
“Got enough to get her to Kansas City,” Hook said.
“She needs to go farther than that,” Fordham declared, staring at the scrip in his hand. “Clerk said it cost forty dollars to get to St. Louis.”
