fordable, so Clay pushed them on across. There was also a bridge available and the bridge was utilized by the two wagons.
Once safely over the river, they made plans to camp at Crooked Creek, which was just about six miles south of the Arkansas. There, they would organize for the 450-mile drive that lay ahead of them.
“I am the foreman and trail boss,” Clay said. “But I confess that this is new to me in that I haven’t worked Angus cattle before. Duff, you’ve been around them for a long time. How do they trail?”
“We found out when we trailed down to Cheyenne from Sky Meadow that if you bell one of the leaders, we shouldn’t have any trouble,” Duff said. “And as long as we can keep that steer going in the right direction, the others will follow along behind.”
“With Longhorns we could average about fifteen miles a day. How does that track with the Angus?”
“I think we’ll have no trouble in doing that,” Duff said.
“If we can do fifteen miles a day that would put us on track to be back home by the middle of December. But with winter coming on, we may not do that well. Still, I think that’s what we should shoot for. I would like to be back home by Christmas.”
Clay set the watch for the first night, and Sally and Maria served a delicious dinner of fried beef and potatoes.
After dinner, they all sat around the campfire, not only for the warmth but for the camaraderie. Duff played his bagpipes, which was a treat to Clay, Dusty, Dalton, and Maria, who had never heard pipes before. Rebecca had heard them, and enjoyed them immensely. Dusty played the guitar, then both he and Clay prevailed upon Tom to perform.
“What does Tom do?” Smoke asked.
“He calls ’em soliloquies,” Dusty said. “They’re words from plays, but not just any kind of words and not just any kinds of plays. They are the damndest words and plays you ever heard of, just like the ones in them high-falutin’ plays that sometimes comes touring around.”
“That ought to be right up your alley, Falcon,” Smoke said. Then he went on to explain to the others that Falcon’s brother and sister were New York actors.
“Oh, Tom, please do a soliloquy for us,” Sally asked. “Do you know Puck’s soliloquy from Midsummer Night’s Dream? The one that begins, ‘Thou speakest aright, I am that merry wanderer of the night’?”
“I know it,” Tom said.
“When I was teaching school, the children used to love that one,” Sally said. “Please, do it for us.”
“Shall I stand and ham it up? Or sit here and just say it?” Tom asked.
“Oh, you must stand. Look at it this way. You aren’t here on the barren plains of Kansas,” Falcon said. “You are on stage at the Booth Theater in New York. You wouldn’t be sitting cross-legged there, would you?”
Tom smiled, stood up, cleared his throat, then struck a dramatic pose and extending his right arm, palm up, began to speak, rolling his R’s and putting emphasis in just the right places.
The others around the fire laughed and applauded. Tom took a good-natured and elaborate bow, smiling as he made eye contact with everyone there.
Including Rebecca.
Rebecca held Tom’s eyes for a long moment before she broke away. What did she see in his eyes? Sadness over what might have been between them? Anger at her leaving? Condemnation over how he found her?
It was a long time before Rebecca went to sleep that night. Tom Whitman was less than twenty feet away. What would he do if she moved her bedroll over beside his? Would he welcome her? Would he turn away in disgust?
She lay tossing and turning, sleep evading her, until she heard a voice calling Tom’s name.
“Tom. It’s your watch.”
There was no moon tonight, but there was a single lantern hanging from the elevated tongue of the hoodlum wagon. This served as a beacon for the night riders to find their way back to the camp. It also put out enough illumination to enable Rebecca to watch as Tom sat there pulling on his boots. He reached for his coat and hat, then walked over to the remuda, pulled out his horse, saddled it, mounted, and rode away.
Tom had relieved Dusty, who was in bed by the time Tom rode out.
Rebecca had watched the interaction between Clay and Maria, and between Smoke and Sally. The love that they shared was obvious, not only in what they said to each other, but the way they touched, and the way they looked at each other.
She lay here in her bedroll, thinking about that as she listened to the soft lolling of the cattle, the sound of wind passing over the wagon, and the hooting of a nearby owl. Rebecca felt the tears welling in her eyes. Was she never to know such love?
She thought of her mother and Oscar. Janie had told her, in no uncertain terms, that she had reached the bottom, with no hope of a future beyond the ever descending rungs on the whore’s ladder, from mistress, to brothel, to bargirl, to streetwalker.
“And then I met Oscar,” her mother had told her. “I don’t know how I happened to wind up in Dodge City, I could just as easily have gone to Denver, or Cheyenne, or San Francisco, or Phoenix. But I got off the train in Dodge City, and of the sixteen saloons here, the Lucky Chance was the first one I walked into. I worked for him for less than a month, then he asked me to marry him.
“I will confess to you, Becca, I married him just to get off the line. But he has been the most wonderful man, and I love him more than I can say. Love came late, but I am just thankful that I lived long enough to experience
