Chapter 2 - Five Days Beside a Stranger
The first night with Boon, Martha slept with a kitchen knife beneath her blanket.
She did not know whether he noticed.
That bothered her almost as much as the possibility that he did.
They camped beside a narrow creek where cottonwoods leaned over the water like tired sentries. Boon chose the place without explanation, guided the horses off the trail, checked the bank for tracks, and only then climbed down.
Martha watched him from the wagon.
Everything he did had the practiced economy of a man who had spent years alone. He unhitched the team. Watered the horses before himself. Checked the wheels. Built a small fire in a hollow where the flame could not be seen from far away. Then he set a blackened pot over it and opened a sack of beans.
“You always hide your fire?” Martha asked.
Boon did not look up.
“Wind’s bad.”
“There’s hardly any wind.”
“Then I suppose I’m just strange.”
She stared at the back of his hat.
“That I believe.”
He glanced over one shoulder.
There it was again—that nearly invisible movement at the corner of his mouth.
Martha decided Boon possessed a sense of humor but resented anyone discovering it.
He brought her food on a tin plate: beans, hard bread softened with coffee, and two strips of salt pork. It was not good. It was also more than she had eaten at one sitting in three days.
She swallowed too quickly.
“Slow down,” he said.
“I know how to eat.”
“Evidence says otherwise.”
Martha gave him a look sharp enough to skin bark.
Boon sat on the opposite side of the fire.
He ate without another word.
The quiet between them should have felt awkward, but the plains were so vast that silence seemed natural. Crickets started in the grass. The horses shifted in the dark. Above them, stars appeared by the thousands, brighter than any Martha remembered from Missouri.
Her hand drifted to her belly.
The baby moved.
Boon noticed.
His eyes dropped for half a second, then immediately returned to his plate.
“You got children?” she asked.
“No.”
“A wife?”
“No.”
“Ever?”
His spoon stopped.
Martha lifted her brows. “You told me not to ask questions I don’t want answered. I want this one answered.”
“No wife.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
“It’s the answer you’re getting.”
She almost smiled.
“Fine. You ask me something.”
Boon looked at her across the fire.
“Why are you headed to Fort Laramie alone?”
The smile vanished before it fully formed.
Martha stared down at her plate.
“I wasn’t alone when I started.”
Boon waited.
She hated him a little for being patient.
“My husband’s name was Jeb.”
The words felt strange in her mouth. Jeb had been dead twelve days, and still she sometimes turned to tell him something.
“He got sick?” Boon asked quietly.
Martha nodded.
It had begun as chills. Then fever. Then weakness so deep he could no longer sit upright on the wagon seat. They had expected another family to come along the trail, but no one had. By the third night, Jeb could barely swallow water.
By the fourth morning, he was gone.
“I buried him near a stand of red rock,” she said. “Covered the grave as well as I could.”
Boon lowered his eyes.
“I’m sorry.”
Martha’s throat tightened.
Those two words nearly undid her.
People said grief made a person fragile. Martha had discovered the opposite. Grief made her hard because softness was too dangerous.
She forced another bite of beans into her mouth.
“He bought land west of the fort,” she said after a moment. “Or thought he did. Forty acres near Cottonwood Creek. We were supposed to start over there.”
“You have the deed?”
“In my trunk.”
Boon’s gaze sharpened.
Martha noticed.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“That didn’t look like nothing.”
“Keep it close.”
“I do.”
“Closer.”
Before she could question him, he stood and began covering the fire.
That night Martha slept with the knife under her blanket.
Boon slept beneath the wagon with his hat over his face and his revolver within reach.
On the second day, they crossed miles of open country where antelope watched from ridges and disappeared before Martha could point them out. Boon drove with both hands loose on the reins. Martha sat beside him for part of the morning because the wagon interior had become too hot.
He did not offer conversation.
So she created it.
“How long have you been hauling freight?”
“Long enough.”
“That’s not a number.”
“No.”
“Were you born difficult?”
He looked at her.
“Probably.”
She laughed again.
This time he almost did too.
By noon, Martha had learned that Boon could identify rain hours before clouds formed, could repair harness leather without looking down, and knew exactly how much water four horses needed after ten miles in heat.
She learned nothing useful about Boon himself.
He had lived in the mountains.
He had trapped once.
He had guided army surveyors.
He had freighted between settlements for several years.
Every answer was a door opened only wide enough for one word.
On the third morning, Martha woke to find a tin cup of coffee beside her blankets and a small sprig of purple prairie flowers resting across the handle.
She carried it outside.
Boon was tightening a trace.
“Did you put flowers by my coffee?”
“No.”
“There is nobody else here.”
“Could’ve been the horse.”
“The horse picked flowers?”
“Smart horse.”
She looked at him until he finally glanced away.
Martha smiled into the coffee.
Later that day, they passed an abandoned wagon burned down to its iron bands. Boon became quiet long before Martha saw it.
He slowed the team.
Ash had long since scattered, but black marks still scarred the earth. A broken trunk lay open nearby.
“Indians?” Martha whispered.
Boon’s expression hardened.
“No.”
“How do you know?”
He pointed to wheel tracks nearly erased by weather.
“Freight wagons. Shod horses. Men who wanted people to blame somebody else.”
Martha studied his face.
“You’ve seen this before.”
“Yes.”
“Who did it?”
Boon flicked the reins.
The horses moved again.
“I said keep your deed close.”
Her stomach tightened.
The baby chose that moment to kick hard.
Martha pressed her palm over the movement.
“Jeb bought the land from a man named Amos Bell,” she said.
Boon went still.
Only for a heartbeat.
But Martha saw it.
“You know him.”
“Knew of him.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means your husband might’ve been wiser than he knew.”
That answer only created more questions.
Boon would not answer them.
By the fourth day, the trail climbed through low ridges and the air cooled. Martha’s back ached constantly. Boon stopped more often than necessary, pretending to check the wheels or horses so she could climb down and stretch without feeling as though she had asked for special treatment.
She noticed.
She pretended not to.
That afternoon, one of her mules pulled a shoe loose. Boon knelt in the dust for nearly an hour repairing it.
Martha sat on a rock watching him.
“You do realize,” she said, “that all this looks suspiciously like charity.”
He kept working.
“Arithmetic.”
“You’re going to use that answer forever, aren’t you?”
“Probably.”
She smiled.
When he finished, he rose and rubbed his back.
For the first time, she saw exhaustion in him.
Not physical exhaustion alone.
The deeper kind.
The kind she recognized.
“Who are you running from?” she asked.
Boon’s face closed.
“I’m not.”
“You check the trail behind us every hour.”
“I check everything every hour.”
“You hide the fire.”
“Good habit.”
“You touched your gun when we passed that burned wagon.”
“Better habit.”
“And you knew Amos Bell’s name.”
Boon stepped closer.
His voice lowered.
“Some questions keep people alive by not being asked.”
Martha lifted her chin.
“I’ve had enough men tell me what I ought not know.”
Something in her words struck him.
He looked at her for a long time.
Then he said, “When we reach the fort, stay close to your papers.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“No.”
He walked back toward the wagon.
Martha watched him go.
The fifth day began bright and ended beneath a black sky.
Clouds gathered over the mountains after noon, enormous and bruised purple. Wind tore across the grass. Boon urged the horses forward, hoping to reach lower ground before the storm broke.
They did not.
Rain struck suddenly, hard enough to turn the world silver.
Boon pulled the canvas tight and secured the flaps. Thunder rolled across the plains, deep enough to shake the wagon wheels.
Martha lay among the blankets while every gust rocked the freight wagon.
She had almost grown used to the constant movement.
Almost.
Then pain tore across her lower back.
She sucked in a breath.
At first she thought it was another ordinary ache.
Then the muscles across her belly tightened until she could not breathe.
Her hand gripped the blanket.
The pain released.
Martha waited.
Outside, thunder cracked.
A few minutes later, the pain came again.
Stronger.
She pressed both hands to her belly.
“No,” she whispered.
Another pain followed.
Regular.
Too regular.
Boon heard her gasp over the storm.
The canvas flap opened, and he was inside immediately.
One look at Martha’s face wiped every trace of calm from his eyes.
“What is it?”
Martha could barely form the words.
“It’s too early.”
May you like
Then the next contraction began.
And for the first time since meeting him, Martha saw Boon afraid.
