“Sikeston, Poplar Bluff, Springfield.”

“When you get to Springfield, you make a quarter turn to the right and head north. That’ll get you to Independence.”

“Thank you, mister. I sure appreciate it.” Charleston, Sikeston, Poplar Bluff, Springfield, Independence. I tip my hat to him and turn Peony back around. I almost feel hopeful again.

“It’s more than four hundred miles!” he shouts at me.

“Then I better get started!” I shout back.

“Good luck.”

“Good luck to you too, mister!”

Four hundred miles is nothing. I’ve traveled farther than that already. I’ll reach Independence by early March, find Jefferson, and leave with one of the first wagon trains of the season. If everything goes well, we’ll be in the gold fields of California by the end of summer.

An hour later, clouds roll in, and a cold rain falls, soaking me to the bone. Peony slogs through fetlock-deep mud. By the time we reach Charleston, my head feels thick, and it hurts to swallow. I’m far away from Georgia now, and more than willing to spend the twenty cents I can’t afford to pass the night in Mrs. Moore’s public boardinghouse, but it’s already full up with folks heading west.

I keep going until nightfall, when I find a farmer willing to let me sleep on the floor in front of his hearth.

I make it as far as Sikeston before coming down with a fever, and I spend an anxious week burning up in a farmhouse near a place called Gray’s Ridge. Despite the family’s kind care, I rave something awful, fighting them constantly—first because I’m afraid they’ll find out my secret, and later because, in my feverish state, I mistake the father for Uncle Hiram. Even after my fever breaks, I find him hard to look at, with his long, fine nose and keen gaze. When I’m well enough to travel again, they’re glad to see me go, but not as glad as I am to leave. I give them two precious dollars for all the trouble.

It’s a cold, wet spring, with day after day of weather that can’t decide if it wants to be rain or snow. Many of the roads are quagmires, trapping wagons and blocking passage. It’s slow going, and I can’t make up lost time no matter how hard I try.

These hills are chock-full of pioneers who are making an enterprise of boarding westbound travelers. I almost always find a bed, a meal, or unasked-for advice in exchange for mucking a few stalls or splitting some firewood or—if I’m desperate—parting with a few pennies. When I get back on the road, I sometimes find a napkin full of cookies, or a little grain for Peony. Once, I even discover a tiny ball of lavender-scented soap tucked into my saddlebag.

In spite of the goodness all around me, the low clouds feel like a yoke about my shoulders, and the sky drizzles sorrow down on Peony and me as I slump over her withers. It gets harder and harder to smile at strangers, and each morning, I’m clumsy and slow about packing up and getting back on the road. One night, when I’m camped in a small glen after having shot a squirrel with my pistol, I’m finally able to put words to my misery.

I miss Daddy.

With the thought comes a flood of memory. The winter I was nine years old, Daddy announced that he would teach me how to hunt. Mama bundled us both up and packed all the jerky and hardtack we could carry and sent us on our way without wringing her hands once. Daddy and I hiked horseless into the woods and were gone six days.

He showed me how to test the wind, to read tracks and scat, and to be as patient and ghostly as winter itself. He taught me to field dress an animal when it was too big to carry, to shoot a rifle without toppling over, and to find dry wood in the snow. At night, we scraped hides in front of our tent while the fire crackled and our clothes steeped in wood smoke, and he regaled me with tales of his own father, who headed west and spent years on the Ohio frontier in search of adventure and fortune.

Sure, I was little, but I was smart enough to understand the wistfulness in my daddy’s voice. That’s why Mama let him do wild things without complaint—like take his nine-year-old daughter on a hunting trip. Because the kind of man who fled Boston to make a new life in Indian country was the kind of man who might just keep on going. If Mama didn’t let him sow some wild oats, maybe he’d do something wilder. Maybe he’d go west.

So it’s now, with my own fire crackling, my lips greasy with the squirrel I just ate, and the night echoing with the distant yip of a coyote that I miss Daddy most. He should be here with me. We should have been on this adventure together.

On April 1, 1849, I reach Independence. I crest a rise, and there she is, stretching wide and strange below me.

My first impression is of mud. It spatters off horse hooves and wagon wheels, stains the base of every building and the legs of every pair of trousers, mixes with half-melted snow to create a soup of gray and brown. The few buildings making up the town proper are painted muddy white or muddy red. Centered before the largest of these is the one bright spot: an American flag, whipping proudly from a high pole. It’s the new one, with a full thirty stars.

Surrounding the town are acres of tents and wagons, thousands of oxen and horses; even a few hasty shacks, spread over a vast, flat landscape of mud and snow. And beyond it all is a slow, muddy river, curving gently into the horizon and shimmering like gray silk in the early spring sun.

I’m not sure what I expected. A neat town square like Dahlonega’s. An empty corner with no one in sight but Jefferson McCauley, standing there with his hands in his pockets and a welcoming grin on his face.

I spend all day wandering, getting to know the lay of the land. I’ve never seen so many people all in one place. I’m bumped and jostled everywhere I go, and it’s a peculiar thing to be so crowded and so alone at the same time.

The general store is a small, cluttered building with a floor made from poorly joined wood planks, all covered with muddy boot prints. I open my mouth to ask the clerk if he’s met anyone named Jefferson McCauley, but words fail me.

A gleaming Hawken rifle is mounted on the wall behind him. It’s Daddy’s. Which means the brothers who robbed me are here in Independence. The scent of rotting forest trash suddenly fills my nose, as if I’m still hiding in that pile of musty leaves.

“Sir? Can I help you?”

My hands are clammy cold, and my legs twitch, as if to run.

Don’t panic, Lee. The brothers could have traded it to someone bound for Independence. They’re probably still plundering the back roads of Georgia or robbing flatboatmen along the river.

“Sir?”

“I . . . How much for that rifle?” I ask, pointing. Maybe it’s not Daddy’s gun. The wood grain is different, the polish a bit worn near the trigger guard.

“Sixty dollars.”

I gasp. “Why so much?”

He shrugs. “People need guns to go west, and they’re willing to pay for ’em. Tell you what. You come back in a week, and if this gun hasn’t sold by then, I’ll let it go for fifty.”

“Sure. Thanks.” I stare at it, thinking of the twenty-four dollars I have left. The gun isn’t Daddy’s; I’m sure of it now. My fright made me stupid.

Even so, I can’t bear to be in this store a moment longer. I ought to pick up some hardtack and a new whetstone for my knife, but I don my hat and turn to go.

“I knew a man who had a gun just like that,” says a voice at my shoulder. A familiar voice.