Walk on Earth a Stranger

“It would be a strategic error,” Major Craven adds.

Jefferson sets the rear trigger.

We stare one another down: Hiram and his two men, me and my traveling companions. A few passersby stop to see what the fuss is about.

Becky is the one to break the silence. “You see, Mr. Westfall, sir,” she says, bobbing her unnamed daughter in her arms. “Leah is ours now.”

Hiram deliberates, his eyes roving our small company, resting for the space of a moment on every single face. “I see,” he drawls, slow and Southern and altogether false. “You realize, don’t you, that you’re harboring a runaway? She belongs with her family.”

Becky laughs. “I knew she was a runaway the first time I laid eyes on her! But I’ll thank you to leave us alone, regardless.”

“She’s with her family now,” Jasper amends.

Hiram holds my gaze, and I hold his right back. It gives me an ache to see him; he’s so like my daddy, except straight and strong and healthy. But he’s half the man my daddy was. Less than half.

He seems to come to a decision, and his face darkens with determination. At last, he tips his hat to me. “I’ll be seeing you again, my Leah. Very soon.”

He means to scare me, but my breathing is just fine, thank you, and the hands on my rifle are steady enough to take him at two hundred paces. “For sure and certain,” I reply.

Uncle Hiram turns his back and strides off, the other two men at his heels. He still wants what I can do, and he won’t stop trying to get it. Mama and Daddy never saw him coming, but my new family knows what kind of man he is. We’ll be ready.

I’m about to say thank you, and maybe hug someone, but everyone has already turned away like my uncle isn’t worth another moment’s attention.

“I still think you should call her Therese,” Olive says to her mother as we resume our walk to the fort. It’s a game everyone has been playing, trying to find a name for the Joyner baby.

“Or Lee,” Andy says, with a shy glance at me.

“Or California!” Hampton says. “You can call her Cali for short.”

“Elizabeth is a fine name,” I put in. “It was my mother’s name.”

We continue to throw names out until we reach the gates, where we pause a moment.

Jefferson drapes an arm across my shoulders. “We made it,” he says, gazing up at the walls. “We actually made it.”

I’m smiling, fit to burst. Feeling richer than a king, I say, “Let’s go find us some gold.”