Prologue

Prairie Center, Wyoming

April 1864

Daisy clutched the wriggling, wailing little bundle, marveling at him. Wrapped in a thin, blood-soaked sheet, the little boy cried with a surprising strength that belied the hours of labor, the intense battlefield that had taken place in this airless room.

“Give him to me,” Clara said, and Daisy placed the baby in the crook of his mother’s arm. When Clara’s arm didn’t tighten around him, she pushed a pillow into place against the baby’s back.

Clara looked down at the dark-haired little head, and Daisy waited for her to say something about the strangeness of it all, or marvel at what she had made. But what she said was not at all what Daisy had expected.

Clara looked up at her, and when their eyes met, hers were stern and forceful. “You listen to me now, Daisy.”

Clara had lost a lot of blood. Daisy was no midwife, but she had seen all manner of injured people, and she had never seen this much blood. She didn’t know what was normal. Rufus had ridden out for someone to help, but that had been two days ago, and no one had ever come. Clara was weak, as white as the sheets she lay on, her skin beneath her eyes purpling as if from a bruise.

Since the baby had arrived, she had tossed and turned, her sweat ice cold despite the burn of her skin, the words coming out of her mouth incomprehensible. This sudden forcefulness was the most Clara had seemed herself in days, and Daisy was overtaken with hope that the fever would pass, the bleeding would stop, and the only person left on this earth that she loved would get better.

“I’ll be dead before dawn breaks.” Clara’s words were blunt and flat, and maybe it was that that kept the shock from slamming into Daisy. Her mouth went desert dry, but the rest of her body went silent, as if every part of her was focusing on doing nothing but listening to Clara speak.

Clara took a ragged breath and gripped Daisy’s hand, her thin fingers, once strong as iron, now pitifully weak. “I had such—” She swallowed hard. “Such high hopes for Rufus. He’s not—he’s not the man I thought he was.” Her eyes fell on the baby wrapped in a tight little bundle against her, and they took on the shine of unshed tears.

Daisy leaned forward, putting a hand on Clara’s arm, and nearly drew back in shock at how cold it was.

She forced herself to speak, the words heavy in her throat. “Stop talking this way, Aunt Clara. Everything will be just fine; you’ll see. You’ll get some good rest, and like as not, Rufus will show up any moment with a doctor to get you some medicine. Just sleep, and I’ll look after the baby.”

“When I close my eyes next, it will be to die,” Clara said forcefully, and Daisy closed her mouth with a snap.

Deep inside, somewhere buried deep, echoed the threat of pain that was coming, pain that hadn’t reached her yet but would soon. She pushed back against it, keeping her hand on Clara, waiting.

“Rufus has my father’s old wagon hidden out back. Cut through the brush behind the shed, and you’ll find it.” She paused and sucked in a breath, wincing at the pain as she fought to continue speaking. “He did a poor job of hiding it. Under the seat is where he keeps his extra silver, the silver he sets aside for new trades. It’s all the money he has in the world, so don’t waste time once you have it.” Her eyes cut to the flat gray sky outside the window as if Rufus Kane might be seen riding up even now, but the window was small, and they were two stories up. There was nothing to see but sky. “Hide the silver somewhere on you. Always keep it on you; keep it safe. Don’t ever take it out where someone can see you.”

Daisy’s head was bursting with questions, but she bit her tongue so hard she could taste the metallic tang of blood. She could see the effort each word was costing Clara, so she forced herself to be silent, to wait, and to listen to what she had to say.

Later, she could allow herself to feel the things that were threatening to burst through the dam inside of her. But not now.

Clara swallowed hard. “There’s a wagon party leaving Fort Laramie tomorrow at dawn. It’s your best chance, but it’ll be tough for you to make it on time. I had thought—” She stopped and bit her lip, dragging in a deep breath. “It doesn’t matter. Go now, and you should make it before they leave.”

All Daisy could do was stare. What was Clara asking of her? She couldn’t be asking—

Clara stared down at her baby boy, and tears spilled down her cheeks, silent rivers of grief. She pressed her lips to the baby’s dark brow, the tears sliding, disappearing into the shock of hair, into the folds of the blanket. Clara wrapped it more tightly, tucking the end so that it folded in and rested against the baby’s heart.

“Did you know that not all birds sing while they fly?” Clara asked as she stroked the baby’s cheek. “Only some do. Larks sing during flight. I always thought that was something.”

She kissed the baby once more and passed him to Daisy, who took him uncertainly, holding him out in the space between them still. Everything about this felt wrong. Nothing was happening the way it was supposed to.

She swallowed hard against the hot lump in her throat.

“He is the brightness of a new day. He was the hope in my heart.” Clara’s voice faltered briefly, then she tore her eyes away from her child and looked at Daisy, the uncharacteristic forcefulness returning once again. “Call him Lark, for me, will you? Rufus would never have allowed it.” She laughed, choking and bitter, and looked out the window.

Her voice was gentle once more when she turned back to Daisy. “It’s time to go now, dear heart. Take my baby boy. That is my final wish. Take him far away from here and raise him to be a man entirely different from his father.”

She reached out, and Daisy leaned into her cold hand. Clara pressed a kiss onto her own brow, and Daisy could fight the tears no longer. “Go and do better than we did. Give him more than we had. You have my unending love and gratitude.”

Daisy straightened and tightened the bundle against her. Lark was sleeping, a slight curve tucked into her chest, and she hoped that the frantic pounding of her heart would not wake him. She opened her mouth to say something, but what? She couldn’t take this baby and join a wagon party. She couldn’t leave Clara behind. She couldn’t—

“Go now,” Clara said, her voice sharp. “Go!”

The urgency in her voice left no room for argument. Daisy took one last sweeping scan of the room and fled, leaving behind the smell of stale air and sickness, the sweltering closeness of the space, the desperation in Clara’s eyes.

She fled down the stairs, her heart in her throat, every inch of her alive with a new terror, the sounds of booming laughter, drunken arguments, and bottles thudding against wooden tables rising all around her as she froze at the foot of the stairs, looking around to make sure that none of Rufus’s men were keeping a close eye on the stairway.

She could see most of them, dotted at various tables, one asleep under the bar, his dirty boots propped against the bottom rung of a stool. The coast was clear, or as clear as it ever got in the Blue Moon Saloon, where Rufus Kane reigned supreme and everyone who stepped foot inside knew that they were risking their lives if they so much as breathed wrong in his presence.

One last look—left, right—and then she couldn’t resist casting another glance back up the stairs, where Clara lay dying. Against her chest, she could feel the small, thrumming heartbeat of Clara and Rufus’s son. Lark. His heartbeat so much more quickly than she would have thought possible. The thought made her stomach twist.

She knew nothing about babies, about taking care of them, about wagon parties and crossing the plains of the West. And what was the plan when she arrived at the party’s final destination? She would be on her own, with a baby that wasn’t even hers, having to build a life from less than nothing.

A barmaid tripped over the boots of the man sleeping beneath the stool, and he woke with a roar, lashing out at her. She dodged him easily in a move that Daisy herself recognized, because it was one she had had to learn quickly. The man cursed at her, spat a wad of tobacco, and then slumped immediately down so that his cheek squished against the wood and the filthy floor.

She looked back down at Lark once more.

If Rufus raised this child, he would raise him to be just like him or one of his men. He would turn Clara’s little boy into a monster, whatever way he could.

Lark. The name was perfectly reminiscent of a spring morning, of the sweet, high calls that welcomed a new day. Of Clara, and her sunny, pure heart.

Hot tears rose, and Daisy swallowed them back and squared her shoulders. Clara had died bringing this child into the world, and she would be damned if she let Rufus wreak his particular brand of havoc and cruelty on him. Daisy would do this for Clara. For Lark.

And for herself.

Slipping back into the shadows of the stairs, she pulled Clara’s scarf from her apron pocket and wrapped Lark against her chest, freeing her hands.

No one looked up as she crossed the back hall and went out the door, into the deepening darkness of the night.

She found it with no trouble. The wagon Clara’s father had built wasn’t much to look at. Its paint had peeled, and the canvas top sagged with rot in a few places, but the wheels were sound, and the axles had been greased not long ago. Daisy could smell the tallow when the breeze shifted. It was more care than some wagons ever got. Clara must have known this was coming. She’d been thin and pale for months, even before her belly swelled. There was a resignation in her that Daisy hadn’t understood until tonight.

The silver was right where she had said it would be as well, and Daisy’s eyes went wide at the sight of it gleaming in the rising moonlight. There was no time to count it; it was already getting late, and they needed to hurry if they were going to make it to Fort Laramie in time. If she and Lark missed this wagon party, she didn’t know what they would do. They would have nowhere to go.

She knew her way around oxen thanks to her late father, and so it was no trouble to get the old male into place in front of the wagon. She and Lark were on the road, headed west, so quickly she wondered if maybe Clara was still alive upstairs, looking out the window and knowing they were escaping safely.

The wagon creaked and swayed as it rumbled northward through the sagebrush flats.

For a while, Daisy wondered if she would continue like this forever, the only sounds being the creaking of the wheels, her shifting on the wooden bench, and the darkness lying heavy around them. But eventually the horizon took on a faint glow, a soft promise in the east. The baby, warm and quiet in the crook of Daisy’s arm, had fallen asleep after a long, hard cry. His tiny body felt impossibly light, and yet he anchored her more than anything ever had.

She hadn’t spoken a word since leaving the saloon, not even to herself. Her throat was too tight. The silence felt sacred, stretched out like the flat land ahead, all pale dirt and stunted mesquite, washed silver in the moonlight.

Every so often, she cast a glance over her shoulder, as if she might still be able to see the dark hump of the saloon, squatting against the slope of the hill it hid behind. She thought of Clara, flashback memories of the horror of the last few days, her damp curls stuck to her temple, her fingers clawing weakly at the bedding, her voice little more than a whisper.

She pushed the memories away for now, wishing she had been able to do more for her. Wishing they were taking this journey together, which she wondered if Clara had been planning for all along, before her pregnancy had taken such a toll on her.

The road stretched out in front of her, so she did the only thing that made sense.

She kept going.

Daisy and Lark reached the river fork where the trail broke west as the stars began to wink out above them. A narrow creek ran clear beside the trail, shaded by a fringe of cottonwoods just starting to leaf out. Daisy halted the ox and climbed down stiffly. Her dress stuck to her back, damp with sweat, and she peeled it away as she knelt to drink. The water was cold and had a faint, muddy taste with a hint of mint. She filled a canteen that had been stashed beneath the bench and splashed her face. The baby stirred and fussed from his spot on the bench as the wagon shifted without her weight.

Daisy climbed back up quickly, her body aching from the effort. She was only twenty-six, strong from years of sweeping floors and hauling kegs, but she felt ancient now. Her legs trembled from the strain of the night, and her back ached with a dull insistence. She looked at the two branches of the path—left, right. Surely, Fort Laramie would be to the west? She looked up at the sky, wishing the sun were up to guide her. The moon looked to be curving to the right. Was that west?

She pushed on, deciding it must be, following the left fork of the path.

The trail was well-worn; its ruts baked into the dirt like scars. She passed scrub jays darting between low brush and jackrabbits from prickly pear thickets. Now and then, she saw old boot prints, horse droppings, the carcass of a snake half-eaten by birds. Every so often, a crow called out from above, perched high on a dead tree, watching her pass with glassy eyes.

She fed Lark from the small tin of cow’s milk Clara had told her to boil down into something thicker in the days leading up to the baby’s birth, sweetened with a hint of honey and barely enough to stretch another day. When they arrived, she’d need to find someone nursing. Or figure something else out.

She glanced anxiously up at the lightening sky. It was getting late—or rather, early. They needed to make better time.

He drank it greedily, and she watched him, memorizing the curve of his cheek, the little whorls in his hair. She’d known him for less than a day, but already she felt fiercely protective of him, like she’d swallowed a fire. Something about the long night spent locked together had forged a strong and unbreakable bond between them.

They were both motherless, both without anyone and anything else on this earth. The thought made her feel less alone.

After he ate, she wrapped him in Clara’s scarf and tucked him against her side. The sky was wide open above, stars spilling across its expanse like spilled sugar. Coyotes howled in the distance, and the wind rustled the dry grass around the wagon wheels. Daisy felt as if she had drunk three pitchers of coffee, though she had had none and no sleep to speak of for nearly four days, half her mind alert to any sound coming out of the darkness, the other half trying not to think too hard about what she’d done.

She had stolen a wagon, stolen silver, and taken a child that wasn’t hers. The law, if it came for her, would call it kidnapping. Theft. She had no papers, no claim, nothing but her word.

But no one else had been there.

No one else had held Clara’s hand. No one else had caught the baby, wrapped him in a clean cloth, soothed him with trembling arms while his mother bled out beside him.

No one else had promised.

Daisy had.

Tears of fear began to streak down her face in the quiet stillness of the night, but she pressed on, hoping desperately that she was going in the right direction.

Chapter One

Fort Laramie, Wyoming

April 1864

Dust clung to Cole’s boots as if the earth itself wanted to drag him down. After a week riding beside the wagon, every inch of him ached. The plains behind them had been long and hard, and now, as Fort Laramie came into view, the wind turned mean. It hissed grit into his teeth, caught the edges of his coat, and drove the sweat down his spine to settle cold against his back. He tipped his hat lower to shield himself from the sun.

The fort rose out of the prairie like it had been dropped there by mistake, just a jumble of log walls, squat buildings, and tents pitched wherever there was space to put them. The old adobe post still stood, patched with new timber where time or men had worn it down. Somewhere beyond the walls, a smith hammered steel, and the rhythmic ring echoed across the wagon yard.

Cole rode ahead of the wagon, reins slack in his hands. The mare moved slowly but steadily. She knew her job. Behind him, the oxen pulled the wagon over the hard-packed trail. Willa sat high on the seat, arms crossed, chin tilted just enough to make it very clear she wasn’t going to be pleased with anything for the rest of the day.

“Took too long,” she muttered.

Cole didn’t answer.

“The river was a joke,” she went on. “Nothing but frogs and dead trees.”

She shifted onto the seat, scowling at a passing tent. “These look like stitched-up ghost coats. Just a bunch of heaps of rags for cowards. What kind of place even is this?”

He tightened the reins at that and turned slightly, but kept his voice level. “Enough.”

Willa huffed, a slight, sharp sound, but changed tack. “You said you’d get me another book.”

“And I will,” he said, voice flat. “When we reach Bozeman.”

“If we reach Bozeman.”

“Besides, no story in a dime novel is going to teach you how to cross a mountain or fire your gun straight. You need time and experience for that, and that’s what we’re focusing on now.”

Willa didn’t bother answering. She was thirteen and mean about it lately, half wild from the move and the rest from grief. He understood. But understanding didn’t mean giving her free rein. It also didn’t make it easier to keep his patience, though he did his level best.

They entered the wagon yard properly, and the fort swallowed them whole. Oxen lowed nearby, bleating from an overloaded cart. A man cursed and smacked a wheel with a mallet. Children darted between wagon tongues, chasing one another and shrieking until someone’s mother shouted them down.

The air stank of old smoke, animal filth, and grease. Even the half-built church, its roofless frame rising like a broken ribcage, couldn’t make the place feel decent.

Cole scanned the yard. Some of the outfits looked prepared. Tight canvas, water barrels, clean-wheeled wagons. Others looked like a stiff wind would turn them into splinters. He rode past a rig with three chickens tied in a basket and a goat tethered to the back axle. A child sat inside, picking at a rag doll that had seen better days.

His own wagon was a contrast. Well-rigged, the canvas tight, the rear packed and balanced with supplies: grain sacks, dried meat, a barrel of water strapped near the axle, crates of ammunition packed low for stability. The false floor in back held his tin lockbox, buried beneath oilskin and spare linens. Every coin he had left to his name was inside it, along with the journal.

His wife’s journal.

He hadn’t opened it since she passed. Wrapped tight in oilcloth against the elements, tucked out of sight. He didn’t know if he ever would be able to open it.

A shout rose near the entrance, drawing his eye. A new arrival rode in from the eastern trail: tall in the saddle, long coat fluttering behind. The gelding he rode was spotted and sharp-eyed, its hooves kicking up dust as it slowed. The rider didn’t speak. He didn’t need to.

The yard quieted, just enough to feel the shift. Some men turned away. One spat. Another adjusted his grip on the handle of a hatchet.

Cole didn’t move. He watched.

The rider dismounted. His movements were slow and deliberate. A long rifle was strapped across his back, the wood polished dark and gleaming. His face was shaded by the brim of a battered hat, but the cut of his cheekbones and the set of his eyes marked him clear enough. Half-Kiowa, by Cole’s guess.

Cole nodded first. “Cole McKinnon.”

The man returned the nod. “Elijah.”

That was enough. No last names needed. Not here. Not with what lay ahead.

They turned from each other without further word. Elijah led his gelding toward the east fence. Cole guided his mare to water, then saw to the oxen. Willa stayed on the wagon bench until the sun shifted and threw her into shade. Then she climbed down and wandered toward the edge of the yard where a woman had set up a makeshift cook station. The smell of beans and scorched coffee drifted on the wind.

Cole gave her a long glance. She wasn’t likely to be polite, but she knew better than to steal.

He spent the next hour checking gear. He ran a hand along the canvas, checked the lashing knots, and made sure none of the grain sacks had torn in the jostle from the last crossing. Everything had held. He felt a small surge of satisfaction. He hadn’t done much right in the last year, but the wagon—that, at least, he knew how to keep.

As the sun sank, more wagons arrived. Some bore markings from Missouri, others from farther east. Folks with accents he hadn’t heard since Tennessee shouted to one another across the open yard. A group of Mormon families camped along the northern fence, children praying beside cookfires. At the far end, a tall woman with windburned cheeks was bartering hard for a length of canvas with a toothless peddler.

Cole kept to himself. He nodded when spoken to, offered help when it was needed, but didn’t linger. Folks in places like this watched each other like wolves, warily, waiting to see who would break first.

He found Elijah again at dusk. The guide had set up a small camp alone, just outside the circle. He sat beside a low fire, fletching arrows. A pot of something boiled low beside him.

Cole approached quietly. “Are you planning on guiding all these people through the Bozeman Trail?”

Elijah looked up. “If they pay.”

“How many are there?”

“As many as can keep up.”

Cole nodded. “We can.”

Elijah didn’t smile. “The girl, your daughter?”

“Yes.”

“Mother gone?”

“I’m doing the best I can for her on my own.”

Elijah nodded once, then looked back at his arrows.

They left it at that.

By nightfall, the sky had turned to copper, then ash. Stars prickled through one by one, hard and white. Coyotes called from somewhere beyond the bluffs. Willa returned to the wagon without a word, climbed inside, and curled up beneath the wool blanket that had once been her mother’s.

Cole lay beside the fire, hat over his eyes, rifle within arm’s reach.

He didn’t sleep much. No one really did the night before a crossing.