“And what will Samuelson tell him?” Caroline asked. “He’ll tell him that you’re alive. That you’re not dead.” The relief in her voice was heavy and obvious. The chase for revenge would be over. Her son could be healed, just as she was healed now. “He’ll tell him that you and Nathan were coming to Savannah, and Will will turn around and come back here.”
Julia’s head bobbed up and down vigorously. “So all you have to do is wait here for him.”
Nathan looked at Joshua. Their eyes locked for a moment, and something unspoken passed between them. Then Joshua nodded. He didn’t have the heart to say it and was asking Nathan to lead out. Nathan cleared his throat. “It, uh . . . I’m sorry, Caroline, but it may not be that simple.”
She whirled in dismay. “Why not? If we go looking for him, we might pass him on the river or on his way back here from New Orleans and not even know it.”
Nathan sighed. “Caroline, I hope you’re right. I hope Will got to St. Louis and is on his way back here right now. But what if he’s not? What if something happened?”
“What could happen?” she asked in a small voice, wanting to know but not sure she could bear the knowing.
Now Abner jumped in to help Nathan. He understood. He had traveled to St. Louis on three different occasions. “There are a lot of gamblers and other riffraff that travel the boats,” he said to Caroline. His wife was poking at him, but he moved away from her jabs. “Well, I’m sorry, but Joshua and Nathan are right. We have to face reality. Will had a hundred and fifty dollars with him.”
Abner stopped at the surprised look on Caroline’s face. “Yes, he took fifty dollars from my desk.” He shook his head. “I thought he might, but like you I didn’t want him going off without any money. Anyway, if Will isn’t careful and lets anyone see that money, there’s a good chance he could end up with a conk on the head and being left at one of those little river towns somewhere between New Orleans and St. Louis.”
Joshua reached across Savannah and took Caroline’s hand. “We’re not talking about him being dead or anything, Caroline, but we have to face the possibility that he didn’t make it to St. Louis. Then the longer we sit here, the harder it will be to find him.”
She looked away and tried to pull her hand free, but he held on to it and went on. “At least we’ve found you and the children now and know you’re safe. So what if we leave you here? Nathan and I will take the ship tomorrow back to New Orleans. We’ll ask around there if anyone has seen him. Then we’ll take a boat north. Everywhere we stop we’ll look for him. Riverboats are often at towns at the same time. We’ll check every boat headed south. And if we do miss him, you’ll be here waiting for him.”
Caroline looked down at their hands, biting at her lip. Tears had welled up in the corners of her eyes. “I can’t bear to have you leave me again.” She drew in a breath. “And what if those two men know I’m here? What if they come looking for us?”
“I’m sure they’ve given up and gone back home,” Joshua said again, but it sounded lame. Every adult in the room knew that what he said was a good possibility, but there were no guarantees.
“I’m going with Papa,” Olivia said from her chair.
Joshua let go of Caroline’s hand and turned around. “I’ll be back, Livvy.”
“I’m going with you,” she said stubbornly. “I want to help look for Will.”
“You can’t, Livvy,” Joshua murmured. “Papa will be back.”
“No,” Caroline said with sudden determination. “Livvy’s right. Wherever you go, the children and I are going with you.”
Joshua started to protest further, then nodded. It would greatly complicate their movements, but there had been too much separation in their family for them to part with each other again. “All right.”
“Well,” Abner said, “Julia and I will be here no matter what. If you do miss Will and he comes here, we’ll turn right around and bring him to St. Louis. I’ll accompany him personally to make sure he gets there.”
“Thank you, Abner,” Joshua said gratefully. He looked at Caroline. “Then it’s settled. We leave tomorrow?”
She looked at him, then at Olivia, whose head was bobbing up and down vigorously. She turned back to her husband. “Yes, we’ll leave tomorrow.”
Nathan sat back, a great sense of relief washing over him. They still had to find Will, but tomorrow they would be heading back, back towards Missouri, back towards his family.
* * *
Will Mendenhall Steed was not on his way back to Savannah. Nor was he anywhere near to making that decision. In fact, it was not until the early evening of the thirty-first of December that he disembarked from the riverboat tied up at the docks at St. Louis, Missouri. The voyage from Savannah to New Orleans had been uneventful for him. There were several other passengers on board, and he had spun them a yarn about going to Louisiana to stay with an uncle. Once in the great river-ocean port, he had been forced to wait for three days for a boat going upriver all the way to St. Louis. So he holed up in a small hotel on the waterfront, more fearful of being found by those sent after him from Savannah than he was of any strangers.
The boat finally departed on the nineteenth of December, but they were only two days upriver when the first small chunks of ice started to appear in the muddy brown water. The steamers going downriver reported that way up north, in Iowa and Wisconsin territories, the winter had turned bitter cold and the river had frozen solid in places. With a warming trend, the ice had broken up and great blocks of it were now moving downriver. The ice blocks were nearly melted this far south, but farther north they could prove to be damaging to a boat’s hull. So the captain docked in Natchez, Mississippi, and refused to budge for five days until there was no more sign of ice.
By then it was Christmas Eve, and the passengers had voted to spend another two days in Natchez rather than have the holiday on the river. Will had fumed under the delay but was totally helpless to do anything about it. They finally sailed again on the twenty-sixth. It had taken five more days to reach St. Louis.
Will suddenly realized he was shivering. In his haste to leave Savannah without being caught, he had not even thought about it being winter up north. He wore a light jacket and a woolen shirt, but the temperature was in the midforties, and his breath showed in the air. Shoving his hands in his pockets, he moved quickly down the gangplank and across the wharf. He stopped for a moment to get his bearings, then turned south, exactly opposite the direction of the warehouse and office where Walter Samuelson, his father’s former business partner, worked.
Originally Samuelson had been in his plans. But Will had thought it through very carefully, and he knew that Samuelson’s would be the one place his mother would think he would go. He didn’t think it was likely that a letter from his mother had beaten him here, but he wasn’t going to take any chances. If one had, Samuelson would hold him until Caroline came for him or else would send him back to Savannah. And that was not in Will’s plan.
Brooding now, excited to finally be where he could take some action, Will moved along the street, beneath the misty circles lit by lampposts. He had scouted out this area during the time he and his mother were here in St. Louis. It looked different now at night, but he moved on steadily, watching closely for things he recognized. Then he grunted. There was the saddle shop, and across from it was the tobacco shop with the wooden Indian standing outside the door. Relieved, he turned up that street, walking more quickly now, fearing that the hour already might be too late. And then, as he rounded the next corner, he let out a sigh of relief. The lamp was still on in the window.
* * *
The shop owner peered at him over the top of half-cut spectacles. “Ain’t you a little young to be purchasing a gun?”
Will looked insulted. “I’m sixteen, nearly seventeen,” he said gruffly, trying to keep his voice as low as possible. “Man’s got to have protection if he’s joining a teamster caravan across Missouri.”
The man was still skeptical, but let it pass. “That’ll be twenty dollars for the pistol and three more for fifty rounds of ammunition.” He made no move for the weapon in the glass case behind him, and Will suddenly realized that the man didn’t think he had the money.
Will dug in his pocket and brought out his purse. He started to open it, then remembered the hungry look he had seen on a man’s face when he had opened his purse on the boat. Will had stayed clear of the man after that, even though he had tried to befriend him. Now he turned his back on the shop owner and withdrew two ten-dollar gold pieces and three silver dollars. He counted quickly. That still left him almost sixty dollars, enough to keep him going for several weeks yet, if he was careful.
Closing the purse, he put it back in his pocket and turned around. He held the money out for the man to see but didn’t put it down as yet. It gave him a perverse satisfaction to see the surprise on the man’s face.
“All right, then.” The man turned and got the pistol down, then reached under the counter and brought out a box and laid it beside the gun. Only then did Will give him the money.
“Thank you,” Will said.
“You know how to use that thing?” the man asked.
Will looked disgusted. “Of course. My pa taught me.”
“Oh.”
Will started for the door, then stopped and turned around. “Can you tell me how to find the Riverbend Hotel?”
One eyebrow came up and the man squinted at him. “Yeah, it’s down Water Street, about half a block from the river. ’Bout ten minutes from here.”
“Thanks.” Will started out the door.
The man watched him, then felt a touch of concern for the boy who was trying to act like a man. “You’d best be careful down that neighborhood. It ain’t the best part of town.”
Will raised one hand but said nothing. Before he and his mother and sisters had left St. Louis over a month ago, Samuelson had told them that the two men were staying in the Riverbend Hotel. It was a place to start.
He went out the door and shut it behind him. Face resolute, he turned left, retracing his steps back down to the waterfront. Shoving the pistol inside his trousers, he pulled his jacket around him and buttoned it so that the gun was hidden. Then hefting the box of ammunition up and down in his hand, he strode off, hunching down against the chill of the night.
* * *
Hugh Watson and Riley Overson had come to St. Louis driven by hate. Or rather, Hugh had been driven by hate, and Riley came because he did pretty much whatever Hugh told him to do. That hate had been partially slaked when they burned down the big fancy house that Steed had built for his wife in Independence. But Hugh was furious when he learned she had left town. He had plans for her, plans that involved getting his just dues. Steed had stopped them from getting at those Mormon women in Far West. So it was only fair that his wife should make up for it. And she was a beauty too. Hugh’s dreams were filled with thoughts of her.
It took them a day to find out that her likely destination was St. Louis, then three more days to beg and borrow enough money from some of the most vigorous of the Mormon-haters to go after her. But by the time they followed the Widow Steed to St. Louis and tracked her down, she had eluded them again and gone south on one of the riverboats. By then they were totally out of money, and St. Louis in the dead of winter was not a hospitable place for men looking for work. The riverboat traffic was way down until spring. Nothing was going up the Missouri River to Independence. Freight was stacking up in the warehouses, and longtime stevedores were fiercely protective against anyone trying to muscle in on what little work there was. A few teamsters were braving the weather and headed west, but they had their own men and weren’t willing to take on two more mouths to feed from provisions that took freight room from the wagons.
Riley was getting more and more ugly about the whole thing. They had moved out of the Riverbend Hotel the day after they learned about Caroline’s departure. Now they spent their nights in an unheated, rat-infested hole beneath a cotton warehouse. Riley wanted to go home and fully expected Hugh to work out a way for them to do so. Typically they spent their days picking up an odd job or two, then spent the evenings in the saloons drinking away what little money they made, snarling and snapping at each other like two cur dogs trying to occupy the same narrow doghouse.
“Hugh. Hugh Watson.”
Hugh set his beer down and turned around to see who was calling his name. The man was at the door, peering into the smoke-filled, half-lit room. Hugh raised a hand. It was Charlie Patterson, a man they had met while cleaning stables and who often teamed up with them in drinking cheap beer and moaning about the unfairness of life.
“Over here, Charlie.”
“Blowhard,” Riley grumbled. “Probably looking for a free drink.”
“Shut up. I paid for yours, didn’t I?”
Charlie came over, weaving his way through the crowd and around the few tables. He plopped down and grinned wickedly. “Got news fur ya, Hugh.”
“What?”
“What’s it worth?”
Hugh swung at him. “It’s worth a lump on the jaw if you don’t tell me.”
Charlie jerked away, letting the intended blow whiz past his face. Now he laughed gleefully, knowing that what he brought was going to bless them all. “There’s a kid looking for you, Hugh.”
Hugh blinked. “A kid?”
“Yeah. Big kid. About fifteen or so. Big Mick O’Donnell pointed him out to me this morning, walking down near the river. I guess he showed up four or five days ago and started asking questions about two men from western Missouri who were at the Riverbend Hotel in mid-November.” He looked at them archly. “Two men who were asking questions about a certain Mrs. Joshua Steed.”
Hugh started at that. “Mrs. Steed? What the . . . ? How could a kid know about that?”
“Don’t know,” Charlie crowed, enjoying Hugh’s sudden nervousness. “But he’s willing to pay for information.”
Riley swore. “What if it’s the law?”
Hugh snorted loudly. “A kid? Don’t be stupid.”
Charlie smiled, revealing brown and crooked teeth. “You weren’t listening very good, Hugh. Did you hear what I said?”