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was headed for California.”
    “I was,” he said. “I changed my mind.”
    “You know how Indians fight,” Theo said. “You’re telling Treat he don’t want no part of them, and then you go and join yourself. You know what you’re getting into.”
    “I been among them,” Preston said. “I know they ain’t going to be easy.”
    “We’ll see,” Joe Crane said. “Maybe when we get there we won’t have to fight nobody.”
    “The militia give you that hat?” Theo asked.
    “Nah,” Joe Crane said. “He bought it in the post store. I seen it first but he had to flip a gold piece over it.”
    “And you lost.”
    “Inkpaduta will sure like taking those feathers for himself,” said Theo.
    “Inkpaduta? Who’s Inkpaduta?” Joe Crane said.
    “Red Top.”
    “And that’s why we joined the militia,” Preston said. “There’s gold in the Black Hills. If I’m going there, I want to do it with a lot of fellows with guns.”
    “So it’s the gold,” Theo said. “You think you’ll have time to look for it?”
    “I ain’t no Indian fighter,” Preston said. “I just want to see if it’s like they say. Gold everywhere as far as the eye can see.”
    The Black Hills was sacred ground for the Sioux. It’s where they buried their dead. That’s what Theo said. “Those people won’t like a lot of white folks poking around up there, digging holes and such.”
    “We’ll take care of them,” Joe Crane said.
    The Indians around the fort was mostly just as fine as they could be. They was near all of them of the Crow tribe, but there was a few Arikaras, and even some Sioux. They was polite to folks and seemed to enjoy their children as much as anybody. I didn’t like their chanting much, but at least they was quiet of a Sunday morning. Them folks in the wagon and at the fort got to singing early, and a mite loud.
    “You going to keep that wagon and them horses?” Theo asked.
    “I’ll take it with me,” Preston said. “Horses too. We’re lighting out in a few days.”
     
    The night before they left I was feeling kind of rootless and solitary. I might of gone with them, but I didn’t want to fight nobody. Still, they seemed kind of happy to be headed for some kind of adventure. What if there really was gold up that way?
    We was sitting around a campfire behind Preston’s wagon. It was me, Theo, Preston, and Joe Crane. I’d sipped a little bit of more whiskey. I shared some too. I got to be kind of curious and talkative. I wanted to know how Preston and Joe Crane come to be traveling together.
    “Started out from East Tennessee,” Joe Crane said. “We was both with Colonel Broward there.”
    “You was Confederate?”
    He nodded.
    Preston said, “One or two skirmishes can make brothers out of some folks.”
    “We fought together,” Joe Crane said. “And after the war decided to pool our money and come on out this way.”
    “We was fur trappers for a while,” Preston said. “Up and down the Missouri River. All the way north to where it bends to the west and heads out here. Never had such fun. We was just playing is all, trapping otter and beaver and selling the skins. Did that for half a decade, then decided to sell everything, buy the wagon and go on further west. Get some gold, maybe.”
    “I was all the way in California when I was a boy,” Joe Crane said. He sat right across from me, his legs crossed in front of him. His round belly almost covered his boots. The fire seemed to glisten off his bald head. “My daddy went and took us out there in ’49. He was looking for gold too. But he never found none. He went to work for the railroad and got hisself killed in a train wreck. I was fifteen and holding my momma up for a while before the war.”
    “What happened to her?” I said.
    “We come back to Kansas, and then I went and joined the Confederate army and I ain’t seen her since.”
    “You never went back?”
    “Oh, I looked for her and all. One day her letters stopped coming, and