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then she was just gone.”
    “Died probably,” Preston said.
    “I like to think she married some rich fellow and moved to a bright, big house in Chicago, or St. Louis.”
    “And she wouldn’t want to write you nor nothing after doing that?” I said.
    “How would she know where to write me? It’s what I like to think,” he said. “It’s better than a picture in my mind of her face rotting in the dirt someplace.” He cleared his throat and looked away. Preston put his hand on his shoulder just briefly, but Joe Crane didn’t say nothing. He stared at the fire for a spell, took a sip of my whiskey. He looked almost misty-eyed, but then he suddenly reached up and tried to grab the hat off Preston’s head, but Preston was ready for him and jumped to his feet. “Nice try at it,” he said.
    “I ought to have that hat. It looks better on me, and it don’t fit you worth nothing at all.”
    “It fits just fine.”
    “You look like a squaw with that thing on.”
    “It ain’t so. Anyway, I don’t care how I look.”
    “The hell you don’t.”
    “I don’t.”
    “Gimme the feather, then.”
    “What for?”
    “Just let me have it. If you don’t care how you look, what do you need the blasted feather for?”
    “It’s just part of the hat.”
    “Because you like how it looks, am I right?”
    “You two ought to get married,” Theo said.
    Preston come around the fire and sat next to me. It got quiet for a spell, then I said, “You know, my ma died and my daddy couldn’t abide it. He took off.”
    “And just left you?” Preston said.
    “I must of reminded him of her.”
    “She have red hair like yours?” Joe Crane said.
    “I stayed with my aunt,” I said. “But she never liked me much, neither.”
    “Well, me and Joe was going to get rich after the war, but all we got is them two horses and that ’ere wagon.”
    “You got that hat too,” Joe Crane said.
    “A lot of folks wish they had a wagon like that,” I said. “I seen them on this trip.”
    Theo said, “It ain’t that good.”
    “Look,” Preston said. “Theo had to set a axe handle in the thing for one of its spokes. The wheels creek and wobble. The damn thing’s falling apart.”
    “It’s a good wagon,” said, Joe Crane. “It sure keeps us dry of a cold winter night.”
    We talked a long time. I begun to realize I’d miss laughing at them two fellows when they was gone. It amazed me how easy it was to talk to some folks and get to feeling like you known them all along. I was thinking I made a couple of good friends that I might see again someday and I drifted off to sleep a-hoping for just that.
     
    Sometime in the middle of the night, a little while after I’d fell asleep, I heard what I thought was Indians circling around the camp and hollering to beat all. I jumped up quick and grabbed my carbine. The fire had banked pretty much, and I couldn’t find nobody in the dark that resembled Theo, nor nobody else, neither. I think I could hear my heart a-beating like hell. Dark shadows run by me, and one of them nearly knocked me down.
    I raised my carbine and got ready to shoot one of the shadows, when I heard Preston’s voice coming from it. “Damn it all.”
    Joe Crane wasn’t as much whooping as he was laughing. I seen him crouching forward when he run by the embers of the fire, and he was holding Preston’s hat on his head. Preston was right behind him trying to get his hands on it. Leaning forward as he was, Joe Crane made it near impossible for Preston to get even a grab at the feather that stuck out of the band on the side.
    They disappeared around behind Theo’s wagon, then come out the other side, still howling and hollering. I think they both was laughing.
    Theo poked his head out the back of his wagon. “What in hellfire is going on?” he said. He had his own rifle in his hands, and it looked like he was about to shoot the first shadow he seen and he didn’t care none what he might hit, neither.
    “It’s