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knowing the man beside her had plans no father should have.
    “Not saying much,” Hassenplug commented.
    She looked at him, at the smile beneath his mustache. He imagined things would go the way he wanted, but Zoe knew they would not. Her plans did not extend beyond hiding the knife, but as she looked at Hassenplug’s mouth, an alternative to stabbing him flashed into Zoe’s head. The knife would not be necessary after all.
    “I don’t have much to say,” she said, and turned her face to the road again.
    Hassenplug laughed. “That deal we made, that what you’re thinking about? Remember the deal?”
    “Yes. I said I’d think about it when I got a dress.”
    “That ain’t the way I recall it. Straight trade, that’s how it’ll be. You get what you want after I get what I want.”
    “That isn’t what you said.”
    “Don’t get a notion to wriggle out of it, not after you made a deal. Anyone makes a deal with me, they stick to it.”
    His voice had turned ugly, the smile had soured. Zoe glanced at him, then away. She saw he meant what he said.
    “Afterwards,” she reasoned, “after you get it for me. Then … then you can.”
    Zoe intended leaving the store by its back entrance, assuming it had one, or by any available window if it did not. She would go to the station and get aboard the first westbound train that pulled in, and when the conductor asked for her ticket she would admit she didn’t have one; the worst he could do was put her off at the next stop, where she would wait for another train. In this on-again, off-again fashion she would go west, where Clay and Drew led unknown lives. The new dress, with its perfect fit, would give her the confidence to step inside the first of many cars.
    “Shoes,” she said, picturing herself aboard the train. “I want shoes too, real shoes, nothing like these.” She looked down at her clumsy boy’s boots, graceless as buckets.
    “Anything else?” Hassenplug asked. “Diamonds and pearls, maybe?”
    “Just the shoes, and the dress … and a new petticoat.”
    “Petticoat! What you think you are, a goddamn princess?”
    He laughed again, the same ugly sound, and flicked the reins. “You don’t know a thing, girl. You don’t know nothing, you hear?” Zoe wouldn’t look at him. “You hear me!”
    “Yes
    “Don’t be telling me what you’ll get and when you’ll get it. I’ll be the one does the deciding, not you, hear me?”
    “Yes.”
    “A thing’s only worth what it’s worth,” he said, and nodded in agreement with himself. “It ain’t worth no more than that. I’m a fair man,” he continued, softening his tone, “and a fair man makes a fair trade. Don’t you worry, you won’t be sorry about a thing, not a goddamn thing.”
    They drove another mile, then Hassenplug said, “Right here’ll be about right,” and steered his wagon off the road into a thick stand of dogwood.
    Zoe stiffened with alarm. Hassenplug’s schedule for the trade was the reverse of her own. “No,” she said, “after the dress …”
    “Get down, and don’t be running away. I know how you figured it to be, getting to town and then running. Well, you won’t run, not in town and not here neither, because you won’t go to town. Think I’d let you? I know better, see. You’ll get your dress, a real pretty one. You be nice and I might even get you some regular shoes, with them little bows, maybe. Just you be nice and you’ll get what you want. Now get down like I said.”
    Zoe did as she was told. Now everything depended on her willingness to use the knife. It made her sick to think of jabbing the blade into Hassenplug, even sicker to think of what he intended doing if her gumption failed and she froze instead of defending herself.
    Hassenplug was getting down from the wagon on the same side as Zoe, unwilling even to give her the chance of a head start, should she decide to run. His face was creased by an openmouthed smile, the lips wetted by his roaming