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a better living out there.”
    But another woman said, “Laws, how I’d like to go along. Sometimes I think if I have to gather one more egg, I’ll throw it to the cats and take off walking. Imagine the chance to look in a gold pan and find a thousand dollars.”
    “You’d give up your home?” Aunt Catherine asked.
    “Faster than you could say, ‘Pickled peppers.’”
    After we were on our way again, Aunt Catherine asked Ma, “Do you think that woman would run off?”
    Ma laughed, but then she turned and looked back in the direction of the farm. “Maybe not this afternoon, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we spotted her in Golden one day.”

Chapter Seven
    OUR ADVENTURE IN ST. JOE

    T he weather was good in Missouri, warm but not hot enough to make us uncomfortable in all our clothes. Even though there was a tiny bit of room in the wagon, now that we had eaten some of the food given to us by our neighbors and friends. Ma still insisted we wear all our clothes. I heard her tell Aunt Catherine she was afraid Pa would make her throw out the extra dresses if she asked to store them in the Conestoga. “We’ll wait. I promised I’d wear all the dresses,” she said.
    “I think Thomas would find room now if you asked him.”
    “Well, I won’t,” Ma said. “I believe he and Will must have laughed at us wearing all these clothes, thinking we’d beg for a place to store them. Well, we’ll show them.”
    “ We? ” Aunt Catherine asked, and laughed. “Thomas is not the only one who is stubborn.”
    So far we didn’t have worries from Indians, we were able to find water, and we didn’t run into any rattlesnakes, as Pa thought we would, and it seemed like we flew as fast as birds across the state. It wasn’t even a month—it was April now—before we reached St. Joseph, or St. Joe. That’s where Pa said we would get the plans for the business block. He had written to a friend who was set up in St. Joe as a builder and had promised to draw them up. We would hook up with a wagon train there, too.
    “We’ve done all right on our own. Why do we need to join a train with all that dust and animals milling around and not a moment of privacy?” Aunt Catherine asked.
    “It’s dangerous to cross alone. There are Indians, and what if one of us fell under the wagon or got snake bit? Neither Will nor I know about doctoring. And if the wagon breaks down, there’ll be someone to help us. Besides, Meggie ought to have other women with her,” Pa explained.
    We had found a place along the east side of the Missouri River to camp. It was filled with wagons and tents, and Pa went in search of a wagon train to join. He came back an hour later and told us, “Good news! There is a train leaving in two days for Denver City, which is the big town close to Golden. We are welcome to join it. All we have to do is get ourselves across the river.” I was too big to be picked up, but Pa did just that. “Emmy Blue, there are children in that train, so you won’t have to spend your time with us old people.”
    We had passed through the streets of St. Joe on our way to the camp, and I was anxious to explore the town. I’d seen men in buckskin pants embroidered with beads and a family of Indians sitting in the dirt, begging for “beeskit.”
    “Look, Indians,” I’d cried.
    Pa shook his head. “The coming of the white man has not been a good thing for those poor folks. You’ll see grand Indians out on the plains, Emmy Blue, the finest specimen of men, whose skill with horses beats any I ever saw. But these Indians”—he nodded at the family—“are no more than dirty beggars, as bad as any white bum you ever saw at home. The men—and the women, too—are addicted to whiskey.”
    “You mean they’re like Betsy Pride’s father?” Betsy was a girl who lived in a shack with her father on a rundown farm not far from where we had lived. Her mother was dead, her brother had run off, and she lived alone with her father, who was