Leaving Independence Read Online Free Page A

something.
    “Trains leaving Independence go right by Fort Hall,” said Charlie. “I’ve studied the maps!”
    “What trains are you talking about?” asked Corrine, her blond brow twisted. “Track hasn’t been laid that far west yet.”
    “Wagon trains!”
    “Live in a wagon? With strangers?” Corrine sized up her older brother. “Are you out of your mind, Charlie?”
    “We would have our own wagon, Corrine. With a cover over it.” Charlie grew more excited, which got Jacob excited.
    “We’d see buffalo!” Jacob’s nine-year-old eyes grew as large as Mimi’s biscuits. “Me and Charlie could shoot some.”
    Corrine huffed and looked at Abigail. “I hope you’re not listening to him.”
    “People do it all the time,” insisted Charlie. “Thousands of people.”
    “And how many get scalped by Indians? Bleed to death on the side of the trail?”
    “That’s enough, Corrine.” Abigail watched Lina’s face wrinkle in worry.
    Corrine had talked earliest, walked earliest, and asserted her independence earliest of all the Baldwyn children. Two schoolmasters at the Marston schoolhouse had declared her the brightest student ever to grace the building. But the quickness of her mind sometimes caused her to be impatient with others. Lina, on the other hand, was all gentleness and sensitivity.
    Abigail looked across the table at Mimi, who was watching Charlie with her brows pulled together.
    Jacob was the rash one, not Charlie. What made Charlie think of such a thing . . . going out west to be with Robert? No. There had to be another solution.
    “We are not going to Independence and joining a wagon train so we can chase your father out west,” said Abigail, signaling an end to the discussion.
    But she was wrong.

    Hoke’s eyes locked on a white filly. He and James sat on their mounts and stared at a herd of wild horses in the Texan basin below.
    “Yes, sir.” James grinned. “Just settin’ there waitin’ for us. My luck, the day I met you. There’s something about not seeing you get clawed by a two-hundred-pound cat, then coming out on this rise looking at our next year’s income, that makes me sentimental.”
    Hoke took off his once-black hat and smoothed back his dark hair. He needed a haircut . . . and a shave . . . and a bath. Afternoon sunlight sparkled off a creek winding through the picturesque basin below. “You think that creek’s deep enough for a full-body bath?” It would make for another cold one, but that was the kind he was used to.
    “I make a profession of gratitude and you want to know if the creek’s deep enough to wash in? That really hurts, Hoke.”
    “You rattle on more than I got ears to tolerate.”
    “But I was sayin’ nice things. It looks like you could tolerate listenin’ to nice things.”
    As their horses picked a careful footing down the slope of the hillside, James asked, “Take ’em to St. Jo or Council Bluff?”
    “Independence.”
    “I thought you didn’t like Independence.”
    “Why’d you think that?”
    “You never want to go there when I suggest it.”
    “Well . . . suggest it now.”
    James shot him a look. “Is the trail dust itchin’ you?”
    Hoke didn’t answer. He was watching the white Appaloosa, who was now watching him. He and James were nearly to the bottom of the hill. Several horses in the wild herd had raised their heads to eye them. That Appaloosa had been the first.
    “Always said I wouldn’t keep a white horse,” Hoke said. A white horse was easy to spot. It made a man a target. “But she’s a beauty.”
    “I think that cat done spooked you. That’s what I think. And now you’re drawn to the angelic. Say, aren’t you from Independence?”
    “It’s where my folks are buried.” The cat hadn’t spooked Hoke, but his dreams of Independence had. Why was he suddenly filled with longing to see those grave markers again . . . to walk those dusty streets? Independence was calling him back after a twenty-year