CHAPTER ONE   
(1872)
 "Sh-h!"  Frank placed his hand over Beau's mouth.  "Old Man Davis is coming."  He glanced beyond the outhouse at the end of the path.   Beau's shoulders shook with mirth. Together the two boys watched a light bob and weave its way through the trees.  From their hiding place they had a perfect view of both the path and the back of the small wood structure. 
 "Hurry," Frank whispered encouragement to the tiny flame licking at the weathered boards at the back of the shanty.  Old Man Davis would wet his pants and make all kinds of threats when he saw the burning privy. 
 This was the third outhouse he and Beau had set fire to tonight.  They hadn't stayed around to watch the first privy go up in flames, but had beat a hasty retreat when they saw a man with a rifle run out of the nearby rundown shack where an odd assortment of mostly women and children had spent the winter.  They were rumored to be Mormons on their way to a settlement in Mexico.
 The second privy had been more fun.  They'd gotten an eye full when flames shot up the back of the outhouse behind the saloon and the mayor had burst through the door with his trousers almost tripping him.  They'd beat a hasty retreat when a dozen men charged out of the back door of the saloon, armed with buckets and whatever else they could lay their hands on to beat out the flames.
 At last the schoolmaster emerged from the trees, waving his lantern and stumbling as he walked.  Frank stifled a chortle.  Davis, the high and mighty schoolmaster, was drunk!   The man who was usually so prim and proper staggered toward the privy, tastefully concealed from his house by a grove of trees.  He fumbled with the wooden peg that secured the door on the outside to keep it from flapping should a gust of wind sweep through the small clearing. The thin little man stepped inside and the waiting boys heard the latch that secured the door from the inside drop into place.
 Frank peered through the dark at the back of the outhouse, wondering what was taking so long?  There was a red glow, but it didn't appear to have taken hold.  The dry wood of the other two privies had burst into flame almost instantly. 
 "It's not burning fast enough," he whispered.  "Old Davis will finish his business and be on his way before this one takes off."
 "Let's lock him in," Beau mumbled and Frank grinned.  Davis wasn't the only one who had drunk a little more than he could handle.  Beau's ma would have him hauling water and scrubbing the wash tomorrow to teach him a lesson.
 Beau was already on his feet, tip-toeing toward the privy door about as gracefully as an ox.  Frank hurried after him.  He wanted to scare the schoolmaster, but he didn't figure it would be a good idea to lock him inside the outhouse.  Should the thin planks suddenly burst into flame, Davis might be injured.  He found his own steps a bit unsteady and Beau was reaching for the wooden peg when a whoosh of sound alerted Frank that something wasn't right.  The kerosene lantern!  Old Man Davis had carried a lit lantern into the privy!  Frank lunged toward his friend, pushing him toward the ground.  Together they rolled.
 An explosion ripped the soft, Southern night, sending a rain of fiery debris into the sky.  It fell, pelting their backs, leaving scorched holes in their shirts and scattering flames into the woods.   He could hear Beau's rough panting beneath him and knew his friend was winded, but all right.
 A scream reached his ears and he remembered Davis.  He rolled off of Beau and straightened in time to see the schoolmaster tearing up the path, his flaming pants trailing from one ankle.  Fire licked at the running man's shirt tail and Frank knew that in a matter of seconds the flames would reach the queue of hair the fussy man kept tied at the back of his neck. 
 Gathering his legs beneath him, Frank lunged toward the fleeing figure, bringing him down with a resounding crash and rolling with him to extinguish the flames.  He beat at the fire, ignoring the pain to his own hands until he was satisfied no lingering sparks remained.  At last, he rocked back on his heels to survey the figure sprawled in the dust.  He reached out a hand to turn the old man over, intending to help him to his feet, but a shout caught his attention and from the corner of his eye he saw Beau disappearing into the bushes where the two of them had crouched earlier.
 Frank rose to his feet.  Someone was coming, and if he didn't run they'd catch him.  He looked at the unmoving figure lying at his feet and heard him groan.  Angry voices carried on the night air, coming closer.  They'd take care of Davis.  He turned in the direction his friend had disappeared and began to run.
 He caught up to Beau at the woodshed behind Beau's house.  The fight that ensued resulted in a black eye and a chipped tooth for Beau to have to explain to his mother the next morning. 
 "I yelled for you to run," Beau grumbled.  He pulled a bottle from behind a pile of logs and rolled it across his throbbing eye for a moment before uncorking it and taking a deep pull.  He held out the bottle to Frank, who accepted it and took a swallow before handing it back.  Beau took another long drink.
 "Think they'll know it was us?" Beau asked, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
 "Probably," Frank answered.  "Doesn't matter.  Pa will blame me no matter what."
 "Still plannin' to head for Galveston soon's you're eighteen?"
 "Yeah.  Two more months and I'm out of here."  Frank reached for the bottle again, holding it absently without drinking.  "No way am I going to be Uncle Dan's flunky."
 "Thought you liked writin' essays and all that sissy stuff."  Beau reclaimed the bottle.
 "Uncle Dan's idea of an apprentice is someone to empty the slops, sweep floors, and clean the type.  He does all the writing himself.  He says all that stuff builds character and teaches responsibility."
 "How come yer Pa ain't sendin' ya to medical school in Boston?   He always said he was gonna."
 " I never wanted to be a doc like Pa."  Frank slid to the ground, leaning his head back against the rough planks of the shed.  "Anyway, old Davis told Pa and Uncle Dan it'd be a waste of money to make me a doc.  He said I haven't got what it takes and I should stay right here and work for Dan."
 "Yer smart enough," Beau protested.
 "Smarts isn't what he meant," Frank replied with a sneer.  "Old Davis said it's fortitude and maturity I lack and likely always will."
 "What'd your pa and Dan say ‘bout that?" Beau slurred the words.
 "Not much, so I suppose they agree.  Uncle Dan just said he'd teach me responsibility when I started working for him."
 "Ya think old Davis is dead?" Beau changed the subject.
 "Naw, he's not dead, but if he finds out it was us, he'll send the sheriff after us."
 "Ma'll kill me iffen the sheriff comes lookin' fer me. Iffen she don't, Betsy will."  Beau rose to his feet, casting an apprehensive glance toward the dark house.  Beau was on the outs with his sister for telling their mother he frequently skipped school to go fishing.  Frank hid a smile, knowing Beau would be in even greater trouble if Betsy learned Beau was doing more drinking than fishing on the days when he failed to show up at Old Man Davis's school house.  He envied Beau in a way.  He wished he had a ma and a little sister who cared whether or not he drank or went to school.
 Frank turned back toward his friend, grabbed the bottle, and hid it behind a chunk of wood.  Beau seemed to agree that he'd had enough.  Without a word, he took an unsteady step toward the house, then another.  Frank watched him for several minutes, then turned toward home, regretting that his own feet were somewhat unsteady. 
 He figured Pa would be waiting up for him, and it might, at best, be a paternal lecture.  As he approached the two-story frame house in which his mother had once taken so much pride, he could see there was a lot more going on than just Pa waiting up for him.  Every room on the first floor level was lit up, and the front door hung open, spilling light onto the wide front veranda.  A buggy and half a dozen saddle horses were hitched to the rail in front of the house, and several men could be seen lounging on the wide porch while others passed between the lights and windows inside.
 Recognizing the buggy as Pa's and the big bay gelding as the sheriff's, he figured he was in bigger trouble than even he had expected.  Leaving the alley, he slipped into his mother's overgrown garden to circle behind the house, choosing the darkest shadows to conceal his approach.  If he could make it up the oak tree near his bedroom window, he might be able to pretend he'd been in bed all evening.
 The sound of his own name caught his attention as he hunkered near the oak tree, so he crept closer to the parlor window to hear better.  Raising his head slightly, he was able to see into the room that had once been his mother's pride.  The room was filled to capacity with men, including several prominent figures.
 "You don't know it was Frank."  He recognized Uncle Dan's voice which went on with a definite sneer.  "You were so busy trying to avoid being recognized you didn't see a thing."
 "The schoolmaster identified him."  The mayor was properly clothed now.  He scowled in Dan's direction.  
 "The schoolmaster didn't see who attacked him.  He heard someone yell what might have been Frank's name," Uncle Dan argued.  "Davis is so drunk, he can't be considered a reliable witness."  Dan almost sounded as though he were siding with Frank.
 "Everyone in town knows it was Frank Haladen and that Mason boy," someone else grumbled.
 "And Doc Haladen admits the boy ain't in his bed like he ought to be," another voice added.
 Pastor Longsworth added his solemn pronouncement, "We've been pretty patient with those boys for a long time, Doc.  Beau losing his pa and your Frank his ma to the fever takes some adjustment, but they aren't boys any more.  They're almost grown and need to start taking their licks like men."
 "Who but the Lord knows the workings of a boy's soul?"  Pa said as though the whole discussion centered on a matter of philosophy instead of whether or not his own son was about to be locked up in the sheriff's jail.
 "A night in jail might be the savin' of those two rascals," the sheriff's voice boomed.  "Boys are apt to tip a few outhouses, maybe even set one or two on fire, but we can't have 'em beatin' folks up.  Besides, if Alvin Tiltwater hadn't come along the whole town could have burned from the fire that spread into the woods."
 Frank noticed Pa wasn't saying anything in his defense.  Pa didn't care about anuthing since Ma and Alice died, and certainly not about him.  He wanted to jump up and tell the sheriff he hadn't beat up anybody; he'd saved Davis's life by putting out the fire spreading up the schoolteacher's clothing.  He hadn't started a fire in the woods either.  That old fool-Davis-had done that himself with his kerosene lantern.
 "Look, you boys go on home."  It was Uncle Dan speaking again.  "Edmund is dead on his feet.  He was up all night last night with Mrs. Frandson, birthing her twins.  He saw patients all day, then Calvin Davis tonight.  I'll stick around and talk to Frank when he comes in."
 "That young hooligan needs more than a talking to," the mayor protested.
 "A night or two in jail is what he needs," the sheriff put in.  "I'm chargin' him with attempted murder and destruction of property."
 "Don't be more of a fool than you can help," Uncle Dan shot back.   "Even a boy has the right to be heard."
 "Don't worry about Frank."  Pa finally spoke up.  "Davis said he won't have him back in the classroom.  Come tomorrow, he'll be working at the newspaper office.  Dan will keep him too busy to cause any more mischief."  Pa's words didn't sit well with Frank. 
 "You can count on that."  There was a grimness in Dan's voice that didn't bode well for any future working relationship with his nephew.  Frank didn't know why it was any of Uncle Dan's business anyway.  His uncle was Ma's younger brother, but he always acted like he was the one in charge when he was only six years older than Frank. 
 Pa had pretty much raised Uncle Dan, and Ma was the only mother his uncle remembered.  Ma had been nineteen and Dan just four when Grandpa Ellsworth died early in the war, leaving his newspaper to his children.  Ma had worked at the paper most of her life and continued to manage it even after she married Pa a few years later.  When Pa moved west, Dan had helped Ma pack up the printing press and came with them. Since Ma died of the fever two years ago, Dan had run the paper alone.  He was always fussing about Pa working himself into a grave and Frank not helping enough.  Frank was tired of it.  Besides, it seemed to him-that since half of the newspaper had belonged to Ma, it should be as much Frank's as Dan's anyway, but Dan never talked about Frank becoming a partner.
 From what Frank could gather from the talk inside the parlor, he was through with school sooner than expected, so there wasn't any reason to wait around for the sheriff to put him in jail or for Uncle Dan to work him to death.  It wasn't his fault drunken old Davis had carried a lighted lantern into the outhouse.  He wasn't going to be the one taking orders from Dan and sweeping out the newspaper office in the morning either.  He could be in Galveston in three days.  He'd heard there were plenty of opportunities there for a bright young man like himself.
 Taking advantage of the raised voices, he climbed the tree and silently slipped through a window into his bedroom.  It didn't take long to stuff a couple changes of clothing into a duffle bag and collect the small pouch of coins he'd been saving.  He picked up the single shot rifle that Uncle Dan had passed on to him when they'd gone hunting last year.  He started for the window, then turned back to pull from his bed the quilt Ma had made for him.   For just a moment he paused with the quilt in his hands, thinking of his mother.  It was almost as though she stood before him.  He could clearly see disappointment in her eyes.  He shook off the image, folded the quilt in thirds, then made short work of rolling it into a tight bundle which he secured with a rawhide thong.
 Back at the window, he could hear stomping and grumbling and knew Uncle Dan had convinced the men to leave, which meant he didn't have much time.  Not daring to make any noise that might attract attention, he couldn't drop his bag and the quilt to the ground, but had to hang onto them and the rifle as he made an awkward struggle down the tree.  At last, he felt the soft brush of grass.  Once on the ground, he made his way to the spring house.
 One thing about Pa being the only doctor in town, they always had plenty of food.  Two thirds of Pa's patients paid him in goods rather than cash, and the spring house was always filled with a generous supply of meat and produce.  He helped himself to a slab of bacon, a ham, and as many other supply items as he figured he'd need in a week.  That would give him plenty of time to find work, probably on one of the ships where he wouldn't need to worry about room and board. In a few months he'd be visiting the exotic places he'd only read about in the tattered geography book Old Man Davis passed from pupil to pupil.
 Leaving the spring house he crept toward the stable.  He didn't enter, but settled himself with his supplies in a clump of shrubs where he could watch the double doors.  He expected Dan would soon lead Pa's buggy and mare to the small barn.  He didn't have to wait long.
 Just as he expected, Dan soon showed up leading Pa's horse.  He carried a lantern, which he hung on a nail just inside the doors, then began releasing the animal's harness.  Piece by piece, he undid the array of straps and buckles, then hung the harness in its place, ready for Pa to grab from its familiar hooks the next time he was called out.  Dan seemed to take forever brushing and currying the old nag, who stood patiently with her nose in a feed bag.  When he finally finished, he led the horse outside and released her into a narrow, poled yard where she could move about freely. Two other horses made soft sounds of greeting to the mare as they moved toward her from the pasture that adjoined the corral.  Dan didn't lower the pole gate separating the horses.  Frank knew the mare was always kept in the corral at night in case she was needed in a hurry, but both his horse and Dan's roamed freely in the larger pasture edged by a new orchard he and Dan had planted and watered by hand three summers ago.
 Dan leaned against the top pole of the corral and didn't move for several minutes.  He stood as though lost in thought watching the horses, then slowly turned back to the stable where he hung up the brushes and reached for the lantern. Frank felt a twinge of conscience.  Uncle Dan looked sad and loaded down with care.  For just a moment, Frank considered calling to him and offering to help out at the paper, but Dan extinguished the light and closed the double doors before turning around, revealing a tight-lipped grimness.  Frank watched him move with long strides toward the back porch. 
 Frank felt strange, knowing he'd probably never see his uncle again.  Dan had been his boyhood hero, then his disapproving jailer.  For just a moment, he wished things could be the way they were before Ma and little Alice died.  Dan hadn't been so serious then and the two of them had been close friends and brothers.  Now he took care of Pa like Pa was sick and bossed Frank around like he was Frank's pa.
 Once he was certain Uncle Dan had returned to the house, Frank slipped inside the rundown barn.  He didn't dare light the lantern, so he stumbled about in the dark locating his saddle and bridle.  Once back outside, he considered the two horses still stretching their necks over the corral fence as though gossiping with Pa's old mare.  Ma's mare was the better horse.  She was both larger and stronger than the gentle mare his parents had given him for his twelfth birthday.  He eyed her for several minutes, then turned away.  She was also harder to catch and Pa needed her to spell off his buggy horse, besides Dan had considered the horse his ever since the mare he'd previously ridden broke her leg and had to be put down.  Frank wouldn't take anything for which Dan could fault him.
 He approached his own mare and made short work of saddling Molly and stowing his gear.  Dan had hinted that Frank might be getting a better horse when he turned eighteen and for a moment he regretted leaving without the better animal, but Molly would do.  He wouldn't need a horse after he reached Galveston, and though the money he'd get for selling the old horse wouldn't be much, it would tide him over until he started drawing wages.
 He led the horse to the gate and didn't mount until he was a good distance from the house.  He didn't want Uncle Dan coming after him or any of the town people being alerted to his departure.  He approached Beau's house from the back and took the precaution of leaving Molly behind the ramshackle structure that served as the Mason's woodshed.  He approached the house on foot, and when a handful of stones tossed against Beau's window failed to rouse his friend, Frank retreated to where he'd left Molly.  Beau didn't own a horse and Frank doubted his friend would leave his ma and little sisters to fend for themselves anyway.  It was just that it didn't seem right to leave without telling his best friend good-bye.
 A light came on in the room next to Beau's.  That would be Betsy's room.  He considered leaving a message for Beau with her, then decided against it.  She'd likely throw something at him if he tapped on her window–either that or threaten to scream until he let her go with him.  There was no telling with Betsy.  He realized, with a start, that he'd miss Beau's tow-headed little sister.  She'd been following him and Beau ever since she learned to walk. And just last Sunday, he'd seen her all dressed up for church and looking right pretty.  He dismissed that train of thought.  He had more important things to think about.
 "Looks like we're on our own." Frank patted Molly's neck and swung into the saddle.  He patted the mare's neck again and looked back one last time toward Beau's window, then the window next to his.  The light flickered out. 
 Frank didn't need Beau.  Beau would just hold him back.  Frank dug his heels into Molly's sides.  He'd be in Galveston in no time.  An exciting new life waited for him.
 Once he left town behind, he urged Molly to her greatest speed for several miles, but when the horse tired, he let her pick her own pace, and they ambled slowly into the night.  Stars shone above, the night was clear, and he had plenty of time to think.  Being alone wasn't quite as easy as he'd expected.  He considered turning back, but pride stiffened his resolve.  He hadn't done anything so terribly wrong.  Probably every grown man in Willow Springs had tipped or burned an outhouse when he was young.  He would be eighteen years old in a few days, but Pa and Dan treated him like a child.  He'd show them.

 * * *
 It took longer to reach Galveston than he'd expected.  He overslept twice, and he took the wrong trail and had to retrace his steps, which cost him a day.  Preparing his own meals took longer than expected as well, and he quickly discovered he wasn't nearly as good a cook as Dan, who had done the cooking during their boyhood camping and hunting treks. When he finally looked out across the bay toward Galveston Island, he forgot the sore behind, sun-burned skin, and half-cooked meals that he'd endured for almost a week.  His fantasies of becoming a sailor and rapidly rising to become an officer filled his head.  He'd contact several ship captains and see which one made the best offer.
 Among the businesses near the causeway connecting the island city to the mainland, he finally located a livery stable.  It was small, and the old man who greeted him looked him over, clucked a few times, then demanded payment in advance.  Frank fished out the requisite coins, then stalked away, miffed, thinking the old man should have treated him with more respect.
 Frank surrendered more of his supply of coins for a seat on the train.  He'd never had the opportunity of riding a train before, and he found something both thrilling and frightening about crossing over water on the heavy train, but when he at last made his way down a city street to a wharf that stretched out over the water, his heart seemed to pound in his chest.  The sun shimmered on white-edged waves rolling easily across the deep blue of the gulf.  Even the air seemed to smell different.  It was beautiful and exciting and he was about to realize his dream of visiting strange, exotic places.  Someday he'd return to Willow Springs a rich and important man, an envied world-traveler. 
 After exploring for hours, the sun began to set and his stomach reminded him breakfast had been a long time ago.  He turned his attention to looking for a place to purchase a meal.  The businesses in this part of town appeared rough and crude, but at last he spotted a weathered wooden building that looked like a place where a man might find liquid refreshment and something to eat.  Stepping inside the dim interior, he recognized the rank odor of unwashed bodies and alcohol.  He straightened his shoulders and swaggered a bit.  He belonged in a place like this, where brawny men ate hearty stews and drank a few mugs of ale while talking about the places they'd been.  He didn't need more education or a dreary apprenticeship; he was a man now, and soon he'd be doing a man's work, earning a man's pay.