I was still sobbing, beating on the nut with the wrench like a demented person, when the man on horseback appeared around the bend behind me. Rescued! I was never so glad to see anybody in my life, even if he was a complete stranger.

He reined up and called out: “Miss? Are you all right?”

“Yes. It’s the wheel.” I banged on the hub again. “I can’t get the spindle nut free to tighten it.”

“Let me see what I can do.” Quickly he dismounted and came up next to me to have a look. “If you’ll let me have that wrench, I think I can do the job.”

And he did. In less than ten minutes he had the nut tight again so the wheel no longer wobbled. I smiled at him, my best smile. He was a good-looking man with a bushy mustache and bright blue eyes. And he had nice manners, almost courtly. Old, though. Older than Dad. He must have been at least forty. His name, he said, was Boone Nesbitt.

I told him mine and said: “I can’t thank you enough for your help, Mister Nesbitt.”

“My pleasure. We’re both heading in the same direction, Miss Murdock. Would you mind if I rode along with you? That wheel should hold, but in this weather…”

“I’d be grateful if you would.”

He tied his piebald horse to the buckboard and climbed up next to me on the seat. I let him take the reins. Usually I can do anything a man can, even work the ferry winch, but I was wet and miserable, and, if he wanted to drive, I was more than willing to let him.

“You live at Twelve-Mile Slough, is that right?” he asked after we were under way.

“How’d you know?”

“The storekeeper in River Bend. He’s a talkative gent.”

“What else did he tell you?”

“That your father is ferrymaster there. T.J. Murdock.”

“That’s right.”

“The same T.J. Murdock who writes sketches and articles for San Francisco newspapers and magazines?”