My luck had been running fine until River Bend and the sharp-eyed citizen and that hard-nosed sheriff. There were store boats plying this delta country, but not so many that a wagon seller couldn’t make a decent living for himself. Farmers and their wives in need of clasp knives and pocket watches, writing paper and bottles of ink, saddle blankets, good maguey rope, bottles of liniment and cough syrup and female complaint medicine, needles and thread, pots and pans, spices and seasonings, yards of calico and gingham. Town citizens, too, eager to buy when their local mercantiles ran out of the goods I carried in this old red and green, slab-sided wagon with the fresh-painted words on each side:

James Shock-Fine Wares, Patent Medicines, Knives Sharpened Free of Charge

And here and there, now and then, a few dollars to be promoted by other means. Yes, and a lonely wife or a comely young miss with a yearning for sachets and perfumes and silver Indian jewlery, and an eye for a bold young banjo-strumming traveling man.

Oh, it was a good life most of the time. Freedom. New places and new sights, and seldom the same ones twice. Even a touch of danger, and not only from the elements. For an itinerant merchant was prey to thieves who sought his money and penniless scoundrels who attempted to pilfer his wares. Not that any of them had ever succeeded in relieving Ben Shock’s son of what belonged to him, no siree. The nickel-plated revolver I carried under my coat, and the Greener loaded with shells of ounce-and-a-half shot beneath the wagon seat, had seen their share of action since I inherited the wagon from my old man six years ago. And would again, I had no doubt.

The wagon bucked and skidded again, and I drew hard on the reins and braced myself on the rain-slick seat. “Steady, Nell!” I called out to the old dappled gray. She’d been a fine horse in her day, but that day was nearly past. I would have to replace her soon, before she fell over dead in the trace-as the old man had fallen over dead while mixing up a batch of worm medicine that afternoon in Carson City. It was a sad thing to watch animals and folks grow old. I was glad to be young and hale. Yes, and, if I had my druthers, that was how I would die.