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I’ve even encouraged the ladies to maintain journals. I believe the story of their time on the frontier will prove of value to history.”
    The general’s tone conveyed an air of finality on the topic. Still, Annabelle couldn’t resist a final challenge. “If there’s to be peace with the Indians, why do you need to build the forts?”
    The general’s accelerated speech had affected her own manner, and the words escaped Annabelle’s mouth before she weighed them. The junior officers braced for an outburst, but the general’s manners held. Indeed, he smiled at her, his eyes alight like a fencer enjoying an unaccustomed challenge. He offered her a quick nod. It was as close as he would come to a bow, she suspected, or a concession of defeat.
    One of the other officers answered, a short, thickset man with a receding hairline and prodigious sideburns. He patted her arm as he said, “You don’t think we can trust the red devils, now do you? We need the forts to make sure they stay in line.”
    The others hastily agreed, but Annabelle noticed Sherman said nothing. The look he gave her was anything but patronizing, and she recalled that not long ago her family feared this man even more than Indians. How wise are we to trust our safety to his assurances?

C HAPTER F OURTEEN
    The wagons headed out the next day, moving west toward the Platte River, which they would follow until the river forked. From there, they would follow the North Platte to Fort Laramie and the shortcut promised by their guides. With favorable weather, the Colonel estimated it would take six weeks to reach the outpost. Annabelle found it beyond her imagining that they could travel for so long and still not even be halfway to their destination. Yet the Colonel said they would need another two months from that point to reach Virginia City.
    On leaving Omaha, Annabelle’s apprehension in abandoning everything she knew gave way to wonder at what she discovered. After weeks in town, everything smelled fresh. Even the air seemed lighter, bringing a crisp clarity to her vision as in moments after a rain. In one spot where the new telegraph line stood like a final tether to civilization, she counted more than a hundred poles. She tried calculating how many it would take to traverse the plains, but the numbers swirled in her head like driftwood bobbing among waves.
    Walking behind the family’s wagon, Annabelle’s thoughts turned to the sea more than once. The tall grass that surrounded their path rose and fell in the breeze like ocean swells. Just as waves’ peaks and troughs reveal themselves only once a boat is among them, the seemingly flat land unveiled a contoured terrain of rolling hills, thorny bushes and wildflowers as the wagons passed.
    When they stopped at midday for a meal and to rest the stock, Annabelle and her cousin Caroline collected flowers to press in a book. Annabelle couldn’t remember the last time she’d pressed flowers. She must have been a child. Back then, she treated her younger cousin like a living doll, dressing Caroline in hand-me-down clothes, forcing her to sit still while she brushed her straight, blonde hair, making her learn her letters. Though no longer a child, Caroline’s youth eased her adjustment to their new environment in ways Annabelle envied.
    The first evening in camp, the Colonel showed the ladies what he called an old Indian trick—ridding blankets and bedding of lice and fleas by spreading them over anthills. Annabelle smiled to imagine the horrified reaction among the ladies of Charleston on learning the necessity of such a chore. Yet that wasn’t the last challenge to Annabelle’s sense of decorum.
    Plainly put, there were no privies on the trail. Annabelle had known this, of course. What she hadn’t counted on was how the damnably flat and treeless terrain denied any sense of solitude. Annabelle hoped a solution would present