Free Kaki Warner by Miracle in New Hope

meaning, but it was nice just the same. Even nicer was that she seemed to regard him as a normal man and not one to be feared or pitied.
    Roscoe wandered in and poked his cold nose against Daniel’s cheek. Daniel batted him away and pulled the bedroll tighter. The temperature dropped. Yet despite the chill, with Roscoe at his back and thoughts of Lacy Ellis crowding his mind, he managed to stay warm enough that he finally drifted to sleep.
    The weather held, and they reached Volker’s Crossing late the next afternoon. It seemed a prosperous place—a few houses, a cantina that rented upstairs rooms by the hour, a barbershop that offered haircuts and tooth-pullings as well as hot baths, and a sprawling general store situated at the confluence of two fast-running creeks. But with winter full on them, there weren’t many horses outside the cantina, and few shoppers browsed the shelves in the store.
    Content to let Jackson and his sister do the talking, Daniel let them precede him inside. While they spoke to the storekeeper, he wandered the aisles, knowing this was the last place Hannah had been seen by her family. He wasn’t sure what he expected—a feeling, some lingering sense of her presence, a voice whispering in his mind. But there was nothing. Just a store filled with goods and watched over by a fat calico cat dozing in the front window.
    By the time he’d gathered the few supplies he needed, the other two had finished questioning the old man behind the counter. It was apparent by their expressions that the storekeeper had imparted no new information. Mrs. Ellis’s face had taken on a pinched look, as if her skin had shrunk against her cheekbones. Even her pretty eyes had lost their luster.
    “So now what?” she asked her brother when they stopped beside Daniel near the front door. “Do we search for her here? Or try somewhere else?”
    “Ask him. He’s the one brought us on this fool’s errand.”
    Daniel ignored Jackson. “Doc Halstead told me most of what happened the day your daughter disappeared, but he didn’t mention what time of day you and Hannah came into the store.”
    “Morning. Early. It looked like snow, and we wanted to leave as soon as Tom and Harvey put on the new wheel. Why?”
    “She like cats?”
    “Hannah?” She frowned at her brother, then back at Daniel. “Yes, she likes cats. They’re her favorite animal. What does that have to do with anything?”
    “Just curious.” He turned to Jackson. “We camping here tonight?”
    “By the creek.” Jackson held open the door for his sister. “But first we’re going to the bathhouse.” He shot Daniel a pointed look. “You ought to come, too. You smell like horse.”
    “You go on. I need to pay for these.”
    After they left, he set his items—a ten-pound bag of grain, a packet of buffalo jerky, and three slightly soft apples—on the counter. While the storekeeper, an older man with a squint and more gums than teeth, tallied the total, Daniel mentioned the calico and asked if the cat was a good mouser.
    “Worthless. Prefers frogs. Damn thing sleeps half the time, prowls the creek the other half. Mice are eating my profits.” He looked up, his gaze skimming Daniel’s scar, then falling away. “That’ll be a two thirty-two.”
    Daniel handed him three silver dollars. “Last year, the day that little girl went missing, many folks in town?”
    “More than here today. Must have been eight or ten wagons lined up along the creek. German pilgrims, mostly. Here’s your change.”
    Daniel slipped the coins into his trouser pocket. “Remember where they were headed?”
    “West. Same as everybody comes through here in the fall. Trying to clear the pass before winter hits. Want me to wrap the jerky and apples?”
    “No, thanks.” Daniel slipped them into the pockets of his jacket. “Anything between here and the pass? Maybe a town or water stop?”
    “There’s a fort halfway up the west fork. But we’re the only store for fifty