Free Fire on the Plains (Western Fire) by Kate Wingo

replied, his gray eyes completely focused on the rutted pike over which they traveled.
    Having left the rolling hills of Missouri behind them, the well-traveled road cut an unrelentingly straight swath across a verdant plain. Mile after mile, the Kansas scenery had remained unchanged. Or at least it seemed that way to Lydia, habituated as she was to the tree-covered Ozarks.
    “If we don’t have a house, can we live in our wagon?” Dixie inquired, twisting around on Ben’s lap as she spoke.
    “You keep an eye on those horses , Corporal Dixie. If you don’t help me hold these reins, I’m liable to run us off the road.”
    “Yes, sir, Captain Ben.”
    Ever since Ben let Dixie ‘drive’ the wagon, her daughter’s sole delight revolved around the unexplored facets of trail life. Rather sweetly, she’d even taken to following Ben when he unharnessed the horses and hobbled them for the night. Though such pursuits could hardly be called ladylike, it did keep Dixie from falling prey to boredom.
    Distressingly, Lydia noticed that Ben had failed to answer Dixie’s question in regards to living out of the wagon. Having never been homeless before, she didn’t know how she felt about that possibility. Granted, the wagon was spacious enough for traveling. But to live in it, like a band of itinerant vagabonds? Why, it was unthinkable. These were civilized times. And civilized people lived in houses. Just because Ben preferred sleeping out-of-doors, it didn’t mean that she was anxious to do so, as well. Why her husband chose to bed down on the hard, cold ground each night remained a mystery. Lydia could only assume that he’d grown overly accustomed to sleeping under the stars when he was a soldier.
    “Do you see that clump of trees over there on the right, about half a mile yonder?” Ben released his hold on the reins to point out a blurry patch of green ery in the distance.
    Dixie excitedly nodded, her red curls bouncing atop her shoulders.
    “Your new home is on the other side of those trees,” Ben told her, a note of manly pride in his voice. “Now, what do we tell the horses when we want them to go to the right?”
    “Gee!” Dixie shouted, repeating the command a seco nd time.
    Though not enthralled to hear her daughter scream like a banshee, there was no denying that Dixie made an endearingly charming teamster. Evidently, Ben thought so, too, a hint of a smile lurking beneath his swooping mustache.
    “That’s my girl,” he complimented, helping Dixie to steer the horse team to the right, the wagon bumping and swaying as it lumbered across the grassy plain.
    Anxious to see the damaged farmhouse, Ben peered at the grove of cottonwoods that blocked his line of sight. If the farm was in as dire a condition as his sister Mercy had claimed, he’d finally be able to put his new wife to good use. So far, she was only good for cooking, nagging, and dressing stylishly.
    Well, maybe not nagging, per se. But Lydia did have a way of getting her point across that usually rubbed him the wrong way. Maybe it was that queenly air of hers, the way that she held herself ramrod straight, her hands primly folded together in front of her. Truth be told, Ben had known drill sergeants with less vinegar to them than his new wife. Although, circumstances being what they were, he was having a hard time thinking of Lydia as anything other than James McCabe’s long-suffering widow. Which is why he’d convinced himself that sleeping under the stars on a gum rubber blanket preferable to sleeping beside Lydia on a comfortable feather tick—
    What the hell!
    Reaching under the seat, Ben grabbed his Henry rifle.
    “Corporal Dixie, you better scoot over there next to your mother.”
    Obediently, the child scampered off his lap.
    “Mister Strong, is something the matter?”
    Ben glanced at Lydia, wondering if he should tell her that he’d just seen a plume of smoke hovering above the tree line. Since his was the only farm in the vicinity,