Free Messenger by Moonlight by Stephanie Grace Whitson Page B

the draw to pick up Shadow’s trail. As for the other horses, I don’t imagine they went far. Once the sun came out, they probably forgot why they were running and went to grazing.”
    Luther nodded. “It’d be good to make Valley Home before dark if we can. That’s about ten miles on up the trail.”
    “We’ll do our best,” Frank said.
    Once he’d put a little distance between himself and camp, he took a little sip of whiskey, grateful for the warmth it spread through his midsection.
    He caught up with Shadow just before sundown. She met his approach—or, rather, Outlaw’s approach—with a welcoming nicker.

Chapter 7

    Early in the evening, a week into the ten-day journey to Clearwater, Annie and Shadow had just picked their way across a creek and come alongside Luther’s wagon when the freighter pointed at a barely discernible gray dot on the horizon. “Hollenberg Station. One of the best-run places between here and Clearwater.”
    As they rode along, Luther spoke of Gerat and Sophia Hollenberg, the German couple who had, just three years previously, built a single-room log cabin at a prime spot on the California-Oregon trail. As their business grew, they added on. The single room eventually expanded to the current six-room building that, in addition to the family’s quarters, housed a grocery and dry goods store, an unofficial post office, a meal-serving tavern, and a loft offering overnight lodging. “See that barn?” He pointed at the massive structure just past the station. “Stalls for one hundred horses or mules.” He waxed positively lyrical about Mrs. Hollenberg’s cooking.
    Dozens of immigrant camps dotted the landscape between the creek and the long, low building with the peaked, shingled roof. When Luther learned the barn was “full up,” he pulled his freight wagon alongside a large corral. Everyone in their train worked together, unsaddling, unharnessing, and unhitching their nearly twenty animals and turning them into the corral. By the time the horses and mules were tendedand the tack stored beneath the freight wagon, the evening star had come out.
    Luther led the way up the hill to the clapboard building. Opening the main door, he waved Annie in ahead of him. She stepped into a large room with gleaming, whitewashed walls. An open door in the far wall revealed shelves laden with goods. A tidy woman dressed in an indigo calico dress and a spotless apron stood behind a counter to the left of that doorway, talking to a buckskin-clad customer. Nearby, a two-burner stove radiated warmth. Luther pointed to a door to their right, “The stairs to the loft—the ‘hotel’ part of the operation.”
    At the sound of Luther’s voice, the woman behind the counter looked up with a welcoming smile. “Luther Mufsy! You are in luck! Today we have dumplings.” She handed a small cloth bag to her customer and stepped out from behind the counter. Without waiting for an introduction, she motioned for everyone to follow her as she led the way past the small stove and into the next room, where a large cookstove dominated the far wall and a rustic table and two benches provided seating for at least a dozen.
    “I’ve been telling them they’re in for a treat,” Luther said, as everyone took a seat at the table. “Frank, Emmet, and Jake are the latest Pony Express riders. Jake’s for Liberty Farm up in Nebraska. The Paxtons are going on to Clearwater. Annie’s the new cook there.”
    Mrs. Hollenberg looked Annie up and down and, without comment, retrieved bowls from a corner shelf and began to ladle dumplings out of a massive stew pot on the stove. As she set Annie’s bowl before her, she asked, “So. She is to be working”—she glanced over wire-rimmed spectacles at Luther—“for George Morgan?”
    Luther nodded and clapped Frank on the back—a little too heartily, Annie thought. “Frank and Emmet weren’t about to leave their sister alone in St. Jo.”
    Mrs. Hollenberg only grunted as she