“You flirt with all men so outrageously?” he asked.
“As a matter of fact, I don’t flirt at all. Just seems to come natural with you tho
ugh.” She chuckled.
“I ought to marry you for the money, myself…” Sam grumbled.
“Mm…now there’s a thought.” She laughed. “If we were married we could…”
“I’m beginning to think Harry is right, you are crazy,” Sam muttered.
“That’s the meanest thing you ever said to me, Sam.”
Sam glanced up at her. “Instead of diggin’ your heels in at me, maybe you ought to be thinking about what you’re gonna say to them lawyers. And start acting like a boy, Riley. At least you got a name that sounds more like a boy than a girl. You just remember who you are and what you are and everything will be okay.”
The light in her eyes went out and she nodded. “You’re right Sam.” She looked at Nodog. “Nodog, Sam is a hard man to figure, but I got plenty of time.”
Nodog licked her hand and wagged his tail against the saddle horn as he snuggled against her.
Chapter Five
Sam glanced at Riley out of the corner of his eye; she’d been silent for a long while now and he wasn’t sure why.
They’d traveled by night, and Sam walked alongside her and the horse for a long while. Halfway through the night, Nodog had enough of riding and jumped down. He sniffed the trial, and then left a weaving trail alongside of Sam.
“Why you so quiet?” he finally asked, unable to tolerate her silence.
“Been wonderin’,” she answered.
“Oh, what?” Sam asked, not looking at her now.
“How do I go about being a boy?” she asked. “I mean, it ain’t natural, and I couldn’t do much of a job for my father when he expected it. So tell me…how do I go about it?”
Sam shrugged. He peered up at her and nodded. “Well, let’s see. You shouldn’t ought to smile too much. Boy’s growin’ into manhood don’t smile much, they take life too seriously. And…you should learn to spit, boys are always spitting…”
“Spitting?” She sounded a little shocked. “Really? I never noticed. But okay, I can spit.”
“Let’s see.” He stopped the horse.
She spit down at the ground. It splattered everywhere.
“Nah…that ain’t no way to spit. You gather it in your mouth with your tongue and aim it and spit hard, so it don’t splatter, more like your aimin’ to hit somethin’ with it,” Sam said and demonstrated.
She shrugged. “Okay…yeah, I can do that.”
“Try it,” he offered.
She slathered it and looked at the ground, and aimed it at a rock. She hit it, and Sam laughed out loud. “That was pretty good.”
“You do it enough.” She shook her head. “What about up here?” She raised her hand to her breast. “Not that I got that much to hide, mind you, but it could become noticeable.”
Sam looked away. “We’ll do something about that as soon as we can. It ain’t like it’s real noticeable anyway. In the meantime, keep your shirt loose, so it’s not a problem.”
“Oh…okay…And exactly how is my being a boy gonna benefit me or us?” she asked, as Sam put Nodog in her lap. “Well, anyone sees you with me, I can explain it easier. They hung your pa from a tree and I found you, wandering around on the prairie. People can accept such stories. But they’d never accept a white woman travelin’ with a black man. For any reason.”
“Good point. That’s good thinking, Sam. Okay. I understand it now.”
Satisfied, she didn’t speak again for a long while.