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whispered, “Not if we catch you first.” And we will catch her, I thought. Somehow I’d find out what the Berks knew about James Weaver, who’d scratched out awful violin tunes and sketched his first buildings within these walls—and buried Miz Lizbet behind one of them.
    I’d read a description of James Weaver in his mother’s diary. He and I shared the same copper-wire hair and blue green eyes, the same paper-pale skin, as if we were twins who, through a weird accident of birth, were separated by fifteen decades. If anyone was going to learn something new about James, it was going to be me, not Mattie Berk.

Chapter Eight
March 1857
COCKLEBURS
    Pa and James washed up out back. Pa had layers of travel dirt to scrub away before Ma would let him offer the blessing for supper. After supper, James would tend to Buttermilk, who’d carried Pa all those miles. Buttermilk’s chestnut coat was matted with sweat, and the white mottled zigzag that gave her her name looked gray as wash water.
    â€œLong trip,” James said. He was always shy for words when he was alone with Pa. With Ma around, conversation flowed more easily, and of course, Rebecca never stopped yammering for a second.
    â€œI’d have run Buttermilk like a racehorse if I’d known thy ma would be waiting home.”
    â€œLucky for Buttermilk thee didn’t know.” The horse flicked the first of the season’s flies off with her tail.
    Pa’s eyes darted up toward the point just under the roof of their house. “Thee got it all settled, the business over Miss Elizabeth?” His voice was tight. Why, he was afraid of Ma!
    â€œYes, sir, she knows, and she knows thee knows, and she says there’ll be no more talk of dead bodies in the house.”
    Pa nodded, relieved.
    â€œI suspect she’ll have a few more thoughts on the subject when she gets thee alone,” James said, snickering.
    â€œNow that thee’s thirteen, thee’s an authority on women?”
    â€œJust Ma,” James replied quickly. He wiped his hands on an old flannel blanket flung over the stockade fence. Bethany Maxwell came across his mind, as she did all too often. She was as beautiful as a newborn piglet—and just as slippery. She’d gone off to California with her family and hadn’t sent back a single word. But he had Trembles, her Siamese, to remind him of Bethany’s blue eyes.
    â€œWell,” Pa said, rolling his sleeves back down. He buttoned them between his pale wrists and large, windburned hands. “I for one am glad to have the whole episode with the runaways behind me.”
    â€œThee has cockleburs behind thee also,” James said.
    Pa patted his rear. “Ouch!” He picked them off, dusting off his trousers, and he straightened his shirt and turned his hat just so. “Reckon thy mother will find me presentable?”
    â€œYes, sir.” James thought his father admirably handsome—tall and broad and full-bearded. James,with his red hair and freckled, milky skin, would grow up to look nothing like Pa. He’d look more like Grandpa Baylor, and it saddened him to remember that he’d never again share his thoughts with Grandpa Baylor.
    Growing up, he thought, you sure lose a lot of people you’d rather have around a bit longer.

Chapter Nine
CAUGHT!
    The radio in the Berks’ room hummed with some all-night talk show, and Mr. and Mrs. Berk talked right over it.
    â€œHow much could they possibly have to say to each other? No one in my family talks this much,” Ahn said, with a jelly jar to the wall. “Can you make out anything?”
    â€œIt sounds like an argument to me.” I yanked my Thoreau Middle School nightshirt over my knees. It was already stretched enough to fit a sumo wrestler.
    â€œYou listen for a while.” Ahn handed me the jar and dropped onto the twin bed. The bed springs squealed.
    â€œShh! They’re not supposed