As darkness started to fall, they came to a fork in the road. Ahead of them Decker could see the rock formation Hudson had told him about. It was several hundred feet high, coming to a peak at the top and then widening out as it came down.
They stopped at the fork and looked at the two crudely made signs. One said: fenner’s fork and pointed to the left fork, or the east one, and the other said: eaton’s fork and pointed right, or west.
“What do we do now?” Felicia asked.
“We’ll camp off the road a ways and in the morning we’ll pick a fork.”
They rode about fifty yards off the road and camped in a dry gully.
“Why here?”
“I don’t want to take a chance on being seen from the road, just in case someone is traveling at night.”
They took care of the horses, then Decker told her there’d be no cooking that night.
“We’ll build a small fire, but I don’t want the scent of coffee or bacon giving us away.”
“Well, let’s see what the Hudsons gave us in the sack.”
She began pulling out food.
“Cold chicken, some cans of fruit, some biscuits. With this, who needs hot food?”
They had their dinner and laid out their bedrolls.
“Decker?”
“What?”
“Did you want me to stay with the Hudsons?”
“No.” His answer came without hesitation.
“Why not?”
“I didn’t want to see you become wife number three.”
“Oh, God!” she said. “There’s no chance of me ever marrying a Mormon.”
“Or an older man.”
“Well, not somebody a lot older, anyway.”
“Go to sleep.”
“I’m not sleepy.”
“I am.”
“No you’re not,” she said. “You’re never sleepy. I’ve never met anybody like you.”
“I’m just a man.”
“Decker,” she said, “when you lie down and close your eyes—I mean, when you decide that you’re going to sleep—you’re asleep like that. Then in the morning when you wake up, you open your eyes and you’re awake right away. You don’t even rub your eyes! That’s not normal.”
“It is for me.”
“See? You’re not normal.”
“Well, neither are you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Fourteen-year-old girls should not be traveling with bounty hunters. They should be home going to school, cooking for their grandfathers, and having boyfriends their own age.”
“Boys my own age are…boys.”
“Yech!”
“Felicia.”
“Yes?”
“I’ve just decided to go to sleep.”
And he did.
While Decker slept, Felicia watched him. If, as he had said, he was twice her age, that made him twenty-eight.
Sara had told her that she was seventeen, and that her husband John was forty-four. As far as Felicia was concerned, twenty-seven years was just too big a difference.
But it made fourteen years look like nothing at all!
On the south side of the rock formation was another camp, where one person dined on beef jerky.
In the morning a choice would be made as to which fork to take.
The east or the west.
A lot would depend on the decision.