I was leading my mule into town to be shod, uncertain what I was going to do after, when I saw the wagons. I knew where they were headed—west. West to Oregon. They weren’t the first to come through and I’d probably have paid them no mind, except for three things.

First, it was one of those fine early April days that starts the sap to running and just naturally makes a man’s foot start to itch. Second, Pa and me had a fair-sized argument that morning and I was still feeling rankled. Then, of course, there was the girl.

She sat on the back of the first wagon, her bare feet dangling. She had a right cute face under a mass of yeller hair and the smile she gave me set my innards to quivering and the blood rushing up my neck.

I watched those wagons disappear around the bend ahead and I felt a restlessness that made my bones ache like a fever. The farm, even the gently rolling southern Illinois country, seemed like a prison. Besides, I wanted to see those laughing blue eyes again.

I rounded the bend and trudged down the hill towards the town, ‘cept I don’t know that you could call it a town. Where the road widened, set McGonigle’s saloon, Josh Martin’s harness and gun shop and Gold’s Emporium, which was a fancy name for a general store.

A few people didn’t like Mr. Gold ‘cause he was one of those Jew folks but he’d always treated us fair and square. Pa whupped the tar out of me one time for repeating something Tom McGonigle had said about Mr. Gold. Then Ma read me a lecture. Truth to be told, I’d minded the lecture more than Pa’s birch rod. Ma had a way of making you feel mighty small. Besides, I liked Mr. Gold and I think he liked me. When I was a kid, he always slipped me a piece of rock candy when Pa wasn’t looking.

But getting back to our town, there wasn’t much more to it. Harvey Corfman had a feed store and livery stable across from Max Arbuckle’s blacksmith shop at the west end of town. There was the bank with Doc Mayhew’s place and Lawyer Riley’s office above. That’s all, except for half a dozen houses stretched south along the creek.

Just beyond Arbuckle’s and north of the bridge, Castor Creek made a big bend around a grove of sycamore and walnut trees where we had the Fourth of July picnic. Sometimes a preacher, up from the south, would hold a revival meeting there. The wagons were camped there and my heart jumped like bullfrog leaping into a pond.

When I saw those wagons, my feet just stopped. I might be standing there yet if that mule hadn’t got impatient and nipped my shoulder. The thoughts of seeing that little yeller-headed girl started me sweating.

I’d never had much time for girls nor they for me. Girls just naturally seemed to like a smooth talking feller and I never could seem to get my tongue around the kind of words girls like to hear. Besides, I never had the time for courting. When I wasn’t helping Pa on the farm, he had me hired out.

Still two month’s shy of my eighteenth birthday, I’d been doing a man’s work since the age of ten. I’d reached my full growth a couple of years before and at six-four, I topped Pa by a full two inches. Maybe that was why Pa had taken to hiring me out most of the time.

Fact is, Pa’s hiring me out was the cause of our argument that morning. T’warn’t that I minded the work ‘cause most of the time I’d enjoyed it and I’d learned a lot. When I was twelve Pa’d hired me out to a harness maker and I’d learned a lot about tanning hides and making all kinds of stuff out of leather. It was dirty, smelly, hard work, but interesting and I’d’ve stayed with it but for Mr. Porter’s being bitten by the traveling bug and moving on west.

Pa had then hired me out for a couple of years to Enoch Smalling. A mean, cantankerous old man but a master builder. From him I’d learned a love of working with wood as well as skill with a broadaxe and adz.

I also worked on and off for Max Arbuckle for the past three years and could shoe a horse or shape a plowshare as good as he could. One winter Pa had even hired me out to a gunsmith clear over at Vincennes.

With all that hiring out, I’d picked up a right smattering of skills that I wouldn’t have if I’d stayed on the farm. Like I say, I didn’t object to the work, I just felt I was entitled to more than my room and board, with Pa taking all my wages.

The onliest things I owned for myself was the clothes I was wearing, that mule, the sheepskin coat and tools in my pack, the Sharps buffalo gun I was carrying, and a twenty dollar gold piece I’d been paid the day before for three months work.

That gold piece caused the trouble this morning. I wanted half of it and Pa wanted it all. When Pa went to get the birch rod, I just got back on that mule and headed out. I don’t reckon I’m any bigger coward than the next man and it wasn’t fear of that switch that made me run. I just wasn’t about to be whupped again. If I didn’t take the whipping, I’d have to fight and I couldn’t fight my Pa.

Pa was a fine man for all his being a mite hardheaded at times. I’d been brought up according to the Good Book to honor my Pa and I didn’t figure fighting him would honor either of us very much, so I taken out of there, figuring to give him some time to sorta let the wildcat out.

Half way to town, that mule threw a shoe, and the walking had calmed me down a mite. I hadn’t given any thought to where I was going or what I was going to do after I got that mule shod. But now, seeing those wagons, and thinking of that yeller-haired girl, I knew. I was going west.