Ruth practiced at the piano as the morning passed due to Francis sleeping in once again. Kid had gone off to see if he could nab some game. She had Isaiah in her lap and he banged on the piano once in a while, trying to add in his own music.

Mercy came up to them.

"You want to play at the piano too?" Ruth asked.

She shook her head. "Not right now. Ms. Permelia's showing me how to work the puppets with the strings."

"That sounds like fun."

"I just wanted to ask you do I get to have a Bible of my very own now?" She eyed her mother's Bible that was sharing a place on the bench.

"Well, it helps, sweetheart, to be able to read it first, but we'll see. Christmas ain't too far away and you got to show us you can be really careful with an important book."

"I will. I promise! Thank you, Momma!" She skipped off with an enthusiasm that made Ruth chuckle.

Evelyn was nearby and she commented, "I enjoyed watching your daughter get baptized. You know something adorable? She found freedom the same day as the 13 colonies did, July 4th." Her eyes dropped down. "I need to get back in touch with God. I'm afraid I've let things of that nature slip."

"Well, God's always waiting to hear from us, however far we've wandered, and when we spend time in His Word, you'd be amazed at how close you begin to feel to Him again. Scripture is a powerful thing because of the Author." She paused to free her hair from Isaiah's death grip. He had somehow managed to get a few strands loose from her bun. "I've been thinking on your situation. What about his sister? Does she know what all's going on?"

"Permelia knows, but she prefers to ignore it."

Francis finally poked his head out of the wagon, looking worse for the wear.

Ruth gave Isaiah to Evelyn. "I'll talk to him now if you want me to."

Evelyn nodded and Ruth made her way over to Francis.

"How you feeling?" she asked.

He looked surprised to be asked. "Alright, I guess."

"Are you really? You know your wife's concerned for you too."

"Is she now?" His upper lip curled and his eyes hardened, not the reaction she'd hoped it would elicit.

She was quick to remind him. "She loves you. She wants what's best for you. And that tincture is not what's best and you know it."

The target of his anger became Ruth now. "You just don't give up, do you? Would you just leave a man in peace?"

"I'll get out of your hair, but it's a real shame they don't make a tincture for the tincture."

Kid came back with a jackrabbit and they put in a good day of travel considering the late start. Francis rode the horses harder to make up for it.

"You been talking about our personal business to the Coles?" Francis demanded of Evelyn that night when he thought everyone was asleep.

His voice was loud enough that Kid and Ruth, who were still awake, heard and got up and moved closer to be of help if it was needed. They remained out of sight though.

"No, they figured everything out for themselves, but I'm glad they did. I still remember how happy our first year of marriage was before you discover the laudanum. I want it to be that way again. But mostly I want you fully well."

"No, you want me to stop buying it so you'll have more money for you. You may be pretty and young, but that doesn't mean you can wrap me around your finger."

"You are barmy if that's what you think that's what this is about. And here's another thing, I'm not going to let you hit me anymore. I can leave with Sister Ruth and Kid and I will if I have to."

"And who says I'd let you leave?" Francis asked.

"I say you'll let her leave," Kid said dangerously, stepping into the firelight where he could be seen with his drawn gun.

Francis walked away from them all in stony silence.

The next morning, Ruth found Permelia, who immediately asked her, "What's wrong, dear? You look like you got something on your mind."

"I do. It's about Francis and his problem with laudanum. I've tried to get through to him. Kid's tried. And Evelyn's tried. Maybe you can succeed where we failed. After all, you've known him longer than anybody."

"Look, my brother and me haven't had a fight since we were kids. We love each other, but we leave each other alone. He's a grown man, capable of making his own decisions. What he takes or does is not my business."

"The laudanum is your business. If you loved him, you wouldn't ignore what he's doing to his health."

She sighed. "I guess maybe I could just talk to him. Gently suggest some things."

She kept her promise and Francis willingly went into the wagon with his sister for a private conversation, looking pleasant enough, which meant he had no idea what she was going to talk about. He came out enraged and he turned on Ruth and Kid, who were standing together. "That talk was you all's doing I know. You know I'm really starting to wish I'd left you two in the desert."

sss

Things were tense after that with Francis not speaking as much as he had before.

They came upon a small mine and small didn't begin to describe it as it was really only a handful of miners digging up enough for personal use and to have a little left to sell to some of the stores and blacksmiths for a minor profit.

One of the men came up to their stopped wagon; he was covered from head to toe in black coal dust.

"My daddy's black," Mercy said shyly. "Sometimes."

Ruth coughed hard to hide her laughter and Kid flushed red.

"Oh, yeah?" the man asked, amused. "Does he like to dig too?"

She shook her head. "He paints himself black."

The man laughed. "Now that I'd like to see. You all got plans to put on a show?"

Francis spoke up. "We put on a show wherever there's interest."

"We'd love to watch your show, but we're not wealthy by any means. If we were, we'd hire somebody else to dig up this coal."

"Well, admission usually costs 4 cents a ticket, but we'll let you good people see it for a penny each and some coal," Francis said, showing himself to be a sharp negotiator as the coal would likely make up for the lost income in a populated place like San Antonio where someone somewhere was bound to need coal.

Ruth looked at the coal closer. It was low grade coal, mostly a soft brown rather than the hard black coal she'd dug up with her cousins for fun as a child, but it burned just the same. It'd be a good heat source for somebody.

So that evening after the miners had finished their digging, they put on a show for them. They seemed to like Kid's folk song better than the drama. They asked him to sing it again at the close of the show. He was still tuning his guitar when Mercy came padding out to Ruth in her night clothes.

"You shouldn't still be up," Ruth chastised gently.

"I couldn't sleep." She climbed into her mother's waiting lap. "And I want to hear Daddy sing."

"Well, Daddy is pretty good at getting people to sleep with his singing."

Finally satisfied with the tuning, Kid began,

"One Sunday morning, Lord, Lord, Lord
The preacher went a hunting, Lord, Lord, Lord
And he carried along a shotgun, Lord, Lord, Lord
And along came a grey goose, Lord, Lord, Lord
Well he shot down a grey goose, Lord, Lord, Lord
And the gun went a-boom-boom, Lord, Lord, Lord
And down come the grey goose, Lord, Lord, Lord
Took six weeks of falling, Lord, Lord, Lord
And six weeks calling, Lord, Lord, Lord
And they put him on the table, Lord, Lord, Lord
And your wife and my wife, Lord, Lord, Lord
There's time for feather pickin', Lord, Lord, Lord
But the fork wouldn't stick it, Lord, Lord, Lord
And the knife wouldn't cut it, Lord, Lord, Lord
And they put him in the oven, Lord, Lord, Lord
But the oven wouldn't burn him, Lord, Lord, Lord
And they him in the hog pen, Lord, Lord, Lord
But the hog couldn't eat it, Lord, Lord, Lord
And he broke the hogs teeth out, Lord, Lord, Lord
So they threw him in the sawmill, Lord, Lord, Lord
And the sawmill wouldn't cut him, Lord, Lord, Lord
And he broke the saws teeth off, Lord, Lord, Lord
And the last time I seen him, Lord, Lord, Lord
She was flyin' cross the ocean, Lord, Lord, Lord
With a long string o' goslings, Lord, Lord, Lord
And they're all goin' quack, quack, Lord, Lord, Lord."

Mercy was still awake at the end of the song. "Momma, why couldn't they eat the goose?"

It's just a silly song. It didn't really happen, but the idea is people shouldn't go hunting on Sundays because it's work. Least of all a preacher who should be inside a church preaching on a Sunday morning. It was the Lord's way of reminding him of that."

"Oh."

Kid had come over, and he picked Mercy up with one arm. "I think I got me a goose."

Mercy giggled, knowing he was teasing. "No, Daddy."

"Oh, it's just a little girl then. I was confused because she wasn't in her bed."

Mercy giggled again and Kid asked Ruth. "You coming, Mother Goose, to put this gosling to bed?"

"Right behind you."