The Quilt Walk by Sandra Dallas

discard some of her quilts before we even left Quincy, and I knew she hadn’t forgot that.
    Ma, too, had a hard time turning down anyone in need, which Pa knew, and she said, “Go along, Thomas.”
    “You’re a good woman, Meggie.” He cleared his throat. “We’re halfway to Golden, and we’ve lightened the load, what with the flour and bacon and other things we’ve eaten. I think there’s room in the wagon for your extra dresses now. You don’t have to wear all of them anymore.”
    Ma nodded. She didn’t smile, but when she turned to me I saw her eyes flash as if she’d won some contest. “Whatever you think best, Thomas,” she said.
    As soon as Pa went off with Buttermilk John and three other men—they didn’t invite Mr. Bonner to join them—I asked Ma, “Does Pa really mean it? May I wear just one dress now?”
    Ma nodded, and then she smiled. “We kept our promise, Emmy Blue. And we kept all of our clothes, too.”
    I started to take off my top dress, but Ma said it wasn’t proper to undress right out there in the open. I’d have to wait until nooning. As we walked along beside the oxen, me holding the whip and tapping the lead ox every now and then, I wondered if Ma, in her good mood, would let me out of making all fourteen quilt squares. Maybe she would settle for eight or ten. But I knew she wouldn’t.
    Pa was right. The travel was easy that day. The air was cool, and the sun didn’t beat down on us as it had for the last few days. In a mile or two, the mud turned hard, and the oxen moved more quickly. I wanted to find Joey and run off onto the prairie to search for birds’ eggs or pick wildflowers, to dig my toes into the soft dirt and maybe lie down on my back in the prairie grass and look up at the clouds. Joey and I found wagons and animals and faces in the clouds, and we pointed them out to each other. Just the day before, he’d said, “That cloud looks like one of my pa’s layer cakes!”
    Today I knew I had to stay with the wagon. Pa had asked me to, and Ma was walking slower than usual. “You all right, Ma?” I asked.
    “Of course, I am. What makes you ask?”
    “I’m just asking,” I said, but in truth I was worried about her. We walked along in the damp earth, that made my feet and ankles and legs muddy. I hoped we’d come to a river before long and I’d be able to wash them. As the sun was reaching the top of the sky, I heard a shout and saw Pa and the other men returning. I called a halt, tapping our lead ox on the head with the whip and yelling, “Whoa.”
    “No need to stop, girlie,” Mr. Bonner yelled at me. “Let them as was careless catch up with us.”
    I looked at Ma to tell me whether I should start up again, but Buttermilk John came abreast of us. “Ye called it right, Miss Hatchett. Time for our nooning,” he said. He held up his arm as a signal, and the wagons came to a stop, turning out so that the women could prepare dinner and the men could unhitch the animals to graze.
    Pa came toward us, huddled on the horse he had borrowed, and I thought maybe he’d been hurt. Ma did, too, because she quickly climbed down from the wagon, with the skillet in her hand and a worried look on her face. “Thomas?” she said.
    Pa grinned as he opened his coat. Sitting on the saddle, shivering, was the sorriest dog I’d ever seen. He was an ugly mutt the size of a lamb, and he quivered when he looked up at Pa, his tail as limp as my sunbonnet had been in the rain. His coat was matted with dirt and burs, and he was so thin that his ribs stuck out. Pa let go of him, but the dog shook and didn’t want to jump down. Pa nudged him off the saddle, and the dog huddled on the ground, looking up at Pa as if begging him for something.
    “What in the world?” Ma said.
    “It’s a dog.”
    “I can see that. Whose dog?”
    Pa shrugged.
    “What are you doing with him?”
    “I found him under a bush when we were searching for the runaway animals. I couldn’t just leave him