“You see my boyfriend’s lost his and he can’t be without one, I’d be ever so grateful Graham!”She raises Her knee slightly, adjusting Her hi...h-heel shoe, and giving me a gob-smacking view for just a second. I try to concentrate on what She’s saying, aware that I’ve no longer any control on where my eyes are. I mumble, “yes of course Miss Jenny, I’ll get one for you now.”It’s risky of course, more than my job’s worth, but Her ‘gratitude’, whatever She means by that, is worth taking any risk for.. We line cooks making plate after plate, trying to be on time for our patrons, making sure each dish is the way the chef and expediter wants it. Steam causing my face to sweat, an unruly lock of hair falls from under my cap. Steak frites. That was the dish in front of me. Wiped the edge of the plate, gave it tot he server, expediter checked it and out it went.A moment later, the server comes back and says to me, very nervous because she saw what happened last week, says to me, “He's out there. As we left the docks in Independence two days ago, we saw at least a hundred covered wagons waiting just outside of town. I’d bought a newspaper, a single sheet, and it said that, depending on the weather and how the prairie grass was growing, the first wagons intended to leave here for Oregon on Monday April 22. Other groups of wagons would follow them at intervals of a week or so.Samuel thanked me when I showed him the article. “The first group should arrive at the post near the end of June,”. The dates were in rough columns and there were at most two dates by each name. Two names only had one date in the first column. The first column was titled "owned." The second was headed by the cryptic "1st dan." The last date entered had been over a year and a half ago.Alex had lain there reading the names, memorizing them. The ones with only one date tantalized her. The first was almost eight years ago. The last one with a single date was the last one on the list. She wondered what had happed.