“Hold on there, yella,” says a man’s voice. The crowd parts to let a pair of red suspenders through, the color of firecrackers. My bow slides off the strings.
But it’s not Mr. Trask, not even close. This man is West’s height but brawnier. What could he want from me? He grins like he knows a secret. Dear God, a mercenary. Andy was right. A dog’s on the loose. Why didn’t I listen?
I collect myself as he draws near. Then I notice the suspenders are not suspenders at all, but straps securing a banjo to his back. I nearly moan in relief.
Pulling his instrument to the front, he quirks an eyebrow. Nothing draws a crowd like a duel between a banjo and a fiddle. Father and I dueled often back in New York, especially when we were short on rent money.
The man shows me the crown of his head with its combed waves of chestnut hair, and I return the bow. His copper eyes take in the child-sized violin, and he says in a silky voice, “I’m Jack. That baby fiddle mean you play like a baby?”
The men in the crowd call out, “Hear, hear!” to egg us on.
I size him up and set my jaw. “Why don’t you stay and find out?” I challenge, leaving off my name, as I did with Dr. Highwater.
He grins rakishly from beneath a neat slash of mustache. The rest of him is neat, too, not a single wrinkle on his shirt or his face.
The crowd cheers. Familiar cat whistles pierce the noise, and a real smile replaces my fake one. The remuda’s only a stone’s throw away though I can’t make them out among the masses.
“What do you have in mind?” I ask.
Jack’s muscles bulge under his rolled-up sleeves, the skin tanned and flecked with copper hair. “Been a while since my banjo ate a fiddle.”
I put on my rooster comb. “Well, I know where it can get a good slice of humble pie.”
The crowd laughs. Jack places his banjo pick between his teeth and tunes his instrument, not lifting his eyes from me. As soon as he hits the first four C’s, I recognize “What Shall We Do with a Drunken Sailor?” A crowd pleaser.
The emigrants, already in high spirits, jump to their feet. More people gather ’round, and soon Jack has the whole caravan’s attention.
He nods the signal, and I pick up where he leaves off. To begin, I make my playing sweet and easy. I scan heads for Mr. Trask, but cannot see much beyond the front row, where a line of girls stand pining over Jack, their mouths forming little O’s of adoration.
So I jump up on the barrel.
The song picks up pace, and now my fingers are a blur. I use the momentum to ricochet bounce off the top of my bow and add several triple stops—three strings played at once—the move that Mr. Trask paid fresh tangerines to hear. Come on, Mr. Trask.
I rest, and now Jack’s fingers go fuzzy. His female fans multiply and start screaming. One even cries, “Marry me!”
Shielding my eyes from the bonfire, I scan the crowd from my higher perch. I don’t see the grocer from New York, but I do make out the boys under the oak tree, and they whistle and whoop when I find them. I salute my bow their direction, then rip out my solo. The remuda’s cries spread like wildfire and soon the whole crowd’s cheering for me.
Something’s wrong. My head feels too light. Damn, my hat! I must have knocked it off with that last triple stop. The show must go on, but not under present circumstances. I drop down off my perch.
Jack stops playing and takes the baby violin out of my hands. I scramble after my hat. One of the pioneers picks it up and hands it to me. I grunt out a thank-you.
When I return, lid in place, Jack is positioning the baby fiddle under his chin. “Don’t mind if I do.”
Though he scratches the bow and falls off pitch, his screaming fans don’t care.
“You gonna let him boss you, Chinito?” yells a familiar baritone.
I groan under the weight of two hundred eyeballs, all expecting a good fight. If I don’t get back into the ring, I might as well ditch this hat and tie on a bonnet. The boys start chanting my name, and now everyone takes up the chant. “Sammy, Sammy!”
I cringe. If he is here, Mr. Trask will find me now, or I can assume he’s gone deaf. I snatch up Jack’s banjo, and jump back onto my barrel. I strap Father’s favorite instrument across my shoulders, and a hush descends over the crowd. The banjo’s bigger than Father’s, at least fourteen inches in diameter with a heavy rosewood fingerboard, and it probably looks like it’s wearing me rather than the other way around. But I’ve got hot coal in my firebox and I’m ready to go full steam.
I don’t have a pick, and my nails are ragged, so I bite off my sleeve button, then set it on the strings. Andy’s going to kill me.
Some of the screaming girls now clamber over to my barrel. Maybe I look tall and dashing up here. Eat your heart out, Jack.
I finger out a simple roll. Sounds good, time to move the show along. When my turn comes up for the solo, I double the tempo and punish that drunken sailor to within an inch of his life. My right hand works the strings like a spider in its death throes. I might even sound better than Jack, judging by audience reaction.
By the time the song’s over, my clothes are damp, but I am glowing. My barrel vibrates under the noise of the pioneers’ cheering and clapping. Remembering my task, I sink back on my heels and survey the crowd one last time.
No Mr. Trask. It was a long shot.
I climb down from my perch.
“You ride your strings hard,” says Jack. “How ’bout we take a sip of lemonade together?”
His eyes brush over me like maybe he would rather take a sip of something else, and that something is not the girls gawking at him.
“My—my—friends will be looking for me,” I stammer, pushing the banjo at him. “But thank you anyway.” His gaggle of admirers swallows him up.
Andy trots up to me, holding a stack of tin cups. “That was genius. You almost caused a fire up there.”
Dr. Highwater walks up behind her, hand extended toward me. “Best music we’ve had on the trail since setting out.” His warm two-handed handshake reminds me of Father, who shook everyone’s hand as if it were an honor. “Even better than the clarinet-and-harp duo we saw last week at Fort Laramie.”
“Did you say clarinet?” I ask.
“Yes. It’s not my favorite instrument but—”
“The man, was his name Tucker Trask?”
“I only caught his first name, but it wasn’t Tucker.” He kneads the knuckles of one hand with his thumb.
I bow my head to hide my disappointment. “Well, it was nice meeting you and your daughter.”
“Theodore,” he says. “That was his name.”
I snap my head up. Theodore, of course! How could I forget such an important detail? Tucker was just a nickname.
“Did he say where he was going?” I ask, not breathing.
“I didn’t speak to him directly. But he did tell the audience he was going to teach at a conservatory.”
Conservatory? The barren west coast offers no such thing, at least not to my knowledge. He might as well have stayed in New York for that. Unless he—