Chapter 2
Josiah Gibb, Joe to his friends and employers, joined the stampede to the cookhouse for breakfast before the drive. It was barely light outside, the sky that grayish color that precedes the dawn. Joe could hardly make out the peaked roof of the cookhouse against the horizon. He dropped to a seat at the long table and dished up eggs and bacon and a couple of Cookie’s giant biscuits.
The boys were unusually quiet over the meal. They’d gotten the news yesterday: Mr. Wortham was sending his oldest son along with them on the drive. Nobody was quite certain how to react to that. It wasn’t that any of them disliked Roy…exactly. It was just that everyone said the boy was about as spoiled as a bucket of three-week-old milk. Almost everyone had a story to tell Joe and Slim, who’d both st
