A More Perfect Union
Thick flakes fell from a silver sky, muffling the sound of the horses’ hooves as they picked out a path down the packed dirt road that led into town. Their tack jangled with each step, and in the back of the clapboard cart they pulled, an axe and shovel rattled together like distant thunder. In the cart’s jump seat, Brance Brenneman held the reins in one hand, an almost negligent gesture, and kept the other on the seat as if to hold himself in place. To his right, his young lover Caleb Chilson clutched a rifle laid across his lap. With every other step the horses took, the back of his left hand brushed the inside of Brance’s right wrist.
The town they entered was a handful of log buildings shuttered against the cold. A few homes ringed the outskirts, haphazardly plac
