Excerpt
It drew its fair share of attention as it jolted down the middle of the dry, rutted stretch that the folks of Williams Trace referred to, with misplaced pride, as Main Street.
It wasn’t just the wagon, though it looked enough like a peddler’s wagon that it briefly stirred up the hopes of a few of the stalwart ladies of Williams Trace, who were tired to death of the slim pickings to be had at Charley Fugg’s mercantile. A second look dismissed that happy thought. No clanking pans, strings of spices, or other interesting gewgaws adorned the tall wooden panels or little frame top, and the paint on the sides was faded and peeling.
Nor was it the woman on the wagon box, though in other circumstances, truth to tell, she was used to receiving more than her fair share of attention, and of the admiring kind. Here in Williams Trace, though, she was just another mosquito-bitten, over-heated, straggled-hair woman with four younguns, passing through at the hottest time of the day, in the hottest week of the hottest summer anybody in Williams Trace could remember in more than a decade.