The grizzled man took a breath. “If you want to stay here, missie, we could find you, find you…” He trailed off, looking around dolefully.
“Shelter?” muttered his comrade. “Not hardly.” He stood up and squeezed his friend’s shoulder. “Give it over. She’s not our business. Not today.”
With a disappointed glance over his shoulder, the grizzled man dragged off.
“I hope he finds his Sassy,” said Fawn. “Who was—is she? His daughter?”
“Granddaughter,” replied the townsman.
“Ah.”
“We need to get off this blight, Fawn,” said Dag, wondering if, had it been some other day, the townsmen would have made Fawn their business. Disquieting thought, but the dangerous moment, if that had been one, was past.
“Oh, of course.” She jumped up at once. “You’ve got to be feeling it. How’s your leg doing?”
“It’ll be well enough once I’m in the saddle again.” He grounded the butt of the hickory stick and levered himself up. He was starting to ache all over, like a fever. The townsman trailed along after them as Dag hobbled back to his horse.
It took Saun and Varleen both to heave Dag aboard Copperhead, this time. He settled with a sigh, and even let Saun find his left stirrup for him and take away his stick. Varleen gave Fawn a neat boost up on Grace, and Fawn smiled thanks.
“You ready, Dag?” Saun asked, patting the leg.
“As I’ll ever be,” Dag responded.
As Saun went around to his horse, the townsman’s eyebrows rose. “You’re her Dag?” Surprise and deep disapproval edged his voice.
“Yes,” said Dag. They stared mutely at each other. Dag started to add, “Next time, don’t—” but then broke off. This was not the hour, the place, or the man. So when, where, and who will be?
The townsman’s lips tightened. “I doubt you and I have anything much to say to each other, patroller.”
“Likely not.” Dag raised his hand to his temple and clucked to urge Copperhead forward.
Fawn wheeled Grace around. Dag was afraid she’d caught the darker undercurrents after all, because the struggle was plain in her face between respect for bereavement and a goaded anger. She leaned down, and growled at the townsman, “You might try thank you. Somebody should say it, at least once before the end of the world.”
Disconcerted, the townsman dropped his eyes before her hot frown, then looked after her with an unsettled expression on his face.
As they left the blighted town and struck east up a wagon road alongside the river, Mari asked dryly, “Satisfied with your look-see, Dag?”
He grunted in response.
Her voice softened. “You can’t fix everything in the whole wide green world by yourself, you know.”
“Evidently not.” And, after a moment, more quietly, “Maybe no one can.”
Fawn eyed him with worry as he slumped in his saddle, but he did not suggest stopping. He wanted a lot more miles between him and what lay behind him. Greenspring. Should it be renamed Deadspring on the charts, now? Mari had been right; he’d had no need for a new crop of nightmares, let alone to have gone looking for them. He was justly served. Even Fawn had grown quiet. No answers, no questions, just silence.
He rode in it as they turned north across the river, looking for the road home.
17
S ome six days after striking the north road, the little patrol clopped across the increasingly familiar wooden span to Two Bridge Island. Fawn turned in her saddle, watching Dag. His head came up, but unlike everyone else, he didn’t break into whoops, and his lopsided smile at their cheers somehow just made him look wearier than ever. Mari had decreed easy stages on the ride home to spare their mounts, though everyone knew it had been to spare Dag. That Mari fretted for him troubled Fawn almost more than this strange un-Dag-like fatigue that gripped him so hard. The last day or two the easy part had silently dropped out, as the patrol pressed on more like horses headed for the barn than the horses themselves.
They paused at the split in the island road, and Mari gave a farewell wave to Saun, Griff, and Varleen. She jerked her head at Dag. “I’ll be taking this one straight home, I think.”
“Right,” said Saun. “Need a helper?”
“Razi and Utau should be there. And Cattagus.” Her austere face softened in an inward look, then she added, “Yep.” Fawn wondered if she’d just bumped grounds with her husband to alert him to her homecoming.
Dag roused himself. “I should see Fairbolt, first.”
“Fairbolt’s heard all about it by now from Hoharie and the rest,” said Mari sternly. “I should see Cattagus.”
Saun glanced at his two impatient comrades, both with families waiting, and said, “I’ll stop in and see Fairbolt on my way down island. Let him know we’re back and all.”
Dag squinted. “That’d do, I guess.”
“Consider it done. Go rest, Dag. You look awful.”
“Thankee’, Saun,” said Dag, the slight dryness in his voice suggesting it was for the latter and not the former statement, though it covered both. Saun grinned back, and the younger patrollers departed at a trot that became a lope before the first curve.
Dag, Mari, and Fawn took the shore branch, and while no one suggested a trot, Mari did kick her horse into a brisker walk. She was standing up in her stirrups peering ahead by the time they turned into her campsite.
Everyone had come out into the clearing. Razi and Utau held a child each, and Sarri waved. Cattagus waved and wheezed, striding forward. In addition there was a mob of new faces—a tall middle-aged woman and a fellow who had to be her spouse, and a stair-step rank of six gangling children ranging from Fawn’s age downward to a leaping little girl of eight. The woman was Mari’s eldest daughter, obviously, back from the other side of the lake with her family and her new boat. They all surged for Mari, although they stepped aside to give Cattagus first crack as she slid from her saddle. “’Bout time you got back, old woman,” he breathed into her hair, and, “You’re still here. Good. Saves thumpin’ you,” she muttered sternly into his ear as they folded each other in.
Razi dumped his wriggling son off on Sarri, who cocked her hip to receive him, Utau let Tesy loose with admonishments about keeping clear of Copperhead, and the pair of men came to help Dag and Fawn dismount. Utau looked tired but hale enough, Fawn thought. Mari’s son-in-law and Razi had all three horses unsaddled and bags off in a blink, and the two volunteered to lead the mounts back to Mare Island, preferably before the snorting Copperhead bit or kicked some bouncing child.
Tent Bluefield was still standing foursquare under the apple tree, and Sarri, smiling, rolled up and tied the tent flaps. Everything inside looked very neat and tidy and welcoming, and Fawn had Utau drop their grubby saddlebags under the outside awning. There would be serious laundry, she decided, before their travel-stained and reeking garments were allowed to consort again with their stay-at-home kin.
Dag eyed their bedroll atop its thick cushion of dried grass rather as a starving dog would contemplate a steak, muttered, “Boots off, leastways,” and dropped to a seat on an upended log to tug at his laces. He looked up to add, “Any problems while we were away?”
“Well,” said Sarri, sounding a trifle reluctant, “there was that go-round with the girls from Stores.”
“They tried to steal your tent, the little—!” said Utau, abruptly indignant. Sarri shushed him in a way that made Fawn think this was an exchange much-repeated.
“What?” said Dag, squinting in bewilderment.
“Not stealing, exactly,” said Sarri.
“Yes, it was,” muttered Utau. “Blighted sneakery.”
“They told me they’d been ordered to bring it back to Stores,” Sarri went on, overriding him. “They had it halfway down when I caught them. They wouldn’t listen to me, but Cattagus came out and wheezed at them and frightened them off.”
“Razi and I were out collecting elderberries for Cattagus,” said Utau, “or I’d have been willing to frighten them off myself. The nerve, to make away with a patroller’s tent while he was out on patrol!”