Samuel waited until the thunder died, then straightened. “I didn’t like the looks of that bunch.”
“Me neither,” Emala said. “Praise the Lord they didn’t see us. We have enough troubles.”
“What worries me,” Randa said, “is that they were comin’ from the direction Chickory and Mrs. King went.”
“We best keep goin’.” Samuel rode along the bank to a grassy incline, and up it into the trees. He twisted in the saddle. The four men were nowhere to be seen. “We were lucky.”
“Luck had nothin’ to do with it,” Emala disagreed. “I keep tellin’ you the Lord is lookin’ after us. I prayed, and He made us invisible.”
“That is the silliest notion you’ve ever come up with, and you have come up with some whoppers.”
“I’ll whopper you, oh ye of little faith. The Lord is our rock and our salvation.” When Samuel didn’t say anything, Emala prompted him with, “Well?”
“No, you don’t. Every time you bring religion into things, I get a blisterin’ that would bring Samson to his knees.”
“At least you remember his name. Given how little you read Scripture, that’s somethin’.”
“See what I mean?” Samuel said to Randa.
“ ‘Unto thee will I cry, oh Lord, my rock,’ ” Emala quoted. “ ‘Be not silent to me, lest, if thou be silent to me, I become like them that go down into the pit. Here the voice of my supplications when I cry unto thee, when I lift up my hands toward thy holy oracle. Draw me not away with the wicked, and with the workers of iniquity.’ ”
“I’d sure like to know the Bible as good as you do, Ma,” Randa said, with a wink at her father.
“It’s taken a lifetime of study, child. If more people kept their nose in the Word and out of the affairs of others, this world would be a lot nicer place.”
Fresh clods of dirt marked the trail. Samuel studied the tracks, trying to make sense of them. Nate King had promised to teach him how to read sign. He couldn’t wait. He was so intent on the ground that he didn’t realize the trail was blocked until his horse stopped and nickered.
Samuel looked up.
“Dear God!” Emala blurted.
Not ten feet away, lying on their backs and bound hand and foot and gagged, was their son and Winona King.
Chapter Ten
“Chickory!” Randa cried, and started to goad her horse up past her mother’s to reach her brother.
Emala was struck speechless; the unexpected always unnerved her, and this was as unexpected as could be.
Samuel started to swing down. Suddenly he was aware of men on foot closing in from all sides. “Look out!” he shouted to his wife and his daughter.
Randa hauled on her reins. She didn’t want to leave, but instinct warned her that if she didn’t escape, she would end up trussed and helpless. A short man snatched at her bridle, but she jabbed her heels and her horse knocked him aside.
“Stop her!”
Samuel was torn between helping his son and Mrs. King, and fleeing. He started to dismount, thought better of it, and swung his leg back again. But before he could use his reins, two of the men reached him. The one on the right had a bristly mustache and was holding a shotgun, but made no attempt to use it. The one on the left had blond hair and cold blue eyes. Each grabbed one of Samuel’s legs.
Emala squealed in panic. Two men were converging on her. “No, you don’t!” she cried, and reined around. She smacked her horse with the flat of her hand and it broke into a gallop. Pleased with herself, she suddenly realized she was riding toward a low limb. She ducked, but she couldn’t duck low enough; her bosoms got in the way. She tried to twist aside, but the limb caught her across the shoulder. The next thing she knew, she was on her back on the ground with the breath whooshed from her lungs and a short man and a young man standing over her and grinning.
“You sure made that easy, you tub of lard.”
Still on his horse, Samuel kicked the man with the mustache and jerked his leg free of the blond man. He sought to flee. He would have made it, too, except he saw his wife fall and he reined over to help her. That was when another white man, a burly brute with a beard, came hurtling out of the undergrowth. Samuel recognized him; it was a slave hunter called Trumbo. Trumbo rammed into him like a two-legged battering ram.
To his dismay, Samuel was unhorsed.
Fifty feet into the trees, Randa looked back and saw that her father and mother were down. She almost turned back to help them, but the youngest of the whites whipped out a pistol and took aim at her. There was no doubt he would have shot her except that another man appeared, a man she had encountered before—Wesley, his name was—and swatted the younger man’s arm. The pistol went off, but the ball dug a furrow in the ground and not through her.
Randa kept riding.
Emala was on her back, but she wasn’t helpless. She kicked the short man trying to seize her.
Cursing fiercely, the man backed off and leveled his rifle. “Try that again and I will by-God shoot you!”
“Lower that weapon,” Wesley commanded. “How many times must I tell you that they are worth more to me alive than they are dead?”
Samuel barely heard that. He was too busy fighting. Trumbo had slammed him onto his back and sought to pin him, but Samuel was just as big and a lot stronger. He gave the bearded man-bear a shove that sent Trumbo flying. Before Samuel could rise, the man with the mustache and the man with the yellow hair were on him. They got hold of his arms, and the blond man tried to bend his arm behind his back.
Bellowing like a mad bull, Samuel threw them off and heaved to his feet. He turned to help Emala.
“Not another step,” Wesley said, jamming the muzzle of his Kentucky against Samuel’s thigh. “Shooting you in the leg won’t kill you, but it will sure as hell tame you.”
Samuel froze.
“The girl got away,” Trumbo said.
“She won’t get far,” Wesley predicted. “As soon as we tie these two, I want you and Bromley and Kleist to go after her. She’s heading for the open prairie, so it shouldn’t be hard to catch her.”
Emala sat up and jabbed a finger at the back-woodsman. “I should have known it would be you!”
“You’re money in my poke, woman,” Wesley replied. “A lot of money. I wasn’t about to give up this side of the hereafter.” He backed away from Samuel but held the Kentucky on him. “Listen good, you Worths. So long as you do what I say, when I say, you’ll make it back to Georgia in one piece. Give me trouble, any at all, and you’ll suffer.”
Samuel was quivering with fury. He thought the slave hunters had given up, but here they were again. But there was no way he was going back again. No way in hell. He would rather be dead than a slave. Besides, they weren’t taking him back to put him to work in the cotton fields. They were taking him back to hang him. Trumbo went into the trees and reappeared leading horses. From one he took a coiled rope and came over. “Turn around and put your hands behind you.”
Samuel did no such thing.
“You heard him,” Wesley said. “Or is it that you want me to shoot your wife?” He trained the Kentucky on Emala.
“No. Don’t hurt her. I’ll do what you want.”
“Oh, Samuel,” Emala said.
It was just about the hardest thing Samuel ever had to do. He hated it, hated having rope looped tight around his wrists, hated being made to sit and have his ankles tied, too.
“Now do his wife,” Wesley directed.
Emala balled a pudgy fist. “Just you try it,” she warned. “I’ll bean you on the nose. You just see if I don’t.”
Wesley sighed. “Do you have a lick of sense?”