A murky caricature of a horse and rider sped past the bank.
Nate heaved onto his knees. Dripping wet, he hopped out. It wouldn’t take Harrod long to discover his trick. The instant the old frontiersman saw the bay without him, Harrod would rein around and hunt for him.
Nate scrabbled up the incline. He slipped, surged higher, slipped again. Digging his toes in, he reached the top.
As yet there was no sign of Harrod.
Regaining his feet, Nate hopped across the trail into the woods. A tree loomed. He tried to avoid it but ran into the trunk. Pain flared. Then he was on all fours, plunging as deep into a thicket as he could go. Thorns raked his cheek, his neck. One nearly took out an eye.
Every muscle aquiver, Nate settled onto his side. He waited for his breathing to steady, then renewed his assault on the knots. They refused to give. He bit so hard, it felt as if his teeth would break.
To the east hooves pounded.
Nate flattened. He couldn’t see the trail, but he glimpsed the old man’s silhouette.
“King? Where are you? I’ve got your horse.”
Nate gnawed at the rope.
“I know you can hear me. You have to be around here somewhere. Pretty clever, what you did. But now you’re on foot. You don’t have any weapons. Think of what that means.”
Nate went on gnawing. It was common knowledge that a man afoot was an early grave waiting to happen.
“What’s this?” Harrod exclaimed.
The silhouette had stopped near the grassy slope.
Nate dug his top teeth into a knot and pried. It gave a fraction but no more.
“So this is where you jumped off? You muddied the water. And here’s a track.”
It puzzled Nate, Harrod talking so much. Did the man really think he would answer? Or was there more to it? He stopped gnawing and peered through the thicket. All he saw was greenery and a patch of blue sky.
A twig crunched.
Moccasins appeared. Harrod was moving slowly, apparently wary of being jumped.
Nate didn’t move a muscle.
The moccasins stopped, and Harrod called out, “Listen, King. You can’t have gotten far. I suspect you can hear me. So here’s something for you to think about.” Harrod paused. “Your wife.”
Nate’s fingers clenched as they would if he had them around a throat and was throttling the life from someone.
“I told you about Wesley. He’s no bluff. He wants those blacks and he will have them. And he won’t let anyone stand in his way. Not you. Not your missus.” Harrod waited for a reply, and when Nate didn’t say anything, he said, “It could be Wesley has her. It could be he has all of them, and he’s waiting for me to show up with you.”
Nate glanced at the empty knife sheath on his hip.
“I know how one like him thinks. He’ll keep your woman alive only so long as it suits his purpose. Then he’ll hand her over to the others. You haven’t met them yet. They’re animals. They’ll gladly slit her throat after they’ve had their way.”
An image of Winona enduring the unspeakable set Nate’s blood to boiling. He grew warm all over.
“Wesley might give her to them anyway if I show up without you just to spite you. Or maybe he’ll set her out as bait to lure you in.” The moccasins turned in a circle. “Where the blazes are you? Why do I feel your eyes on me?”
To vent his anger, Nate resumed his assault on the knots.
“Come out of hiding and I promise there will be no hard feelings. I’ll even cut your ankles free so you can sit your saddle. What do you say?”
Nate touched his belt where his flintlocks should be.
“I thought you cared for her,” Harrod persisted.
Nate bit off an oath.
“The way you went on about how nice she is and all, I didn’t think you’d want them to do the kinds of things they’re going to do to her. What will it be? Don’t you want to spare your woman a fate worse than death?”
The blazing orb men called the sun had followed its daily arc and was dipping toward the horizon. Streaks of pink, red and orange lent beauty to the sunset.
Winona was in no frame of mind to appreciate it. She was winding through the woods on foot, her wrists bound behind her back. A rope was around her neck and linked to Emala, who in turn was linked to Samuel. After him came Chickory and Randa.
“Dear Lord, save us,” Emala prayed. “I will sing of Your power. Yes, I will sing aloud of Your mercy in the morning.” She sighed wearily. “That last was from the Bible, Mrs. King.”
“My husband reads it nearly every night.”
“So he told me. You have a good man there.”
“Yes,” Winona softly agreed. “A very good man.”
“I read the Bible a lot myself. Not Samuel, though. He’s not as religious as me. Fact is, there are days when I wonder if he has any religion at all.”
Winona glanced past Emala at her husband, who walked with his head bowed. “How about that, Samuel? Do you believe in God, or what my people call the Great Mystery?”
“I used to.”
Emala rolled her eyes. “If faith were a flame, I’d be a roarin’ fire and he’d be a candle. If it were stone, I’d be a boulder and he’d be a pebble. Any faith this family has, I’ve had to nurture it like you would a seed.”
“Oh, Lord, woman.”
Emala clucked in reproach. “There you go again. Takin’ the Lord in vain. Who knows the Bible inside and out? Me. Who can sing any song of praise you can think of? Me. Who prays mornin’ and night that this family will be spared tribulation.”
“Seems to me you need to pray harder.”
“Samuel!”
A shadow fell over them. Wesley had reined his horse around. “Do you two bicker like this all the time?”
“Only lately,” Emala said.
“I’ve listened to all I’m going to. Either talk nice or don’t talk at all.”
“If you don’t mind my sayin’,” Emala replied, “that sounds awful strange comin’ from the likes of you. What you know about nice wouldn’t fill a thimble.”
For a moment Winona feared Wesley would strike her. Instead, he smiled.
“I get it now. You bicker with everyone.”
“You don’t know me,” Emala said. “You only think you do. Sure, I’ve been out of sorts. But who can blame me with all that’s happened?”
“This might surprise you, woman, but I don’t blame you at all. It’s not your fault your kind were dragged to this country. The slave traders are to blame. You should all be sent back to Africa, where you belong.”
Emala shook her head. “I wouldn’t know Africa from France. From what I hear, it’s an awful place, with lions and tigers and snakes and people who eat other people. I was born in this country, just like my mother, and her mother before her, and I have no hankering to live anywhere else.”
“You don’t belong,” Wesley said. “This country is for whites and only whites. Bringing your kind in was a mistake.”
“The plantation owners don’t think so. They work us like mules to put money in their pockets. Without us, they’d go broke.”
“And there’s the real reason you’re here. It’s always about the money.”
As was their wont, songbirds and warblers filled the lush woodland with their paean to the departing day. Goldfinches with their clear notes, larks with perhaps the most musical calls of all, sparrows with their gay chirps, robins with their highs and lows, all combined in an avian chorus.
Normally, Winona enjoyed listening. But today she had something else on her mind.
Winona wasn’t one to delude herself. She never looked at the bright side when there wasn’t a bright side. The slave hunters had to kill her. Nate, too, if they caught him. They knew that she and Nate would do everything they could to stop them from taking the Worths back, even if that meant following them all the way back to the States.