"Later—you can ride with me later, Annie. Now just be good. I want to find out why Mr. Jenkins stopped." Sarah turned in her saddle, standing up in the stirrups to peer past Carla again. She couldn't see Jenkins' face, just the back of his head, the thick set of his shoulders and neck, and the dark rump of the appaloosa gelding he rode.
"What's the problem, Ron?" Sarah asked, trying not to shout in case there were some danger ahead.
"No problem, Sarah, at least not yet," Jenkins said, not turning to face her.
Hearing Ron Jenkins call her by her first name still sounded odd to her, but she reminded herself she had never called him Ron until a few days ago when he and his wife and daughter had come to the farm and asked if she wanted to accompany them. They moved slowly, the Jenkins family, and Ron Jenkins had meticulously avoided every possible small town between them and "the mountains" he kept referring to. But they were already in the mountains, she realized, and she wondered if Jenkins' enigmatic references had been to the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee rather than the mountains of northwestern Georgia. Leaning back in the saddle, trying to press her spine against the cantle to relieve the aching, she realized that if Jenkins intended to take them out of Georgia she would not go.
On the chance that her husband, John, was still alive—and somewhere she told herself, as she had told the children repeatedly, that he was— chances would be slimmer of his finding them if they left the state and the area around the farm.
She knew that her husband's survival retreat was in these mountains somewhere, and if they stayed in them it would only be a matter of time, if—when, she reminded herself—he came for them, before they would meet. But the farther Jenkins took her away from the northeast Georgia farm she and the children had called home before the night of the war, the slimmer the chances would be.
They had viewed some towns from a distance, and many had looked as though they had been looted and burned. Once, several hours back, they had hidden quietly as a gang of brigands, on motorcycles and driving pickup trucks, had gone down along a road they had been about to cross.
Sarah's mind flashed back to the night of the war, and to the morning after and the gunfight when she had killed the men and the woman who had tried to harm her and the children. Her spine shivered and she twisted involuntarily in the saddle, her eyes drifting to the much modified AR-15 rifle she had taken from one of the dead men. Her husband's Colt .45 was still in the trouser band of her Levis and she shifted it—the automatic was rubbing against her flesh and it hurt.
Checking the reins for Sam knotted to her saddle horn, she loosed them again and pulled her husband's horse after her as she passed Carla Jenkins' bay and rode up alongside Ron. "What is it, Ron?" she asked again.
"Down there—another town," he answered.
Sarah looked where he pointed, catching a loose strand of hair and tucking it under the blue and white bandanna covering her head. Her hair felt dirty to her—she had not washed it since the morning before the war. There hadn't been enough water and there hadn't been any time.
It was already nearly dusk and she couldn't see clearly at first in the sunlight-obscured shallow valley below them, but after a moment, as her eyes became more accustomed to the dimness, she could make out the scene unfolding there. It was the brigand gang they had seen several hours earlier. The faces were strange when she had seen them from quite close then, but even discounting that, she had known they were not from the area. People in Georgia were, by and large, good-natured, gentle people. As a northerner in a strange part of the country she had learned that years earlier. And these men and women in the small town below them were not gentle. Some of the old frame houses on both ends of the main street were already afire. The bulk of the gang of brigands was in the center of the town. Looking down into the shallow valley, she was too far away to make out individual actions, but—rather like large ants—she could see them moving from store to store in the small business district. Because of the clearness of the mountain air, she could even hear the sounds of smashing glass from the shop windows. She could hear shots as well.
"Those people were fools to stay in their town," Jenkins observed to her.
"Well, can't we do something, Mr. Jenkins?" The formality of the way she addressed him shocked her.
"Well, Mrs. Rourke," and his voice emphasized her name, "I'm no weapons expert like your husband was."
"Is—Mr. Jenkins."
"I doubt that. I think he bought it during the war. Atlanta I figure is just one big crater right now and you said yourself he was supposed to be landin' there.
But I ain't like him whether he's alive or dead—I'm just an army veteran tryin'
to get along. I can handle a gun as good as the next man, but I'm not about to go racin' on down there and be a hero 'cause all I'll be is dead and you and my wife and daughter and your kids then is gonna be just on your own. And that ain't right. I got a responsibility to my family and to your family. And I take that pretty serious."
Involuntarily almost, she reached across and pressed Jenkins' hand. "I'm sorry,"
she said softly. "You've right, I guess."
She glanced back over her shoulder and noticed Carla Jenkins staring at her.
She took her hand away from Ron Jenkins' hand.
"What are we going to do, then?" she asked him.
"I think we're gonna just sit tight up here and see which way them folks decides to go after they finish their business down there. Then we'll move out in the opposite direction. Carla's got a sister up in the Smokies there around Mount Eagle and I reckon that should be a pretty safe place to go."
"But that's in Tennessee, Mr. Jenkins—I can't go there!"
"Mrs. Rourke. Now listen," and Jenkins for the first time faced her, turning in the saddle and getting eye contact with her. "I don't know what's under that scarf and all that hair and everythin' and hidin' there in the back of your pretty little head, ma'am, but you can't just sit out here in the mountains and wait for your husband to appear out of nowhere now and rescue you. You got them two kids to look out for same as I got my wife and daughter. Once things calm down a might after everythin' gets settled, you can always look for your husband then. But if you decide on stayin' in these mountains with the likes of them down here," and he gestured toward the pillaging in the town below them, "you ain't gonna last a day—and that's a pure fact."
"But my husband will never find us in Tennessee."
"Your husband is dead, Mrs. Rourke—and I wish you'd wake up and see that."
Sarah Rourke looked at him suddenly, pulling the bandanna from her head, realizing it was giving her a headache. She said, her voice low and even, "John is alive, Mr. Jenkins. I've been telling that to my children and I believe it myself. He spent his whole life learning how to stay alive and I know he did somehow. And I know that somewhere now wherever he is he's thinking about me and about Michael and Annie and risking everything to get back here to us. And I'm not going to betray him and run out. I'm not. He's alive. John is alive and you can't tell me otherwise, Mr. Jenkins. And I'm not going to Tennessee with you or anyone else."
She twisted the bandanna in her hands, then stared down into the valley. As the sunlight ebbed, she could see the fires at both ends of the town much more clearly.
Chapter Seven
All Ron Jenkins had said to her and to his wife, Carla, was, "I'm goin' on down into that town there. I won't need my horse—you keep it close by and saddled and ready. I figure they might have some water and some other things down there I reckon we could use just as soon as letting them down there to rot."