He would give anything for a horse.
The Big Dipper arced cross the sky until its position told him the time was close to midnight. He was sore and tired and hungry, but he wasn’t about to stop this side of the grave.
“I’m coming, Winona.”
To Nate’s surprise, he got an answer: a bestial growl. Halting, he held his spear low in front of him, the sharpened tip angled up and out. He balanced on the balls of his feet, ready to lunge or spring aside.
What ever growled was feline. Cat sounds were different from wolf and coyote sounds.
Gleaming emerald eyes confirmed his hunch. They were fixed on him with inhuman intensity. The size and shape could only be one animaclass="underline" a cougar. A hungry cougar.
“Try and you die,” Nate said.
A lot of animals ran at the sound of a human voice. Not this one. Snarling, it stalked closer.
Just what Nate needed. He stamped a foot and shouted, but it had no effect. He roared as a bear would roar, but the cat had figured out he wasn’t a bear. He whooped. He whistled. He shrieked. In frustration he even tried a few cuss words.
A twig snapped to Nate’s right, but he paid it no mind. He mustn’t take his eyes off the cougar. The moment he broke eye contact, it could charge.
The vegetation on the other side of the trail rustled, and despite the cougar, Nate gave a quick look—and felt his blood change to ice.
A second pair of slanted eyes, nearly identical to the first, were peering back at him.
There wasn’t just one cougar.
There were two.
Winona lay on her side facing the fire, pretending to be asleep. Her eyes were open a crack and she was watching Cranston. The nervous bundle of energy, as the whites would say, was standing watch. The rest of the slave hunters, as best she could tell, were asleep. As well they should be. As whites measured time, it had to be close to two in the morning.
Winona hoped the Worths were still awake. Before they lay down, she had whispered what she had in mind.
Samuel, in his eagerness to be free, had been all for it.
But not Emala. “Land sakes. Your plan could get us all killed. As bad as things are, I sure ain’t anxious to breathe dirt.”
“Not so loud,” Samuel had cautioned.
“You can count me in, Mrs. King,” Chickory said.
Randa, to Winona’s surprise, hesitated. “I want to. I really and truly do. But you heard that man called Wesley. We give them trouble and they will hurt us.”
“They can try,” Samuel said. “Now that I’ve tasted freedom, I want more. I want to do as I please for the rest of my days.”
Chickory said quietly, “I’m with you, Pa. Those men beat me. And the others laughed while they were doin’ it. I hate them, Pa. I want to kill every last one.”
“Now, now,” Emala said. “What they did was bad. But if we start actin’ like them, we’re no better than they are.”
“Maybe we aren’t.”
Emala twisted toward her husband. “Did you hear him, Samuel? Do you see what runnin’ has brought down on our heads? Our own flesh and blood, talkin’ as if I’ve never read him a lick of Scripture.”
“What does the Bible have to do with this?” Samuel demanded.
“The Bible has to do with everything. It’s God’s Word on how He wants us to be. Love thy neighbor. Turn the other cheek. Those are the rules we should live by.”
“Are you insane? How can I love someone who is takin’ me back to Georgia to hang? How can I turn the other cheek when all they’ll do is hit me harder.”
“Do you know what your problem is? You have no faith. Thank God I have enough for both of us.”
Now, lying motionless, Winona looked from Wesley to Trumbo to the others. They appeared to be asleep. So too, to her dismay, did Randa and Chickory, who were on the other side of the fire. Winona couldn’t tell about Samuel; he was behind her. Emala, though, had been opening her eyes every now and then, so she might be awake.
Cranston came over to the fire and held his hands out to the flames even though the night wasn’t cold.
“If I was any more bored, I’d scream.”
Winona took that as a good sign. He was more likely to doze off once he sat down—only he didn’t sit down. He made another circuit of the clearing, muttering to himself. He might keep it up until he was relieved in a couple of hours.
Winona would rather deal with him than with the others. He didn’t impress her as being nearly as vicious and dangerous as Olan and Wesley.
Her wrists and ankles were growing numb. She went to move them to restore the blood flow, and caught herself just in time.
She mustn’t let Cranston know she was awake.
He came toward the fire.
Winona’s hopes soared when he bent as if he were going to sit, but he only wanted to shake the coffeepot and see how much coffee was left. Replacing it, he sighed and strolled off toward the horses.
Winona decided to take a gamble. She was close enough to the fire to touch it. She thrust out her arms, and the flames engulfed her bound wrists. Terrible pain shot through her, but she grit her teeth and held her wrists steady for as long as she could stand it. Then, quickly drawing her arms back, she grit her teeth to keep from crying out.
The rope was smoldering, but it hadn’t burned through.
Winona’s wrists, on the other hand, were severely burned. Her skin was in agony. She made certain Cranston was still across the clearing, then went to do it again.
The whites of Emala’s eyes shone in sheer horror. “Don’t!” she whispered. “You’ll hurt yourself worse!”
Winona did it anyway. The pain nearly caused her to black out. She half expected to be burned to the bone when she pulled her arms out of the flames. Only a few strands held the rope together. Gritting her teeth, she tugged and snapped them.
Winona examined her wrists. They were blistered and charred. But she was free, and that was the important thing. She checked on Cranston, wondering what was taking him so long. He was petting his horse!
Winona reminded herself that he was young yet, little more than a boy. But that wouldn’t stop her from doing what she had to.
Feigning a light snore, Winona shifted so her knees were tucked high and her hands were at her ankles. She held her wrists together to give the impression they were still tied and pried at the knots on the rope around her ankles. “Keep an eye out,” she whispered.
Emala nodded, fear in her wide eyes.
Winona thought of Nate; he should have been there by now. Something must have happened. From remarks dropped by her captors, it had to do with Peleg Harrod. The old frontiersman, it turned out, was working for Wesley. She wasn’t surprised. She had instinctively distrusted him when she met him, and her instincts were seldom wrong.
The knots were resisting her attempts. Trumbo had done a good job.
Winona kept at it long after most would have given up. Her charred wrists weltered with pain, but long ago she had learned how to close her mind to discomfort and do what needed doing.
“Psssst,” Emala whispered.
Winona glanced over. “What?” Just then, one of the knots came undone. She attacked the second.
“You asked me to keep watch.”
Preoccupied with the ankle rope, Winona didn’t understand what she was getting at. “You do not want to?”
“Dearie, I’d do just about anything for you. I just thought you’d want to know that he’s coming back.”
Winona shifted toward the horses.
Cranston was halfway to them.
Chapter Fourteen
The cougars were young, two from the same litter, Nate guessed, not yet ready to go their separate ways, hunting together. Because they were young, they were that much more dangerous. Older cougars were wary of humans. These two regarded him as no different than a deer or an antelope.