He drew up. "How do you figure?"
"I've been remembering that big river we heard tell of. Remember? He told us that river came down from the north, took a big bend, and flowed kind of east-northeast to the sea? That river mouth was a natural harbor, kind of protected from the sea by sandy islands just like the sounds back in Carolina. The way I see it, those girls are headed west, and they are going to come to that river or sight it, and then they'll have to turn south.
"Remember that sailor man we talked to in Jamestown? He drew us a diagram in the dust about that river, said it was a natural trade route to the Indians up country without being bothered by those folks around the settlements."
We ran no more. The forest was of oak and maple, with hillsides here and there covered with the graceful white trunks of the birch. It was very still. A woodpecker tapped busily somewhere not far off, and we saw a small flight of birds holding close to the ground, flying into the brush around a small meadow.
On moccasined feet we moved with no sound, and at brief intervals we paused to listen. Sound carries for some distance, and our ears were now attuned to the natural sounds of the wilderness, so we would quickly detect any sound foreign to the forest.
We came up the side of a knoll, moving among the trees. Leading the way, I topped out between some oaks alongside a clear space. We were high enough to have a view all around, and my eyes caught the movement just as Yance's did.
"Kin?"
"I see 'em."
Merging our bodies with the trunks of trees beside which we stood, we watched six men coming along a trail behind us. There was no mistaking the man in the lead, for surely there could be no two men of that size who moved as he did. It was Max Bauer.
"Well, what d' you know?" Yance whispered. "Would you guess they was coming to help?"
"Not much."
"Trailin' us," Yance said. "I got a notion--"
"No," I said, "but we can make it hard for them. Not all at once or they'll know we've seen them. Let's just let our trail kind of fade out."
Several miles ahead we could see another such knoll. "See that? We'll meet there."
Yance was gone into the grass like a ghost. I swear, that brother of mine could move soft as a cougar, and he was just as mean to tangle with. I let him go, then slipped off on the other side of the hill, leaving plain enough prints. Then I saw a hard old deadfall lying across some others like it. The bark had peeled off this one leaving the surface bare and smooth as a naked limb. I stepped up on it and walked its length, switched to another, then to a couple of rocks. From there I went into a stream and walked for a quarter of a mile in the water, which was murky from rain runoff higher up.
Coming out on a shelf of rock, I stood still to let most of the water run off me, then followed the rock along the shore. Coming up on several deer, I threw a stick at them, and they ran across a small meadow into the trees, leaving a trail for each. Chuckling, I circled one side of the clearing. They would have to check out each deer's trail to be sure it had not been made by or followed by a man. It would not hold them long, but it would slow them down.
Reaching the knoll almost an hour later, I scrooched down close to a tree and gave study to the country about. Far off to the west and north I could see there was a sort of gap in the trees, which must have been that river that came into the sea up the coast from Cape Ann. That it curved around some, I already knew.
By now, if the maids were still moving, they would be somewhere only a few miles to the north or west of us if we'd been guessing right. Yet the men who were following our trail were tracking us, not the girls. Yance joined me.
"Wonder if they know about that river?"
"Doubt it. They wouldn't meet up with many hunters or the like. Wouldn't be fit company. Of course, that Macklin girl was a listener. What I mean is, she paid attention to folks when they talked, and when I was tellin' Temperance about our country, she asked a passel of questions, all of them right canny. Still, not many of those folks get far from the settlements, and she might not."
It was a worrisome thing, for in the thickness of the forest we might pass them within a few yards and know naught of it, for knowing nothing of our presence, they would be still if they heard us, suspecting we were enemies.
Near as we could figure it was about fifteen miles from the shore of the sea to the river at the point where we now were. Yet the maids seemed to have headed west and then would turn south, and the area in which they now could do that could be less than five miles, probably less than three.
We gave study to the country, trying to figure how they might travel. Yance gestured toward it. "Hard to believe, with folks needing land that all this lies empty and still."
"I like it wild," I said, knowing he did, too. "But think of all the poor back in the old country who would like to have even a small bit of it."
"Aye." Yance swept bis eyes across the country, alert for any sign of movement, any suggestion of travel. "And I am thinking they will come, Kin. They will come. It is a vast and lonely land now, but it will not be so long."
We came to our feet and moved away. "You work slowly across to the westward," I suggested. "I shall go swiftly west and scout the country toward the great river."
We parted. It was our way to do so when hunting, and we had bird calls or sounds we could use to signal one another; we often worked apart, but we worked as a team. We must work swiftly now, for those coming behind us would soon know their slaves had escaped and would be coming for them, seeking them out, and us. What happened within these woods no man would know, and many had died here, unmourned and unknown, and so would it be with us if we erred even slightly.
I had gone scarcely a mile and had paused to listen when I heard the faintest sound; turning my head, I looked into the eyes of a girl, and she into mine.
For a moment neither moved or spoke. She stood slim and graceful as a tall young birch tree, and she looked straight at me, and then she smiled. Others came up behind her, a smaller, younger girl and a tall young black man. He carried a spear and, at his belt, a knife.
"It is all right, Henry," she said. "He is a Sackett."
"What," the black man asked, "is a Sackett?"
She smiled with sudden humor. "Who knows, Henry? It is some strange sort of beast that comes up from the south and brings fresh meat and steals young girls from their homes."
"I can see," I said quietly, "why one might steal a girl, although the idea had never occurred to me before."
"All girls are not easily stolen," she replied. "But we have been, and now we try to return again home. You will help us, sir?"
"Your mother sent for my brother," I said. "We both came. But we had best move. Others are behind us who would keep us from helping you."
"There are those behind us, also," she said. "You are alone?"
"Yance is here. He will join us soon, I think."
My eyes went to Henry. "I was also a prisoner," he said.
"He helped us," Diana said. "Without him we might not have been able."
Turning southward then, I led the way into the forest, but first I paused and sent into the sky the call of a lone wolf hunting. There would be no answer, but Yance would know, and he would come.
The black man, and Diana as well, looked lean and fit. Carrie Penney looked a little drawn, a little pale, but there was no time now to think of that. Nor was I worried about Yance. By now Yance would be moving south to join us.
I led off swiftly, moving like a ghost through the close-standing trees and thick brush. Behind me, Diana was astonished by the way I found openings in the brush where there seemed to be none and how I automatically chose those routes calculated to leave the fewest tracks.
During our frequent pauses she studied Kin Sackett, for this was the man who suddenly had all their lives in the hollow of his palm, up to a point. Diana looked upon him with some skepticism despite the confidence she felt, for she was not one to trust easily. She had liked Yance when she first met him, and her sympathies had been completely with Temperance when she fled the community with him. This new Sackett was taller, quieter, and an altogether more thoughtful man, one, she suspected, of cooler judgment. Despite that, she was wary. Diana Macklin was not one to give herself completely into the hands of anyone.