Chapter 30
Chapter Thirty
The sun was dropping quickly. Darkness would soon slow him down, but Caleb thought about the woman following the outlaws. She couldn’t be too far ahead of him, and he wasn’t going to stop until he caught up with her.
These mountains held dangers for anyone, on horse or on foot. The fierce and brutal laws of nature applied here. It was a fact of life. The weak fell by the wayside. The strong—with some luck—survived.
But courage had its own kind of strength, and whoever this woman was, she had plenty of it.
He found signs of her as he rode along. He’d seen her footprints in the mud at the convergence of a stream and the river. The trail of the road agents’ horses had turned inland, and her tracks had followed.
As he nudged Pirate along, Caleb could only think of one reason that would drive a woman to tramp so resolutely through the wilderness. It was the will to survive.
The trail skirted a low area that had been flooded in the spring. Standing water still lay in swampy pools, smelling fetid. Trees, stunted and bent, looked tired, wounded.
A vague, clouded memory came back to him. It was one of his earliest recollections. It was from an afternoon in his childhood. He didn’t know how old he was at the time. Two? Three?
He and his mother were on some muddy lane, moving along as fast as she could drag him. Marshes, stinking and populated with snakes and rat-like creatures and snapping turtles that could take a boy’s hand off, spread out on either side of the road.
His mother was holding his wrist so tight, it hurt him. He had to run to keep up with her. He was dog-tired, whining at her.
“Where are we going? Carry me.”
They’d been hurrying along forever, and she didn’t speak. Not a whisper. Not a word to soothe him.
Suddenly, tall, monstrous trees loomed up in front of them, dark and ominous with sharp branches like claws, poised to snatch him.
“No, Mama. Let’s go back. I don’t like it here.”
A gloomy tunnel, bordered by swampy, foul-smelling woods. Clicking, buzzing sounds and ravenous flying creatures. A long, dark-furred animal darted across the road, disappearing into the boggy space between the black trees.
Caleb set his feet, fearful of passing, but his mother pulled him along.
He stumbled in the slippery muck, but she kept him upright, moving forward. The darkness of the woods ahead filled him with cold fear. He didn’t want to go.
He glanced up at his mother and found her looking over her shoulder, her eyes peering through the murk. She wasn’t afraid of what was ahead. She was terrified of what they’d left behind.
Real or a nightmare, Caleb never forgot. That’s how memories went. To this day he didn’t know if what he saw that day was real or if it was a slice of some nightmare. His mother never spoke of it. She never allowed him to mention it.
And he understood clearly now what he couldn’t grasp then. His mother had to run to survive.
The tragedy was that she’d never been able to run far enough.
The old ache smoldered in his chest, familiar as a scar. He’d spent most of his life knowing he hadn’t been able to save the one woman who mattered most. His mother.
Caleb shook off the dark memory and looked ahead. He couldn’t change the past. The path in front of him was the only one that mattered.
And somewhere up there, in the fading light, a lone woman was chasing after some very bad men. What made it worse, it could be Doc’s daughter.
“Hold on,” he murmured into the dusk, though there was no one to hear him but Pirate. “Whoever you are, just hold on.”