Chapter 30
The hill was steeper than it looked from the road, and Maria had gone up it half-running, her breath coming ragged by the time she reached the top, and found nothing there at all.
No wagon. No sign of trouble. Only scrub grass moving in the wind and the town small and distant below her. Now she wondered why Samson, who was meant to be doing deliveries to the ranches outside of town, would have come up this way anyway.
She turned in a slow circle, searching the far slope for any sign of him, a wagon overturned, an animal spooked, anything that might explain why a boy would come running with such urgency and nothing more than a handful of words to explain it.
There was nothing. Only the empty hillside and her own breathing, loud in her ears.
Perhaps she'd misunderstood. Perhaps the boy had meant a different hill, or she'd taken a wrong path somewhere in her hurry, and Samson was elsewhere entirely, needing her for reasons she couldn't guess at while she stood here wasting precious minutes on the wrong stretch of ground.
The thought sent a fresh wave of panic through her, and she turned again, faster this time, scanning the road below for any movement, any sign of the wagon, of Samson, of anything at all that might tell her she hadn't failed at the one thing she'd been asked to do.
Her chest had gone tight, her thoughts scattering faster than she could gather them, and for a moment the whole hillside seemed to tilt beneath her, too large and too empty and too far from anyone who could tell her what was happening.
Then, at the far edge of the slope, a small figure crested the rise, running.
Billy.
She started toward him before she'd fully registered who it was, relief and confusion tangled together so tightly she couldn't tell which one reached her first.