19

All you need for happiness is a good gun, a good horse, and a good wife.

—DANIEL BOONE

They ate a cold supper, unwilling to risk a fire even in a rockhouse. Stringy jerked meat, dried corn, and the few remaining beaten biscuits filled their tense bellies, and then Sion watched Tempe leave the shelter without her rifle. Though both Hascal and Raven were at watch, Sion’s every nerve stood on end and left him wishing he could accompany her himself. But she needed privacy. It went hard on a woman being with so many men. Just that morning he’d nearly laid Cornelius out for staring at her so blatantly with a misplaced longing. For now Cornelius was farther back in the cavern along with Spencer and Lucian.

Beside Sion sat Nate, patching his moccasins with deerskin nearer the rockhouse entrance. Fireflies flared in the woods, drawing Sion’s notice, but it was Tempe he looked for. Minutes stretched long and lonesome. When she didn’t return in the time he reckoned she needed, he could hardly sit still.

Nate seemed not to notice, working his awl and sinew with patient deliberation, squinting in the fast-fading light. “You remember the Cherokee word for father?”

“Easy enough. Sounds like daddy.” Sion leaned a shoulder into the rock wall, Annie across his lap. “Adadoda.”

“Well, our little miss was talking with Mister Raven about her daddy, then.”

Sion pulled his gaze from the woods to look at him. “What do you mean?”

“And here I thought Ayl—Mistress Tucker”—Nate cleared his throat—“was a widow woman. But I’m beginning to believe . . .”

“What makes you think they weren’t talking about Raven’s pa?”

“’Cuz she was doin’ most of the talkin’.”

Sion resumed his watching. “Learn anything else?”

“A few words here and there. Seems they were most het up about the war party more’n anything—that lead Indian who goes by the name of Five Killer.”

Sion held his peace, mulling the words till memory served. “Isn’t that one of the Cherokee who lit into Boone’s party in ’73 and killed his son?”

Nate exhaled. “I disremember exactly.”

Tired of waiting, Sion pushed himself to his feet.

Nate abandoned his mending. “You goin’ after little miss?”

“Mayhap.”

“Just you remember she may be in need of some solitude.”

“It’s too chancy for solitude.”

This Nate couldn’t argue. Over the ledge Sion went, landing soundlessly on a tuft of springy moss. A blackberry vine wended a thorny arm within reach. He picked a tendril clean and ate a few overripe berries, gaze swinging wide. The late-July lushness hid Tempe. Standing watch, Hascal and Raven saw him pass, but he didn’t ask them where Tempe had gone nor tell them he was looking for her.

The sturdy, sleek bodies of the horses surrounded her, their moods and quirks plain. Even at rest, Cornelius’s mount was wound tight as a fiddle string, amusing her with its eye rolling and sidestepping. Sion’s horse was much like him. Quietly powerful. Able minded. Controlled. Whilst her own mare, Dulcey, was sweet if feather headed, tearing away at the clover in a state of unparalleled bliss, Tempe was most drawn to Raven’s mount.

Lowering his shaggy head, the pony nuzzled her as she stroked his muzzle before picking the burrs from his coat. A curry comb was needed but not near at hand. She spied a hoof pick in the grass, abandoned. One of the tasks of the chain men was to see to the horses, but Hascal and Spencer were too nervy from the Indian scare to be of much use. Glad for the solitude, she was of a mind to bed down right here and shun the men. One in particular was like a bee in her bonnet. It wasn’t Cornelius Lyon.

The twilight deepened. At home the milking would be done and the supper dishes washed. Russell would take up his fiddle or retire to the barn-shed, depending on their lodgers. Paige would flirt and cajole, be it with Russell or a stranger. At a distance their familiar ways were more endearing. Near at hand they rubbed her raw.

Her nimble fingers swept Raven’s pony clean of tangles. He nuzzled her again, catching her under an upraised arm so that it tickled and she nearly laughed.

“You rascal,” she whispered, laying her cheek against his sturdy neck and taking in his herby breath. Of all God’s creatures, horses seemed the most needful yet the cleverest.

“Tempe.”

She whirled, aggravation trumping surprise.

Sion stood behind her as if out on a Sabbath stroll. “Would you rather I call you Miss Tucker?”

“Tempe’ll do.” She let go a breath. “My name’s no matter. It’s your being here so sudden-like—”

“On account of your leaving without your gun.” He held out her weapon.

“I won’t use it. It’s merely for show. A bluff.” At the quirk of his brow she said, “I could never kill another human being—”

“Not even one intent on killing you?”

“Nay.” She took hold of the flintlock reluctantly, avoiding his gaze.

“You’ve been away from camp a mite too long, besides.”

She gave another pat to Raven’s pony. “I was thinking about bedding down here with the horses.”

He grinned, then covered it by rubbing his whiskered jaw. “I’m liable to come out here of a morning and find the horses took. You too.”

“There’s worse things.”

His brows peaked. “Worse things than being took?”

Far worse. There’s heartache. Regret. Lost chances. Shattered dreams . . .

His gaze was combing the woods again, as if sure Five Killer would reappear. In another surprising move he took her hand. Shock skittered through her. Mercy, how long it had been since she’d felt the touch of a man’s hand. He led her beyond the horses to a secluded cove even farther away from the rockhouse. Away even from the guard.

Her heart began a little jig. She tried not to look at him. Tried to remember just who he was. Harper’s own. Yet something had tripped inside her, some thawing, some warmth. When he let go of her hand she missed his strength, that sense of purposefulness about him. James had had that same quality. Aye, it was James she missed.

“Sit back to back with me.”

She did as he bid, understanding the need for extra vigilance, relieved to be facing outward. Thus situated, their backs touched where their hands once had. She took in the night sky riddled with stars like she’d heard decorated the new rebel flag. Flintlock forgotten, she leaned into him and he her, albeit ever so slightly.

His low words carried over his shoulder as he turned his head. “I’m of a mind to send you back.”

She inclined her ear to catch every syllable. They were nearly cheek to cheek. “Back?” she echoed.

“Aye. To the inn.”

She knew what he meant but wanted to prolong this moment. The sweetness. The stillness. Yet time pulsed on, drawing them ever toward a deeper danger.

“No woman should be outside log walls.” The sudden heat in his voice was like the heat of the woods. Unrelenting. Searing. “At first light you need to set out toward home. Once we reach the Barrens, it’ll be too late.”

“And Raven?”

“I’ll give him double wages to see you safely there, enough to trump the scalp bounties I hear the British are paying.”

How had he come by this? Had Raven revealed such? “What if I want to keep on to the Ohio?”

“Then you’re more a fool than I reckoned.”

“What does that make you?”

“Twice the fool you are.”

She smiled, but it was a sad smile, quickly fading. “Tomorrow doesn’t affright me.”

“And that’s what affrights me.” The honest edge to his voice seemed to belong to someone else entirely. The Sion she knew was no more. This borderman was almost . . . gabby. “I think you court death. Court it in ways I can’t reckon.”

She cocked her head, listening for anything ominous through the blackness. “I reckon we have little to do with it, this living and dying.” She said the words slowly, examining her timeworn grief in a new light. If God called James home in His perfect time, shouldn’t that speak peace to her harassed heart? “God only gives a man so much time, so many breaths. It’s written in His book.”

“You believe that?” he queried.

“And you don’t?” she hissed back.

“Nay. There’s been too much lost.” He swallowed, seemed to stumble. “You’ll understand better once you lose something irreplaceable. Some piece of yourself.”

“I have.” She hugged her knees closer, forgetting to keep her gaze outward.

Five Killer cut across her conscience. Seeing him again, wanting to give in to her hate, left her feeling further from James. Five Killer had not been brought to justice, but God was just. And God had seen fit to take James. Her greater woe was that James’s death had been so unmerciful. No matter how she worked it, there had been nothing redeeming about that day shy of eternity.

She said, “Back in ’73 it seems I left my very soul in Powell Valley.”

“Powell Valley?” His voice was so low it was nearly lost to her. “Boone’s first try at settling Kentucke. When his son was killed . . .”

There had been others lost that day. But for the moment she forgot them, adjusting to Sion’s knowing.

“What was he to you, Tempe?”

An oriole flushed from a bush, rapid in its wing beat. Startled, she looked up, weighing her answer. What had James been to her? What had been lost? Her girlhood. The first flush of youth. The purest sort of love. A man who wanted to stand by her. Share his name. His days.

“What was he to me?” she echoed. “I was to be Tempe Tucker Boone.”

A long silence fell betwixt them, broken by a mockingbird’s cry. Should she tell him all the rest? That instead she’d reaped a barrenness of heart, her mind eaten up by angst. That Pa had foundered and lived on the run, haunted. That Russell was still not right. That Ma was forced to live a lie as widowed innkeeper. Was there no end to Powell Valley?

“You love him still.”

It was not a question, thus she did not answer. Could not. Sorrow took hold of her, making a mess of thought and emotion.

I will always love him.

The Indians had taken much. But they couldn’t kill love. Love, unlike many things, never failed. Love endured.

“In light of all that, why would you go another step?” The question was softly, even respectfully worded, no hint of exasperation within.

Because death is the door that leads to James.

She got to her feet, the weariness of spending too many nights on the ground with too many men catching up with her. Without another word she started away from him, her rifle a reminder of what awaited should she push west.

“You need to think hard on turning back,” Sion repeated.

To the east, Ma’s table and her own feather tick beckoned. She missed Paige’s chatter, Russell’s moody silences, every leather hinge and dusty corner of the inn. And Smokey. She missed Sion’s dog, not the ill-bred mongrels crowding the dogtrot.

Night had overtaken them, the rising moon shiny as a newly minted copper shilling.

Stay or flee?

She’d have her answer come morning. First it needed praying for.

Sleep would not come. Yet it wasn’t Sion’s offer to return to the inn that consumed her but the last of her memories from ’73. She’d lain on hard ground like this back then, but there’d been hope in her heart. And love. Always love.

Those final October days in Powell Valley, Tempe and the other women and children gathered grapes and pawpaws and nuts, nearly hooting with glee over the beloved chinkapins, whilst the men dug a pit to roast a whole beef. Out of pouches spilled meal and dried corn, beans and fruit, even coveted herbs and spices. Tempe smelled something akin to cake, quite a feat without a familiar fireplace and proper cooking vessels.

Their clever skill at making do with whatever was at hand was both a delight and a befuddlement. A reminder that they’d let go of everything. Farms. Fields. Possessions. Once James and Russell and the Mendenhalls returned, they’d all break camp and press on toward distant, unknown places they’d call their own, crossing into the land beyond to reach the unclaimed Kentucke meadowlands. For now hearts were high from several days’ rest and the coming nuptials.

She’d soon be a married woman. Beloved. Changed. Wiser to the ways of the world. For now twilight was creeping closer, filling in the forest’s nooks and crannies as Saturday ebbed. Tempe listened past the call of a whippoorwill and the fading shuffle of a busy camp to hear the sounds she craved above all else. An excited whinny. A careful halloo.

Full dark had come on when the wolves began to howl. Would James and the men not come? They’d promised to return by Saturday eve. Something kept them at Castle’s Woods, or with a full load of seed and farm tools and such, they’d been slowed.

She lay down on her pallet, the forest floor chill and uneven beneath her. A snaking root stabbed her back, and she felt the ticklish trail of an ant across her bare arm. Russell usually slept an arm’s reach away on the outside, his rifle slung across upright sticks, ever ready. Across the embers of a dwindling cookfire, her mother lay, eyes closed, lips parted. And Pa? She didn’t know.

Tempe stared heavenward, eyes on the full moon floating free of the sugar trees.

Blind to the beauty, she sent three words into the stillness.

Lord, please . . . James.

When she finally slept, she’d dreamed of thunder.

The distant thunder of guns? Uneasiness smothered her heart. Her head came free of the pallet, her body poised for flight. Her sleepy gaze was drawn to the Boones, an assortment of lumps beneath unkempt bedding a few families away. Maybe James had come in during the night. The moon had been full, good for travel.

But it wasn’t James she saw.

Standing a few feet from her was the young man—Isaac Simmons—nobody seemed particularly fond of. He’d earned a brand for cowardice and thieving and had left their party earlier on the trace. Now his face stood out in the wan morning light, pale as frost, eyes wild.

The guard gathered round him, a trio of buckskin-clad men who seemed more aggravated than alarmed by his presence. Hastily, Tempe stood and ran callused hands down her dress to smooth out the wrinkles before plucking a shawl, damp with dew, from a laurel bush. She hardly felt its chill as it draped her.

The camp was astir. Bedrolls needed to be strapped to packsaddles and children fed. But Tempe kept her gaze on Isaac, who’d finally begun to talk. She moved nearer, reading his lips, his gestures and grimaces. He turned and spat into a clump of weeds, looking sick enough to retch.

Tempe hardly noticed Mary Mendenhall’s approach. Mary was sixteen and newly wed, her face holding a question. Her husband had gone with James and Russell to Castle’s Woods.

Next came Jane Mendenhall, carrying the least of her children. Her face was still pinched with fatigue despite several days’ rest. “You bring word of my Richard?”

For a split second, Isaac just stared back at them before starting up again with a choking stutter.

“It—it’s bad—I come upon an ambush some three miles back along Wallen’s Creek—Cherokee and Shawnee—from the look of it. The stock’s all scattered—the horses took. Both Mendenhalls killed outright.” The young man spoke in breathless spurts, sweat slicking his brow despite the morning’s chill. “Three more are shot full of arrows, so torn up I could hardly make ’em out. I believe one’s Boone—maybe Tucker.”

Tempe took a step back, blood singing in her ears.

A wall of folks were behind her now, hemming her in, leaving no room to run or cry or collapse. She looked about wildly, the ragged trees fading to gray then black, cutting off light and air. If she’d been high atop a knob, she’d have flung herself off it, so deep went her hurt.

James . . . dead . . . on their wedding day?

What of Russell? Was her beloved brother dead too?

James’s father appeared then, gun in hand, striding toward them. Daniel held himself ramrod-straight at the news, his weathered features showing neither surprise nor sorrow. He asked a few low questions as if weighing all the facts before calling his brother and a small party of men to go back and bury the dead. James’s mother took out linen sheets from their precious stores to wrap the bodies in.

Stoic, the men began herding the women and children toward a large hollow beneath a beech tree, throwing up a rude defense of brush and fallen timber. The scene was one of chaos and near panic.

Shaking from the storm of her emotions, Tempe fisted her apron, the linen wadded in trembling hands. Beside her, Mary Mendenhall cried quietly, but Jane Mendenhall—a widow minutes old with eight fatherless children—stood stricken, the forgotten baby in her arms fretful.

Across the way was Tempe’s mother, also bereft of a son. Aylee Tucker put an arm about James’s mother, leading her to the shelter of the beech tree, seven younger Boones trailing. Little Livvy was crying, her small chest working like a blacksmith’s bellows as she clasped her older sisters’ hands.

Unable to look at her, Tempe turned her face to the sky. Seeking answers. Trying to stay standing. Desperate to recall what James had said to her at the last.

I wish you could go with me.

With all her being, she wished she had.

Sion took the night watch till the moon foretold three o’clock and Lucian roused. Expecting to fall into a dead slumber, he lay on his scant bedding in the rockhouse, dreaming of softer ground. Between him and Nate was Tempe, but he couldn’t tell if she was asleep or awake. And then when the silence and blackness of the night was deepest, she mumbled a few sleep-slurred words. He could make out but one.

James.

It was enough to keep him wide-eyed till daylight. After that she’d quieted. Was her time on the trace stirring up old heartaches like trail dust? If she turned back, headed to the inn . . . What a hole she’d leave should she retreat. And he had no guess as to whether Raven would accompany her for double wages or fly.

It was clear the half-blood was partial to her. Sion watched Raven craft a bow and a quiver of arrows for her. They bounced on her back, making her abandon her rifle altogether at times. Raven was teaching her how to use them, and being Tempe, she warmed to the task. Sion had yet to tease apart the reasons for their tie, and the wondering gnawed at him like a mouse finding a shed deer antler on the forest floor.

Turning on his side, he rested his head on his forearm and allowed himself an unguarded look at her. The moon was obliging, at such a slant that silver light spilled into the rockhouse and soaked every ridge and hollow of her. She lay on her back, her comely profile at rest, hands folded atop her middle.

If she left . . . what would he miss?

The flash in her eyes when he riled her? The deep-set dimple in her cheek? Her amiable self-possession? Her surprising, slow-to-speak ways? Tending to any complaint with her herbs and simples? The fall of hair to the small of her back, an untamed coil of too many colors to count?

She stirred then, turning toward him. A handbreadth away. Nate’s raucous snoring didn’t dent the enchantment or even earn the customary nudge to quiet down. Moonlight limned her cheekbones and fringe of lashes. Sion clenched his free hand, the temptation to brush back a stray wisp of her hair nigh impossible to resist.

She had nearly been James’s bride. A worthy bride for a Boone. What had Daniel once told him?

All you need for happiness is a good gun, a good horse, and a good wife.

A true-hearted woman, Daniel had concluded. Sion had heeded that advice. Had all a man could ask for. Then as now the knife’s edge of sorrow descended and cut short the faint stirrings of awe he’d begun to feel.

“Sion?” Tempe looked over at him. Her voice was like a caress in the darkness. “Is it time yet?”

He swallowed. Rolled onto his back. “Time?”

“To leave out?”

Would he lose her? He forced more words past a too-tight throat. “Which direction?”

She chuckled, a sweet, throaty sound, nearly drawing his eyes back to her. He focused on the rockhouse ceiling, a gnarled, smoke-blackened overhang he’d be glad to part with come daybreak.

“Time’ll tell,” she whispered, turning her back to him.

Tempe was aware of Sion’s eyes on her as they decamped. She sent him several sidelong glances, enjoying his attention. Maybe a smidgen of Paige’s flirtatiousness had rubbed off. Though Sion was clearly in charge, she had the upper hand, at least for the moment.

The horses were saddled and loaded, the camp picked clean of belongings. A breakfast of spring water and parched corn sufficed, and then she saw to Sion’s arm, pleased the bite was fading from an ugly red to a mottled purplish black, though her anger at Cornelius still burned bright.

This very morning Cornelius began to whine, pestering Sion about the particulars of their march. Sion wasn’t in a garrulous mood, annoying Cornelius with belated, one-word answers. Tempe tensed. Would another fight erupt?

Cornelius stood over Lucian as the manservant tightened his saddle’s girth. “I have decided that the fatal flaw of the wilderness is the dearth of daily bread. Had we some beeves, wheaten flour, and maccobean sugar, I’d be more inclined to suffer your tyranny.” This he leveled at Sion, who stood inspecting the Jacob’s staff, the crown jewel of surveying.

To Tempe’s delight, Sion ignored him.

“I call for a change of order in the column,” Cornelius droned on. “I shall lead out and set the pace, the Cherokee and Miss Tucker scouting ahead, and the rest following behind, with you, Morgan, bringing up the rear. When we reach the survey site—”

“When?” Nate burst out. “If is more likely. Yer liable to lead us straight off a cliff. You might make pretty maps, but you ain’t got no internal compass.”

The chain men snickered as they awaited Sion’s orders. And Sion—Sion was awaiting her, unwilling to make a move till she declared her intentions. She’d put him off long enough, though the lure of home was like the scent of baked bread. Nigh irresistible.

She swung herself into the saddle, facing west, still a bit sleepy-headed. She’d dreamed of James again. Sifted through the last of her memories. Glad she was of dawn’s light. Now her stomach, hardly content with her handful of corn, made noisy protest.

Mounted beside her, Raven turned to her with a sympathetic aside. “Fish enough to fill your belly once we reach the Green.”

She smiled, having withheld from him Sion’s tempting offer to turn back. The promise of catfish or carp, a favorite, seemed subtle confirmation to press on. Kneeing Dulcey, she moved past Sion to the front of the column.

Was he hoping she would turn back? Or had his dire words last night merely masked his feeling that he found her more hindrance than help? Then and there she purposed to prove herself.

Dawn bespoke another blazing day. A redbird sang from the topmost branches of a poplar, its sweet whistle one of the first songs of morning. Sweat began a slow trickle down her back. Her stays would soon be soaked through. She’d laced them less tight, leaving room to breathe as the heat ratcheted. She longed to be as unclad and free as Raven.

Turning to look over her shoulder, she found Sion watching her so intently she wished she could climb inside his head and try his thoughts. Squaring her shoulders, refusing homesickness, she steeled herself against the demands of the day, trying to stay forward thinking.

She remembered that along the Green was a series of waterfalls, a cool, misting place rife with shade. Privacy. On one of her forays with Pa they’d camped along the largest falls, naming it after Aylee. It had been late autumn and Pa was hunting buffalo. The cold turned so intense Tempe stayed wrapped in a buffalo robe the entire journey.

Now she followed Raven a ways and then they parted, he taking to the ridge above and she keeping to the humid bottoms, the surveyors trailing or between them.

Sion wasted little time laying the line, the sun soon striking the equipment and creating a fearful shine. Tempe kept alert to the line marks for the next direction west, their noisy work even bringing a halt to the birdsong. Though talk was minimal there was no doubt surveying was an intrusion to the untrammeled woods. The axemen never ceased their chopping. With Nate and Lucian as chain carriers, Cornelius grudgingly was made marker. Sion rebuked them for short-chaining—failing to pull the chain tight—making a mockery of his accuracy.

When Raven rejoined her at noon, his expression held a hint of disgust. Each foot forward thrust the Indians back. No doubt he was thinking it too.

“It’s a wide sweep of world.” Raising a hand, Tempe pushed back her hat to ease her damp hairline. “Can’t we all just abide together in harmony?”

“No, oginalii.” He flicked a mosquito from a silver-banded forearm. “The land stealers are here to stay.”

“Where then will you go?”

His shrug held resignation. “Maybe it will not matter. I may join my Tsalagi brothers and fight.”

Alarmed anew, she looked at him. “You would make war?”

Raven studied her, more grim. “This Morgan, the Long Knife, he is a wolf.”

Wolf? Once she had thought the same. Now she wasn’t sure. She cast a look over her shoulder as the main party caught up with them at the rendezvous point, a grove of stately maples near a sulphur spring. “Every man is part wolf, part lamb. The stronger depends on which you feed, remember?”

“You borrow the words of the holy man Asbury.”

She nodded, the memory convicting if distant. The preacher had come but once, then gone back over the Gap. Raven happened to be at the inn when he held them spellbound on the dogtrot, planting biblical seeds. Was she watering them in his wake?

“I pray for peace,” she said.

“To your holy Father?”

“God is your Father too,” she returned quietly. “He makes a place for us in heaven, forever.”

Still grim-faced, Raven reined his horse around to face the rest of their party. “I am not sure of this heaven you speak of. But I think the hell the holy man spoke of is here.”

Her heart sank. Sion approached slowly as if gauging the intensity of their talk. With another push to her hat, Tempe sent it dangling down her back.

She was unsure of Raven. Unsure of Sion. Unsure of taking another step. And still missing James.

For now they rested, the axemen spent. Looking back over the ground they’d come, Tempe took in the destruction. Broken twigs and branches. Crushed undergrowth. The telling marks of men’s tracks. Blaze marks on tree after tree. All the tools were finally idle—the red-tipped chaining arrows, the tally belt to track them, one too many felling axes and fascine knives.

Cornelius was bent over his plane table, a drawing board with paper and rule, a sight at each end. Sion kept slightly apart, jotting in his field book. At day’s end they would gather and compare notes and sketches, astonishing her with their mathematical and artistic prowess. But at the moment they seemed subdued, overcome by the vastness they claimed by metal chains.

Cornelius looked up from his work, his fair hair hanging in damp wisps about his face. “There was a time we surveyed nine tracts totaling twenty thousand acres in seventeen days.”

“Fincastle County is not the frontier,” Sion replied without looking up.

“No, it ain’t,” Nate sputtered between a mouthful of jerky. “Most of Virginia seems naught but Yankee Doodle land from here.”

“Yankee Doodle land, indeed.” Laying his quill aside, Cornelius reached for a canteen. “The Kentucke guidebook you’re writing shall be as formidable a weapon as these axes and knives, enticing settlers far and wide to venture into the wilderness, or so I hope. I’m confident my publisher in Philadelphia will print the guide along with my maps. Once that happens I shan’t stoop to a field survey again.”

Tempe uncorked her own canteen as Sion looked up at her over his notes. “How far to the Barrens, Miss Tucker?”

So he’d forsaken Tempe, had he? A stilted formality had crept between them again. So be it. “Another ten miles by my reckoning, Mister Morgan, though Raven might be of a different mind.”

At that Sion tucked his field book beneath one arm and walked toward Raven, who stood beneath a sugar tree, leaving her to puzzle out Cornelius’s lofty talk. A guidebook? Such a farfetched notion! Settlement was coming, but she rued its violent advance. Ink and paper, a guidebook, had little bearing on conquering the wilderness, surely.

Yet in her heart of hearts lived a longing for peaceful times. Neighbors. Acres of corn and rail fence. A lessening of danger. Caught on the cusp of change, she squirmed.

Her beloved wilderness was vast and unfettered. Free.

She was with the very men who would bring all that untrammeled beauty to an end.

And she had lent her hand to help them.