Red Prophet Page 0,59

just remember me," she said. "And you keep that amulet I gave you. You wear that all the time."

"What's it do?" he asked, taking it from his pocket again. "I don't know this kind."

"Never you mind, you just keep it close to you all the time."

"I will, Ma."

Measure walked his horse up beside Al Junior's. "We best be going now," he said. "We want to get to country we don't see every day before we bed down tonight."

"Don't you do that," said Pa sternly. "We arranged for you to stay with the Peachee family tonight. That's as far as you need to get in one day. Don't want you to spend a night in the open when you don't have to."

"All right, all right," said Measure, "but we at least ought to get there before supper."

"Go on then," said Ma. "Go on then, boys."

They only got a rod or so on the way before Pa came running out and caught Measure's horse by the bridle, and Al Junior's, too. "Boys, you remember! Cross rivers at the bridges. You hear me? Only at the bridges! There's bridges at every river on this road, between here and Hatrack River. "

"I know, Pa," said Measure. "I helped build them all, you know."

"Use them! That's all I'm saying. And if it rains, you stop, you find a house and stop, you hear me? I don't want you out in the water."

They both pledged most solemnly not to get near anything wet. "Won't even stand downstream from the horses when they spurt," said Measure.

Pa shook a finger at him. "Don't you make light," he said.

Finally they got on their way, not looking back cause that was awful luck, and knowing that Ma and Pa went back into the house well before they was out of sight, cause it was calling for a long separation if you watched a long time when folks were leaving, and if you watched them clear out of sight it was a good chance somebody'd die before you ever saw them again. Ma took that real serious. Going inside quick like that was the last thing she'd be able to do to help protect her boys on their way.

Al and Measure stopped in a stretch of woods between Hatchs' and Bjornsons' farms, where the last storm knocked down a tree half onto the road. They could get by all right, being on horseback as they were, but you don't leave a thing like that for somebody else to find. Maybe somebody in a wagon, hurrying to make home before dark on a stormy night, maybe that's who'd come by next, and find the road blocked. So they stopped and ate the lunch Ma packed for them, and then set to work with their hatchets, cutting it free from the few taut strands of wood that clung to the ragged stump. They were wishing for a saw long before they were done, but you don't carry a saw with you on a three-hundred-mile trip on horseback. A change of clothes, a hatchet, a knife, a musket for hunting, powder and lead, a length of rope, a blanket, and a few odd tokens and amulets for wardings and fendings. Much more than that and you'd have to bring a wagon or a pack horse.

After the trunk was free, they tied both horses to it and pulled it out of the way. Hard work, sweaty work, cause the horses weren't used to pulling as a team and they bothered each other. Tree kept snagging up on them, too, and they had to keep rolling it and chopping away branches. Now, Al knew he could've used his knack to change the wood of that tree inside, to make it split apart in all the right places. But that wouldn't have been right, he knew. The Shining Man wouldn't've stood for that - it would've been pure selfishness, pure laziness, and no good to anybody. So he hacked and tugged and sweated right alongside Measure. And it wasn't so bad. It was good work, and when it was all done it was no more than an hour. It was time well spent.

They talked somewhat during the work, of course. Some of the conversation turned on the stones about Red massacres down south. Measure was pretty skeptical. "Oh, I hear those stories, but the bloody ones are all things somebody heard from somebody else about somebody else. The folks who actually lived down there and got