anything, don’t get too close, just turn around and come back here.”
She nodded.
“Em, watch for the place where horses have come out of the stream.” Duncan turned his horse downstream. “That’s the only clue we’ll need to pick up the trail.”
“I know what to look for,” she snapped. Both of them were treating her like a child on a rabbit hunt.
Duck laughed. “That’s my Em. Nobody could ever tell you anything.”
She was already heading upstream and didn’t answer. The stream was shallow, not more than three or four feet in the center, but wide enough that two or three horses could easily ride abreast.
Now and then she felt the splash of water but blamed it on a branch she’d brushed or her horse splashing. She didn’t, couldn’t feel the rain, for if she did it would mean that she would have to stop, and Em had no intention of stopping. Her horse fought the current, so after a few hundred feet, she rode the edge of the stream, not caring that she left a trail. No one was following her.
The trees grew denser, with dead moss hanging off their branches that reminded her of huge spiderwebs wide enough to swallow her if she wasn’t careful. In places, thanks to the rain, the water splashed over its banks. Twice, her horse stumbled, tossing her into the water, but she didn’t stop. She had only an hour to find the trail, and if she didn’t, she’d have to turn around and pray that Wyatt or Duck had found something.
In a bend in the river, she slowed, searching both banks for any sign. Her horse was tired and she knew the outlaws’ mounts would have been also. They couldn’t stay in the water much longer or they’d be traveling on foot.
Her teeth were chattering, but she didn’t care. She wouldn’t stop. In the stillness just before she rounded the corner, she thought she heard voices. Em walked her horse onto the bank and listened, then moved slowly forward.
After only a dozen steps, Em froze. Men not thirty feet beyond the trees lining the stream were talking. Yelling almost. Laughing. Swearing.
She looped her horse’s reins over a branch and moved as silently as she could toward the noise.
Ten feet into the brush and trees, she saw the men she’d been looking for circled around a campfire. For a moment, she couldn’t believe her eyes. Lewt was in the middle of them playing cards.
She counted them, unsure if there had been six or seven tracks in the mud. She counted five men around the fire besides Lewt. One on the ground looking more like he’d passed out than fallen asleep. Frantically, she watched the trees. Were they all present, or was one missing?
Again and again her gaze traveled to Lewt as if her eyes were hungry for just the sight of him.
All day in her mind she’d pictured him suffering, maybe even dying. It had never occurred to her that he might just be playing cards with the outlaws. She didn’t know whether to feel angry or relieved. She’d found him. He was surrounded, and worse, he appeared to be one of them. The man was a chameleon. Change his clothes, change his company. It didn’t matter. He blended in.
A twig snapped from a few feet behind her and Em felt something slam against her head a moment before the world went black.
CHAPTER 35
LEWT WATCHED ONE OF THE MEN WALK INTO CAMP carrying Em over one shoulder like she was no more than a deer he’d killed for supper. He felt his own heart stop and it didn’t start up again until he heard her moan in pain.
She was alive.
“Look what I found,” the troll of a man shouted. He had wide shoulders and trunk legs but not the height that should have gone with the rest of his body. As the world’s shortest giant stomped into camp with his trophy, Lewt watched silently with the others. He knew if he tipped his hand now, his life as well as hers would be worthless.
The self-appointed leader of the group, a big sloppy man named Binns, moved closer. “Where’d you find her?”
“Down near the water. She was watching us,” the troll said as he dropped her near the fire. “I wouldn’t have hit her so hard if I’d known she was a woman. Dressed like that, I thought she was a man.”
“Where’s her horse?”
“I must have spooked him ’cause he took off downstream.”