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Chapter 43

Marie Keehn looked at the smoke rising in the distance. She was too numb to cry. Instead she took off her shoes and socks and looked at her feet. She had blisters on both heels and her right foot had blisters on three of her five toes. Her shoes, fine for an eight- or sixteen-hour shift at the prison, weren't suited for a long trek through a wilderness.

She had thought she would find Alexander's staff and the Cherokees today. But that wasn't going to happen. Ten minutes back she had spotted smoke from what should be their camp. The location wasn't exactly where she had been led to believe it would be, but it was close. It was also about three miles away. On a good day, she could walk that distance in less than two hours, even across rough terrain, but today was not a good day. She was moving at a snail's pace. She guessed she still had a three- to four-hour hike ahead of her, and the sun was less than ten minutes from setting.

At least she'd found a cave to sleep in tonight. More like a horizontal crevice in a short cliff than a cave, really, but it'd do. Especially since it was a steep twenty foot climb to reach it. That climb had used up her strength, for the moment. She could only hope it would look too chancy for any would-be nocturnal predator.

Of which she hadn't seen any signs, anyway. Not once during the whole trek. So far as she could tell, all the dangerous predators in this world seemed to hunt by daylight. Whatever night hunters there might be were probably too small to see her as suitable prey.

It didn't matter. She'd rather deal with nocturnal predators than risk sleeping in a tree again. She'd almost fallen out of the tree twice during that horrible night—and when she finally woke up in the morning discovered that she'd somehow wound up twisting herself completely around in the fork. Her head was where her feet had started.

How she'd managed to do that without falling out of the tree was a complete mystery. The first and only case of possible divine intervention Marie had ever seen.

Once she reconciled herself to another night alone, though, she started feeling better about the situation. True, she hadn't eaten in days—she wasn't even sure how many, any longer—but it had been long enough the hunger was gone. And she'd come across a small creek early in the day, so she'd had plenty to drink and had managed to refill her improvised canteen.

That meant, come dawn, she'd still have the reserves to get to where she was going.

"In the morning, babes," she whispered, as the last rays of sunlight disappeared.

 

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Framed