At the farthest end of the lake, where the beach starts to bendback around, I pause, looking up into the trees and the perimeter of oaks like a wall sheltering us from whatever lurks beyond.
I start to turn back, when the wind stirs, releasing the scent of pine and dead leaves, and also a voice.
Avoice.
Distant and echoey, up beyond the tree line.
I swivel to look back across the lake, where I can still see our small campfire, and two bodies sleeping beside it. It’s not Noah and Cricket I heard.
I tilt my gaze toward the trees, listening for the sound of horses’ hooves thundering against the hard ground, their hot breath in the cold air. But there is only a voice. And then another.
Someone is camping nearby.
I move away from the lake, up into the dense oaks.
The campfire vanishes behind me, and so does the quiet lake, until I’m surrounded by only the cold shade of evergreens.
I know I should go back to camp, wake Noah and Cricket, tell them what I heard. But my legs don’t slow, curiosity edging me deeper and deeper into the trees. It’s likely only ranchers, travelers passing through these hills and bedding down for the night.Nothing to fear. No reason for us to pack up and leave.
Dry pine needles crunch underfoot and I slow my pace, not wanting to be heard. But the forest is dark, no moonlight peeking through the branches, and I stumble over a tangle of roots, cursing.
The voices grow louder—several of them—and I move up the ridgeline crowded with pines and hemlocks. There is laughter, too, late-evening chatter. The amber glow of a fire appears ahead—the flames much larger than our own back at the lake.
Through the trees, five distinct figures come into view. Five men—seated around a campfire.
Five horses tied to nearby trees.
I crouch down behind a thicket of saltbush, knees in the dirt. Their voices are deep, rolling up into the low branches and down the ridge to the lake where I first heard them. They’re talking about tobacco, about a bullsnake that was found in one of their bedrolls the other morning. They laugh, several of them leaning close to the fire, while something cooks on a skillet over the flames.
They are eating, drinking from a shared canteen, telling stories.Harmless enough. I watch them a moment, careful not to make a sound. One of the men leans toward the fire, tossing a spent corncob onto the flames, and for the briefest of moments, the skin of his forearm catches in the firelight, and I see it: a starburst branded into his flesh, red and scarred. New—like it had just been burned into his skin within the last day or two.
I jerk my face back, dropping down behind the saltbush.
Them.
They’re here, in the trees, not far from our camp. They found me.
I steady my breathing, the fear expanding in my chest, getting larger.I need to get away from here.But one of the men laughs, loud and forceful, and I snap my gaze back toward the campfire. Another man—with his back to me—shifts on the log where he’s seated, tossing out a brown liquid in his cup toward the line of bushes—coffee maybe, the gritty dredges.
But for the briefest moment, his face comes into view, and it’shim.
The man from the saloon with the silver-crow bolo tie, the man who stood over me at the miners’ camp, who pointed his pistol atme and would have pulled the trigger if his boss—Holt—had given him the okay.
Samuel.
Shit.I shift my weight back, to slink away into the dark, into the trees—soft and quiet and unseen—but the adrenaline is swimming in my veins, my entire body a coil of nervous sparks. I take a step back, then another. I swear I don’t hear my foot catch on the dead limb—only the feel of it cracking underfoot—but one of the horses, tied to a branch only a few yards away, snaps its head upward, eyes roving the tree line.
I pause, suck in a breath.
Shit.
Shit.
One of the men I don’t recognize stands up, walks to the horse, and runs a hand down its neck. He turns in a circle, looking for the cause of the horse’s nervousness.
My throat narrows on the fear. Tightens.
Then closes up completely when the man’s eyes find me.
