Margaret found comfort in the hope that the rustlers would have more immediate priorities than chasing after their absconded labor gang — if any others, apart from Franklin, had had the sense and the guts to run away, that is. Surely new slaves could be seized easily from among the next influx of springtime emigrants, she told herself. So why waste fresh horses and good muscle tracking down those few who had broken loose when there were more pressing matters to attend to? First the loot from the metal burial ground would have to be secured and taken, probably — oh, sacrilege — into the Ark for division or safekeeping. Then the Ark itself would have to be secured or burned to the ground. No doubt all the Baptists were now united with their God and lining up to have their bloodstained devotional tapes replaced by halos. The Helpless Gentlemen would be standing limply at their Maker’s side at last. But what of Margaret’s fellow emigrants? She could only hope her winter friends were being treated well, though in her heart she feared otherwise. Could she hear human voices calling in the distance? Could she hear other horses sneezing? She turned her head like an owl to listen on all sides. No, nothing. Just the usual sounds of a cooling countryside. Finally, when twisting in her saddle she could see no sign of any roofs or any smoke or any hoof-raised dust apart from their own, she said, “We’re free of them, I think. There’s no one at our backs.”
Franklin knew these men more intimately than she did. The loss of slaves might not matter to them, but the loss of face and the loss of horses would be intolerable. At the very least, the two rustlers on guard duty who had been dragged off their mounts and dishonored in the labor gang’s sudden rebellion and the third guard who had ridden for help would want, and would be expected, to put right their blunder. He could almost hear Captain Chief mocking and haranguing them in that deranged voice of his. How could three strong men, mounted on good horses, armed, fail to keep control over that rabble of low-life refugees and farmers? he would want to know. Perhaps these flimsies would prefer it if he found them some less complicated duties in the future. Could he trust them to guard a herd of goats, perhaps, without a couple of the goats pulling them from their saddles? No? Too hard for them to manage on their own? Well, then, did they have the brains between them to take charge of a trussed duck without the duck chewing through its ties and disappearing into thin air with a horse tucked under each wing? He doubted it. He doubted that these three men deserved to have anything for supper except a beating, unless they succeeded in getting back each lost man and both lost horses. At once. Today. “Go bring them in!”
“They’re coming for us, never doubt it,” Franklin said. His only hope was that the three blameworthy guards would check out the obvious hiding places first: the forest just beyond the Ark, and then the shacks and beds for hire of Tidewater. A second, less likely hope was that if Franklin’s labor-gang comrades were recaptured in any numbers, all of them perhaps, then the rustlers and Captain Chief might decide to settle for the loss of one tall man. But two good mounts? Franklin could not convince himself of that.
“They’ll come to get their horses back, I promise you,” he said after a while, wanting to break their silence. “Good mounts are valuable. A man like that without a horse is not much use to anyone.”
“Let go the horses, then,” Margaret suggested.
“And walk?”
“We’ve walked before.” The word before seemed sensuous.
Franklin thought about her suggestion for a moment before rejecting it. “Can’t do that,” he said. “A horse will find its masters if you let it go and then lead them back to us. They’ll have our scent.”
“They’re horses, not dogs!”
Franklin laughed. “Only a woman from the town could think that,” he said, and blushed.
Nevertheless, Franklin and Margaret dismounted from their horses as soon as they dared. It would be best to keep their mounts fresh and rested, just in case they were discovered by the rustlers and needed to take flight again. They led them by the reins and took it in turns to carry Jackie on their backs in the blanket sling. Franklin liked her fingers tugging at his neck, the smell of her, the weight of her. He’d worn jackets that were heavier. At least the girl, whoever she might be, was warm in her blanket, but it wasn’t long into the afternoon before the sun was too low and too obscured by cloud and treetops to offer much comfort. Franklin was in his shirtsleeves and his work pants. He had nothing else. The morning of laboring had kept away the cold, but now he was shivering. He did, though, have a pair of stout work boots that made the walking easy. All Margaret had were some yard sandals, a pair of knee-length socks that she had knitted herself over the winter, a long patch skirt, and a smock tied at her waist. No hat. And nothing personal. Everything had been left behind at the side of her bed in the Ark, including her comb and hairbrush, her spark stone, the fishing net with which she had trapped a bird for breakfast months before, and her beloved blue scarf, that remnant of her youth in Ferrytown.
She had lost her pot of homegrown mint as well, just when it could be expected to show signs of springing into life again. She had a haunting image of it bleached into her memory: their barrow being raided on that dreadful night on the Dreaming Highway when the rustlers had kidnapped Franklin, the mint being dashed onto the ground as if the plant were worthless, and then the sudden spinning of her head as her blue scarf was dragged away. “Not her,” the short man had said. “We don’t want her.” And she was saved.
Franklin seemed to hear her thoughts. He smiled at her and raised an eyebrow. “Go ahead, ask.”
“What happened to you afterward?” she asked. Before and afterward. “What happened to you when I wasn’t there?”
“You mean the horsemen? All of that?”
“Everything.” Had he missed her? Had he thought of her? Was she in his dreams?
He understood what she hoped to hear — he hoped to hear the same from her — but no, he could not find the words just yet. He spread his hands and blew out air. Overwhelmed and at a loss. Such sudden freedom winded him. There was a lot to tell. There’d been so many hazards to survive over the winter and there was so much distress to put to rest, now that it all — touch wood — was history. “Bad months,” he said. “And you?”
“Bad months as well,” she said.
Neither wanted to be the first to give an account. So they came to an agreement: the one carrying Jackie would do the listening and the other would talk. But they would take it in turns with the girl and the storytelling, exchanging both of the burdens whenever they grew weary of either.
Margaret was first. It was important to explain the child to him. She told Franklin about her travels with the Boses and the two murderous men in the woods, how she’d come to be Bella’s adopted ma, the Helpless Gentlemen, the hilarious and temporary safety of the Ark, why Bella had been renamed Jackie, how that morning she’d recognized the short man in Jackson’s long coat, and, last, Franklin laughing with his great loose arms.
Franklin explained the boredom of slavery. “My story can’t compare with yours,” he said. “We worked, we slept, we nursed our bruises. And I was starving all the time. I could have eaten rope. I did eat rope. And cockroaches.” It felt too personal to mention the punishments he’d witnessed, the deaths or the provocations of the man he’d nicknamed Captain Chief.
Margaret listened with her stomach tightening at the prospect of any news of Acton Bose, Jackie’s — Bella’s — father. She was afraid that she would hear that he had been one of the labor gang in the trenches outside the Ark and that somehow she would be required, for duty’s sake, to seek him out and reunite the father and the daughter. She was relieved and ashamed of herself to hear that Acton had been sold to work in mines and could be anywhere. “I haven’t seen him since that day. Not heard a word of him,” said Franklin. “Poor man,” she said, but could not truly mean it. She wished Acton well, but also she wished him far. “Poor man,” she said again, and felt that the second time she had sounded more convincing.