The Pursuit of Tamsen Littlejohn by Lori Benton Page B

thinking. Or was he praying? A tiny seed of pity cracked open within her, and for an instant she wished she could be … stronger, surer. Something . But she was undone, unraveled, a seam left unhemmed.
    After a bit he raised his head. “I’ll take you back,” he said flatly. “If that’s what you want.”
    She bit her lip and looked away. “There’s nothing to go back to.”
    “You’re sure? If this ain’t what you want—”
    “It is. I … you …” She wanted to say she was grateful, but she hadn’t the words. Grief capped them like a well, holding them inside her.
    She turned to see him rolling up his bedding. He gathered up the corndodgers to wrap in leaves and caught her eye. “Want to try again before we head out?”
    She could only shake her head. She went to the stream and splashed her face, then set about ordering her hair. The ivory combs were still lodged in place, but few pins remained in the tangled curls. The pinner dangled behind one ear. She rinsed away the sick, fingered out leaves andtwigs, then plaited a simple braid and flung it over her shoulder, slipping the combs into one of the pockets now tied at her waist. Though there was none to see save her guide, who’d already had the privilege of watching her vomit, she covered the crown of her head with the pinner, securing it with the remaining hairpins.
    He’d tied her cloak with his bedding, behind the saddle. “You wear this,” he said, draping the satchel with the corndodgers over her shoulder. “You’ll have it by when you’re hungry.”
    An optimist, he was. Yet the gesture was kind.
    Her mother’s box lay in the grass. Her eyes were dry as she picked it up, but she couldn’t still the trembling of her hands.
    “I can tie that up.”
    She looked away, uncertain. She felt she owed him … something, but couldn’t think beyond the moment and the monumental task of getting back up on that horse.
    “I’d rather hold it,” she managed to say.
    He didn’t object.
    Biting back a groan, she climbed onto the horse’s back, settled the box in front of her, tucked the torn petticoat around her knees. Her guide looked up at her, as if to say something more, then seemed to think better of it. He took up the horse’s lead and the rocking sway that had haunted her dreams resumed.

    They camped at sunset, high in a rocky fastness skirted by firs, having seen no sign of another human being since the man with the mules and dogs, just an endless parade of trees and rocks and the occasional deer or rabbit bounding out of their path. But what trees, some with girths wide enough to hide a horse behind, leafed so thick they turned midday into twilight beneath their canopy.
    Everywhere were birds. Woodpeckers bobbed from their path in flight. Eagles and hawks circled above, keening their wild cries. Ravens croaked at them from the tops of conifers, while down below grouse burst from the brush with a drumming of wings, and flocks of wild turkeys hurried up the mountainsides as they passed. Tiny flitting songbirds raised a constant chorus of trills.
    Once, a great cloud of pigeons crossed over, blotting out the sky for minutes, rustling the air with their innumerable wing beats.
    Tamsen winced as she slid from the saddle for the last time that day. Over and over in the blur of their up-and-down travels, she’d been forced to dismount where the going grew too steep or narrow to trust her perch on the horse. She was blistered, worn, and breathless—the latter due to her stays, which were never intended for climbing mountains or the great gulps of thin air needed for the purpose.
    She sat on a shelf of rock and slipped off her shoes while her guide unsaddled the horse and hobbled it in scanty grass. Then he informed her he was going down the mountain to set snares in hope of getting breakfast.
    “I’ll not go out of shouting range.” He caught sight of her heels, showing blistered and raw through holes in her filthy stockings.
    She tucked