“I’ll be going up to bed,” Adam said at the foot of the staircase after following Matt inside.

“You better hear, too. I’m not saying it twice.”

Adam sat down in the main room, and Matt walked to the fireplace and turned to face his mother. She was staring at him in the way that all mothers could, he imagined, making him feel like the lowliest scum that had ever walked the earth.

“Would you care to tell us who Annie is, Matthew?” she asked.

“I’m sure Ben Littleship told you who she was, Mother.”

“I’m not speaking to Ben right now, though, am I?”

“Annie found us that day. She saw Chester and came to see why a saddled horse had wandered onto her property and found us. I don’t know how she did it, but she hooked a cart to Chester and somehow dragged us into it. She took us back to her cabin and put Ben in her bed and me on a pallet in front of the fire. I had a pretty nasty bump on my head didn’t wake up for fourteen days.”

“Fourteen days? You were out for two weeks?” Adam asked.

Matt nodded. “I was, and Ben didn’t wake up for a good bit longer after that. I wasn’t sure he’d ever wake up.”

“You were unconscious for two weeks, Matthew?” his mother repeated.

“I was. I think I hit my head when Chester was dragging us out of the river. I don’t remember anything after that until I woke up on the floor of Annie’s cabin.”

“How did she keep you alive?”

“She had a healer named Gilly come set Ben’s leg. I’m glad we both slept through that. Annie spooned broth and water in our mouths and moved Ben’s arms and legs around like Gilly told her to. That’s what she told me anyway, and I watched her do as much with Ben, although I took care of Ben for a while after I’d woken up. I was too weak to do much else, and Annie had her pigs and her property and Chester to look after.”

“She saved your lives,” Adam said.

“She did. We would have frozen to death if we hadn’t died from our injuries. We were lucky we were near her cabin.”

“What was she like?” Adam asked. “Young, old? Is her farm prosperous?”

His mother stared at him, and he looked away to Adam when he replied. “Close to my age, I’d say. Her property is not really a farm, although she keeps a couple of hogs that will be going to market and she has a large garden.”

“What was it like when you woke up?” His brother again.

“I had no idea where I was and didn’t immediately remember the river. The first day I was awake I was determined to get up but could only take a step or two before I sat down, exhausted. I’d lost about forty pounds, mostly muscle, I think, because I was weak as a new foal.”

“Did she live there alone?” Adam probed. “Even if it’s not a working farm, there still must be quite a bit of work for a single woman.”

“She does live alone.”

“It wasn’t a family property?” his mother asked.

“Yes, it was,” he replied.

“We owe her an enormous debt of gratitude,” she said.

“We do,” Matt whispered and walked to the long window to stare sightlessly at the cobbled walkway. He had a sick feeling rising over him then, apprehension and worry, followed by the vision of Annie standing in the rain. Did townsfolk know he and Ben were no longer there? Had she done something foolish? And what of her story she had never told him? He knew there was more to it. He knew it.

“What is it, Matthew?”

“Her father took issue with a family of some power in her town, Bridgewater, the Thurmans. Her mother had died in fifty-five giving birth to her brother, Teddy. She said her father was never right after that and that she had raised Teddy virtually alone. About five years ago, her father went to see the Thurmans, who acted as the conscription agents for a Confederate encampment, to complain that they were taking too much from his farm. While he was there he saw one of them beating a Negro and made a fuss about it. They shot him on the street and killed him.”

Adam blew out a breath and sat back in his chair. His mother stared at him grimly.

“Leaving Annie alone to continue raising a brother and now care for a property as well,” she said. “Why isn’t the boy there helping his sister? Why is she alone?”

“She told me Teddy was not right. That even at twelve years old he was still like a child. But he is not there anyway.”

“He’s gone out on his own? How old is he now?” Adam asked.

Matt looked up at his brother. “He’s dead. The Thurmans came looking to hurt Annie, and he tried to defend her and they hung him by the neck from the barn rafters.”

“Dear God,” Adam said.

“Was Annie hurt?” his mother asked after a few quiet minutes.

“They’d stripped her naked and intended to, but after the boy was killed their original intent died away. Perhaps it satisfied their urges.”

Adam swore and apologized to his mother, who was looking steadily at Matt without appearing to have heard any of Adam’s words. She was thin-lipped and would most certainly not stop with her questions until she had every answer.

“I offered to bring her here several times but she would have no part of it.”

“Why ever not?” Adam asked. “What was there to tie her there?”

“She didn’t think you would be appreciative of her and might think she was angling for money or maybe something else. There’s more to her story yet, although she wouldn’t tell me the whole of it. One of the Thurman sons went missing, and I can’t shed the feeling that Annie was part of it somehow. She scares easily, doesn’t go to town unless it’s necessary, and relies on a neighbor to get her supplies and take her animals to market. No one in the town will tell me anything, either. I asked several storekeepers and they all acted as if they’d not even heard me speak her name, other than the butcher, who scolded me for speaking of her and maybe bringing her trouble.”

The three of them sat silently, Adam shaking his head and tossing back his second whiskey of the evening. His mother was still staring at him, sitting straight in her seat, her back not touching the chair, her hands folded neatly in her lap. Matt sat down on the couch, waiting for more questions.

“Am I to understand, Matthew, that the woman, unmarried woman and living on her own in the backwoods, who rescued you and Ben, nursed you, fed you, and cared for you for weeks, even months, you have left behind?”

“She was unwilling—”

“I don’t care about unwilling,” his mother said, her voice rising. “You have left a young woman you owe your life to, who has already been abused, at the mercy of cruel powerful men? Is that what you are saying?”

“I-I . . .”

“Where did you stay once you were well and tending Ben? Please do not say you stayed in her cabin. Women’s reputations are fragile things even in the wilderness, it is unfair, but still true.”

“As soon as I was able, I slept in the barn loft.” As he said it, he thought of Annie standing before him, naked and beautiful beyond belief, of touching her and kissing her and spreading her legs. He looked at his mother and couldn’t stop the color rising in his face. He looked away quickly and licked his lips.

“It’s possible Annie is carrying my child.”

“Jesus and Mother Mary,” Adam said and smacked his palm on his forehead.

“Need I remind you that your father killed four men single-handedly to save me from a life of slavery? He did not do so in order to marry me, even though he asked me very shortly after. He saved me because it was the right and only thing to do when faced with a person being treated violently. He also saved my virtue.”

“You needn’t remind me of anything, Mother,” Matt said, his voice rising as he stood. “I’ve heard the story many times. But the lessons of those stories surely were tested on the battlefield and after. The cruelty I’ve seen, the cruelty I didn’t stop!” he shouted. “How can I call myself moral or able to identify right and wrong when I made decisions day in and day out that were not moral. That were heinous!”

“It was war,” Adam said softly.

“And you feel the responsibility of those actions?” his mother asked.

“Of course I do! I was raised a Gentry, was I not? The foolhardiest thought I ever had was to think joining the army was honorable. I wasn’t defending my home! I wasn’t fighting for a cause that I believed in! I ran away from home like a schoolboy. I don’t even deserve the name Gentry, let alone the heritage!”

His mother stood and sat down close to him. She gathered his hand in hers. “Surely most men, at least the honorable ones, have the same self-doubts and guilt as you after spending so many years at war. You wouldn’t be human if you didn’t wonder and even chastise yourself, but you have got to right your ship.”

“What does that mean, Mother?” He shook his head and looked anywhere but at her face.

“Look at me, Matthew. Now, tell me, what is the right thing to do? Not what you think Annie wants you to do, but what is the right thing for you to do?”

He stood abruptly and flung the coffee cup in his hands against the stone fireplace, sending a shower of china shards onto the hearth. He was breathing heavily.

“The right thing is for me to keep Annie safe! The right thing is for me to ride there with no expectations other than to punish the men who have hurt her, and make her safe and comfortable. That is the right thing to do! That is all I want to do!”

He finally looked at his mother. She arched a brow.

“Then why, Matthew, are you still here?”

“Hello, Bertram,” Annie said as she walked into the post office. “It is a fine day out, is it not?”

The other customer at the counter took a quick look at her and then at Bertram Miles and hurried out the door.

“What are you doing in town, Annie?” he said and walked away to lift a bundle onto the counter.

“I wanted to see if I had any mail. Isn’t that what I’m supposed to do at the post office?”

Bertram leaned across the counter and shook a finger in her face. “You best be careful with that smart tongue of yours, girlie. Old man Thurman’s already got you in his sights.”

“I can’t imagine why,” she said and wondered if he could hear her heart pounding in her chest and realize she was barely taking in enough breath to stay standing. He smiled at her then, a wicked, cruel look even for him. He made her want to vomit.

“Maybe I’ll be taking another look at those titties of yours. You’ll be begging to show me them when Thurman’s done with you.”

She swallowed, stared into his eyes, and forced a smile to her face. “I’ll never beg you or any other of the cowards in this town again, whether you have your little white hat on or not.”

She left the post office and walked down the street toward the edge of town and home. She passed the Thurman Grist Mill offices and stared at the window and door as she did. Joshua Thurman came out the door and shouted at her.

“We don’t need no whore out walking the streets of Bridgewater with good folks! There’s no use looking for another customer here since that old man and young one left town. I’ll bet you gave that young one a good old time.”

“Your shoes are tied together, Joshua!” she shouted back at him and watched him look down at his feet as she knew he would.

Matt checked the cinch on Chester’s saddle in the barn before sunup the following day. He’d packed a bedroll, as he would be sleeping outside for two nights, and Mabel had packed him provisions when she’d heard him wandering in her kitchen at four in the morning and gone to investigate in her night clothes, a frying pan over her head, prepared to attack an intruder. He’d kissed her cheek while she wrapped cheese and bread and fried chicken and put it all in a cloth bag.

“Are you ready, boy?” Matt said now in the cool stillness and quiet of the barn. “We’ve got a long, hard ride ahead of us.”

Chester nickered in response and stomped his front hooves. Matt chuckled and checked the bridle and bit. He packed a bag of feed in one of his saddlebags along with a spare pistol and ammunition, his clothes and razor and food in the other, and checked that his money belt was tight around his waist. His rifle was strapped behind his saddle and his gun belt was around his hips. He led Chester from the barn just as the sky was lightening and the dark of the shadows was turning blue. He put his foot in the stirrup and stopped abruptly.

“What in the name of the devil are you trying to do, Adam? Jumping out at me when it’s still half dark and scaring me to death? What are you doing out here anyway?”

Adam walked toward him out of the shadows, leading a saddled horse. “Waiting for your sorry ass to get moving. I’m going with you, Matt.”

“If what I expect is true, I’ll be doing things that you don’t want to do or know about,” Matt said. “I thank you, but I’ll not have another man’s conscience on my mind.”

“Do you think you’re the only one who’s been faced with unpleasant tasks?”

It was then he recalled what Ben had told him about the day when Daddy had been shot and what Ben and Adam had done to rescue the woman and her children. He wondered if Adam had had to defend himself or the Morgans from soldiers or others intending to take them while he hid them in the mountains.

“I’m riding hard,” Matt said and pulled himself up into the saddle and sat there not pushing Chester to move, until finally tugging on the reins. “I appreciate the gesture and the company.”

Annie leaned close against the wall of the loft and watched through the gun slit as three masked riders cleared the woods from the trail into town. She had slept on the mattress in the loft after her day in town, wondering if she’d done enough to spur them to action. It appeared she had, although the reason she’d want a reaction from them escaped her. What had she been thinking? Was she like her father? Asking for death in some roundabout manner? Had his pain been too great to live with? Was hers?

They were all carrying rifles, and she could see the glint of a knife in the near-daybreak moonlight on one of them. They spread out and slid down from their horses one at a time. Two of the men crept up to the cabin while one stayed near the horses, swinging his rifle in a wide arc until disappearing out of her view.

One of the men kicked the cabin door in, and he and the other charged in. Annie thanked God she was not inside, asleep or awake. There were two of them, and she would never have been able to fight them both off, unless she could have gotten a shot off. Then there would still be two to deal with, even if she had killed the first.

When had she decided that killing a man was something casual, as if she did it every day? When had everything her mother had taught her been forgotten? Maybe not forgotten, but perhaps amended—she was done cowering. She wasn’t going to live in fear any longer. She would be courageous and live, or be so and die. Annie felt great calmness each time she declared that she would no longer live in fear, as if the mantle of terror she carried crumbled a bit each time she did so. Fear was reasonable until it was crippling. Then she heard her pigs oinking and snorting as the man she’d lost sight of chased them to the front of the cabin.

She was on her knees in an instant, pistol in hand and aiming the barrel out the gun slit. The men talked and maybe argued while her pigs wandered the edge of the yard, foraging. Annie didn’t want to give away where she was hiding, but she wasn’t going to allow them to take her pigs. Although that would pale in comparison to Teddy’s death, it was the final straw in several years’ worth of them. One of the men aimed his rifle in the pigs’ direction, and Annie fired. All of the men dropped to a crouch, and one grabbed his ankle where he might have been hit. The horses scattered and two of the men took off for the woods, chasing them. One of them stood, and aimed in her direction as if she wasn’t behind a wall and peering through a slit that was only a few inches high, and then he moved his rifle away, aiming up into the trees. The pigs were running toward their pen, and she heard one of the men holler to the other to hurry as they chased their mounts into the trees.

Five minutes later Madeline’s husband came charging through the woods on their old plow horse.

“Annie! Where are you? I heard shots. Why are your pigs out?”

“They were here, Tom,” she said after hurrying down the ladder and racing across her yard to him. “They were here! They were going to shoot my pigs!”

Tom bent over at the waist, still holding his rifle. “Please, Annie, please, move in with us for a while,” he said as he straightened. “Madeline’s worried sick and so am I.”

“You’re both good friends. But this is my property, and I’m staying.”

“I heard you were in town today, ran into Ezra and he told me. Why did you do that? You’re just going to make Thurman mad.”

“I don’t care if Thurman is mad, Tom,” she said her voice rising. “I just don’t care. They killed my brother in cold blood in front of me, and I have just as much right to buy a chicken and stop at the post office as the next person. I’m mad, too!”

“I can’t protect you here, Annie; and I’ve got a wife and children to raise.”

“I know it. I don’t expect you to come running. I’ll take what they hand me. I won’t like it, in fact, I’ll most likely hate it, but I’m not letting them bully me anymore. I’m just not. Go home. They aren’t coming back today.”

Tom helped her round up her pigs and waited to leave until she’d dropped the bar over the door of her cabin. The sun was coming up and she lay down, willing her pounding heart to slow and not beat its way out of her chest. It was one thing to claim that she was going to stand up to Thurman and his men and quite another to actually do it. She missed Matt. Where was he this very moment? she wondered. What would he say about her new attitude, and would he believe that it was him who’d inspired her? He’d been afraid in the river but hung on to save himself and Ben. He was in poor shape when he finally woke up but had worked until he was fit and able again. He was capable of love, that was for certain. He loved Ben and his family desperately. He was a hero.

She closed her eyes and consciously let herself think of him. Of when he’d smiled at her, when she’d shaven him, the tears in his eyes when Ben squeezed his hand for the first time, when he’d kissed her so tenderly. She would forget him, as she should, but for now his profile, handsome and strong, was a clear vision and made her long for him in her gut as her eyes filled with tears.

“I wasn’t going to say it in front of mother, but Ben found me in a room above a saloon with two naked women.”

“Two?” Adam said as he moved his bedroll around on the hard ground trying to get comfortable. “Ben said there were eleven of them.”

“What?” Matt said and sat up quickly, knocking his hat into the dying embers of their fire. He grabbed it and slapped it against his leg. “That crazy old coot. I’ll have something—”

“Relax, Matt. I’m just teasing you. He said there were two and you’ve said there were two so I guess you were in bed with two women, although for the life of me, I can’t understand what you’d need two women for at the same time.”

“I was too drunk to know any better most of the time.”

“It’s best Mother not know that detail.”

“I’m as ashamed of myself as I could be just imagining what she’d say to me if she knew.”

“I thought the top of her head was going to blow off when you said this Annie might be in a delicate way.”

Matt groaned. He’d purposefully tried not to think of the possibility. But what if she was? She wasn’t like saloon girls, who knew how to keep themselves from having a child, and she’d given herself to him. He was aching to touch her and shied away from the thought that she might be in danger. That he would arrive and find she was dead or gone the day before he rode into town. But the horses needed rest, and so did he. He wondered, though, when the last time was that he’d not had Annie at the forefront of his thoughts. When was the last time he’d gone all day without thinking of her, the last hour that he’d done so? She was somehow wrapped up in him, in his thoughts, and in any consideration of his future. What would he do if she didn’t feel the same?