The-Hummingbird-s-Cage(73)

I dismounted and ran toward him. He waved me off.

“Get the horse,” he said with a gasp.

I saw that Yas had turned to launch himself back through the brush, leaping and hurdling toward the track we’d just come from. Fleeing faster than I could possibly manage, even on Nastas.

“No!” Simon cried. “Get Tse!”

I turned in confusion toward Tse, who wasn’t hurdling headlong anywhere, but standing almost motionless at the edge of the clearing. She appeared to be watching me.

I approached carefully, murmuring, unsure if she would rear up again. But this time she was her familiar gentle self. I took the reins and led her back toward Simon, who had propped himself up to a sitting position but seemed unable or unwilling to get up. I tied Tse’s reins around a low branch and went to him.

“It’s my leg,” he said as I knelt down. “Twisted a bit. Not broken, though.”

“Can you stand?”

“We can try,” he said.

“Here—put your arm around me.”

He slung one arm around my shoulders and pushed off with the other, and together we managed to get him back on his feet.

“Son of a—” he muttered with a grimace.

“Can you put any weight on it?”

“Not without doing some serious damage to your eardrums,” he said.

“Hang on.”

I left him balancing on his one good leg to search the ground for a branch straight and strong enough to bear his weight. When I found one, I helped him limp to a seat on a nearby boulder.

“Wait here,” I told him.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

I hitched a deep breath and walked deliberately to the edge of the clearing, nearest the spot we’d first seen Tse. I scanned the dark undergrowth for a flash of color, of pale skin glowing in the shank of tepid moonlight. Then I began to call Laurel’s name.

I circled the clearing as I scanned and called. I heard nothing in return. When I ventured deeper into the woods, Simon called me back.

“You won’t see your hand in front of your face in there,” he said. “You’ll only get lost. Then we’ll need two search parties.”

“You can’t ride,” I said. “And I can’t just stay here.”

He patted a spot beside him on the boulder. “Sit down,” he said. “Let’s think this through.”

Even thinking seemed like a luxury of time I couldn’t afford.

“I can’t sit,” I said, gazing almost longingly at the dark woods. “I have to do something.”

“Then get me some coffee. Jessie packed some in your kit.”

I stared at him, mutinous.

“Please,” he said firmly.

Nastas was still under a tree branch I’d hitched him to, chewing on his bit. I dug around in the saddlebag and pulled out a thermos. I returned and tossed it to Simon.

“You can’t understand,” I told him as he caught it. “You’ve never had a child.”

“True enough,” he said.

“You can’t—” I stopped short.

He couldn’t possibly know—the guilt, the loaded gun with a hair trigger that always seemed trained on your daughter. And all you could do was try to keep her, if not absolutely safe, at least blissfully ignorant.

“I failed her enough,” I said. “I won’t fail her this time.”

“I believe you.”

“This . . . Mountain can’t have her.”

Simon gave a slight smile. “You talk about it like it’s alive.”

“I know—it’s crazy.”

He didn’t answer.

“How rich,” I said, suddenly deflated. “If all that time with Jim she never got a scratch, but a few months alone with her mother she ends up—”

“Here’s an idea,” Simon said abruptly. “Take Tse and give her her head. Let her go wherever she wants. There’s a chance she’ll go back to where she left Laurel.”

“Simon, there’s an even better chance she’ll head right back to the warm barn. Why would she take me to Laurel?”

“You might ask her to.”

I shot him an angry look, expecting he was making light of an unspeakable situation. But even in the thin moonlight I could see he was dead serious.


*

Tse stood quietly while I readjusted the loose saddle and tightened the cinch. I lowered the stirrups to fit me. I leaned in close to where Tse could hear, but Simon, still seated on the boulder, could not.