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crazy things.  I’ll do my best to tell them in the order they occurred
and in the detail that they deserve.
    __________
    On
the morning of April fourth, so that would be the beginning of our third day
together, we walked west for another mile and finally found a place where we
could get across the river and turned north once again.  At this point, I was
starting to feel pretty confident that we were safe from our pursuers.  We had
traveled on foot for over two full days, passed through several areas where it
would be hard for someone to follow our tracks, and crossed a good sized
river.  My worries now concerned food more than Mr. Ponytail and company.  So I
determined that if by evening we still hadn’t spotted anyone following us, I would try to find a deer or
some other wild game to kill.
    The
walking that day was still pretty tough.  Nothing was flat.  In the distance, I
could see two peaks that I figured, by my map, were Gardner Mountain on the
east and Mt. Logan on the west, so we angled between them.  It wasn’t raining,
thank God, but the air was still damp and cold.  It also seemed that each mile
we went, I felt weaker and weaker from lack of food.  Anna and Gabriel looked
just as exhausted as I was, walking a little bit slower and taking a little longer
to get over or around obstacles.
    We
took a break at mid-day, and I heated some water for pine needle tea.  While we
were drinking it, Gabriel sat next to me and asked about the journals.  I told
him the story of finding them and my thoughts of continuing on with them.  He
seemed interested and asked several questions, so I read him a couple of the
entries written by Claire Huston.
    “It
has become my habit each and every day to do something, anything, however small,
that will make a better tomorrow.”   T hen, “ The thing is, if we are to matter
at all, we can’t permit what might go wrong or what others may think to give us
pause.  We must recognize these things for what they are and shake free of
their grip and do our best, without hesitation, at every turn.”
    We
talked about it a little bit more, and since I had Gabriel’s attention (and
since Anna was well out of earshot), I asked him where he and his mom were
living before they were kidnapped.  I hoped that it would lead to other
subjects.
    It
was a simple question, or at least I thought it was, but he took some time to
answer it.  Eventually he said, “Well, um, she hasn’t always been my mom.”  He
went on to explain that his real mom, along with his father, two brothers, and
a sister, died when he was ten.  He said, “She kind of saved me,” and “just
sort of took care of me” from then on.  They were all that each other had and
that’s why he called her his mom.
    At
first I felt deceived to make surewot.  But given the context of his story, I decided he
probably really did feel she was his mother now.  I have to admit, I would probably
feel the same if it were me.
    His
answer though didn’t come close to my question.  So after a while I changed the
words around and asked again where he and Anna were when they were kidnapped.  He
simply said they were in a field gathering food.  As his words tailed off, he
stood, mentioned he wanted to see if his mom needed his help, and walked over
to her, leaving me with the feeling that there was more to his answer than he granted
me.
    I
should say that I like Gabriel a lot and feel he is an unusually sensitive and
intelligent kid.  But at that point, it seemed there was a struggle going on
inside his head.  There obviously were things he wasn’t telling me.  My guess
was he wanted to talk to me about them but that Anna had convinced him not to, at
least for now anyway. 
    As
to Anna, she doesn’t trust me.  That much is clear.  Yes, that is annoying but
I guess somewhat understandable given what has happened to her.  Still, it
leaves me without answers to some very important questions:  How deep is her
mistrust of