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shadows. Colt emptied the sack, which contained two wool blankets, a generous slice of cheese, and several pieces of corn bread wrapped in linen cloth. “It isn’t much, but I did not want to arouse suspicion.”
    He arranged the offerings together and handed them to Marcus, who accepted the food without hesitation. Colt stood and warmed his hands by the fire. “I see you found my burning pit.”
    “These yo’ chicken bones too?” Marcus said, pointing to a collection of bones scattered in the shadows nearby.
    “I sometimes come here at night when I’m hunting raccoon,” Colt said with an anxious tug of his ear. “There’s a bucket behind the rock over there. You can use it to fetch water from the stream up over the next hill.”
    Marcus offered nothing more than a grudging nod of his head. He studied Colt with confused disdain. “Why you helpin’ us?”
    “You best move on by tomorrow,” Colt said, with stern warning. “It’s not safe for you in these parts, do you understand?”
    Colt turned and looked at me with a flat expression that was out of character for him, and therefore I did not know how to interpret its meaning. He took the rifle from me and grabbed me roughly by the elbow. Before I had a chance to speak, he had me at the cave’s entrance. With one last hard glare, he turned to Marcus. “You are on your own now.”
    As we parted, I somehow knew the four of us were not likely to untangle so easily.

Chapter 4
    B eaming warm against my right cheek, the western sun settled low in the sky as Colt and I retraced our steps down from the peak. We spoke not one word, though the message I received was clear: I was shamed for putting him in such a precarious position. What I chose for myself was one thing. . . . However, what I brought on someone else was another matter entirely.
    When we reached the upper fields of Hillcrest, Colt and I stood silent along the tree line, taking in the view. The greening tobacco acreage lay before us, sloping down to the main house. It sat majestic and picturesque on a knoll to our left where the rear of the house overlooked a wooded ridge that receded to the Red Hawk River. The river’s flow bent southward around the town of Echo Ridge, which nestled out of sight in a vale beyond the plantation limits. Whitewashed fence posts framed a red dirt road stretching across the front yard to the carriage house sitting below us on the right. The lane turned southward, and divided the lower fields like a rusty plow cutting its way through the acreage below. The road sliced through the distant hickory timberline before disappearing in the direction of town. West of the carriage house and farther to our right, the property dropped into a stretch of sunken flatland known as Mud Run, where the slave quarters huddled among the hickory trees. I watched Elijah carry a bucket of water to his mother, Esther Mae, who stood, hands on hips, in the doorway of their cabin.
    “Aunt Augusta has returned from town,” I said, motioning toward Mud Run. “I see Elijah tending his chores. He was at the mercantile with us and witnessed his father’s run-in with Twitch.”
    “I see no sign of Winston,” Colt said.
    The peacefulness of the view was whisked away by the thought of Winston. His routine usually brought him to the open doors of the carriage house at this time of day. Without fail, he could be found brushing down the horses in the glow of the setting sun. His absence weighted my heart and forced my eyes across the tobacco fields toward West Gate.
    Because of the sharp drop of the fields in the distance, only the upper half of West Gate peered over the hill. The wood-shingled rooftops of the barn and sties dropped out of sight beyond the house, and though the pigs and hogs could rarely be heard from where we stood, an indignant turn of the wind reminded us of their presence. In the crook of the mountainside edging its way northward from Uncle Mooney’s homestead was a two-story carriage