Thieving Forest Read Online Free PDF

find her!”
    “How sick?” Betsey T. asks.
    “Getting over a fever. But still weak.”
    “The Indians won’t keep her then,” Spendlove says.
    “What do you mean?”
    “If they see she’s sick they’ll kill her and go on their way.”
    Susanna stares at him. How can he say such a thing? His eyes are watery and his pupils dart around like black flies. An uncouth man who eats his food with a knife.
    “Or drop her at the nearest village,” Mop says hopefully. “That would be Risdale.”
    “Maybe the Potawatomi hope to get a ransom there,” Betsey T. suggests.
    “Didn’t I see you talking to some Potawatomi yesterday?” Mop asks Spendlove. “Over out by Stilgoe Creek?”
    Spendlove spits into the grass.
    “You spoke to some Potawatomi?” Susanna is surprised. She thought Spendlove hated Indians. “What did you say?”
    “When the men come in we’ll organize a good search,” Spendlove tells her. “Meanwhile we can send a runner to the river, maybe Mop.”
    “The river? But they went into the forest!”
    “They stole your horses and wagon. That means they’re going by road.”
    “I saw them,” Susanna insists. “They went into the trees.”
    But Spendlove just spits again. “You don’t know what you saw. You’re in shock.”
    Susanna’s face flushes with anger. “And you’re drunk.”
    “Susanna!” Betsey T. scolds.
    “This is tea,” Spendlove tells her. He throws the word out like a punch.
    Susanna leans forward and looks at her cabin again. Spendlove won’t help her. He is even more useless than she is. She turns to look down the other side of the settlement. “Old Adam knows the way through the forest.” She is thinking aloud.
    “You wait on the men,” Spendlove says. “This is not advice, this is the rule for the situation.”
    But she’s waited too long already. “If no one will go now,” she says, “then I’ll go myself.”
    For a moment no one says anything. Mop and Betsey T. look at her with identical expressions: heads cocked and mouths half open as if trying and failing to parse her words. Spendlove spits again and bends over to cough. Then he takes another pull from his cup.
    “You go into the forest,” he scoffs.

    Amos Spendlove’s two sons, Seth and Cade, are on their way back from a partially successful trip to the ferry landing when they hear the news about the Quiner sisters. Successful in that they were able to sell the Quiners’ horses and wagon at a good price, but the iron Amos ordered had been either sold off to someone closer on the line or lost overboard in a thunderstorm so violent that it kept the barge from being able to land for a full day. This according to the bargeman, a thick Scot with a web-like beard. He claimed it was a miracle the whole vessel didn’t overturn and he himself drowned.
    “Work like his, you’d think he’d take it upon himself to learn how to swim,” Cade says.
    Seth is under their wagon with his coat off. They are only a couple of miles from Severne but had to stop because one of the tree axles is tangled with switch grass. Seth is lying on his back trying to clear it. “Almost a matter of pride with these rivermen that they don’t know a stroke.”
    Although Cade is the younger brother, he is taller and broader than Seth. He has his father’s blue eyes and fair hair. Even in a town of large farmers, Cade stands out. Seth, however, people sometimes forget about until they need a tool mended or the mechanism of a turning wheel explained. Unlike his brother, Seth has dark eyes and very dark, very straight hair, which even the recent rain and humidity could add no curl to. Is he part Italian, the settlers wonder? Or even Hebrew? It is known that the two brothers come from two different wives. As brothers they are close, and notwithstanding their difference in size it is Seth who feels protective of Cade.
    The sound of cicadas rises and falls. The sun is out finally, and the scent of moist, green, newly sprouted life