Gage shook his head stubbornly. “She’s not. I heard her hoofbeats just a few moments ago. Just over that way.” He pointed with his finger out into the heart of the bog.
“Then you’re imagining things. No horse went that direction.”
His voice was hard. “It did. I know I heard it. So if you think I’m imagining things, then don’t follow me.”
“Gage,” I pleaded, grabbing hold of his arm before he could mount. “That’s a bog. Please, you’ll only kill your horse, and maybe yourself.”
He halted, turning to look out over the dark landscape. Our overworked horses’ sides heaved, their breaths condensing in the cold air. The night was silent around us beyond our breathing and the icy wind. But still, if I strained hard enough, like Gage, I thought I could hear the pounding of the horse’s hooves. It was a trick of the landscape, of our minds, and that made it all the more unnerving. We so desperately wanted to catch the mare, and the people she was hurrying home to, that we could convince ourselves of almost anything.
I felt rather than heard Gage curse himself as his entire body tightened and then released as if expelling something. I let go of his arm and glanced at Trevor, having learned long ago that sometimes it was better to allow a man to vent his spleen on himself than to interrupt, especially when I was certain my words would do no good.
His internal struggle over, Gage turned to face us. His eyes were angry, but resigned. “Do either of you know where the horse might have ultimately gone?”
I shrugged. “There are a number of villages on the eastern edge of the Cheviot Hills, as well as several farms and homesteads scattered throughout.” I gazed out at the shadowed hillsides. “Without knowing exactly where we are, I couldn’t even begin to guess.”
Gage followed the direction of my gaze, seeming to realize for the first time that we were almost certainly lost. Not that we couldn’t find our way back out again. But at the moment, I didn’t know whether we were closer to Yetholm or Wooler, Kilham or Harbottle.
He sighed. “I suppose we should begin trying to pick our way back to Yetholm.” It was the nearest village to Shotton Pass, where we had agreed to meet at the inn when our part in the evening was finished.
Trevor helped me to mount and I pressed my knees to Figg’s flank to urge her forward, unwilling to let Gage take the lead this time. I didn’t know if Trevor had been memorizing each of our turns, but with his sometimes poor sense of direction, I knew I was our best bet of escaping the hills before dawn.
? ? ?
Town Yetholm rested about a mile west of the border with England and a mile south of Shotton Pass, in the shadow of several craggy ridges at the edge of the Cheviots. Its wide main street was lined with most of its businesses, including The Plough Inn, which, due to my cousin Jock’s recommendation, we’d settled on as our meeting place.
It was close to midnight before Gage, Trevor, and I found our way out of the bleak hills and back to the center of Town Yetholm. Light shone brightly through the two front windows of the solid, stone building, and smoke puffed cheerily from the double chimneys. Desperate to get warm, I dragged myself off the back of my horse, nearly tumbling into the mud, and hobbled on frozen legs into the front room.
Several men very solicitously settled me before the bright flames in one hearth, where I shivered and lifted my hands toward the heat, trying to thaw my fingers. A mug of something hot was pressed into my hands and I sipped it gratefully, savoring the warmth of its spicy flavor as it slid down my throat. My nose immediately began to run, but I did not care. A man knelt to rest a hot brick wrapped in flannel under my booted feet, finally giving me the presence of mind to observe the party around me.
Uncle Andrew and my three cousins were already there. They had made room for Gage and Trevor to get closer to the fire, but they still huddled about us, now putting cups of the warm beverage into the men’s hands and adjusting the blanket that had been thrown around my shoulders. My spirits plummeted, and I suddenly realized just how much hope I’d held out that a pair of these men had been able to track the sorrel mare all the way to its owner.
“When you took so long to return, we thought for certain you had successfully tracked the mare to her destination,” my uncle was telling Gage in reply to his dejected pronouncement that we’d lost her.
Gage shook his head, his face grim with acceptance. “They eluded me again.”
No one spoke for a moment, probably sensing like me that he had no wish for platitudes. Though I was anxious to catch these murderous body snatchers, it was clear Gage was even more determined, especially in light of his failure to capture them the first time he encountered them.
“Well, whoever they are,” my cousin Jock mused. “They’re canny. We couldna see more than dim shifting shadows, and no’ even those verra clearly. And wi’ the howling wind and the echoing rocks, it was hard to tell whether the horses were coming or going.”