Toby had already made Edith spread blankets on the floor of the tent for ’Ring and Laurel to sleep on. Jamie lay on the cot, sprawled just as ’Ring had done a few days before.
“I’ll get him out of here,” ’Ring said.
“No, let him sleep. He can have the cot. I just wish that I had a couple more for you and Laurel.”
’Ring was too tired to argue with her. He looked at the blankets spread on the floor and the next minute he was lying down and asleep. Maddie lowered Laurel onto another blanket, and for a long moment looked down at her sleeping face. Only a child could sleep through all she’d been through in the last few hours. She kissed her sister’s forehead, saw that she was covered, then blew out the lantern and left the tent.
Toby was waiting outside for her. “They all right?”
She smiled at him. “Fine. Just tired. Any coffee left?”
Toby poured her a cup and handed it to her. “You find out what happened?”
She sat down on the ground by the fire and told him what she knew.
Toby looked at the fire and nodded. “I didn’t get much out of that young scamp either,” he said.
Maddie smiled at his tone. It was obvious that ’Ring was by far Toby’s favorite. “Why was Jamie here?”
Toby shook his head. “I tell you, that family of theirs is strange. Their daddy told me once that sometimes in their family a girl’s born that can see things that are gonna happen. Not things that have happened, but things that haven’t happened yet.”
Maddie held the warm cup in her hand and nodded. “I’ve heard of it. Sometimes it’s called second sight. I can’t imagine a fortune-teller in ’Ring’s family.”
“Oh, they mostly keep it quiet. But whenever there’s one of them girls born, they name her Christiana. There’s one of them now, lives on the coast, not the Maine coast, but way out west. This one’s only a girl, younger than your little sister in there, but she once saved a church full of people from burnin’ or somethin’, so they know she’s got this ‘sight.’ ”
“She knew that something was wrong?”
“It seems that months ago she was playin’ with her dolls and she told her mother that her Uncle ’Ring was gonna be in trouble.” Toby smiled. “Her mother sent a man all the way across the country to tell the boy’s father, and the old man sent the youngster out here to help the boy.”
Maddie drank her coffee. “So Jamie found his brother and followed him.”
“When we was watchin’ you, ’Ring saw the kidnappers followin’ you, and he saw the Injun, and then he saw somebody else, couldn’t figure out how he fit into it all.”
“And that was Jamie.”
“Yeah.”
She shook her head. “So Jamie saw the two of us handcuffed together and decided to play robber, no, highwayman, and take ’Ring’s horse and other goods.” She was silent for a moment, thinking of all that ’Ring had known and she hadn’t. No wonder he had been so calm when the man took his horse; no wonder he hadn’t wanted to go after that precious horse of his. He knew it was safe with his brother. ’Ring had also known that they were safe as they camped for three days, since his brother was keeping watch over them. And also, ’Ring had had a key to the handcuffs all the while.
She thought of the way he smirked at her when she’d been so afraid for him when he wanted to go after the robber. She thought of the fistfight they had pretended to have. ’Ring had known that she was not far from the camp and had been listening. She remembered being puzzled by the fact that she could not find any marks on him after his fight.
She stood and looked down at Toby. Maybe she should be angry, but she wasn’t. Whatever he’d done, he had returned Laurel to her. “I’m going to bed,” she said, then turned and went inside the tent. She slipped into ’Ring’s arms and, in his sleep, he drew her to him. Maddie pulled Laurel to her and went to sleep.
“Are you all right?” Maddie asked Laurel the next morning. They were alone in the tent, both of them sitting on the cot. “And don’t lie to me. I want the truth.”
Laurel told of her experiences in a string of curse words and exclamations that, had Maddie been another woman, might have horrified her. But Maddie knew how Laurel had grown up. It wasn’t until Maddie had been away from her father and his friends, not until she’d been in the opera world for some time, that she realized what an unconventional childhood she had had. Her family had been isolated from other people, and her friends had been old mountain men. Instead of learning sewing and how to pour tea, like most young ladies, she’d learned to dress out a buffalo, to trap beaver, and how to bead buckskin. When she started to sing professionally, she realized that the only songs she knew were opera arias and a few filthy little ditties that Bailey had taught her. She could survive in the wilderness on her own but, before she met John, she couldn’t tell silk from canvas.
Maddie smiled at her little sister and brushed her hair out of her eyes. “I was worried about you.”
Laurel looked at her sister with some awe. She didn’t remember her older, famous sister very well from the few short years that they had spent together before Maddie left, but Laurel had kept scrapbooks of everything that she could get about Maddie. There were posters and clippings and pressed flowers and every letter that Maddie had sent her.
“They said that you needed me,” Laurel said. “I went to the men because they said that you’d had bad medicine.”
Maddie smiled, for Laurel’s words took her aback.
“I was froze fer you and that’s why I went with them,” Laurel said softly, her heart in her eyes.
Maddie smiled and took her little sister’s hands in hers. “I was froze fer you too, but I couldn’t get there.” She touched her sister’s cheek again and realized how much “civilization” had changed her. In the civilized world, people didn’t admit that they were longing for someone else, or “froze fer,” as Laurel called it. No, in the civilized world people hid their feelings or lied about them. And when they were told that someone needed them, or, as Laurel said, had bad medicine, bad luck, they didn’t just drop everything to go help them.