Free The Story Keeper by Lisa Wingate Page A

exchange of silent warning. “Might be you done tolt ’im to mind his lippin’. Might be he’s afraid he’d give ya away. Could be he got some plans a his own.”
    “He ain’t got nary a one.” Again Ira raised his voice.
    The man swung the pistol in the trader’s direction. “He ain’t got no tongue, neither, do he?”
    “I’ve got a tongue.” Rand’s temper thundered now, so much so that he expected his voice to shake with it, but the sound was steady.
    The man appraised him silently, head cocking back. “That be good. ’Cause we gon’ta settle here the night long, have us’ns some jaw together. Me and the boys, we need us a mite a convincin’ you’uns ain’t got plans agin us. That be fine at you, young Jasper?”
    Rand clenched his fist at his side, willed himself not to react in the impulsive way he might’ve had any man offered such a threat to him in a place governed by law and order. “Don’t suppose I have much choice in the matter.”
    “Don’t s’pose you do.”
    Men emerged and then horses. Two men. Four horses. Anothersound followed as the horses stilled. Chain rattling, a man’s growl, a woman’s gasp, her outcry of pain.
    Rand stiffened, drew up, began rising to his feet. The men’s attentions were focused on the woods. Their backs were to him. He outsized all but Jep, but three with guns and another still out of sight? What were his chances?
    His mind churned. Grab the lantern? Throw it hard enough to splinter it, spread fuel and flame over the men, hope for enough panic and distraction? Or rise silently to his feet, steal toward the wagon, toward the pistol in his saddle pack? Or bolt toward it and hope he could reach cover before someone turned his way and took deadly aim?
    He imagined himself bleeding out on the leaf litter, his life wasted, the girl still no better off.
    “Be still ’ere, pup.” The pockmarked man seemed to sense his thoughts. “Revi? What you doin’ out’n them trees? You be usin’ her, I’ll skin yer body’n wrap yer neck in it. Woman’s mine. Troublesome as she been, I’m gonna carve my brand on ’er, right off, t’night. Don’ mean I ain’t got mind t’ share, but she gonna know whose she is now.”
    Rand could only picture his darling sister Lucinda, trapped in such a gruesome predicament. The horror turned his stomach, pushed bile into his throat. He looked to Ira. The old man shook his head and dropped his gaze to the lantern, elbows still resting on his knees. He made no move toward his weapon.
    “I got ’er,” Revi yelled from the woods. “She done tried scattin’ off again. Good that Brown Drigger hanged the chain on ’er.” Revi materialized from the shadows, a ghost in the dim light at first, then alanky, half-grown youth as he entered the lantern’s circle. He’d tossed the girl over his shoulder. Her hair hung in blue-black waves, catching both the lantern light and the illumination of a full moon that had finally risen high enough to find lea of their camp.
    The girl fell hard as Revi tossed her to the ground. She landed in a heap, the heavy chain clinking link by link as it settled around the irons clamped to her wrists and ankles. Rand recognized the abomination as what it was. Slave irons still hung in carriage houses and cellars in and around Charleston, the relics of a world that no longer existed.
    “Ain’t a-havin’ me no more t’do with ’er, Jep.” Revi stepped away, dusting his hands in the air, ridding himself of any remaining contact. “Heared ’er talk hoodoo out ’ere in the dark. Speakin’ spells and devilment lang’edge. Ain’t havin’ me no more doin’s with her.”
    “Yeah, you is.” Jep’s tobacco-stained smile lifted his scarred face, reflecting his anticipation as well as his confidence in his mastery of the group. “We all a us is. Her kin come agin us, ain’t gonna be none of you’uns can say you done nothin’ at the gal.”
    Revi’s eyes widened almost imperceptibly. The