Free The Pursuit of Tamsen Littlejohn by Lori Benton Page B

under his, small and cold, eased its grip and slid away.
    After a quick search, he decided the box had gone over the trail’s edge. Grasping at brush for support, he felt his way down the pine-needled slope, praying it hadn’t fallen far. Praying he wouldn’t go sliding off the mountain in the dark.
    He found it lodged against the pine under which they’d halted. Back on the trace, she took it from him with quiet thanks. He wondered what it was she deemed so precious, but didn’t ask. He got out the canteen and handed it to her. “Want to walk a spell? It’ll help you keep awake.”
    Sleep was what she needed, but she gave him back the canteen and said, “I’ll walk.”
    Pleased with her fortitude, he took the horse’s bridle and started.
    Not a dozen steps on, she gave a little cry. Jesse turned back to find her hunkered on the trail, rubbing at her foot. He’d forgotten she wore those dainty-heeled shoes. He’d have to do something about that. Ahead lay stretches they’d both have to manage afoot. But not yet.
    He went back and offered her a hand. “Come on. Let’s get you up on that horse.”

    He caught her falling from the saddle twice again before the stars faded and the trail grew clear enough to follow without his senses focused on every stone and root and knife-edged drop. A mist had crept up from the hollows. Chill tendrils of it nipped at his heels. They were deep in the mountains and high, with rank on rank of giant hardwoods crowding in, here and there dark pockets of spruce and fir. They hadn’t been seen—byhuman eyes—but with dawn coming, a change of direction seemed in order.
    Ahead the trace crested. He and Cade had hunted these mountains in autumns past. If memory served, it dipped into a meadow where a stream flowed. Along that stream ran another trail, overgrown but passable. He’d make for that, find Tamsen a place to lay her head for a spell.
    Glancing back at her, he reckoned they could be tracked by the hairpins she’d been losing through the night. Her hair spilled down in an inky thicket across her shoulders, halfway to her waist. The lacy bit hung askew. So did her head, lolling toward her chest. Shadows underscored her eyes, and her face showed the strain of fatigue and grief and fear. Still she was so beautiful that Jesse had to remind himself to breathe.
    Then he looked past her, and his chest filled at the sight that greeted him. He brought the horse to a stop on the sloping ground. She jerked in the saddle. He moved to her knee in case she fell, but she didn’t. Getting her bearings, she blinked down at him with dark, suffering eyes.
    “Morning,” he said, with a searching smile.
    She shut her eyes, as if the sight of him and the horse and the world was too much misery to bear. He wanted to give her something to hold against the dark tide of memories sure to be pressing in on her.
    “Tamsen.” When she opened her eyes, he nodded toward their back trail. “Fetch a look.”
    Clearly she was weary beyond caring, but she turned to look and caught her breath.
    They were too hemmed by trees for the grandest view, but a gap in their ranks below gave prospect of a limestone cliff rising sheer from a dark wave of forest crashing, mist-foamed, against its stony face, ablaze in every shade from rose to ruddy gold, giving back the colors of sunrise. Above it in the clear-washed air an eagle turned, catching fire in its wings. Jesse drank it in with the joyous relief that always accompanied his leaving thepiedmont behind—though this time he’d brought along more than a few of its complications.
    The horse shifted, breaking the moment. Tamsen Littlejohn had put her back to the view and was looking up the trace, eyes wary as a deer’s. The same alarm jolted down Jesse’s spine when he followed her gaze.
    Where the trace crested, there now stood a string of pack mules with a man at their head, looking back at them.

    The lean little trapper with a scruffy beard was headed to