Free Long Hunt (9781101559208) by Cameron Judd Page A

made memorable by the injury she had suffered when Bledsoe rode too close to her on his horse and a hoof crushed her foot into the dirt street, breaking two of her toes. She had gone down with a cry and Bledsoe had dismounted to see what he had unwittingly done. It was a fated meeting for them both.
    It didn’t take long for Bledsoe to realize that the woman he’d injured had a distinctive handicap. Her first effort at speaking revealed it: muddied, murky approximations of word sounds, only a few of which he understood.
    As coincidence or fate would have it, Bledsoe had, only the day before, read the already-famous account of Molly Reese and her bloody girlhood adventure—and a fascinating possibility suddenly presented itself.
    â€œAre you by chance named Molly Reese?” he asked. The woman’s answer was impossible to understand, but it didn’t matter. Bledsoe had continued: “Because if you are, ma’am, we stand to benefit nicely from this encounter, you and I.” From the look of her he could tell she was impoverished, and would surely respond to any prospect of “benefit.”
    She did respond. She accepted an invitation from him to dine at a nearby tavern—having not eaten a real meal in days—and her usual defensiveness quickly faded. He told her about himself and his preaching life, working his way delicately around the nature of his motives and interests, allowing her to realize slowly that his “calling” was not really a spiritual one. Rather than be put off by his blatant and unrepentant hypocrisy, she was drawn to it, finding in his willingness to exploit others a ground of hope that perhaps her life could become something better than she had known.
    She had not left the preacher’s presence that night, and was still with him when the next morning came. He sent her away from the inn where they had stayed long before he left, so they would not be seen departing overnight lodgings together. They rejoined outside the town. They had not parted since, forming a partnership both personal and professional: He told the sordid Molly Reese tale and she allowed the gaping devotees of the false preacher to stare into her empty mouth while she sat beneath torchlight with her jaw dropped for their viewing convenience. She hated them all but pretended otherwise for the sake of the gifts some of them gave her in pity. In all her lonely life she’d never fared so well as she had since she took up with the preacher Bledsoe.
    She’d done better than usual here beside Fort Edohi. Her little wooden collection bowl was filled with coins and other items, even a ring and a locket, a generosity quite surprising and unexpected from a population of people one would expect to be quite poor. She could not account for her good fortune, but gladly accepted it, and without guilt. She’d been deprived of much in her life, and it was surely only fitting that she receive something in recompense.
    She’d grown bored, though, sitting there as she had so many times, maw lolled open like an idiot’s, men, women, and children filing by and ogling so they could see for themselves that, yes, indeed, this woman had no tongue in her head! She despised their morbid curiosity, their looks of pity and revulsion. Fools! They could use her as an entertaining display if they chose, because she was in turn using them. The jingle in her wooden bowl more than made up for the shame of being stared at like an object of pathos.
    At last the line of gawkers melted away and she stood, giving a quick smile to Abner Bledsoe, who remained on the platform, waving his dignified farewells to the scattering worshipers. She had turned to step away from her post when Bledsoe suddenly made a subtle gesture indicating she should remain, and tossed his head slightly to make her look to her left.
    A man was approaching her, a gray-haired, slender fellow in excellent clothes, a man who would have looked