Free Guns of Liberty by Kerry Newcomb

shadowy interior of the stoutly built log house.
    Sister Hope-Deferred-Maketh-the-Heart-Sick sighed as the other woman left. Then she stepped down off the porch and extended her hand to the visitor.
    “You must excuse Sister Ruth. She is a widow now, but once this was her husband’s farm. She invited our community to come and live with her, though she never lets us forget who actually owns the land. Sister Ruth can be a trifle brusque. Sister Eve, our superior, manages to keep her in line.” Hope took a moment to stroke Gideon’s coat. “Go on, now,” she ordered, and the animal trotted off across the meadow.
    Rabbits darted across its path, but the animal had learned from sad experience it couldn’t catch them. The mastiff continued on into the woods. Daniel marveled at the way an animal of such brute power obeyed the likes of this woman.
    “I’ve come to see Sister Agnes about the beeswax candles for the inn.” He was anxious to be on his way. Something had bothered him since leaving Meeks and Tolbert at the clearing. He had a feeling of being followed. Call it a sixth sense or a premonition or merely the result of his experience in the wilderness, but whatever the source, it had never failed him.
    “I will take you to her,” Sister Hope told him, and started around the corner of the house.
    Daniel lingered a moment to check his back trail; he studied the forest through which he had just traveled. He saw nothing, yet felt everything, and with a tightness growing between his shoulder blades, he-wondered if the surrounding trees were as innocent as they seemed. He tried to convince himself it was merely his imagination and almost succeeded. But old habits—and the wariness the wild places bred in a man—die hard. Reluctantly he turned his back on the forest’s shadowy depths.
    Henk Schraner didn’t plan on killing Daniel, but sure as God made serpents crawl, Henk intended to see Kate’s handyman sweat every time the bastard stepped outside. Enough near misses , Henk silently calculated, and I suspect Mr. McQueen will seek his fortune elsewhere. The jealous young farmer settled down behind the twin halves of a lightning-split oak, bracing the long-barreled rifle his father had made on the blackened, twisted tree trunk. He kept his vigil about a hundred yards from the front of the farmhouse.
    The Daughters of Phoebe were dedicated to lives of simplicity and prayer. Time meant little here on their farm nestled among the rolling hills. Their garden was a neatly ordered plot of ground where rows of corn rose alongside tomatoes, peas, and squash.
    A split-rail fence protected the garden from the wandering dairy cows that were free to roam the grassy meadowlands about the farmhouse. The farm itself was like an oasis of cleared ground in a sea of oaks and hickories, birches and elms. The surrounding forest provided the farm its privacy.
    Henk, for his part, was grateful for the trees and the undergrowth. Vinces and creepers had already left a green tangle across the shattered tree trunk; the land had begun to reclaim its own. One day he wouldn’t be surprised to find the farm buried beneath loops of leafy green ropes. Henk pictured the six spinsters sitting motionless in their rockers on the front porch, their flesh covered by wind-stirred leaves.
    Henk chuckled at the thought, sighed, and worked a kink out of his leg. First things first, however. Lifting a spyglass, he observed the chestnut tethered to the porch rail. It was Daniel’s gelding. His owner was inside. When he decided to emerge, Henk had a big surprise for him.
    Henk dug down in his possibles pack and retrieved a cloth-wrapped chunk of bread and a length of blood sausage. He made his meal there in the quiet of the forest, arm resting on the rifle, which was loaded and primed.
    He comforted himself with daydreams of a frightened Daniel McQueen, scampering down the Trenton Road for the safety of Philadelphia. Henk sighed in satisfaction. He wouldn’t