Free Now and Forever by Mary Connealy Page A

got to her feet, looked around frantically, trying to think how to save Tucker, and the first thing she saw was a man with a full white beard, dressed in leather from head to toe. He stared at her like she was a ghost.
    All she saw was help.
    “I have a friend down in this cave. I need help getting him out.”
    His eyes went to the knife across her chest. “Your friend ain’t Matt Tucker, is he?”
    “Yes! How did you know?”
    The old man giggled like he’d lost control of his senses. Then he pulled his rifle off his shoulder and fired into the air.
    Shannon staggered backward and nearly fell back through the hole. The old man rushed at her, and she jumped and brandished the knife, ready to fight him or run for her life if necessary. Instead the man went right past her.
    “Shannon!” Tucker roared from below. “Who’s shooting?”
    “That you, Tucker?” The old man’s voice broke as he dropped to his knees.
    “Caleb?” The tone of Tucker’s voice almost brought tears to Shannon’s eyes. She figured it out at that second. This man had been searching for Tucker—and for her too, but she was incidental. She looked down at her hands, blackened with coal dust. She could only imagine what the rest of her looked like. No wonder he’d looked at her strangely.
    “We’ve been searching high and low for you, boy. I figured you was too ornery to die. Sunrise has about worried herself down to a nub, though. Fretful woman.”
    “Sunrise is here?”
    “She’s got a crowd searching. Five days we’ve been working the edge of the Slaughter.”
    “Five days? I lost track of time. I knew it’d been a long stretch, but it’s so dark down here we had no idea of day or night.”
    “You never came through the last chute, so we figuredyou got out somehow.” While he talked, Caleb uncoiled a rope from his waist. “I’m lowering a rope.”
    Running footsteps turned Shannon’s head, and two more men, much younger but dressed much like Caleb, came into view.
    “He can’t climb out alone,” she said quietly, thinking of Tucker’s manly pride. “His leg is broken. You’ll need help.”
    Caleb spun around. “He’s been down there for five days with a broke leg?”
    Shannon nodded.
    Caleb looked past her to the men arriving. “We’ve found him, boys. All we gotta do is hoist him out through this here hole.”
    He quit lowering the rope. Caleb must know Tucker well enough to suspect he wouldn’t want to admit he couldn’t climb out hand over hand. So he didn’t give him a chance to do it.
    When the two men reached her, they gave her a startled glance, then rushed on to Caleb. “Tie this off, Tuck. Let us haul you up. We all want to claim we helped.”
    Caleb giggled again in that same wild way. He was sparing Tucker’s pride in the best way he could. “It’ll be a tight fit, but you can do it.”
    “Thanks, old friend.” Tucker’s voice sounded strong and happy. Shannon couldn’t blame him. It was all she could do to keep from jumping up and down for joy. Their ordeal was finally over.
    The three men had Tucker up to the surface in seconds. He was coated in soot. She could see him down in the cave, of course, but she’d gotten used to their sooty condition.Now, with these men looking at them so strangely, she realized what they must look like. Considering she’d done the fetching of the coal, she was most likely a bigger mess than Tucker.
    Tucker lay flat on his back on the edge of the bare mountainside, and his eyes went straight to her. Not long, but long enough.
    “Peever, Rupert, I’m obliged. Caleb, good to see you.” All good friends, that was clear.
    “We’d better get you to Sunrise. She’ll come a-runnin’ at that shot, but she was a good stretch ahead of us. We can meet her halfway.”
    Caleb studied the splint on Tucker’s leg for a minute, then slid an arm behind his back and lifted him. Another friend, the one he’d called Peever, took the other side.
    Shannon heard Tucker make a