Free Eyes of Eagles by William W. Johnstone

exceptionally bright and to be a voracious reader. Whenever he had a spare moment, he had his nose stuck in a book.
    News from town was not good. The Saxon brothers had broken out of jail . . . with some outside help, and nearly everyone thought they knew who had helped them: Hart Olmstead and John Jackson. But nobody could prove it.
    Hart Olmstead had forbidden his daughter, Kate, from ever again going out to the Montgomery’s. He had given the child a terrible beating when she mentioned Jamie’s name one evening at the supper table.
    Robert Jefferson told Jamie about Kate’s beating one day in town and the boy’s thoughts turned dark and savage, but no one knew it except Jamie. Like the Indians who had taken him, Jamie had mastered well the art of facial stoicism.
    â€œDid he hurt her bad?” Jamie asked.
    â€œHe marked her some,” Robert told him, as the boys sat on the ground and played mumbly-peg with their knives.
    Jamie still carried his Shawnee skinning knife, but he carried it out of sight, tucked into his high-topped moccasins. He did so without Sam having to ask. He wanted to do everything he possibly could to make life easier for the couple who were so kind to take him in. But there was one thing he refused to do: wear shoes. And Sam and Sarah had stopped asking him to. During his formative years, from seven to nearly twelve years of age, he had not had a shoe on either foot, so his feet just weren’t comfortable in anything except moccasins.
    â€œHow bad?”
    â€œNot too bad, ’way I heared it. Heard it.” Since school was about to start, he had begun to watch his grammar. Getting rapped on the knuckles or a twisted ear hurt. “He was careful not to mark her on the face. He beat her back and backside with a belt. She had to stay abed for several days.”
    The boys were silent for a time. Robert looked at Jamie. “You got a funny look in your eyes, Jamie.”
    The look vanished instantly. Jamie smiled. “Just thinking, that’s all.”
    â€œYou anxious for school to start?”
    â€œYeah. I really am.”
    * * *
    School on the frontier was primitive at best. The buildings were ill-heated in the winter and insufferably hot in the summer. If a child got four full months of schooling a year, that was considered good. And those four months almost always were in the dead of winter, when his or her parents did not need them to work in the fields, plowing, planting, harvesting, mending fences, chasing down strayed cattle or hogs, or hunting for food or gathering berries.
    But Jamie cherished every moment in school, for he was fully aware that he was far behind the others his age. However, there was also another reason why Jamie loved school: he got to sit next to Kate Olmstead.
    During his first year of his stay at the home of Sam and Sarah Montgomery, Jubal Olmstead, Abel Jackson, and the few others who called them friends pretty much left Jamie alone. But Jamie knew it wouldn’t last and he was careful not to get caught out alone. It wasn’t that he was afraid, for he was not. He just didn’t want to cause trouble for Sam and Sarah.
    Jamie was growing fast and filling out. Already big for his age, he was going to be a tall man, wide shouldered, lean hipped, and heavily muscled. Already he could more than hold his own with Sam in the fields, but he always held back, so as not to embarrass Sam.
    Sam had presented Jamie with a fine Kentucky horse, a midnight-black stallion named Lightning that he’d bought for no more than a song because no one could ride the animal.
    â€œIf you can ride him, you can have him, Jamie.”
    â€œI’ll ride him, sir.”
    â€œJust keep him away from the other horses. This one’s a bad one.”
    â€œHe’s just misunderstood, sir. That’s all. Believe me, I know the feeling.”
    Jamie gently broke the horse, constantly talking to him and not even attempting to ride the