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“I’m bleeding. You have to help me.”
    “No.” She lifted her skirts and ran across the open field to the shelter of the trees. Asher loped alongside her.
    Once out of sight of Curt, she was overcome with trembles and had to lean against a tree to stay on her feet. Asher shoved his head under her hand. Her crutch. Her help. Her answer to a desperate prayer. But then from whence would come the rest of her help? Church would be shuttered until next Sunday.
    Pray anyway. Her mother’s words again were in her head.
    “I don’t know what to pray,” Carlyn said aloud. Her voice sounded lonely amid the trees with no one but Asher to hear.
    Then the bell began to ring. Not at Carlyn’s church. They had no church bell there. But the Shakers’ bell calling them to worship. To dance and whirl. But the sisters there had no worry about men except as brothers.
    The bell rang on. Clear. Strong. One toll after another. Her answer.

5

    Carlyn walked toward the sound of the bell floating through the air. Each step felt surer as the toll of the bell pulled her toward the village. She didn’t know what the Shakers might expect of her, but she’d heard they didn’t turn potential converts away. She could live the Shaker life for a while. It wouldn’t be forever. Just until Ambrose came home.
    She wouldn’t think about that not happening. Not today when she needed some hope to lean on. Not today when the Lord had saved her from Curt and given her an answer. She refused to be bitter about the answers she did not have. Better to concentrate on the answer she did have and keep walking toward the Shaker village.
    Even after she came out of the trees, she didn’t look back toward the road. Curt must have spotted her. She heard him yelling, but the sound was little more than the irritating whirr of a grasshopper in her ears. All she wanted to hear was the bell, the Lord speaking to her.
    Then, the bell quit ringing. The silence assaulted her earsand she stopped walking. Lost. Unsure which way to make her next step without the bell guiding her. Other sounds returned. Asher panting. Horses on the road. A crow cawing a warning. Of what Carlyn had no idea, but her heart pounded in her chest anyway.
    She was suddenly aware of how she must look. Disheveled. Her bonnet gone, lost in the struggle in the ditch. Her hair no longer in a tidy bun but loose and flying in her eyes. Her dress streaked with dirt, grass stains, and worse. Dark smears where Asher had rubbed against her. She touched the damp spots on the dog’s fur and stared at her hand. Curt Whitlow’s blood.
    The sight made her stomach lurch. She rubbed off the blood on a thick patch of grass. She had to get rid of it. Not only from her hand but from Asher as well. She couldn’t show up at the Shaker village marked with blood. That was no way to step into a new world. An unknown world.
    So even when the faint sound of singing replaced the toll of the bell, she did not move toward it. Instead she lifted her skirts and took off for home as though the devil himself was after her. Asher ran alongside, not bothered in the least by the blood on his fur. He couldn’t know what that might make happen, for there was one thing Carlyn did know. She couldn’t trust Curt Whitlow to keep his word.
    Briefly, she thought of the sheriff with the compassionate eyes. She could go to him. Tell her story first. He might believe her. But then what? While Curt had attacked her, she had escaped without visible harm. Curt was the one in need of a doctor. It would be her word against his. A woman many in the community considered a bit unhinged against a man who owned half the county. Whether the sheriff believed her or not might not matter.
    It would be better to rid her and Asher of evidence of the encounter. To pretend it had never happened. To hope that Curt would do the same. That his pride would make him say he’d been attacked by a stray dog. That might be too much to hope for, but Asher appearing