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looking at him with her eyes wide open. They were as green as still water in the early morning light and they seemed to look straight into his soul.
    â€œAre we going to Fort Smith?” she said.
    Her voice faltered on the last word and that small sound was like a knife to his heart. God in Heaven, she was only a kid.
    A kid who had good reason for the things she did.
    He set his jaw and wished he had never set out to hunt The Cat.
    â€œNot right now,” he said. “In the shape you’re in, the trip would kill you.”
    She gave a sharp little laugh that made his skin crawl.
    â€œOh, yeah,” she said. “I keep forgetting you want the hangman to do that.”
    He looked away, to guide his horse. There was no way he could think about that hanging now. She was only another prisoner. He must forget that she was a woman.
    She made a noise so that he met her eyes again and she held his gaze with her strong, green one as if for reassurance that he was telling the truth.
    â€œWe’re going in the opposite direction of Fort Smith now,” he said.
    She closed her eyes and let her head go into the curve of his shoulder, let her whole weight rest in his arm as if she believed him. As if she knew she was safe.
    And last night, he had laid a loaded gun by her side. As if he’d known she wouldn’t shoot him.
    A seed of trust had been born between them. Now it was his job to rip it out by the roots.
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    Black Fox stayed off the worn trails and made his own path through the woods, riding with every sense and every nerve alert for a warning ofdanger. He held both the reins and The Cat with his left arm—she had passed out again, as far as he could tell—so his right one would be free to draw his gun from the hip holster. Their two horses seemed to be making enough noise for twenty.
    But a few squirrels, a red-tailed hawk sitting on a stump and a startled yearling deer were all that saw their passing and before noon he pulled up on the edge of the yard that surrounded his homeplace—cabin, barn, and outbuildings. For a minute, he held the horses in the shelter of the trees, so he could see whether Uncle Muskrat or Cousin Willie, who farmed the place, were anywhere around.
    At the edge of the bedroll, where The Cat’s face lay against his arm, the heat of her skin burned through to his, even though he wore a jacket. The fever had gone higher than ever, despite the fact that he’d washed her face several times with the bandana wet in cool water from his canteen.
    A team of Uncle Muskrat’s work horses munched grass in the back pasture and cattle grazed there, but no people showed themselves. Nothing indicated that someone might be in the barn, either.
    Black Fox squeezed the Ghost with his knees, so the gray and the little dun started toward the house at a walk while he kept on scanning the place with his searching gaze. It’d be for the best ifno one knew The Cat was there. His family could be trusted to keep a secret, yes, but Sally was a talker and if word accidentally got out, folks would ride for miles to see the heroic Robin Hood who’d been helping the poor people all over Sequoyah district, and sometimes in Flint and Goingsnake, too.
    At the front door, he stopped the horses, dropped the reins and carried The Cat into the house and straight to his bed. She moaned when he laid her down, and when he touched her face, it burned his fingertips. He needed to do something about that fever, and do it now.
    But first, the horses had to be tended, and it would only take a minute to get them out of sight.
    He left the room with one glance back at her still face, pale as death. At least this was one time he knew she couldn’t escape. The thought made his jaw harden. Why had she put herself in the middle of a firefight, anyhow? A young, pretty girl like her should be at home with her mother learning to cook or wandering the spring woods looking for poke salad and