Read The Walking for Free Online Page A

deep breath, then slowly passed his hands over her abdomen, muttering the Words that would terminate her pregnancy. From the hairy cleft between her legs came a small trickle of blood that was immediately soaked up by the rag. Jane was still crying, but from shame and humiliation. It was obvious that she felt no pain.
    Once more his hands passed over her, and this time a gloppy mess spilled out from between her legs onto the rag, a bloody mass of undistinguishable flesh that he quickly covered and took away. He tossed the entire rag in the fire, said a few Words, then turned back toward the girl. "It is over," he told her. "You may dress."
    She took her hands from her face, and the expression he saw, in the second before he turned away to give the girl her privacy, was one of surprise. She had not known it was over because she had not even known it had started.
    He heard from behind him the creak of bed and floorboard, the rustle of clothes. It was not over yet, however. His premonition of lurking disaster had not abated one whit, and though the auras were fading before his eyes, though the tingle in his body had subsided into almost nothing, he still had the sense that something was wrong, that what had transpired here tonight would lead to... to... To what? Death.
    Yes, death. Whether his own or Jane's he did not know, but he tried to hurry her up, tried to get the girl out the door and back on the path to town before anything occurred. She tried to pay him, offered to work off her debt to him for his kindness and help, but he told her he would accept no payment. He did this because he wanted to help her, not because he wanted anything for himself. She did not right him but allowed herself to be hurried out.
    He watched her through the window as she sprinted back toward town, moonlight illuminating her form until she hit a small dip in the trail and faded into the shadows.
    William poured himself some tea from the kettle above the fire and sat in the chair, waiting, but his sense of foreboding did not go away. He was debating whether to saddle up and ride off for a few days, maybe spend a week or so in the hills until whatever this was had passed, when he heard noises from outside.
    Someone knocked on the door.
    This is it. "
    He nearly spilled the tea on his lap, getting up, but he managed to avoid burning himself and placed the cup on the mantel above the fireplace.
    The knock came again, louder, stronger, not the friendly sound of a neighbor's tapping hand but the hard, demanding rap of wood on wood.
    William walked across the room, pulled back the bolt, and opened the door.
    Six or seven men stood on the porch, ax handles and shotguns in hand.
    Even backlit by the moon, their forms in silhouette, their faces bathed in darkness, William could see defensiveness in their postures, anger in the way they held their weapons. Beneath everything, he could sense their fear. He had been through all of this before.
    "Come in," he said, feigning a camaraderie he did not feel. "We didn't come for no visit," the closest man said.
    William recognized the low rough voice of Calhoun Stevens, Jane's father. The big man stepped over the threshold. "We know what you did."
    "And we know what you is!" came the jittery voice of an old man at the back.
    "I have no idea what you're talking about," William lied.
    Stevens raised his ax handle threateningly. "I know my daughter was here tonight. I know what you did to her!"
    Jane could not have told, William realized. These men could not have been gathered and ridden out here in that short time. It had to have been her friend, the one who'd given her his name.
    The men pushed forward. Stevens slammed his ax handle against the cabin wall. "We're here to make sure you can never do anything like that again."
    "We know what you is!" the man in back repeated. There was going to be no easy way out of this, William understood. These men had not come to talk, and they were not prepared to listen. They were