sure the snake wouldn’t return and her legs would actually work when she walked. The last thing she needed was to fall and injure herself because of her own frailty.
Eliza made it to the horse and leaned into his neck. “I don’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m glad you’re here, Melba.”
With equine understanding, he allowed her to hang on to him for a few minutes before he shook his mane. She took the hint and patted him. “Thank you, boy.”
Eliza hadn’t spent much time outdoors, but she had read many books, which she was happy to say prepared her to make a campfire. Perhaps it would help her to track Grady, too. There had been information about tracking animals, which should also work for a human animal, too.
She looked around until she found the tracks from the horse Grady rode in and around camp. The back right shoe had a nick in it, so she could easily see the direction he’d rode, and keep her on the right trail.
Grady had no idea how powerful books could be, but Eliza did. She had brought ones to help her, both with her adventure and with her courage. Ephraim’s books were so important to her, she couldn’t imagine being able to do this alone without his guidance in her memory.
Eliza took hold of Melba’s reins and led him over to a rock so she could mount without making a complete ass of herself. As she slid up into the saddle, her behind and thighs groaned in protest. After the long ride the night before, there wasn’t a place on her that didn’t hurt. However, none of it mattered. She had to find Grady.
Eliza didn’t care how she did it, but she was going to catch up to him and teach him a thing or two about bespectacled women. She gritted her teeth and started off west following the horseshoe prints.
The sun was high in the sky before Eliza stopped to eat. Food didn’t seem important, but her stomach was yowling like a beast and had actually become quite painful. She knew it was partly due to anxiety, but if she got herself sick because she didn’t eat, she wouldn’t be good for anything or anyone.
Every half hour, she checked to be sure she could still see the horseshoe track with the nick. He was consistent in his riding skills judging by the horse’s stride. Grady was obviously a man used to being on the back of a horse.
Eliza’s backend had long since gone numb, along with everything below the waist. She had no idea just how physical riding a horse actually was—no book talked about just how hard the saddle was, either. Of course, the saddle she rode was meant for a man, and likely thirty years old if it was a day.
It was a sad realization, really, of just how much she didn’t know. Books taught her so much, as did Ephraim, but the real world was full of lessons she still had yet to learn. Some of those lessons were hard, and she had a feeling they were only going to get harder.
The biscuits she’d put in her bag were barely enough to keep her going. In addition to being sore and tired, Eliza was hungry enough to eat one of her books. At least she had freshwater; that was a blessing even if the biscuits barely fulfilled a smidgen of her appetite.
Eliza had read a book about hunting and using snares, yet she shuddered to think about actually skinning and preparing a rabbit for cooking. That particular volume had not been put in her bag for that reason. Now she regretted it considering how hungry she was. No wonder people hunted for food, regardless of the blood and violence of it.
Eliza knew they lived in an insular society with the LDS church and the ward that surrounded them. Ephraim had been her neighbor and friend, a non-LDS resident who lived in a small cabin on the outskirts of town. She’d met him quite by accident when she’d been out looking for raspberries one spring seven years earlier. Angeline had stayed at the house because she’d been feeling poorly.
Of course if Silas had known Eliza had gone out on her own, he would have tanned her hide. Ephraim, however, had saved her life that day. She’d been picking berries she thought were the raspberries common to the woods behind their house. Yet they’d been poisonous and Ephraim had stopped her before she finished chewing the first bite.
With a patience Eliza had never known in an adult male, Ephraim, white-haired even then, taught her the difference between the berries. Then he taught her about what she could eat in the forest, what was dangerous, and what she could use every day for things like cleaning and curing headaches.
He was an amazing font of information, one she visited as often as possible. His books became precious to her as he taught her about science, inventions, and the world around her.
Her father never knew of Ephraim’s teachings, and for that lone fact, Eliza was grateful she could lie. It wasn’t a skill she had used in her life until she realized Silas Hunter would never let his daughters be exposed to anyone who did not believe what he did. The LDS church had no room for nonbelievers, and as a prominent man in their ward, her father had a reputation to uphold.
Eliza had no such qualms. At nearly twenty-one years old, she had long since given up on God and the LDS teachings. Science and all its glory had shown her the true meaning of what surrounded her. She’d always questioned the entire concept of faith, but had kept quiet for fear of embarrassment and ostracism.
She’d been right in doing so, because once she became a scientist in truth, and began doing experiments and building inventions with Ephraim, she would have been expelled from her family and her life if discovered. As it was, Silas had found her doing experiments, or constructing inventions, on six occasions. He’d been beyond furious and had forbidden her from performing the devil’s bidding, destroyed her work, and beaten her until she’d been bedridden for days afterward. Eliza remembered each and every one very clearly.
Angeline was the only one who accepted her as a whole person, never judging Eliza or condemning her for beliefs she didn’t share. Eliza’s younger sister was the angel her name implied. She was sweet, obedient, and seventeen years old, and she was out there in the world with only another woman for company.
Eliza had to find Angeline before anything horrible happened. She’d disappeared nearly two weeks earlier along with Lettie Brown, the second wife to Josiah. Angeline was wife number three. Eliza might have believed Josiah had murdered both of them if it weren’t for a conversation she overheard in her own house.
Josiah had hired Grady Wolfe to hunt down the two women. Eliza knew then she had to find Angeline before Grady did or her sister would have to return to the life she had run from. Knowing how much Angeline followed the LDS teachings and how obedient she’d been all her life, something horrific had happened. Eliza knew a great deal of what had happened in Brown’s house, how Josiah had beaten his new wife, and she could only wonder what truly horrible thing he’d done to send the two women out into the world alone.
Eliza had never been so frightened in her life. Angeline was her baby sister; she’d practically raised her from the time they were girls and their mother passed away. Eliza had always thought it was due to unhappiness with her life, since Margaret Hunter had been a convert to LDS, never quite fitting into the community. Her girls had been her life, and her death had deepened the bond between them.
There wasn’t anything Eliza wouldn’t do for Angeline, including setting out on a dangerous adventure she had never imagined doing. Now here she was alone in the middle of nowhere riding a horse and chasing a bounty hunter.
If it weren’t true, Eliza might have thought she was reading about it in a book. That thought made a chuckle burst from her dry throat. In another hour she might start talking to herself, and that would be not only embarrassing but worrisome. She needed to keep her wits about her. Grady Wolfe was a smart man, exceptionally smart.
