The hour had turned ten by the time Thunderbolt carried him down the ridge that rises on the flank of the Tombigbee opposite the mill, and as he wended his way down the wooded side of the ridge toward the stream in moonlight, slowly and cold, he blinked hard. He could barely make out the line where the waters broadened at the mill's pond, but a large dark shadow seemed to have been added to the line at the spillway, as thoush some huge person was standing up in the stream. He could not make it out clearly -- deadwood? Some kind of logjam? A bear? None of these flitting concepts made any sense. A few minutes later he closed his eyes, letting Thunderbolt carry on in his intelligent walk down the incline toward the bank, letting his pupils expand and dilate, and stared again. A sudden shock of breath hit his half-numbed body as he realized what he was looking at among the shadows on the other side of the river; it was the upended carcass of his great-grandfather's mill-wheel, its corroded and rotted limbs splayed at wild angles and a large section of its driving shaft, a huge piece of now-charred oak, pointing wraithlike to the stars. The wind, coming down the ridgline at his back, had carried the smell away, and there had been no blaze by the time he had been close enough to sense it. He urged the horse forward down to the fording piont, and splashed across the chilled night stream with cold sweat forming across his forehead and a freshet of new fear and anger forming in his gut. The stones of the mill were blackened, its timbers fallen baulks of half-eaten charcoal; the roof was ashes over the gutted floor, and a rich, awful stench of hell-charred life sank like a cloud over the whole, as though time itself had been burned at some insane stake and given up the ghost. He stood, frozen in his tired saddle, staring at the ashes of his life, long and long.

The sound of brush and hooves startled him awake; hauling back on the reins he quietly backed his mount into the woods, disappearing in the nightdark lines of the forest as two large horses carrying two large men, their faces covered with black cloth, down the rutted trail from the river road and into the clearing. He held his breath and drew out his pistol, praying that Thunderbolt would not speak, glad that the wind still bore downstream.

The large of the men, a huge shadowy figure with a voice like a gravel-sieve at work, spoke loudly, asthough to fend off doubts and gremlins in the forest.

"We'll lose no more property to that meddling fool. The question now is tracking them.. He's probably run off with that damned widder to stir up more trouble."

"We can't track him in this light, dammit." Adam recognized the nasal baritone whine of Matthew Stanford, and flinched in spite of himself. "We'll have to come back at sun up. There's some cold beef and some proper whiskey back in my kitchen. Why don't you join me?"

The gravelly bass voice rumbled agreement and the two horsemen wheeled and trotted back up the dark path. Adam Goodenough nudged Thunderbolt out of his retreat among the trees, the huge, futile pistol drawing a useless bead on the darkness into which they had disappeared.

He had not much time. He would have to show them where to go.....