He promised to keep Crowe occupied by reporting a broken harness in the south stable.

Elijah thanked him without asking for assurances he could not afford to give.

The boy walked away with his shoulders stiff, trying to look as though his choices did not frighten him.

Before dawn Naomi moved along the kitchen wall in a cloak borrowed from Mercy.

She wore the strip of three knots tied around her wrist.

James waited beside the storage door with his shoes in his hands, afraid their soles would make noise on the stones.

Naomi whispered his mother’s name, and the child followed her toward the pear tree.

A dog barked from the far yard.

Naomi froze, listening for footsteps.

The sound faded as a handler called the dog back.

She slipped through the gate and led James beneath bare branches until they reached the old wagon road.

Abigail waited where the road met a shallow creek.

Her boat was small and patched with strips of pitch, but it could carry a child and one adult across without drawing attention from the main ferry.

James trembled when Naomi asked him to board.

“Will you come too?” he asked.

Naomi looked toward Riverbend and thought of Ruth and Samuel asleep in the cabin.

“I need to go back for my children,” she said.

“But Abigail knows how to reach someone who may know your mother.” James clutched the cloth strip and climbed into the boat.

Abigail pushed off without a word, steering beneath branches that touched the water like fingers.

Naomi returned before the breakfast bell.

Elijah found her behind the kitchen woodpile, cold to the bone and shaking from the effort of holding back tears.

“He’s across,” she said.

Elijah closed his eyes briefly.

They had saved one child from the next wagon.

They had not solved the danger to everyone else.

Crowe discovered the empty storage room an hour later and struck the door so hard the loose latch cracked.

Richard stormed into the yard, demanding names.

Elijah stood among the carpenters and kept his expression blank.

When Richard looked directly at him, he asked where the carpenter had been before dawn.

Elijah answered truthfully that he had been in his cabin with his family.

He did not mention the minutes before Naomi returned.

Chapter 14: The Man Who Could Read a Seal

County clerk Edwin Sutter arrived at Riverbend carrying a notice that named James Bell as an escaped apprentice.

He expected the household to report the child and assist in his recovery.