“Then another wagon came from the west.”
Cyrus pointed to the ground.
“Those are narrower wheels.”
They followed the marks until the tracks disappeared beneath a rocky slope.
There they found Isaac Rowe sitting against a tree with a bandage tied around his arm.
His spectacles lay broken in his lap.
“Don’t come closer unless you’re alone,” he said.
“We are alone,” Cyrus answered.
“Then keep your voices down.”
Isaac described a group of armed men who stopped him under the pretense of looking for stolen property.
They searched his bundles and demanded to see the woman he had transported from Old Orchard.
When he refused, they took his horse and left him bound to a tree.
He had worked free only an hour earlier.
“Where was the woman?” Caleb asked.
Isaac touched his chest.
“She wasn’t in my wagon when they stopped me.”
“Where did she go?”
“She left by the stone bridge before dawn.”
“With the baby?”
“Yes.”
“Who helped her?”
Isaac opened his bookbinder’s case and removed a slip of paper.
“A woman in a blue bonnet told me to give this to anyone who knew Lottie Reed.”
The note carried only a place and a name.
“Quaker meetinghouse, Willow Ford.”
Below the words was a drawing of a silver locket with one side open.
Caleb leaned close.
The tiny inscription in the drawing was clear.
“For Clara, and for the child they would not name.”
He looked up.
“The locket was Eleanor’s sister’s.”
“The woman knew that,” Isaac said.
“She said the inscription was the only thing that would make a man called Caleb understand.”
Amos touched his shoulder.
“You’re not being summoned now.”
“You’re being asked to decide whether to follow.”
Caleb looked toward the north road.
He had already decided.
They built a small shelter for Isaac near the creek and left Cyrus with him to obtain help.
Amos and Caleb set out toward Willow Ford before the next patrol could arrive.
As they walked, Caleb began to wonder whether the silver locket was not a threat but a message somebody had forced the rider to carry without knowing its meaning.
If so, the person sending it might not have been Eleanor at all.
Chapter Thirteen: Willow Ford
Willow Ford was a village of fewer than forty houses clustered around a grain mill and a bridge too narrow for two wagons to pass.
The meetinghouse stood beyond the last orchard, its plain white walls nearly hidden by tall walnut trees.
