“Why, ain’t you noticed?” said Crockett. “Them nags has took off like drunks to a barbecue.”

Gazing towards the hillside upon which the three beasts had been grazing, I observed that Crockett was right: the untethered horses had indeed bolted— frightened off, perhaps, by the booming discharge of the rifle.

“But where shall we find shelter in this godforsaken expanse of countryside?” I inquired, wincing from a sudden throb of pain in my injured right wrist.

“Why, there’s a place not a half-mile from here that’ll serve just fine,” said Crockett. “C’mon, pard. You can ride my hoss, and I will lead the way.”

CHAPTER 31

Before stealing up on Neuendorf and his minions, Crockett had taken the precaution of concealing his horse in the woods. He now hurried off to retrieve the animal. While he was gone, I tested the condition of my damaged wrist by gingerly moving it to and fro, while alternately contracting and extending my fingers. I was pleased to discover that, however painful the effort, I could operate my hand with little difficulty: a reassuring sign that my right carpus, though badly sprained, had not sustained anything so severe as a fracture.

Moments later, my companion emerged from the trees, leading a handsome sorrel. Supporting me by the arm, he assisted me onto the saddle. Then—walking beside the horse with the reins in one hand and his rifle in the other—the frontiersman led us from the clearing and onto a narrow trail that ran through the forest in a westerly direction.

The trying events of that long and singularly unnerving day—which had begun with my violent abduction and culminated with the savage, if wholly justified, slaying of the trio of cutthroats—had left me in a state of extreme physical and emotional depletion: so much so that, in spite of my aching arm and the added discomfort of the steady, drizzling precipitation, I was unable to keep my eyelids from sagging. How long we travelled, I am thus unable to state. All at once, however, I was startled from my doze by the frontiersman’s voice, announcing that we had arrived at our destination.

Shaking my head to dear it, I found myself confronted by a sight that, for several moments, was a source of the deepest perplexity. Directly ahead loomed the charred walls and blackened beams of a great, derelict mansion that had evidently been destroyed by a catastrophic fire. Only gradually did I realize that I was staring at the ruins of the once-proud house of Asher.

“But how in Heaven’s name,” I exclaimed in astonishment, “have we ended up here?”