summoned his companions.
They eagerly followed the track, which, to their growing confusion, ran in the same direction they had previously chosen.
'Cooper, we've already seen the brutes did not come this way,' Dale said with an ominously false show of patienoe.
'No, all we've seen is that they did not reach the band. Tracks have no flair for lying.' Cooper held his course Dale, fuming, had no choice but to follow. A few minutes later, the guard stiffened. 'Look here, all of you. Of a sudden, they spun on their heels and headed northeast'
'Why, I wonder?' Wingfield said. He glanced toward the column of smoke from the sims' fire, pointed. 'They could easily see that from here.'
'What does it matter?' That was Henry Dale. 'Let's hunt down the beasts and have done with this pointless chatter.'
'Pointless it is not,' Wingfield said, 'if it will help us in the hunting. Were you coming to a camp of your friends, Henry, why would you then avoid it?'
'Who knows why a sim does as it does, or cares? If it amuses you to enter the mind of an animal, go on, but ask me not to partake of your fatuity.'
'Hold, Henry,' Cooper said. 'Edward's query is deserving of an answer.
In war, now, I'd steer clear of a camp, did it contain the enemy.'
'Are sim bands nations writ in small?' Dale scoffed.
'I tell you honestly, I do not know for a fact,' Cooper replied.
'Nor, Henry, do you.' Dale scowled. Cooper stared him down.
The country rose as they traveled away from the James.
The sims they were fol owing stuck to wooded and brushy areas, even when that meant deviating from the chosen course. After seeing the fourth or fifth such zigzag, Cooper grunted, 'Nation or no, that pair didn't relish being spotted. Soldiers travel so, behind the foe's lines.'
'Even if you have reason,' Caleb Lucas said a while later, ruefully rubbing at the thorn scratches on his arms, 'why did the wretched creatures have to traverse every patch of brambles they could find?'
'Not for the sake of hearing your whining, surely.' Had Cooper given Henry Dale that rebuke, he would have growled it. With the irrepressible young Lucas, he could not keep a twinkle from his eyes.
AII the Englishmen were scratched and bleeding. Wingfield stopped to extract a briar that had pierced his breeches.
The bushes around him were especially thick and thorny, their Ieaves a glistening, venomous dark green. Only against that background would the white bit of cloth have caught his notice.
He reached out and plucked it from its bramble without realizing for a moment what it meant. Then he let out a whoop that horrified his comrades. They stared at him as at a madman while he held up the tiny piece of linen.
'From Joanna's shift!' he said when he had calmed enough to speak clearly again. 'It must be, the sims know thing of fabric, nor even pelts to cover their loins.'
Save their own pelts, that is,' Lucas grinned. Then the excitement took him too. 'Proof we're on the right track.'
And proof, or at least hope, my little girl yet lives,' he said, as much to himself as to the rest. 'Had they sought no more than meat, they'd not have left the shift round her so long, would they?' He looked to the others for reassurance.
'It were unlikely, Edward,' Cooper said gently. Caleb Lucas nodded.
Henry Dale said nothing. Wiping his florid face with his sleeve, he pushed ahead.
Late that afternoon, near the edge of a creek, the Englishmen came upon the scaly tail of a muskrat, al that was left of the beast save for a blood-soaked patch of grass Allan Cooper found close by. 'Here the sims stopped to feed,' the guard judged. Further casting about revealed a sharpened stone that confirmed his guess.
'This making of tools on the spot has its advantages,' Caleb Lucas said.
'One need never be without.'
'Oh, aye, indeed, if one has but three different tools to make,' Henry Dale said sourly.
Wingfield did his best to ignore the continual bickering. He went over the ground inch by inch, searching for signs of Joanna. He final y found a spattering of loose, yellowbrown muck on some chickweed not far from the edge of the stream. His heart leaped.
The others came rushing over at his exclamation. Dale and Lucas stared uncomprehending at the dropping, but Allan Cooper recognized it at once.
'The very same as my little Cecil makes, Edward,' he said, slapping Wingfield on the back. 'This far, your baby was alive.'
'Aye,' Wingfield got out, giddy with relief. His greatest fear had been that the sims would simply dash her against a treetrunk and throw her tiny broken body into the woods for scavengers to eat.
'They have her yet, I must grant it,' Dale said. 'Do they take her back to their fellows for tortures viler than those they might perform in haste?'
'Shut up, damn you!' Wingfield shouted, and would have gone for Dale had Cooper and Caleb Lucas not quickly stepped between them.
'Have you not cal ed them beasts all this while, Henry?' Lucas said.
