Elaine Coffman by My Love My Enemy

Author:My Love My Enemy [My Enemy, My Love]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nineteen

An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure, or so Mourning had always been taught by Grandmother Howard, who put a great deal of faith in sententious sayings—being a veritable walking collection of admonitions herself. Grandmother Howard also had another proverb that applied to her granddaughter’s aptitude for doing everything the hard way—Nothing worth learning can be taught. Applied to Mourning, this translated—Experience is the best teacher. In that sense, Mourning was a well-educated woman, having gained the majority of her experience from that old and well-established institute of learning, the School of Hard Knocks. It was fortunate for Mourning, indeed, that at times she possessed unparalleled finesse in adroitly finding her way out of an entanglement as easily as she managed to become ensnared in the first place.

And so, having cleverly slipped from the house without attracting Clint’s attention, and having successfully located her mother’s paisley shawl, not to mention skillfully maneuvering their persons away from a notorious border bandit, she was led to her eventual discovery of the truthfulness of yet another proverb—Every solution breeds new problems, which is nothing more than a corollary to the fact—If anything can go wrong, it will. Unfortunately, this had a tendency to be the rule, rather than the exception in whatever endeavor Mourning undertook. With the addition of Cousin Anna, things had the inclination to go from bad to worse.

It was not by pure, unadulterated malice that the cousins found themselves out after dark, but rather due to a series of unsolicited misadventures, which all their misadventures were, in their opinion. Grandmother Howard would have said this was confirmation that whenever you set out to do something, something else must be done first.

Reaching the clearing where they had left the horses, the cousins were astounded to find the horses gone. How, Mourning wondered as she stood with a quizzical look on her face, could anyone misplace anything as large as two horses?

Admitting to herself they had been negligent in leaving the geldings untied, Mourning had no idea that one hasty oversight would extract such payment. Over two hours had elapsed before they located the two geldings in a narrow, dry creek bed. There is a proverb for this also—Everything takes longer than you think.

Owing to this unscheduled turn of events, evening was upon them by the time they located the grazing horses. Unable to find their way in the failing light, Mourning remembered Clint had once told her, A horse, fortunately, has more sense than its rider. Given his head, your mount can locate water and find his way home. They gave the horses their heads. The full moon was out, dipping and dodging in and out of clouds, casting eerie purple shadows with groping forms across their way.

“Mourning?”

“What?”

“You scared?”

“A little.”

“Good.” Anna, like misery, loved company.

It was a damp night, where a heavy mist curled like long, bony fingers between the tree trunks, keeping low to the ground as it threaded its way across the unfamiliar terrain like slow-flowing lava.

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