Love Me, Marietta by Jennifer Wilde

Author:Jennifer Wilde
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781497698178
Publisher: Open Road Media

Twenty-One

I struggled into a sitting position, dry, warm, surprisingly refreshed. The soft, sweet-smelling rug of dried, woven moss fell away from my shoulders as I stretched, looking around the cave. The fire had gone out, only a pile of cold, charred wood remaining, and rays of sunlight streamed through the opening. Corrie and the men were gone. Em smiled and came toward me with one of the curiously shaped white vessels.

“Here, luv,” she said, “drink this, it’s water, and try not to let the fact that cannibals drank out of it bother you.”

I took the vessel by its slender white neck and drank greedily, giving no thought whatsoever to other lips that might have touched the rim. The water was wonderfully cool and satisfying. Em watched me drink as a mother hen might watch an ailing chick. I finished the rest of the water and handed her the vessel. She set it down gingerly.

“How are you feeling?” she inquired.

“I’m sore all over. My jaw aches. My throat feels raw. The roots of my hair sting and, yes, my wrists hurt, too, but I feel wonderful, lucky to be alive.”

“You slept for hours, luv. It’s midafternoon now, and the storm passed over a long time ago.”

“Where are the men?”

“Hunting for food,” she replied. “Corrie went with them. It seems she knows quite a lot about roots and berries and things. They’ve been gone over an hour—should be back soon. I don’t know about you, but I’m starving.”

“I could use a bite,” I admitted.

“Randolph thinks he’s going to find game and kill it with a bow and arrow. As soon as the storm was over he went out and came back with a long willow branch and a bunch of sticks he’d cut. He peeled the bark off the sticks and notched them and sharpened the ends to points, making arrows, then took a piece of thin wire out of his pocket and fastened it to the willow branch and made a dandy bow.”

“Why go to all that trouble? Why not just use his gun?”

“That’s what I wanted to know, luv, thought it was silly as hell when he claims to be such a terrific shot. Know what he told me? He told me that if there still were any Karankawas lurking about the neighborhood he didn’t want to alert ’em of our presence with gunfire.”

“He thinks there might still be some around?”

Em nodded. “They’re migratory, he says, but it seems that when they migrate they don’t migrate far. They move all through the area in long canoes they make by hollowing out logs. They could be ten miles away or they could be half a mile away, and here’s the lovely part, luv, there isn’t just one big tribe of ’em. There’re bands of them all over the place.”

She shivered, folding her arms around her waist. I stretched again, not at all alarmed. The moss rugs made a soft, crackling sound. At least four of them were beneath me, making an unusually comfortable mattress.

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