More than Conquerors by Kay Cornelius

Author:Kay Cornelius
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media Romance
Published: 2014-05-31T00:28:21+00:00

Seven

“I’ll be back soon,” Lucinda promised the next morning.

Millie had come outside to see her off, trying hard to look cheerful. “Send word the instant you have news of Henry,” she said, and Lucinda nodded.

“Watch out for that foot,” Lucinda cautioned as she mounted Ginger and adjusted her riding dress around the pommel of her sidesaddle.

“Don’t worry. I’ve learned my lesson. Be careful, now.”

With a final wave, Lucinda turned Ginger toward the lane leading back to the main road. This time Rufe rode Millie’s roan mare so they could make better time. Her pass from Major Russell would come in very handy, Lucinda thought as she turned Ginger south onto the Winchester Pike. She might need to make more than one trip back to Highmeadows before Ben had all the information he needed, and it would be awkward to have to explain each errand at General Mitchcll’s headquarters.

“We all gwine to miss you, Miss Lucinda,” Rufe said after they had ridden for some minutes in silence.

“I’ll miss Highmeadows, too,” Lucinda replied, and in a way she would. Her hard work there had given her a welcome sense of purpose. But I have another purpose now, she reminded herself.

They had covered only a few miles when the first faint sounds of what was quite clearly gunfire came from somewhere to the east.

“Do you hear that?” Lucinda asked Rufe.

“Yes’m. I ‘spect the Yankees is chasing some folks. “We must be ‘bout even with the Camden settlement.”

Lucinda looked toward the mountains, trying to imagine how anyone could ride and fire in such steep terrain. On the other side of the mountain ran the main east-west railroad track.

“I b’lieve they’s comin’ this way,” Rufe said as the sounds grew louder, and Lucinda began to look around for a hiding place. They had been riding through cultivated land with little cover, but just ahead and to the right she saw a cotton gin.

“Let’s get to shelter,” she said, pointing toward the building and urging Ginger forward. The distance could not have been more than a half mile, but it seemed to take forever to cover. Worse, the tracks their horses made in the fresh mud pointed directly at them.

“I hope they don’t look this way,” Lucinda said as the shots grew even closer.

Suddenly several horsemen broke from the wooded edge of the mountain and galloped through the adjacent fields, crossing the road Lucinda and Rufe had left only moments before. From the distance that separated them, Lucinda couldn’t tell much about the riders except that they weren’t wearing any sort of regular uniforms. Hats obscured their faces, but for a split-second Lucinda saw-or imagined—a flash of blond beard as the men disappeared into a field on the western side of the road.

Moments later, a troop of a dozen or so blue-uniformed soldiers appeared in hot pursuit and also crossed the road, too intent on their quarry to take any notice of Lucinda and Rufe.

“That was close,” Lucinda said when the men in blue had also ridden out of sight.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.