Wilde, Jennifer by Love's Tender Fury

Author:Love's Tender Fury [Fury, Love's Tender]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2012-05-19T14:31:40+00:00

CHAPTER 19

I awoke with a start. There was no grogginess, no period of transition. One minute I was asleep, the next I was completely awake, and I sensed immediately that something was wrong. I could feel it in my bones. I sat up, pushing the blankets away. Jeff was gone. He had been nestled under the blankets with me, and now he wasn't here. I had the feeling that he had been gone for some time. Why had he left me alone like this? It had never happened before. I got to my feet, deeply alarmed.

The sky was an ashy gray, the stars gradually dimming, barely visible behind a misty haze. The sun would be coming up quite soon now. I could see the campsite clearly, see the heap of charred logs that had been our fire last night, the pile of packs Jeff had removed from the mules. The mules were tethered to a tree at the edge of the woods. Jenny was nibbling the grass, and... one of the mules was missing. The third mule, the one that carried most of the packs, wasn't there. Why should Jeff leave like this, taking one of the mules with him? It didn't make sense.

None of it made sense. I was beginning to grow even more alarmed. Could Billy Brennan have crept up and stolen one of the mules and Jeff have gone after him? No, that was absurd. Five days had passed since Billy had torn off into the woods on his horse, and there had been no sign of him. He was terrified of Jeff, and creeping up to our camp was the last thing he would dream of doing. There was little chance we would ever see him again. He could make much better time on horseback than we could on mules, and he was probably two hundred miles away by this time.

But where had Jeff gone, and what had happened to the mule? If there had been any noise, I would have awakened. I felt certain of that. Jeff had slipped out from under the blankets and crept away into the woods, deliberately making no noise for fear of waking me. There was probably some very simple explanation, I told myself. Perhaps the mule had chewed through the tether rope and wandered off. No doubt I was being foolish, feeling this alarm, but I couldn't shake it. No matter how hard I tried to reason with myself, the alarm remained, mounting as more and more time passed and Jeff still didn't appear.

The dense forest surrounded me, seemed to engulf me. I was acutely aware of every noise, acutely aware of being alone. The last star flickered out, and the misty haze vanished to reveal a pearl-gray sky. As the pink and orange stains began to spread on the horizon, color began to appear around me, black and gray and silver giving way to the green of leaves, the blue of wildflowers, the tan and brown of tree trunks.

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