A Secret Refuge [02] Sisters of the Confederacy by Lauraine Snelling Page B

over to Aunt Agatha. Be back soon.”
    But when she drove up to the new house and knocked on the door, a bent-over old man answered. “They’s gone to the church,” he said in a weak voice after she introduced herself and her errand. “But you can unload the things in the coach house there. We don’t have horses any longer.”
    “Thank you, sir, and please tell Aunt that I was by.”
    She unloaded the last of the vegetables, both dried and fresh, although some of it looked a bit shriveled now. By keeping the root crops, other than the potatoes, covered with sand, the vegetables had retained their moisture and flavor. Her mind flashed back to Twin Oaks. All they had put by gone up in flames. And the larder had been massive, though they left all the root crops in the ground and covered the rows with straw to dig out when needed. Surely her people were able to dig those to help keep them going. If only she could figure a way to send some of her gold to them.
    Back at the store she helped Dummont load the wagon, then drove off for the cave. They should be set now for the next month or so. On her way home she thought back to her habit of praying in an emergency. She’d gotten over a lot in the last months. She could get over that habit too.

    Rain brought in the month of February, rain in never-ceasing sheets of silver that turned the hills to mud and the creek to a roaring river. No longer did they water the horses near the cave but took them up the hollow to another calmer place. Finding grazing took much of the day for Daniel or Benjamin. The hay Jesselynn managed to buy from a farmer and bring back in the wagon could only be fed to the mares, since they were being kept inside. Besides finding wood, bringing in dry leaves for bedding the stalls was a major part of Jane Ellen’s and Thaddeus’s day.
    “We’ve got to find another cave,” Jesselynn said one night after supper. “We’ve stripped the area around here bare.”
    “But we set up for the foalin’ here.” Benjamin looked toward the back of the cave where the two mares occupied their own stalls, the others dozing in the corral.
    “I know that. But any day now we’ll have foals, and we can carry them in the wagon if it is too far. I don’t know what else to do.”
    “Spring come soon,” Meshach reminded her.
    “Not soon enough.” Jesselynn laid aside her knitting and rubbed her upper arms. The cold damp was almost worse than the snow and blizzard. This cold ate right into one’s bones and belly.
    “You want I should take Roman and go lookin’ tomorrow?” Benjamin asked.
    “No, you stay here and let Daniel go.” She glanced over in time to see the younger man look down at the floor as if studying something of supreme importance. She knew since his beating that he rarely headed far from the cave by himself, but she hadn’t brought it up. They’d punished the culprits, but there were others as bad or worse. “How about if I go with you?” She surprised herself with her suggestion. She hadn’t left the cave for more than brief forays for days. She hated to be gone from the mares. Too much was riding on their progeny.
    Besides, like a cat, she hated to get wet. The look of gratitude he sent her warmed her heart even if her hands were freezing.
    “Best we wait till it dry out some.” Meshach offered his opinion, not looking up from the wood he was smoothing with a deer antler. “I found more pasture a mile or so across another ridge. Take horses there tomorrow.”
    Jesselynn nodded. Another reprieve.
    She checked the mares one last time before going to bed. Dulcie showed the beginning signs of coming birth. She shifted from one front foot to the other and turned her head to nip at her sides. “Easy girl, you’ve done this often enough to know what’s happening.” She laid a hand on the mare’s side and again on her flank and waited. Sure enough, a contraction rolled through, not hard yet but beginning.
    “You s’pose they remember from