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Page 157
to pay my passage, along with my brother Mack.'' Her soft, close-set eyes grew troubled.
"Where's Mack now?" Mariah asked gently.
Holly didn't answer. "Let's go fix some food for that dour woodsman and his French friend."
Holly seemed to have recuperated completely from her mishap, except for an occasional wince when she bumped one of her bruises. She was a dynamo for the rest of the day, demonstrating to Mariah a multitude of the skills helpful to survival on the frontier: starting a fire quickly with just a tinder box; preparing simple recipes from few ingredients; cleaning clothing between washdays; sewing. And, yes, René did have needle and thread.
Holly turned out to be quite garrulousabout everything except herself. Nevertheless, Mariah learned, in bits and pieces, that Holly was older than the teenager she appeared. Her service as a bondsperson had finally terminated two months earlier, and so had her brother's. The two of them had joined up with a band of other former servants to head west for settlement.
But their band had been attacked by Indians. The men, including Holly's brother, had been killed, and the women taken captive.
Holly, who'd been treated badly, had managed to escape, and that was when Mariah had found her.
"And here I am, safe and sound here, at the inn of your friend Thorn."
"He's not my friend," Mariah said immediately.
"Then why are you here?"
"It's a long story." Though Mariah sensed a potential comrade in this woman who told her horrible tale so briefly and in such an offhand manner, she wasn't ready to tell hers to anyone. Not yet. Maybe never.

Holly Smith had an instinct about people.
She thought about that fact as she and Mariah Walker finished scrubbing the wood floor of the kitchen and common room in the inn in the wilderness owned by the man Thorn.
Holly had known just by looking at him that the New

 
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