The sheriff didn't say anything, but when the road forked a few miles later he turned toward Colt Ridge. The sheriff drove faster now, and the automobile's rapid motion seemed to make her mind move faster as well. So much had happened so quickly she hadn't even begun to take it all in. While she'd been at Kephart's cabin, it all hadn't felt quite real, but now what had happened to Widow Jenkins and what could have happened to her and Jacob came full at her, and it was like running ahead of a barn-high wave of water. Running hard to stay ahead of it, Rachel thought despairingly, because when it all did take hold of her she didn't know if she could bear the burden of it.

They parked next to the cabin. Rachel set Jacob on the ground beside the porch steps as the sheriff opened the trunk.

"We'll put the things you need in here," Sheriff McDowell said, following Rachel onto the porch. "I can help you carry out what you need."

"You think it could be a long while before we come back here?"

"Probably. Leastways if you want that child to be safe."

"There's a box trunk in the front room," Rachel said. "If you can fetch it I'll get the rest."

Rachel stepped inside, the cabin somehow different than when she'd left it last night. It appeared smaller, and darker, the windows letting in less light. Nothing had been disturbed that she could tell except that the loft ladder had been set upright. Thinking me and Jacob might have hid up there, Rachel knew. She gathered what she needed as quickly as she could, including Jacob's toy train engine. As she moved through the cabin filling the carpetbag, Rachel tried not to think about what could have been.

"I'll put that in the trunk for you," the sheriff said when she came outside. "You get the boy."

Rachel kneeled beside Jacob. She took the child's hand and pressed it to the dirt. Her father had told Rachel that Harmons had been on this land since before the Revolutionary War.

"Don't ever forget what it feels like, Jacob," she whispered, and let her hand touch the ground as well.

The woodshed's door was open, and a barn swallow swung out of the sky and disappeared into its darkness. A hoe leaned against the shed wall, its blade freckled with rust, beside it a pile of rotting cabbage sacks. Rachel let her gaze cross the pasture, the spring clotted with leaves, the field where only horseweed and dog fennel grew over winter-shucked corn stalks, no more alive than the man who'd planted them.

They got back in the car. As they approached the Widow's house, Rachel remembered the cradle her father had made.

"There's something I got to get from Widow Jenkins' house," she said. "It'll just take a second."

The sheriff pulled up beside the farmhouse.

"What is it?"

"A cradle."

"I'll go in and get it," the sheriff said.

"I don't mind. It ain't heavy."

"No," Sheriff McDowell said. "It's best I get it."

Rachel understood then. You'd have walked right in and not realized until you seen the blood or whatever else it is he don't want you to see, she told herself. But as Rachel watched the sheriff enter the front door, it was hard to believe the farmhouse itself was still there, because a place where something so terrible had happened shouldn't continue to exist in the world. The earth itself shouldn't be able to abide it.

Sheriff McDowell placed the cradle in the trunk. When he got back in the car, he passed back a brown paper bag.

"It'll be a while before we get where we're going, so I got you a hamburger and co-cola. I loosened the cap, so you won't need an opener."

"Thank you," Rachel said, setting the bag beside her, "but what about you?"

"I'm fine," the sheriff said.

Rachel smelled the grilled meat and realized she was hungry again despite the bowl of beans, the cornbread and buttermilk. She settled Jacob deeper into her lap, then unwrapped the wax paper moist with grease. The meat was still warm and juicy, and she pinched off a few bits for Jacob. She took out the drink and pressed her thumb against the metal cap, felt it give. A kindly thing for him to have done that, Rachel thought, just his thinking to do it, same as buying the marbles. When she'd finished, Rachel put the bottle and wrapper in the bag and set it beside her.

They skirted Asheville and passed over the French Broad. As Rachel stared at the river, she told herself to think of something that wasn't fretful, so she thought of the sheriff's room, how you'd have known it was a man's room as much from what wasn't in it as what was-no pictures on the wall or lacy curtains over the window, no flowers in a vase. But there had been a neatness she'd have not have reckoned on. On the bedside table, a shellcraft pipe and stringed cloth tobacco pouch, a pair of wire-rimmed glasses and a pearl pen knife he'd pare his nails with. Across the room on the bureau, a looking glass, in front of it a black metal comb, a straight razor and its lather bowl and brush. On the chest of drawers, a Bible and a Farmers' Almanac, a tall book titled Wildlife of North America and another called Camping and Woodcraft, all stacked in a tidy row like in a library. Everything looked to have its place, and that place seemed to have been set and determined for a long time. A lonely sort of room.

In a while they passed a sign that said Madison County. The mountains around them rose higher, blotted out more of the sky.

"Where are we going?" Rachel asked.

"I called a relation of mine," the sheriff said. "She's an older woman who lives by herself. She's got an extra room you can stay in."

"She your aunt?"

"No, that would be too close of kin. A second cousin."

"Where does she live?"

"Tennessee."

"Her name McDowell too?"

"No, Sloan. Lena Sloan."

They drove west now, the road rising steadily toward mountains where the day's last light limned the ridge tops red. Jacob waked for a few minutes, then nuzzled against Rachel's breast and fell back asleep. It was full dark when she and Sheriff McDowell spoke again.

"You ain't tried to arrest them?"

"No," Sheriff McDowell said, "but I think soon I'll get enough on them that I can. I'm going to have the state coroner in Raleigh help me. But until then you've got to stay as far from them as possible."

"How'd you know they was coming after us?"

"A telephone call."

"A call last night?"

"Yes."

"And they said Jacob was in danger, not just me?"

"Yes, both of you."

"Do you know who it was, the one that called?"

"Joel Vaughn."

"Joel," Rachel said.

For a few moments she didn't speak.

"They'll kill him for that, won't they?"

"They'll try."

"Do you know where he is?"

"I drove him to Sylva this afternoon so he could hop a freight car," Sheriff McDowell answered, "one that wouldn't be going near Waynesville or Asheville."

"Where's he going?"

"If he did what I told him, as far from these mountains as possible."

The road leveled out a few yards before unfurling downward. Below in the distance were a few muted clusters of light. Rachel remembered how a month ago she'd sat before a hearth of glowing coals and listened to Jacob's breathing, thinking how after her mother had left when Rachel was five there'd been so much emptiness in the cabin she could hardly bear to be inside it, because everywhere you looked there was something that had reminded her that her mother was gone. Even the littlest thing like a sewing needle left on the fireboard or a page turned down in the Sears, Roebuck catalog. The same after her father died. But that night a month ago, as she'd listened to Jacob breathing, the cabin had felt fuller than it had in a long time. More alive too, a place where the living held sway more than those dead or gone.

Now everywhere was emptiness, the only thing left the child sleeping in her lap. She thought about Widow Jenkins and Joel, gone now as well. A part of her could almost wish Jacob too were gone, because it would all be so much easier. If it was just her left, she wouldn't even have to be afraid because all they could take from her was her life, and that seemed a piddling thing after all that had happened. Rachel thought about the bowie knife in the box trunk, how easy it would be to hide in her dress pocket, then wait until the last light in the camp went out and walk up to the Pemberton's house.