Rusty Quill presents

The girl was not meant to be in the woods alone at night. She wasn't supposed to be in the woods at all.

Maggie Bentley's granny Joan had told her time and time again what happened to little little ones who wanted off into them woods behind the house.

You could get it up by error or catamount or just get lost and starved to death or all kinds of things.

But she'd been playing down in the bottom with the Mullins twins and she'd lost all track of time.

Next thing she knew, Kizzie and Iris Mom was hollering and the sun was going down and if Maggie was late for supper, Granny was liable to whoop her backside.

The path through the woods might have been dangerous according to her granny.

But it was also the fastest.

The cleared patch on top of the ridge where Maggie's daddy had built their stout log cabin when she was little more than twinkle in her momma's eye was somewhat isolated.

And the path down the road and round the mountain would take a good couple miles longer to walk.

Mama used to take in someone for some of the other ladies around the gap.

Those with too many kids and not enough time to see to their own men. And Maggie would walk down with her to pick up or deliver whatever mama had been working on.

Mama had always taken the path to snake down through the woods.

That had been before, of course.

Before Maggie's daddy got conscripted and died in his first winter in the army and mama took sick and Granny Jo and packed up her two cats and came to Esau County to look after him.

Since daddy died, mama didn't get out of bed most days. She took her medicine but it didn't seem to help much.

Maggie asked about it, Granny laughed and said, loud and no cure for a broken heart. She best not catch Maggie taking that snake old.

She never said that within mama's hearing.

She would only ask gently each morning if mama would like some breakfast with her coffee and whether she was feeling up to helping with the cannon today.

Oh, Granny Jo and loved cannon. She's right good at it too. Well, if it hadn't been for Granny, Maggie and her mama might have starved that first winter.

She'd come to Esau County, a little cart pulled by an old mule loaded up with the fruits of her labors.

Cantators and turnips and corn and carrots and all manner of jams and jellies. Found their covered all but bare and their hearth all but cold.

...