WHEN the three of them returned to Martha’s house, Mark immediately set to work on the ramshackle old shed, replacing a few rotten boards and fashioning a double-hung stable door. By evening he had achieved a passable result. It was rather small for a stable, but it would serve, especially since the horse could spend a lot of time out-of-doors. Martha’s house was at the edge of the town, and there was a grassy area behind the back yard where it could graze and take exercise.

Stephanie and Mark installed themselves in the spare bedroom and agreed to stay with Martha for a little while: it seemed cruel to be reunited with her and then immediately depart. And Martha, having been utterly won over by Mark, was eager for the wedding to take place as soon as maybe. But both Mark and Stephanie were uneasy.

“I still feel we ought to find out more about Michael and Rachel,” said Mark quietly to Stephanie, as they lay in bed a few days later. “Where they are; if they’re all right. We can’t just abandon them.”

“I know how you feel, Mark. Even if you’re mine in the first place,” and she gave him a passionate kiss, “you still belong to them. It was so good of you to help me find Mother: I love you for it. Of course I’ll help you find Michael and Rachel. But there’s another problem even more pressing. Surely you’ve considered it.”

“What is that, my love?”

“Don’t you see? Mother’s on some sort of restraining order. As an ex-convict, she can’t travel freely without a permit from the author­ities. You told me so yourself: that’s exactly what you were told at the prison. So wherever we go, we’d have to leave her. We can’t take her with us.

“And what about me? If word comes out that a young woman has come to stay at Mother’s house—whether married or not—people, neighbours perhaps, will get suspicious. Maybe the local Sheriff, or the Inspector, will come snooping around. If he or anyone else anyone finds out who I am (and who else could I be?) I’m done for. They only need to force me to reveal my feet. And that puts you in danger, too.”

“Well, I'll be damned! Yes I’ve been quite an idiot, Stephanie! Of course I should have thought of this,” said Mark, humbly. He lay back think­ing for a long while, then he continued, “But you too should have told me earlier.”

“Don’t blame yourself, Mark. And I’m not blaming myself either. It was just so overwhelming, finding Mother so quickly against all our expectations, I simply forgot everything else. But how risky is it, us staying here with Mother?”

“Well, seeing as this is now her home, she’ll have friends here. They’ll know she lives alone, and she’s probably told them she has no children; no relatives, probably. So if a strange couple suddenly turn up—one of us bearing a strong resemblance to her (yes, Stephanie, I can see the likeness between you), maybe people’ll start wonder­ing…”

Mark lay back and thought for a long time.

“I don’t see any alternative—than for us to press on to Rigo, and leave your mother behind,” he began, tentatively. “But I’d hate to do that, just as much as you would hate it. I can see how much she’s rallied since we arrived—since you and she were reunited. You can’t just tear yourselves apart again! Maybe we can come up with a different plan?”

“Just the formality of us getting married is a problem, too,” replied Stephanie. “I’m on forged papers, in your name—just as if we were already married. We can’t present ourselves at the church with those! And if Mother attends, they’ll wonder just whose wedding it is she’s attending…”

“We’ve really landed ourselves in it now, my dear! Let’s talk about it in the morning—and we must discuss things with Martha—your mother, too. As for now, my love…” and he wrapped his arms around Stephanie, who pressed herself against him and wound her legs around him…

In the morning, over breakfast, they put their dilemma to Martha. She was surprisingly calm about the whole matter: she’d evidently been thinking along the same lines herself.

“Oh, if only I still had Johnnie with me—Johnnie as he was before…” she cried, and fresh tears glistened on her face. After a moment she wiped her eyes and continued, “He was so clever at thinking up escape plans: all through Sophie’s life we had to be prepared to use one: prepared to bolt—forged papers and all—and he really thought we could get away with it, when Sophie was—when it happened.”

“What really did happen, when… when that happened?” asked Mark. “I’ve only heard the bare outlines from Steph—from Sophie here, and from David at the time it happened. If it’s not too upsetting for you, of course…”

“I don’t mind telling the story—not now I’ve got Sophie back. After all, Sophie doesn’t know all the details either. You both need to know. Well, the beginning you already know: someone saw Sophie’s footprint and denounced her to the Inspector. David ran to warn us, and we put our escape plan into action: Johnnie was sure it’d work. David wanted to come with us, but we knew at once that that would be a terrible mistake, there’s be hue and cry all over Labrador. So we asked him to stay the night in our house, to give us a head start. I’ve every reason to think he obeyed us: he was such a good lad!”

“Yes he did,” put in Mark. “Stop the night in your house, I mean. He told us.”

“Well, we had planned a small subterfuge. We didn’t even tell Sophie about it, in case she told David. Sorry, Sophie! Not that we expected David to betray us, of course, but we rather expected Strorm to force a confession out of him anyway. So we set off in a south-westerly direction, as if we were heading for the Fringes. Of course it was never our plan to go there! But as soon as we were out of sight of the cottage, we turned north-west, choosing a place to turn off where we’d not leave any tracks either way. A dried-up river bed. Johnnie had worked this all out, you see: we hoped in that way to shake off any pursuit for a while.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

“Our luck held for about a day, but it didn’t last. We’d managed nearly twenty miles, we thought we were safe, but as we were crossing a field a farm hand shouted to us that we were trespassing. And he had a gun. So we stopped. Then he told us that he was on patrol watching out for infiltrators from the Fringes: they’d had several it seems. So, since we were strangers, he asked to see our tags, including Sophie’s forged one.

“We hoped we’d still get away with it, but alas! the name ‘Wender’ had somehow reached that district, so we were done for. The rest you know.

“I’m still not sure how they got our name so quickly, back at Waknuk. Perhaps David blurted it out to his father?”

“David told us about the violent flogging he got from his father,” said Mark. “Not the first time it’d happened. Laid him up for two days. That man Joseph Strorm must’ve been a brute: glad I never met him.”

“So David might have blurted out our name?” continued Martha. “Yes it’s possible, but I don’t think that of him. I liked him too much, and trusted him better than that. I’m more inclined to think, they set a dog on David’s scent and tracked him back to our cottage. After that our name would soon have come out! And the Waknuk Inspector must have sent out messengers on horse in all directions … just bad luck, terrible bad luck…” Her eyes were full of tears once more.

They were all silent for quite a long time. Eventually Mark said, as gently as he could, “That’s very good of you, very brave of you, Mrs W—Martha, to tell us what happened. But it doesn’t get us any nearer finding a plan on how to deal with things now…”

“Mark, could you pretend to be a distant relative of Mother’s—and I could be your wife?” queried Stephanie.

“No good,” put in Martha. “They’ll have gone through mine, and John’s, family connections. Seeing if there are any other Mutants hidden away. They’ll have been very thorough. You couldn’t pass yourself off as any relative of mine, not without arousing suspicion.”

“OK, then, here’s my idea,” said Mark, resolutely. “We use the same cover story I put about in Kentak—and it seems to have worked. I’ve got an uncle, a rather infirm man, who used to be a friend of John’s—of your husband. They used to sometimes go out hunting together. You said that John was a hunter, didn’t you?”

“Yes, he was very keen on that. Yes, he could well have met up with friends whom I didn’t get to meet, whom I didn’t even know about. Common enough within the hunting fraternity. And friends who wouldn’t have surfaced in the Inspector’s enquiries—why should they?”

“So, this uncle,” continued Mark, “who until recently lived some distance away, came to stay with my parents after his wife died, and enquired after John. And he learned that you and he had been sent to prison. Naturally he’d want to follow this up, but since he was too unwell to pursue the matter, I volunteered to do it on his behalf. And here I am. Of course my uncle thinks John is still alive. And he himself may not last long.

“Of course, I don’t really have an uncle. This is all made up.

“The next question being: can you get a travel permit to go outside the limits you’re supposed to stick to? How far is the limit, in any case?”

“Ten miles,” said Martha. “I see what you’re getting at. Yes, I could probably get a permit from the Sheriff, call it ‘compassionate’ grounds. That I’ve got to visit your ‘uncle’ and break the news to him in person. So I’ll accompany you back to your parents’ house…”

“Yes, except that I propose making first for Kentak—and we’ll go by the mail coach. We’ve had enough, both of us, of trying to do the journey on horseback!”

“And what about me?” asked Stephanie. “Do I come with you?”

“Too risky,” said Mark. “The safest thing is for you and Martha to travel apart. My idea is that you also go to Kentak, also by coach, but by an earlier coach. When you get to Kentak, make for Adrian and Jack’s place and explain things to them. Martha, do you know how often the mail coach to Kentak leaves?”

“I’ve no idea, but I do know there’s a coach from here going all the way to Rigo, and that leaves once a week. That’s a long trip!—and quite expensive too. If there’s a Kentak coach, it will probably be about the same interval.”

“I’ll go and enquire today—straight away—and if there’s a coach leaving soon, I’ll book my place on it,” said Stephanie. “I suppose I can do that at the inn.” Martha nodded. Breakfast being finished, Stephanie gathered up her coat and set out, promising not to be long.

She was as good as her word. In less than an hour she was back at the house. But one glance at her face showed the others that it wasn’t going to be that simple.

“There’s no direct coach from here to Kentak, they told me. The road is too rough and narrow for a coach to get through. But we knew that already: we came that way.”

“I can well believe that,” said Mark. “And no way am I going to want us to follow that road again on horseback—not what with cougars about, plus creatures that can bite a horse’s leg off—”

“Can do what?” exclaimed Martha, horrified.

“Well, I said one of our horses had broken a leg, didn’t I? I didn’t tell the whole story. Truth is, it was attacked by some unknown animal during the night, something with immensely strong jaws, bit the poor horse’s leg and broke the bone. I’ve no idea what it could be—not even a cougar would do that.”

“Mutant dog, perhaps,” suggested Martha. “Sometimes a pet bitch gives birth to mutant pups, and the owner hides them till they’re weaned, then lets them go, rather than destroy them. We’ve had a few cases around here—and the Inspector gets furious when he hears about it. The dogs go feral and savage, and attack livestock. Even people. Farmers are constantly having to shoot them. Danger to everyone—”

“Can we get back to our journey plans?” interrupted Stephanie, pleadingly. “Well, the only way to get to Kentak is to board the stage-coach for Rigo, get off at a place called Ashapi and then get another coach back from there to Kentak. It’s a two day journey from here to Ashapi, then another day to Kentak. But the connections don’t work very well.

“The first Kentak coach leaves in two days’ time: I’ve booked a seat on it. Then I have to wait in Ashapi two days for the next coach to Kentak. I just hope I can find a room at the inn there.”

“You’re very brave, my dear, about wanting to go all that way on your own,” burst out Martha. “I’ll be worrying about you all the time.”

“Don’t worry, Mother. Remember, I’ve done the whole journey from Kentak to Rigo by stage-coach, when I was a little girl, and I got through that all right.”

“But now you’re a grown-up girl. Is it going to be safe—on your own?”

“I spent seven years in the F—; in that place I was sent to, Mother. I can look after myself. Mark, you’re all right about my doing this, aren’t you?” Mark nodded, a bit doubtfully. “Then that’s settled. I’m going.”