The Beginning of Wisdom

The packs were stowed on sectioned saplings, keeping them about an inch off the moist ground. The mules were picketed close to the campfire, a precaution against painters and bears. Wallace stood guard away from the campfire, concealed against an old hickory, his cheap English musket loaded. Voices drifting down the road leading from Augusta Landing, stilled his breath.

“Torquay, you and Sidmouth made the right choice agreeing to work for me,” Ernest Coats was heard to say. “It would be a sin to waste your lives as orphans at the Landing.”

Doubt cast a shadow across Wallace’s new-found security.