About This Book
Chapter 8 Rory skirted around the edges, listening and looking through the tangles of branches and thin whips of saplings. Then he wound Sugar through the cottonwood and beech trees still thick with leaves. He followed the sounds of the shouting and humorless laughter until he saw the color of their shirts moving in the spaces between the leafy boughs and gray/brown trunks. He could smell them, the men. Their scent was like those sheep Daniel and Angel had shown him at Fort Hall. Sugar's hooves cracked branches, but the men were too loud to notice, nor did they note when one of their horses, loosely tied to a tree, whinnied to the mare. Rory guided Sugar through the growth, closer. -Life threatening injuries, violent confrontations with soldiers, many dangers to Rory and any child of his and Angela's from white intrusions and diseases! Angela had dared to hope, even if it wasn't a conscious thought, that after the rough start of their lives together, she and Rory and their young son couldlive peacefully on the land they loved. They would simply live their lives. To be sure there would be life passages, births, weddings, even inevitable accidents. Neither Angela nor Rory are fearful people to say the least. But, in the eighteen fifties in the Oregon Territories and indeed throughout the continent the wars between the First Nations peoples and the whites were escalating. Angela and Rory must fight as a team against the odds.
