The Pursuit Read Online Free Page A

child.
    He decided to find out for himself. In truth, he just needed an excuse to get out of there before his mother showed up again. He’d had no intention of crossing paths with the savages again, ever. Although he was much better prepared for them now than he’d been at ten, he was mature enough not to desire that kind of confrontation. It was simply an excuse to ride off for a few hours. He wouldn’t really ride north.
    He found himself headed north anyway.

Four
    L INCOLN could blame his curiosity. He’d heard of the legend called Ian MacFearson—who hadn’t? But he’d never seen the man himself. He’d seen the man’s home before; he just didn’t remember it being quite so gloomy-looking. Of course, a child saw things through different eyes, he supposed. What an adult would find dismal, a child might find scary and, thus, exciting.
    The place sat on a rocky promontory with barren trees before it and the cold sea at its back. The trees must have thrived once, before the soil had eroded away, their roots now embedded in the rock serving as testimony that the area wasn’t always so dismal of growth.
    Spring was nearly over, but nothing had bloomed around Ian MacFearson’s home—nor ever would, unless fresh soil was transported in. Why anyone would want to live in such barren surroundings was beyond Lincoln, yet the areahad grown, with other buildings nearby—none so large as this old manor, but houses that hadn’t been there when Lincoln had last come this way. There had been other houses, though. MacFearson had relatives other than his overlarge brood of sons.
    There was no activity about the place, but then, as Lincoln recalled, there usually wasn’t. If you didn’t catch the brood coming or going, you might think the place was abandoned. That is, if you came by in other than the cold months, when chimney smoke would give sign of occupation. There was no sign of that now.
    Lincoln had never been inside, had never been invited. No one ever was, as far as he knew. Yet he’d knocked on the door many a time to draw out his friends to chum about with him. They didn’t talk about their father. Only people who didn’t know them did.
    Memories of those happier times were jarring. Common sense prevailed, however, and Lincoln left before anyone noticed him in the area. Those memories still persisted though, of things he hadn’t thought about in years. Distracted, he wandered off the southern path home in an east-erly direction, to a place he’d gone many times as a child.
    The pond was still there, a crumbled ruin of a barn in the distance the only evidence that anyone had ever lived near it. It wasn’t even a pond, just a deep hole that collected rainwater, and there was usually plenty enough of that to keep itfilled. A few moss-covered bricks along one edge suggested that the hole might have been someone’s cellar a century or two ago.
    Another memory stirred as he approached the pond. It had been one of the hotter days of a brief summer when he was a lad of eight. Most days here weren’t warm enough for anyone to need cooling off, but that day was, and Lincoln had remembered the little pool he’d come across in his wanderings and had gone there for a cool dunking. He hadn’t known how to swim yet, but only one side of the pond was deep enough to require swimming, and he stayed well clear of it.
    He hadn’t been the only one to have discovered the pond, though, for several of the MacFearson brothers showed up that day, with the same intent of cooling off. Starved for the companionship of someone near his own age, Lincoln had been delighted by their arrival and offered them his friendship. Three of them were leery of getting better acquainted with him, but the fourth boy, Dougall, who was also eight, took to Lincoln immediately, and they soon became fast friends.
    He eventually met the rest of the brothers. Like those who had been with Dougall at the pond, the others weren’t as open as he was and were