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Kat chanted under her breath. "Lions and tigers
and bears, oh my! Lions and tigers and bears, oh "
"Hello," a bass voice said politely.
Kat dropped her kindling. Her heart jamming her
throat, she swung around on the trail and faced an
incredible sight. Oh Lord, Nathan was right. There
were giants.
He didn't look Cherokee, but he could have been
birthed by some Cherokee mountain. He stood there
watching her, his neatly cropped black hair brush-
ing a tree limb easily seven feet from the ground. He
had shoulders a bodybuilder would die for, but oth-
erwise he was streamlined. Big as a freight train,
but streamlined, with a handsome, somewhat angu-
lar face.
Kat exhaled a little. No mythical giant would be
dressed in a blue T-shirt, khaki trousers, and hik-
ing boots. But she didn't like the fact that he had a
knife the size of a small sword lashed into a leather
scabbard on one side of his belt.
Kat backed away slowly, her hands balled into
fists.
The giant's eyebrows shot up. "Wait."
"I'm little, but I'm tough," she warned in a low,
fierce voice. "And I'll take a prize or two before you
squash me."
He stepped forward, holding up both huge hands
In a placating gesture. "I'm "
"Dead meat," she interjected, and whipped out the
Beretta that had been hidden in the front waistband
of her shorts, under her floppy T-shirt. Kat pointed
the gun at the center of his chest.
"Facedown on the ground. Spread-eagle. Say a
word and I'll turn you into cheddar cheese . . . Swiss
cheese."
Kat grimaced. She was so intimidating. She couldn't
even get her cheeses right.
The giant shrugged, sighed, and lowered himself
with surprising grace to the forest floor.
"Eat the ground," she ordered, feeling desperate
with fear. He sighed again and stuck his face into
dark humus that was damp from an afternoon rain.
"Yo, Kat!" Nathan called from somewhere In the
woods near camp. He sang coyly, "Here, kitty, here,
kitty!"
"Naaaathaan!" she screamed. Within seconds she
heard him crashing through the forest, taking a
shortcut to the trail.
He burst onto it, his hand wrapped around the
hilt of his bowie knife. "What?"
"I caught this guy on our land!" Our seemed ap-
propriate. It had just popped out.
Nathan ran up to her, halted in midstride, and
stared at the captive, who still had his face buried in
the forest floor.
Kat watched in consternation as Nathan dropped
the knife, clasped his stomach, and bent over laugh-
ing. "D-Drake L-Lancaster." He wheezed. "Caught by
my Katie."
Oh no. Drake Lancaster, Nathan's co-worker? She
stared at the huge man in horrified embarrassment.
He remained flat, but his back quivered with laugh-
ter, and he raised his head slowly. Bits of dirt and
decomposed leaves were plastered to his droll ex-
pression.
"She's perfect for you, Nathan."
Drake returned from his room in Gold Ridge early
the next morning, met them at the site of the Blue
Song home, and squinted at Kat in amusement when
she solemnly apologized one more time.
Then he stripped down to hiking shorts and boots,
grabbed a shovel, and attacked the house site like a
human bulldozer. Nathan wore only jogging shorts
and his hiking boots, and Kat felt positively overdressed
because she had to wear a bra and T-shirt with her
shorts.
But after Drake returned to the inn for the day. . .
She followed the two men, picking up the things
they unearthed, smiling when Nathan looked over
and made clucking noises at her.
She really did feel like a little hen searching for
goodies, and she found plenty to cluck about. By
noon she'd stacked twenty window sash weights in
a neat pyramid beside a smaller pile of nails, hinges,
and miscellaneous metal.
But her big find was four buttons and a handful
of musket balls.
"Nathan!" She went over to him excitedly and pre-
sented the items in her cupped palms. "Look! They
were all in the same spot!"
After carefully scratching dirt off one button with
a twig, Nathan's expression became pensive. He held
it so that a stripe of sunlight would illuminate the
features.
"It's got a U.S. Army insignia."
She frowned. "But what would that be doing near
the musket balls? Nathan, are you saying a soldier
was killed here? But there's no skeleton!"
Drake came over and examined the items. He was
a very quiet, private person, Kat had already no-
ticed, and he seemed to feel awkward around her,
though he certainly wasn't shy. She judged he was
just self-conscious in the manner of large, brutal-
looking men who were accustomed to being feared
whether they warranted it or not.
As he volunteered technical information about the
musket balls, Kat eyed him curiously. Nathan had
said that he coordinated on-site security for Tri-
State mines, and it was obvious he was a weapons
expert.
"So what you're saying," Nathan observed when
he'd finished describing the balls, "is that these prob-
ably hit hard objects stone or metal not people."
"Yes. If the buttons fit the time period when the
Cherokees were removed, then it's possible the army
was up here, and these could be musket shots they
fired inside the house."
Kat gave Nathan a troubled look. He heart felt like
a small, hard fist in her chest. "Damn," she said
softly.
He laid a hand against her cheek. "There could be
a lot of explanations."
"Yeah, I know. But that one jibes with history.
There was a lot of violence when the Cherokees were
rounded up."
"Well, could be that soldiers came into the house
after the family left," Drake offered. "And shot the
place up just for the hell of it. One of them could've
left a jacket behind. The jacket rotted but the but-
tons didn't."
"But I thought white settlers took over the de-
serted houses and cabins," Kat said. "Why would
they let this one sit here until it fell down?"
Nathan stroked her cheek. "Justis owned it, re-
member? Nobody'd try to move into the house if the
place was claimed by an important man like him."
"Great," Kat said bitterly. "So the only thing that
saved the place was the fact that he stole it from
great-great-grandmother's family. Real noble of him.
I wonder why he didn't move his white wife up here.
Hell, maybe he did."
"Aw, Katie, it wasn't like that."
Kat stared at him. Whenever he spoke in that
strange, certain way, calling her Katie, a feeling of
trust came over her.
His eyes locked on hers as if he were trying to
remember something and looking at her helped.
"Don't know," he said after a few seconds, wearily,
and the intensity faded from his eyes. "It just seems
to me that Justis was most likely a decent man.
Maybe I want to like him for your sake."
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