Mrs. Sherman had always told Roland that eavesdropping would make him hear things he'd regret. She was right more often than not. He hadn't meant to at all, but when he walked into the clearing and saw Riley's hands on Finn's waist, he'd frozen, then backed up into the cover of the woods.
Surely interrupting a private moment was worse than waiting for it to resolve? Right?
As he debated the best course of action, Finn laughed at something Riley said. It was a beautiful laugh, and lit up her face. Roland's heart ached at the sound, and then shattered as Finn fell into Riley's embrace.
Roland turned away, unable to bear watching any more. He walked about and picked up a couple of nearby loose branches, hoping his noise in the brush would announce his presence, then lumbered into the clearing with his firewood load.
He tried to smile at Finn nonchalantly, but she was blushing so violently that he was further crushed.
"Should I go for more firewood?" He asked no one in particular. If they wanted him gone, he would leave again.
"No, that's plenty for the night, I would think," said Mayra, coming out from another area of the trees with a bundle of sticks and twigs for kindling. "Thank you both! I'll prepare the food for cooking if you two can get the fire going. Oh! Finn! How did you get down from the cart? I should have known you needed to..." She glanced at the men, "have a private moment. I'm sorry I didn't stay and help you down."
Finn was rarely more thankful for Mayra's talkative moments. "I'm fine now. I just want to take a little walk, or hobble, to stretch my legs. I'll call if I need help."
"Careful, it's a bit slippery in places!" Mayra said to Finn's retreating form. The reply she got back was hastily mumbled in an unmistakably sarcastic tone.
Mayra looked at the men, curious as to what had put Finn in a foul mood. Roland appeared to be brooding while Riley was barely containing a large grin as he whistled. Clearly, something was going on.
"Which one of you is going to tell me what happened?" Mayra had all too briefly considered tactful silence and subtle fact-finding, but the direct approach was more her style. Finn might kill her for it later.
Both men turned hastily-constructed innocent expressions on Mayra, but she was not fooled.
"Nothing out of the ordinary happened." Riley chose his words carefully both to try and mollify Mayra without too much detail, but also cement Roland's impression of anything he'd seen as being a regular occurrence. It was a clever tactic on both counts, and only one of the listeners knew better than to take his word for it.
"I don't believe you, but fine. Have it your way. Maybe I'll withhold your dinner while you think about whether to tell the truth." Mayra turned her back on him. She would follow through on her threat and he knew it.
"Finn tripped, that's all! You know how embarrassed she can get about these things."
"Is she ok?? Did she hurt herself?" Mayra turned back to Riley, concerned for her friend.
"She's fine. I caught her."
"Oh. I see." Her eyes narrowed and her tone held much more meaning than the words themselves. She eyed the duo warily. "Both of you need to behave yourselves and play fair."
"What??" The men exclaimed in unison.
"I haven't done a single thing--"
"What are you talking about--" Their voices overlapped until Mayra held up her hand.
"Riley, you look like a cat that stole the cream, which means you did something. Roland looks dejected, which means whatever your mischief was, it worked on him. So I'm telling you this before Finn gets back. Riley, stop it. Roland, you'll have to learn quickly not to believe everything this brother of mine might want you to. That's all I'll say on the matter, but make sure you take it to heart." Mayra nodded emphatically and turned back to her food preparations.
Clearly she'd inherited more from her mother than Riley had thought. Her tone of voice as she bossed him around had cowed him before he realized he was being talked down to by his little sister. Indignant, but not enough to confront her about it, he simply shrugged noncommittally at the end of her tirade.
Roland looked a bit thunderstruck. What in the world was going on? His confusion was intense, but somewhere in the speech he thought maybe he was supposed to find hope. Though he didn't understand why, he started to smile.
The camp sat in relative quiet around the fire until Finn returned to the smell of food. Mayra passed out portions to each of them. It was better than Roland had eaten in a long while, and he was grateful.
After food, it was decided that the ground under the cart had stayed dry enough for the men to sleep on (Roland was used to sleeping in the open by now, but a bit of shelter in case of more rain seemed wise), and the ladies would stay in the cart.
The women didn't even whisper to each other much tonight due to the proximity of the men and their potential for being overheard. And so, in the silence, everyone passed quickly into sleep.
_________
Riley flopped over, elbowing Roland in the face for the third time, and snored loudly. If Roland scooted his bedroll any further away, his head would be under the wheel of the cart. Thankfully, the first hints of dawn were creeping into the Eastern sky. Roland stretched, deciding just to get up instead of risking another jab to his face from his overactive companion. He squinted in the darkness. Maybe the man was awake already and doing it on purpose. After all, it had only started happening the last half hour or so, not all through the night. He wondered.
Rolling out from under the cart and pulling on his boots, Roland stretched his legs and walked to the horses. Alert after sensing his movements, both animals greeted him with soft whinnies. He stroked their noses gently.
"People are much harder to understand than you fine friends." Roland confided. "I have almost no idea what to think or do about all this. Obviously I should help them get to the city and to the doctor, but after that? I've no idea. These feelings are weird for me, and I've got a whole year of military service to put in with--just my luck-- the potential for the first war in over 200 years looming, if Riley's right. It's a disaster."
Buck snuffled at Roland's shirt, looking for a carrot or apple slice, as the man sometimes offered him. "Sorry, friend. I didn't bring anything over this morning. I'll make it up to you." Patting the horse again, he decided that while he was up and the sky was slowly becoming lighter, he should take the pair for some water. A stream wasn't too far and he would probably be back before the others awoke.
As he neared the water, he saw a form sitting on a fallen log.
"Hello?" He asked tentatively. Surely the sound of the horses' footsteps would have been enough to alert the person to his approach, but they appeared focused straight ahead.
"Oh!" Startled, Finn almost fell off the log.
Roland's face puckered in confusion and concern. "What are you doing out here? Alone, no less? How did you get down from the wagon? Did you hurt yourself?"
"Shhhh." Finn hushed him and pointed across to the other side of the stream, her voice now controlled into a whisper, she said "I'll tell you in a moment. Look."
A short distance away in a clearing, the moonlight and slowly growing dawn caught on the white spots of two fawns. The mother doe was frozen except for her ears, which scanned for danger after the noise of the horses walking and Finn's brief startled exclamation.
Roland dropped the horses' reins, knowing Buck would stay put and trusting the other horse would stay close as well, and eased slowly down onto the log beside Finn. Together they watched the trio of deer until the animals disappeared back into the thicket they must live in.
"Beautiful," breathed Finn. She hadn't seen deer in ages, and was struck by their majestic forms.
"Yes," Roland was quiet for a moment, holding back comment about Finn when Mayra appeared, bustling out of the trees.
"Sorry I took a moment, I found some edible mushrooms--" Mayra stopped when she observed the couple. "Which I need to take back to camp, so I'll come back for you in a while if that's ok." She didn't wait for an answer, but was gone as quickly as she'd appeared.
"This might be a presumptuous question," Roland began tentatively, and Finn braced herself for something truly embarrassing, "But, does Mayra dislike me? She seems to excuse herself often when I'm near and yesterday she lectured me."
This line of questioning was not at all what Finn had anticipated. "Lectured you?"
"Yes. I'm not sure I understood it at all. There was something about 'playing fair' and not falling for Riley's tricks? It was when you took your walk while Mayra made supper."
"Ah." Finn thought she understood a little better now, but tried to avoid speaking directly on the source of Mayra's odd behavior. "She doesn't dislike you. I think she likes you a fair amount."
"Then I definitely don't understand." Roland sighed defeatedly.
"May I ask you a presumptuous question in return?" Finn bit back the grin growing at the corners of her mouth.
"Of course." Roland assured, curious beyond measure.
"You haven't spent much time around young women, have you?"
"Pardon?" Roland wondered what the motivation behind the question was as it hit a kind of embarrassing nerve.
"As a breed we can be eccentric and even baffling to the outside observer. I feel you would be less confused if you'd had more interactions."
Roland flushed red, "Well, we've had many come in as patients, but, on a social level, my primary interactions with the female breed, as you put it, have been with Dr. Sherman's wife. She can be a stoic and stern but ultimately kindhearted woman. I've never been left feeling confused about what she thought of any topic."
Finn giggled in spite of herself, both amused at Roland's naivete about women despite being from a city full of people, and also in pleasure that he seemed to be implying he'd not had flirtatious interactions in the past.
"It's not funny! Manners can only take me so far. Your neighbor's simultaneously blunt and vague talking-to was an entirely unique experience."
"I'm sure it was at that!" Finn laughed harder. Despite her annoyance at what she can only assume was Mayra interfering once again, her amusement at Roland's bewilderment was too much to contain.
Roland's consternation faded in the presence of Finn's laughter until he joined in. For the first time since he'd left the city of his birth, he had a sense of feeling at home.