Rick slid a pack of cards from the side pocket of his backpack. "Shall we? A little Gin Rummy?"

"I think we got the easy end of this expedition," Carol replied.

It hadn't taken long to set up camp, and guarding it mainly meant they had to stick around in case anyone materialized and tried to steal their things.

"I'll take that as a yes." He began to deal hands on the flatbed of the truck.

Carol looked around the perimeter once before she scooped her cards up. "Are you going to T-Dog and Andrea's wedding at the Hilltop in December?"

"Of course. I just have to get my constable schedule worked out with the Council." He chuckled and shook his head. "Can you believe that came full circle?"

"Well, it's been years since Patricia and Milton died. And history…it goes a long way in this world."

"Well, that and the baby," Rick said.

Andrea had given birth to a girl about six months ago. They'd named her Morgan, after Duane's father. They'd both looked after Duane over the years, but he was a fairly independent twenty-year-old now, an assistant deputy of the Hilltop Guard.

Carol had just finished arranging her cards when she sensed movement in the distance by the edge of the forest that lined the foothills. She dropped the cards and seized her rifle. "Binoculars."

Rick put aside his hand with less urgency, raised the binoculars around his neck, and looked into the distance. "Two horses, three riders, one's very little…I think it's Dixon and the kids."

Carol's heart dropped into her stomach. "Daryl's not with them?"

"No."

Carol ducked under the barbwire lining the perimeter of the camp and jogged toward the horses that were galloping toward them. Dixon had Murphy between his legs, while Patty was doing her level best to control Daryl's horse Thunder.

Dixon reared his mare to a stop before Carol and dismounted while Patty caught up.

"Daryl!" Carol cried.

"Daryl's fine."

The tension in Carol's frame unwound like a ball of yarn rolling down a hill.

Dixon looked back at Patty, who had slowed Thunder to a walk. When she reached them, Dixon took the reins and helped his daughter down. Then he helped Murphy dismount.

"Why are you back already?" Carol asked anxiously.

Rick came to a strolling stop beside her and put a hand on the butt of his revolver.

"Daryl doesn't want you to get your hopes up," Dixon said. "But we found Beth's horse."

"Beth's horse is right there." Rick nodded to the mare Dixon had just rode in on.

"I mean her old stallion. Magnus."

"Magnus?" Carol and Rick breathed together.

"Don't get your hopes up," Dixon repeated. "There could be any number of reasons for it. It could have been found by any random person at any time. Daryl doesn't want you to get your hopes up."

That was like telling the sun not to rise. "Take me to him!" Carol demanded. "Take me to him now!"

"Someone needs to stay and guard the camp. You and Rick go. Take Thunder. Leave my horse. I'll watch the kids. You saw where he disappeared into the woods earlier?"

Carol nodded.

"Go in there, swing a left, follow the sound of rushing water, and you'll find him."

Carol was already climbing up on Thunder when Murphy whined, "I wanna go! I wanna go tracking with Pa! I don't want to stay in some dumbass camp!"

"Language!" Carol instinctively scolded him.

"Pa says dumbass all the time."

"Well we've discussed many times that just because your daddy says something doesn't mean you get to." Sophia had called Daryl Daddy. With Murphy, for some reason, it's always been Pa. Carol thinks maybe Daryl read him Huck Finn one too many times when he was very little. "You stay here, and you mind your Uncle Dixon."

"He's my cousin, not my uncle."

"You mind him."

"Yes, ma'am," Murphy said contritely. He knew better than to push his luck when Carol used that tone.

Rick climbed up behind Carol, who immediately kicked the horse, and soon they were thundering across the field.

Daryl was walking along the shore of the rushing creek when they found him, holding Beth's stallion by the reins and examining the hoof prints.

"Don't get your hopes up," Daryl told her when she made her cautious way down the bank to him.

"Too late."

Rick dismounted from behind her. "Did you check the saddle bags on Magnus?" He began rooting through them without waiting for an answer.

"Arrowheads," Daryl said. "Some deer jerky and hazelnuts. And a little leather notebook."

Rick ripped that notebook out and began paging through it.

"Ain't Soph's handwritin'," Daryl said.

"It's not Carl's either," Rick replied as he turned another page, "unless his got a lot neater over the years. Looks like surveyor notes, for mapping territory, digging irrigation…and invention sketches, too, for designing a windmill, a watermill…."

"Yeah." Daryl swung his crossbow off his shoulder. "Which means they probably got a camp, and not a small one."

"Or they're in the process of trying to build one," Rick replied.

"You lead the horse." Daryl walked ahead of Rick with his eyes on the ground. Carol dismounted her horse, unclipped the strap at the top of the sheath that housed her throwing knife, and took the safety off her rifle before taking the horse's reins and falling in step beside her husband.

They followed the hoofprints along the shore, and as the creek wound, the banks grew taller. When they heard the sound of walkers hissing and chomping around a bend, maybe they shouldn't have rushed toward it, but that's what they did. What if Sophia or Carl was in danger?

Someone was in danger, all right. A man sat on the shore, unable to stand up, his bloody pants leg ripped open. What might be the shaft of a snapped arrow stuck straight up through the flesh of his thigh. A bow lay beside him, and five walkers lay on the opposite shore of the creek with arrows in their heads. A sixth floated dead in the water. A seventh had gotten too close to shoot, and he'd stabbed it with an arrow and pushed it off himself. The eighth he'd apparently sunk a knife into, but it had stumbled back before dying, and he couldn't reach his knife. He was now straining to wrap his fingers around a rock as four walkers lurched toward him, one already across the creek and bending to sink its teeth into his shoulder.

Daryl smoothly swung his crossbow up and pulled the trigger. A bolt thunked into the head of a walker and sent it tumbling down in the man's lap. Carol sent her throwing knife flying into the head of another walker that had just put its foot on shore. She swung her rifle off her shoulder, but Rick had already shot the last two walkers by the time she was squinting through the scope.

The injured man took in several panting breaths, rolled the dead walker off his lap with disgust, and then collapsed onto his back on the shore, eyes closed.

Carol inched forward to look him over. He seemed young, mid-twenties maybe. Deer-skin moccasin boots adorned his feet, but his shredded, dark green canvas pants were probably L.L. Bean. A hand-woven headband surrounded his crown, and two black feathers hung down from it, but he wore a brown leather jacket that had clearly been plucked from the department store racks of the Old World. His dark brown hair was cut short at the top but fell in two long, thick braids across his chest and all the way to his hips. He was well tanned from the sun, and perhaps Italian complexioned to begin with, but he was no Native American. "Get the medical kit from my saddle bags," she told Rick, who walked back to Carol and Daryl's horse.

"Hey, Kemosabe," Daryl said. "You alive?"

The man's eyelids fluttered open to reveal a pair of dark brown eyes. He took in Carol's face hovering over him first, and then turned his eyes slowly, weakly, to Daryl. He swallowed, and then in a hoarse voice asked, "Mr. Dixon, sir?"

Daryl's mouth dropped open, and Carol wondered why she hadn't put it together before – the bushy eyebrows, the somewhat large nose, and that little mole just above his lip. "Patrick?"

"Patrick?" Rick rushed forward with the medical kit in his hand and looked the man over. "Is Carl alive?"

"Sophia?" Daryl demanded.

Patrick's eyes fluttered closed again, then open. They rolled back slightly in his head, and he wheezed. Then he passed out. Carol seized the medical kit from Rick and got down on the ground beside him. She felt first for a pulse, and assured he was still alive, went to work yanking out the arrow.

"What do you think happened?" Rick asked Daryl.

"Think the horse took off running when it saw some walkers," Daryl replied. "Patrick didn't have a good grip on the reins, got thrown, landed on his own damn arrow somehow. He shot the walkers, but he couldn't move with that thing in his leg. And 'ventually, more of 'em stumbled out the woods."

"Good thing we showed up when we did."

"Alcohol," Carol ordered, and Rick got down and handed it to her. Patrick hissed conscious again as she poured the alcohol on his wound. "Tourniquet."

Carol had just finished putting the tourniquet on when Daryl swiveled suddenly toward the opposite shore and raised his crossbow. He'd heard something she hadn't, maybe something as subtle as the snap of a twig. But the sounds that followed where far less subtle—there arose a series of whoo-whoo-whoo whistle-like calls echoing from the trees, and then eight men abruptly materialized. They all wore deer-skin moccasin boots, Old World pants and jackets, and braided headbands from which dangled one or more feathers. The eldest man, who wielded a tomahawk, had six feathers brushing against his wrinkled brown cheek. Long, gray-black hair fell from his head, and crow's feet crinkled at the edges of his near-black eyes. Five of the other men held drawn-back, loaded bows while two others wielded spears.

"We're peaceful," Carol said, standing from her crouched position while holding her hands up. "We found your friend here, and we just rescued him from walkers. We're just trying to help him. Maybe we can all put our weapons down?" She nodded to Daryl. Surrender was their only chance to find Sophia if she was still alive, and they were outnumbered anyway.

Reluctantly, Daryl lowered his bow. Rick hadn't had a chance to seize his rifle, and so left it on his shoulder. The men surrounding them made no move to lower their weapons. The eldest man tilted his head and peered at her curiously.

"We know Patrick," Carol said. "From before he was with you."

Some of the men blinked, but the elder's face betrayed no recognition. They youngest man in the group, no more than seventeen, Carol guessed, leaned into his bow with his lip drawn into a snarl. "Who's Patrick?"

The elder reached out his hand and pressed it palm down. The young man, with fiery eyes and much reticence, lowered his bow. The others lowered their weapons as well, and the elder returned his tomahawk to his belt. "We should kill them, Wohali," the young man told his elder. "They injured Concotocko."

"They didn't injure him," Wohali replied. "The signs say he was thrown. He landed on his own arrow, the turkey. And can't you see they were treating his wound? Nevertheless, we cannot trust them." He nodded to three of his men. "Strip them of all their weapons and bind them." He turned to another pair of men. "You two, lay Concotocko on his horse."

"What was he doing alone out here?" the young man asked.

"I sent him to survey the creek for future irrigation," Wohali told him. "Bring me their horse."

The young man obeyed, taking Daryl and Carol's horse Thunder by the reins and bringing the animal to Wohali, who clucked his tongue at it, stroked its nose, and then mounted it.

Carol was patted down roughly. Her three knives were removed - they didn't miss the one on her ankle - and her handgun and rifle. Her hands were yanked behind her back and tied with rope. She looked straight at Wohali while being bound. "Sophia?" she asked. "Carl?"

Again she saw some of the men blink in recognition, but the elder remained stone faced and did not reply. To the man who was binding her, she turned back and asked in a whisper, "Do you know Sophia?"

"Look forward," he replied, and cinched the rope tightly.

"Are they with you?" Rick demanded, stepping forward as his hands, too, were tied. Next to him, Daryl was likewise being bound. "I'm Carl's father. Rick. This is Daryl and Carol. They're Sophia's parents."

"No more questions," Wohali replied.

Two men lay Patrick over Magnus, on his stomach, with his injured leg against the horse's side. One checked his pulse and seemed satisfied.

Another man examined Carol's AR-15 with awe. He turned, raised it, aimed, and shot a tree. He recoiled in surprise when the rifle actually fired. "It works!"

"Well don't try the other guns!" Wohali scolded him. "You'll draw the wendigo. Bring it to me."

The man brought Wohali the rifle, who put it on his shoulder. Another man shouldered Rick's rifle, while a third examined Daryl's crossbow before putting it on his own back. A fourth man brought the handguns and knives over to Wohali and slid them into the saddle bags. "Those handguns are all loaded."

"That explains the gunshots we heard earlier. But they didn't come from this part of the forest. Perhaps from their camp. Or from their hunters?" Wohali leaned on the horn of the saddle and locked eyes with Rick. "You have a means to manufacture ammunition, which means you have a large camp. Where is it? How many?"

"Not many," Rick lied. "A little over a dozen total. We just came here to hunt, and we came across Patrick."

"You lie, but when we have taken you to Deyani, we will know the truth. Walk them." Wohali turned Thunder and began to drive the horse through the woods. The teenager followed him, holding Magnus by the reins while another man walked alongside the horse supporting Patrick with one hand on his back. The archers, tomahawks now in hand and bows on their backs, urged their captives on.