Woods Runner by Gary Paulsen

Then he jumped in, pulled the sail up—the canvas surprisingly clean and well tended—and stood to the tiller. There were no seats or benches except in the cabin, but a wooden bailing bucket was in the stern. As soon as the boat was moving in the soft breeze, Matthew pulled the bucket over and sat, put a chew of tobacco in the corner of his cheek, smiled through discolored teeth at Samuel and said, “Your ma and pa know you’re coming to get ’em?”
    Samuel looked sharply at Abner—he must have told Matthew the whole story. Abner smiled. “We have done a mite of business together. I told him what we were doing. You can trust him with your life, which”—he snorted—“is exactly what you’re doing.”
    Abner has a whole network, Samuel thought, to work against the British. People on farms, pigeons, and now the man with this boat. Abner was the most amazing man Samuel had ever met.
    “No,” Samuel said. “They probably think I’m dead, killed by the Indians.”
    Matthew nodded. “A fair surprise for them, then. It’s good to have surprises for your family.”
    And he tended to sailing the boat and didn’t say another word all the way across the river. It was just as well because with the lack of anything productive to think about—Samuel didn’t know where they were going, wasn’t sure what he would find, and didn’t know what he would do when he found or didn’t find his parents—his mind was taken up by the sailing.
    The boat must have been fairly heavy, yet it skimmed along over the water like a leaf. It wasn’t so terribly fast—maybe three or four miles an hour—but it seemed … graceful in some way. No, that wasn’t it. Free. The wind moved them along quietly and nobody worked to make it so—it just happened.
    The boat nudged into the bank.
    “Out,” Matthew said. “And up the bank. The road into town is on the left, sugar mill down to the right a quarter mile. I’ll come back every night at midnight and wait until three in the morning for four nights. If you’re not here by then I’ll figure the worst. What do you want done with the girl if you get scragged?”
    “Can you take her?” Abner paused. “Into your family?”
    Matthew hesitated. “Well,” he said, “Emily always wanted a daughter. So be it. But we’ll bet against it.”
    And he pushed the boat back out into the current and was gone.
    Abner said, “Let’s get to it.” And he moved up the bank with Samuel following.
    At the top Samuel stopped dead. There were peopleeverywhere, all along the road into the city and down the side road that led to the sugar mill, maybe hundreds of them, and it seemed that almost every man was wearing a red coat.
    Soldiers were wherever you looked, armed and walking next to the buildings, roughly forcing civilians to move out into the street.
    “Let’s start down toward the mill,” Abner said. “There might be somebody we can talk to, get a mite of information.”
    They hadn’t gone twenty yards when two soldiers, rifles fixed with bayonets, stopped them. “State your business,” one said.
    “I’m on the Crown’s business,” Abner answered. “From across the river. Looking to bring food to the prisoners. I was told they’re in the old sugar mill, is that so?”
    The soldiers laughed. “Aye,” said one. “There and in warehouses and churches. But don’t waste food on the rebels. You might as well feed it to hogs, for all the good it will do. They’re all marked for the box.”
    They went off laughing and Abner started walking again, heading for the sugar mill, Samuel following. What had the soldiers meant by “marked for the box”? He was so engrossed in his thoughts and in keeping up with Abner, who could walk surprisingly fast, that he almost ran full-on into his mother.
    His mother.
    Right in front of him.
    It was a thing that could not happen. Impossible. For the first moment, neither of them believed it.
    She was dumping out a bucket of slops in the gutter as he