Love on the Range

by Mary Connealy

  Win closed her bright blue eyes and drew in a long, slow breath, as if gathering herself. Kevin pulled her closer.

  Win’s hand went to where his rested on her shoulder. She said to him, though not so quietly the whole table couldn’t hear, “I need to tell her.”

  Kevin slowly, reluctantly, nodded.

  “I-I sh-share your suspicions, Mrs. Hobart.”

  “Please, it’s Rachel. No missus. I told your father I was a widow when I took the job.”

  Nodding, Win said, “I don’t remember anything that will help you. I was told Ma died birthing a child. I remember no one had said that there was a baby on the way to me. It was a complete shock. The news of a child lost. The news of my ma dying. I got sent over here. Katherine, Wyatt and Cheyenne’s mother, had come over and offered to take care of me.”

  “What about your father? He does no work that I could see. It’s not like he was out laboring on the range every day.”

  Win shook her head, such a tiny motion . . . Wyatt could barely tell she heard and reacted.

  “I guess he felt he wasn’t up to caring for a child.”

  No one mentioned that she wasn’t an infant. She didn’t need care so much as love. Wyatt was glad she’d come over here where she had a chance to find it.

  “I stayed here for a few years until I was old enough for boarding school.”

  “In St. Louis, not Chicago. That struck me as strange,” Hobart said between bites of stuffing. “Why not send you back to the town where you were born, where your parents were from? Hawkins could have much more easily contacted someone there to ask about schools.”

  “I have few memories of my grandparents, but I met an elderly lady in St. Louis who’d known them. I found out they were wealthy, influential people in Chicago. They were completely against my parents’ marriage. My ma, my grandparents’ only child, had been a bright, socially active woman who loved people and dancing and pretty gowns. After she married, she all but vanished from society. She had a child, and people didn’t think it was so strange that she’d stay at home for that. But then there were rumors that she’d become frail. Melancholy. After my grandparents died, my parents moved out here. This woman in St. Louis was a good friend of my grandmother. She still carried all the worries Grandmother had shared with her around like weights.”

  “I should have looked into the circumstances of their deaths,” Hobart muttered to herself.

  Win gasped. She swallowed hard and went on. “My pa wanted to be a land baron.”

  Wyatt made a particularly rude noise before he could stop himself.

  No one looked away from Win. “Then Ma died. Since I talked with that woman in St. Louis, I’ve begun to remember things. Ma crying. Loud shouting. Bruises. It’s all dim and muddled by the years and my youth.”

  Win’s eyes came up and locked on Hobart. “I can hardly bear to be around Pa now. I’ve wondered if I’m being fair to him. But there’s something there, something in his eyes. Maybe I’m imagining it, but he—he scares me.”

  Hobart’s jaw tightened. “I know that look. I’ve seen it directed at me. Amelia knows that look, too.”

  Molly asked, “C-can a person still be arrested or hanged for something that happened so long ago?”

  Hobart studied Molly’s face for so long Wyatt wanted to grab Molly and drag her away from the woman.

  Finally, Hobart said, “Have you heard the term statute of limitations?”

  Wyatt looked around the table.

  “Statute means law, I think,” Win said.

  “Yes, there are laws that limit how long a person can be arrested for crimes,” Hobart explained. “Different crimes have different lengths of time, and most states and territories have their own limits. If you rob a bank and they don’t catch you for seven years, you got away with it. If someone realizes you did it up until that time—if that’s the statute of limitations in your area—they can still arrest you.”

  “S-so what number of years is it for killing someone?” Molly had taken food onto her plate, but Wyatt noticed she hadn’t touched it.

  Hobart looked at Molly, then Win, then back to Molly. She said quietly, “There is no statute of limitations on murder.”

  Molly asked no further questions. And she didn’t eat a bite.

  “I thought I was going to be sick.” Win rested her head on Kevin’s shoulder. She shook, deep inside, her soul trembling. To have said out loud the deepest secret of her life. “I still don’t feel steady. B-but it was right to talk to her, wasn’t it?”

  She and Kevin had returned to the ramrod’s house where they’d taken up residence. Now they lay together, Kevin holding her close. A very present help in times of trouble. There was a psalm that spoke of God being a present help in times of trouble. Win thought it described her husband right now, too.

  She prayed to God and clung to her husband and trembled.

  “I think . . .” Kevin was silent for far too long. “I think one of the reasons you’ve never spoken of it is because you saw no way to prove what you suspected. It would just be a young woman who’d listened to gossip back in St. Louis. Your pa is a wealthy man. It would put you in a terrible position to have spoken of your worries under those circumstances. But now, with Hobart here investigating, it was right and good that you spoke up.”

  Win snuggled closer. Kevin had such strength, and she leaned into every bit of it.

  She whispered, “Did you see how Molly reacted when Hobart talked about there not being a statute of limitations on murder?”

  “I saw.” Kevin spoke as if his jaw was clenched tight. “Molly and I have never spoken of how our parents died. But I could see her fear. I came in and found them dead and Molly bleeding. I hid the bodies, and we never spoke of them again. Ma was a near recluse due to Pa’s hard fists and her shame over the bruises. Pa was a man who lived recklessly, running straight into trouble all the time. They were never missed.”

  “It would be good for her to talk about it.”

  “After all these years? We’ve managed not to talk about it for so long, to break through that would be so hard for her . . . for both of us. I remember when I first told you how terrible it was to say it all out loud.”

  “It would be hard. I can feel myself shaking as if I’ve exposed something terrible to the whole world. As if I’ve taken a huge risk. As if fear has me in its grip. But I think maybe airing it out to the world has helped.”

  “And you think Molly should take that risk, too?”

  “I think if she doesn’t, she’s never going to know true freedom. Whatever she witnessed when your parents died, and whatever her part was in it, keeps her chained to the past. She’s a solemn young woman who isn’t happy here and maybe can’t really be happy anywhere until she breaks those chains.”

  “And if she does speak of it, she could hang for murder. That’s one brutally heavy chain.”

  Eleven

  The school is closed?” Molly had to force her gaping jaw shut.

  “Shhh . . .” Mrs. Brownley took Molly’s arm and led her farther from the gathered congregation outside the little log church.

  The services were over. The congregation wasn’t staying long outside due to the chilly weather.

  Molly had packed all her belongings. She intended to stay in town while her family went home without her.

  Mrs. Brownley was near the small cemetery behind the church when she glanced around Molly to make sure no one was near enough to overhear. “We are a small town. Not many children in the school. We hoped for twelve, though one family with two children is out of town a fair distance and don’t come in during the winter.”

  Molly looked at the gentle snow swirling down around the tombstones. It was like her dream of independence was blowing away with the dispersing church members. It was October, and winter was as good as here. It would be her first winter in Wyoming, and the rumors of blizzards and bitter cold were frightening.

  “If two of the twelve are out, or soon to be, what abo
ut the other ten?”

  “There are four families here in town.” Mrs. Brownley’s voice dropped again, though there was no one near. “Someone started talk of your—your, um . . . character, I’m afraid.”

  She looked into Molly’s eyes. Only kindness there.

  “My character?” A chill that had nothing to do with the icy breeze slithered down Molly’s spine. She thought of how her parents had died and knew if that was being bandied about, then the talk was fair. But no one knew that. No one except Kevin, and Win knew some of it. Well, in truth, Kevin only knew some of it.

  “I’m not sure where the talk started, but of course everyone knows of the odd business with the RHR and Clovis Hunt’s will. There’s talk of you having an improper, um . . . well, uh, connection to that business.”

  The reason she got fired in Wheatfield, Kansas. Or close enough. Clovis Hunt was here to ruin her life once again.

  “But it was my ma and Clovis’s marriage that wasn’t proper. What’s more, my ma had no idea of such. She trusted Clovis. When she heard he’d died, Ma remarried. But the fact that he was already married when he wed her meant her first marriage wasn’t legal and her second one was. My birth is perfectly proper.”

  Mrs. Brownley had her hands clutched together, pressed to her chest, as if she were begging Molly not to be upset. Or maybe it was an attitude of prayer.

  “Two of the larger families said they won’t be a part of the school when a scandal follows the teacher across hundreds of miles.”

  She should have been able to leave it behind, Molly thought grimly. And maybe she would have if they hadn’t come straight to Clovis Hunt’s hometown, where all this nonsense about his abandoned wives had first come to light.

  “That takes the school down to only four students. And that includes the two who come in from out of town. Besides, those unhappy families aren’t agreeable to just keeping their children home, they are clamoring for a different teacher. The school is closed until a new teacher is hired.”

  Molly looked into Mrs. Brownley’s eyes. The woman was a bit shorter than her, thin enough Molly worried about the Brownleys losing the income from boarding the teacher. Molly wanted to defend herself. She wanted to find those families and firmly explain her birth was all proper. She wanted to scream that it wasn’t fair that she was tarred with a brush she’d had nothing to do with.

  One look in Mrs. Brownley’s kind eyes told her it would be a waste of time.

  Molly’s shoulders slumped. “I should move on, head down the trail. Leave the terrible injustice of Clovis Hunt and the RHR behind. If I go without my family, and maybe change my name, no one would look down on me.”

  Mrs. Brownley’s hand settled firmly on Molly’s shoulder. “You can’t do that. A woman alone can’t strike out in the world. It’s not safe.”

  Molly thought of Amelia Bishop. A happy, courageous young woman looking for adventure. Mistreated by Oliver Hawkins. Married to a man who ended up being an outlaw and was now dead. Returning, a more fragile woman, to the safety of her father’s home.

  And no one would describe Molly as a courageous, adventure-seeking woman. Mrs. Brownley was right that to leave on her own wasn’t safe.

  Kevin and Win came up to Molly. Win said, “We’re ready to unload your things.”

  “What’s wrong?” Kevin knew her so well.

  “The job is no longer available.” Molly didn’t want to go into it. Not here at least, not when she wanted to scream and rant and weep. “I will be coming back to the RHR after all.”

  Wyatt came to her side. “We want you back at the ranch, but what happened to the job?”

  She thought of Clovis and the wreckage he’d left behind.

  She thought of Amelia Bishop and what Rachel had said about how frightened she’d been.

  She thought of the other vanished housekeepers and Win’s dead ma. And Molly’s dead ma.

  A fury gripped her hard. She kept it in check, but she didn’t try to make it go away. Instead, she nurtured it, hugged it close, and thought of a way she could show a little courage.

  “I left a few things at the parson’s house. Let’s get them and go home.”

  Rachel had slipped into the house that first day and never went outside again.

  Never stood in front of a window. Never lit a lantern when she was alone in a room.

  Not even the cowhands knew she was there. Including Andy.

  Now she helped set food on the table. Molly had to admit the meal looked good. “Rachel, you worked for several months at Hawkins’s as a housekeeper, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, I was there over four months.”

  “I’ve been thinking, if a Pinkerton agent like you can masquerade as a housekeeper, then maybe a housekeeper like me could masquerade as a Pinkerton agent.”

  No one else was in the kitchen. They’d gone in different directions to get out of their Sunday best. Molly had rushed to change her dress so she could speak to Rachel in private.

  Her hands full, carrying a plate piled high with freshly sliced bread, Rachel cast her a shrewd look. “What happened to teaching school?”

  Molly explained in the quickest amount of time possible.

  “I could get a job as Oliver Hawkins’s housekeeper and go in there and snoop around. You were searching for evidence of Amelia Bishop, but now that we know of other missing housekeepers and what happened to his wife, well, a housekeeper is in every room of the house. She dusts shelves, tidies up desk drawers.” Molly found the first smile since she’d been fired. She suspected it wasn’t a nice smile.

  “You don’t know how to be a Pinkerton agent, Molly.”

  Molly came to Rachel’s side and clutched her arm. “You could teach me. And I could come to town for supplies or weekly to church and report on anything I’d found. And I could see how Oliver treats me. And between us we could figure out—”

  Rachel held up a hand, palm flat, almost in Molly’s face.

  “Don’t tell me no,” Molly said desperately. “I need a job. And I need to help.”

  “Why do you need a job? You’ve got a good life right here.”

  “What Oliver did to his wife . . . it makes me sick. I—that is, my ma, well, she suffered at the hands of my pa. I won’t stand by and do nothing while a man gets away with that.”

  Rachel stared at Molly for a long time. Finally, she muttered, “Statute of limitations.” Then she went back to getting the meal ready.

  “I think we can work together, you and me,” Rachel said. “I think you have the skills you need to be an agent and a housekeeper, and maybe we can stop this man from killing again.”

  Molly touched Rachel’s arm. Their eyes met. Molly felt hers brim with tears, but she staved them off. “Thank you.”

  “I didn’t become a Pinkerton because it interested me. I’ve seen men who needed to be brought to justice in my life, too.” Rachel nodded. “There’s a lot to it. And it will be a job. You’ll earn money from the Pinkerton Agency for this.”

  Molly hadn’t expected that. “Hawkins will be paying me, won’t he?”

  “Yes, but when you work for me, you get paid by me. We need to talk long and hard. I can tell you Hawkins has a safe I was never able to crack, and I believe he has another hidden, but I was never able to find it. But I did find—”

  Wyatt came down from changing. His eyes flicked back and forth between the two women. “Now what’s happened?”

  Molly looked at the Pinkerton agent, who nodded.

  Molly threw her hands wide and said, “I’ve got another job.”

  “If you really believe he’s a murderer, you can’t send her in there.”

  Molly slapped the table, which drew Wyatt’s eyes from Hobart. “Stop talking to her. She’s not sending me anywhere. I’m going. She’s going to teach me how to handle things so I can get the evidence we need against Hawkins.”

  Wyatt’s jaw got so tight he was afraid his teeth might crack. “It’s not safe.”

  “I want to do it.”
Molly, usually quiet, occasionally snippy, but never loud, yelled, “It makes me sick to see a man get away with hurting a woman. Somebody needs to stop him, and there’s no one else to do it.”

  “He won’t believe you’d work as a housekeeper. He’ll be suspicious.”

  “I was going to teach school and that fell through. Why would he not believe I’d take a different job?”

  Wyatt wasn’t going to be able to stop her. He saw a determination in her eyes that was tinged with . . . perhaps a hint of desperation. But the thought of her over there. Defenseless, living with a possible murderer. What’s more, winter was coming on.

  “The weather is going to turn bad. You won’t be able to leave. I won’t be able to come if you need help. You’re going to get snowed in over there, as everyone does eventually in the Wyoming hills.”

  “Rachel has already searched as much of the house as she could. She thought of a few more places she should have checked, looking for some proof of what he’s done. I’ll look there, and I’ll find what I need and be out of that house within a matter of days, before winter slams down. And the safe—”

  Fists on the tabletop, Wyatt thought frantically. He needed to stop her. He couldn’t stop her. So he’d . . . he’d . . .

  “Most of Hawkins’s hired men were in on the plot against him,” Wyatt said. “Nearly all the honest hands had moved on, leaving only the dishonest ones. Ralston was stealing money and cattle, but nearly all the hands stood ready to let Ralston take over when Hawkins was killed. We got a list of names from Wells, to the best he knew them, and all those men were arrested or have run off. Hawkins is shorthanded, I know that. Add to it, he does none of the work himself. I’m coming with you. I’ll get a job as a ranch hand.”

  Molly opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again. It reminded Wyatt of a trout he’d landed last summer.

  “Why would Hawkins believe you’d work for him?” she asked. “Why would the owner of the neighboring ranch come looking for a job?”