In Too Deep

by Mary Connealy

  The three men trooped out the door.

  “I’ll keep looking in here. There can’t be many more places to hunt,” Julia called after them.

  “I’ve never felt so useless in my life.” Audra adjusted her clothing so Lily could eat.

  “Nonsense, you’re taking care of a baby. You’re the only one here that can do that, you know.” Julia began running her hands along the top of the wall. There was a level spot all around where the roof touched the building. Audra didn’t bother to tell Julia that the men had already looked there, twice each.

  “True.” Lily looked up from where she lay in her mother’s arms. Audra loved her children so fiercely. Two daughters. Would the day come when they’d get married with only a few moments’ discussion? Audra prayed it would not be like that for her girls. She smiled down at her precious baby, then whispered, “Can you believe I got married today?”

  “No, I can’t. I can barely believe I’m married.” Julia finished her hunt in the tiny room and turned to Audra. “Is it okay? I don’t like it that you married a man who . . . who . . .”

  “Who doesn’t love me?” Audra said it firmly, glad it had been spoken aloud. “Just like my first husband.”

  “It’s a terrible thing, the way women are just handed out to whatever man is available. I should have stopped it. I should have—”

  “Now it’s my turn to say ‘nonsense,’ Julia.” Audra sat up straighter. “Ethan is a decent man. I know you weren’t overly fond of your father.”

  “That’s putting it mildly.”

  Clearing her throat, Audra went on. “Yes, well, then you won’t be hurt to hear me say Ethan is a big improvement.”

  “There’s no denying that. I just wish he wouldn’t stand around grinning all the time.”

  “Smiling is also a big improvement. Ethan is a fine man.” She hoped. “I’m sure he’s got his own quirks, just like I do. But we’ll learn to deal well with each other in time. And I needed to get away from that caldera, you know that. Maggie wasn’t safe.”

  “But Seth was a big part of the problem and you’re taking him with you.”

  “But the tunnels were such a lure to him. If we can’t keep him from going down in those tunnels, I hope we can at least keep him from taking Maggie with him when he goes.”

  “He’s a lunatic, you know that, right?” Julia dropped to her hands and knees and felt along the ground where the floorboards had been torn away.

  “I feel a lot of compassion for Seth.”

  Julia lifted her head up so suddenly the bun in her hair, always unruly, tore the pins loose. “Really?”

  “Of course, really.” Audra rolled her eyes. “He isn’t really a madman.”

  “Ummm . . . yes he is.” Julia’s hairpins scattered around her. She quit her search for money and started chasing pins.

  “Where’s your compassion, Julia? He was terribly hurt as a child. He was a prisoner who suffered only God knows what during the war.”

  “Which has made him a lunatic.” Julia found her last pin. Audra noticed Julia was a lot more interested in gathering every last pin than she was in the money.

  “I think a woman’s kind touch, children in his life, a strong brother at his side will help him find his way back to good sense.”

  Julia looked doubtful as she twisted her hair into a knot and refastened it. Once she was finished, she said, “I hope you’re right. I hope you’ll be safe with him.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  Julia looked around the room, now torn to bits, though it hadn’t had far to go anyway. “Can you remember Father carrying anything that would’ve held a lot of money? Breach told us there was a fortune missing.”

  On a gasp, Audra said, “A fortune?”

  “That’s what he said. But in what? Dollars? Paper money? That would fill a large satchel at least, if not a chest. I don’t even know how much space that kind of money would take up.”

  “Gold maybe?”

  Julia shrugged. “A fortune in gold would be heavy. I carried every bag and box at one time or another on our trip. Besides, I helped pack. I filled every square inch.”

  “Where could he have hidden it?”

  “Picture Father when we were packing.” Julia’s bright green eyes closed. “Did he have something bulky or heavy that he kept with him at all times? Did he say or do anything that drew your attention to a satchel or a certain box?”

  Audra shook her head, yet did some thinking before she answered. “When he was dying, he said something about the money.”

  “Like where he’d hidden it?” Julia jumped to her feet.

  Audra lifted Lily to her shoulder and patted her back. “Yes. He said deep.”

  “Deep?”

  “He said he hid it ‘deep, deep, deep.’ I think he said the word three times. Maybe more. He did a lot of muttering. He said we’d never find it.”

  Julia looked around the room. “I suppose that means he buried it?”

  “Which means Wendell was right.” Audra heard a little burp out of her baby and got more satisfaction from that than she had from her recent marriage. A sad commentary. “We will never find it.”

  “Was there anything more?”

  Frowning, Audra tried to remember what exactly he’d said. “ ‘The rest of the money I’ve hidden in a deep, deep hole.’ He said that just before I hit him.”

  “Stop saying you hit him.”

  “No, I’m glad I hit him. The fact that it knocked him down when he was so sick doesn’t take away from me doing a good thing.” Audra realized how that sounded. “Not that I’m glad I hit him.”

  “You just said you were.”

  “Well, I am, but I’m not. I mean—”

  “Don’t worry about it. He had it coming and there’s no doubt in my mind you didn’t hit him one tiny fraction as hard as he deserved.”

  “He said more, right before he died, but it was the same—I think. He said, ‘I’ve hidden it in a deep, deep hole where no one will ever find it.’ ”

  “I’ll go tell the men to stop hunting. Unless we want to dig up all the land around this cabin and the one where we lived, and with no assurance that we will find a thing, we might as well forget it.”

  Audra nodded. “It’s been a long day. I’m ready to go home.” And face her fate. She needed to have a longer talk with Ethan about just exactly what her fate was. Certainly nothing could pass between them as a husband and wife anytime soon. She’d just had a baby. Although she remembered Wendell had expected to claim his rights the night of their wedding and far too soon after Maggie was born. And she’d known him less than she did Ethan.

  Julia went outside, and Audra faced with dread the fact that she was a married woman again.

  Then she made a mental comparison between Wendell and Ethan.

  Things had to get better.

  Considering the last couple of years of her life, they couldn’t get worse.

  “I don’t care who you have to kill!” Jasper Henry slammed both fists on his desk. “I want that money found!”

  He hit the desk so hard the massive oak slid forward. He split the skin on his knuckles and saw blood on his ink blotter.

  Bleeding him dry. That’s what this mess with Wendell was doing.

  He looked up and did his very best to scare his men to death.

  “We haven’t heard from Tracker lately, but we know where he’s gone.”

  A chill of rage settled in Jasper’s gut. A lot better than fear. Wendell had taken too much. And he’d taken it at just the wrong time, so Jasper couldn’t pay a man even more powerful than himself. Even the two thugs before him didn’t know the full truth of it, or they wouldn’t keep working for him. Their loyalty stretched just as far as Jasper’s money, and no further. Now Jasper was spending his last bit of money trying to restore his fortune. But his instincts were telling him to run. Take what little he had left and get out of town. He’d been planning his escape before Wendell’s theft, which was why nearly all of his accumu
lated wealth was in one spot and easy to grab.

  “He found him, didn’t he?” Jasper didn’t have anyone among his men who knew the western lands, so he’d hired Tracker Breach. Jasper could track a man on brick streets right here in Houston, but he’d needed the best tracker he could find who knew the wild places. That is, the best tracker who wouldn’t ask too many questions.

  “Yeah, Tracker found Wendell. He probably killed him, grabbed the money, and ran,” Mitch said.

  Jasper nodded at his man Mitchell Wilks. Trouble was, by hiring Breach, he’d hired someone who didn’t have the sense to be afraid of him.

  “Wendell was an expert at leaving a hard trail to follow, sir,” Mitch added. The cowboy stood in his sharp black suit with his hands folded in front of him, a nasty piece of humanity. He’d made his living slipping guns and whiskey and runaway slaves past blockades during the War Between the States. He hadn’t cared what he was smuggling. He’d taken slaves north and taken them back south. He’d been with Jasper since the war ended, and so far there was nothing that was too low for the man.

  No one he wouldn’t kill. No vice he wouldn’t enjoy. But all in his tidy way. His suit never got wrinkled while he carried on with the worst kind of depravity.

  Jasper considered him the next thing to a brother.

  “Tracker didn’t hide his trail.” Grove Cassidy was cadaver-thin with a face drawn into grim lines that Jasper had never seen bend into a smile. He scared grown men into turning over everything they had to escape his wrath. Jasper’s gut clenched when he thought of some of the methods Grove used. He was the reason Jasper had such a choke hold on his territory. Between Grove and Mitch, no one ever crossed Jasper Henry. And now, Wendell had.

  “Tracker could hide in the wilderness.” Jasper had lived off the land after Pa had thrown him out. He knew how to survive, but it was a life with no comforts. And the people who lived there were tough men. His easiest prey was in a more civilized world. But he had to have that money. Wendell was small-time, but he’d put his hands on the wrong bag at the exact right moment, and he’d taken enough to ruin Jasper’s empire.

  “He might.” Grove rarely said a sentence when a word or two would do.

  Mitch was all charm, though. “We’ve found a clear trail the man left heading west. We’ve gotten a steady stream of telegrams from Tracker and lists of the towns he searched. And we’ve checked with some men in those towns and they confirm Tracker was there when he said he was. He may have gone into hiding once he found the money, but we should be able to find the exact time and place he went missing. And from there, we can start searching.”

  “I made it clear the price he’d pay for betrayal. Real clear. You know the system we set up to leave letters, care of general delivery, in each town. Check for those letters. They’ll have a lot more details than a wire.”

  “We’ve gotta get moving.” Grove’s cold eyes spoke of eagerness to hurt anyone who’d betray Jasper.

  “We leave on the train west in two hours.” Mitch pulled his pocket watch out and flicked it open with a sharp metallic click. “We’ll find Tracker, and if he has the money, we’ll get it. If he doesn’t have it, we’ll find it.”

  “Don’t make me come after the two of you.” Jasper knew exactly the kind of men he hired. Neither could touch him for ruthlessness.

  “If you had any doubts about our loyalty, we’d’ve been dead long ago,” Mitch said, snapping his watch shut.

  Grove’s steady gaze was all the agreement Jasper was going to get.

  Both of them left the room as silently as avenging demons.

  Jasper’s throat almost swelled shut when he thought of some of the men he owed money.

  Fear.

  He’d dispensed his share, but he hadn’t felt any since he was young and had learned to deny everything weak. And nothing was weaker than fear.

  And right now . . . he was terrified.

  Chapter

  5

  Ethan was on his way home. He was taking along his wife and two children.

  He paused to see if he might wake up—but nope.

  And he had Seth, who had just claimed a homestead. Ethan wasn’t sure Seth even fully realized that, but Seth was the owner of all the good water holes for a thousand acres. It was mostly forests and yet there was some decent grassland included, too. Seth’s land connected Rafe’s caldera to where Ethan lived on the old homeplace. It gave the Kincaids control of over ten thousand acres of rugged mountain range, lush with grass and thick with timber. A lot of people would’ve seen wasteland, but the Kincaids had lived here long enough to know the wealth to be found in these mountains.

  Ethan and Rafe would explain the land he owned to Seth more clearly, later, after he settled down. And the first step to settling him down was taking him home.

  Home.

  Home without Rafe.

  That wasn’t how Ethan had pictured things when he’d decided to quit his wandering ways. At least now Audra and her daughters were miles and miles away from that ugly hole in the ground.

  “What are we having for supper, Audra?” Seth, leading the way, eager to get home, pulled his horse back so he could ride alongside them.

  “I have no idea.” She looked from Seth to Ethan. “Is there any food in the cabin?”

  Ethan tried to remember. “I haven’t hardly been home since I’ve been home.”

  “You haven’t been home since you’ve been home?” Audra smiled at him. A cold, mean-hearted kind of smile. A shiver of fear raced up Ethan’s back.

  “Being married is kind of strange, isn’t it?” Ethan looked down at Maggie, sitting on the saddle in front of him, flopped over his left arm, dozing. Lily was asleep in Audra’s arms. He had two children.

  Strange for sure.

  “I’ll say it is.” Audra shook her head. “I had hoped that man who hurt Rafe and Julia and Seth would be shipped away by now.”

  “Tracker was my friend.” Seth bent toward Audra to look at Lily.

  Audra shuddered. Ethan sure hoped she was shuddering because of Tracker and not because of Seth. Life could be a trial if Seth made her shudder.

  “He was a bad friend, Seth.” Ethan wondered if Seth would ever start thinking clearly enough to remember Tracker had shot him.

  It wasn’t just being married that was strange.

  “The sheriff said the judge would be in Rawhide soon.” Audra’s worry lines seemed deeper all the time. “I had hoped he’d be locked up in a penitentiary by now.”

  “Can you cook, Audra?” Seth asked.

  She smiled.

  Ethan was curious about that, too, and happy to hear a question that wasn’t quite so life-and-death.

  “Yes, I think I’m a decent cook. I did a lot of cooking before I married Wendell. Julia handled most of it while I lived with her, but I know how.”

  Ethan met her eyes and smiled. “I reckon having a woman around the house will be pleasant.” Then his smile faded. “Unless you’re planning to cry day and night like our ma did.”

  “I hardly ever cry.”

  “Well, good. If you do feel such an inclination, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t act on it.” Ethan saw the cabin come into view as they rounded a curve in the trail. “We’re home.”

  He pulled his horse to a stop and looked at the pretty cabin nestled in the valley, tucked up against a mountain, with a barn and corral. There was meadowland to the west and north. Horses grazed on lush grass. The mountain shaded them from the worst of the August sun and kept the grass green all summer. Rafe had turned his skilled hand to improving the cabin after Ethan had left.

  “The barn is painted red,” Audra said as she stopped her horse beside him. “A log barn painted red. I’ve never seen that before. The whole place is really beautiful.”

  “That’s Rafe.” Ethan loved his big brother, but right now he was just a touch jealous. “He’s a hand at carpentry. You saw how hard he worked on his own cabin.”

  Audra nodded. “And he said he isn’t clos
e to done with it.”

  “Our place didn’t look like this when Pa was alive.” Seth reined his horse to a stop, and they sat, three in a row, staring at home.

  “Nope, Pa never had much use for prettifying things. He wouldn’t do it himself, and he wouldn’t put up with Rafe doing it. Reckon once Rafe was here alone, he figured he’d run things his way. I got the feeling Rafe was mighty glad to see me. It’d be a lonely place to live with only a bunch of cowhands.”

  Ethan looked at Seth and saw his little brother watching him.

  Ethan said, “We should’ve never left him.”

  “And now we’re home and Rafe isn’t here,” Seth said.

  “Let’s ride in. Audra, the inside is as pretty as outside.”

  His wife smiled, and something tugged on Ethan’s gut that wasn’t jealousy but somehow reminded him of it. It also reminded him that he was a married man.

  Ethan had done a lot of traveling around, but he’d stayed to manly places, spent time in the mountains trapping or mining, spent time on ships at sea. He’d never been around women much, except for his ma. And that hadn’t been any fun.

  The sun was low in the sky, but there was plenty of daylight left as they rode up. “Seth, will you hold the horses while I get Audra inside with the babies?”

  “No,” Audra said. “Let me go with you to see the barn. Then we can go inside the house for the first time together. Is that all right?”

  Ethan smiled. “Sure.” He steered his horse toward the barn. Steele Coulter, Rafe’s foreman, came out of the bunkhouse. No, not Rafe’s foreman. He was Ethan’s foreman now. Ethan had to try and remember that.

  Steele walked into the barn just behind them. “Howdy, Ethan, Seth, Mrs. Gilliland.”

  Steele had been over helping build Rafe’s house and he’d run for supplies and done other work for them. Ethan had come home and brought Seth a few times, too.

  “She’s Mrs. Kincaid now, Steele. Audra and I got hitched today.”

  Steele’s bushy gray brows arched, but he was a man of few words and one to mind his own business. He said nothing, just took the reins of Audra’s horse. Ethan helped her down, with the baby asleep in her arms, as Maggie was asleep in his.