In Too Deep

by Mary Connealy

  They rode up. Rafe dismounted and wrapped his reins around a tree branch. Julia was at his side before Ethan and Audra could walk the few paces over to them.

  “Where’s Seth?” Rafe asked.

  “I’m in here, Rafe.” Seth’s voice sounded hollow from inside the cave. “I’m thinking of living in here.”

  Rafe jammed his gloved fists on his hips. “Seth!” Rafe’s voice could’ve shaken the cave, it was so loud. “Get out here.”

  There was a scratching sound.

  “Seth, right now.”

  “I’m coming, Rafe.”

  “How deep did he go into that dumb cave?” Ethan bent down to stare in the dark hole.

  “What’s taking him so long?” Rafe demanded. “I’ve got some questions for him.”

  Ethan could see that something was bothering Rafe. It wasn’t about Seth liking to explore caves. Rafe’s usual icy temper looked fiery hot right now.

  “He broke his leg.” Audra’s announcement drew Rafe and Julia’s attention.

  “How?” Julia pulled her riding gloves off, her brow furrowed with concern.

  “Those men, the ones who shot at you yesterday, attacked us.”

  Julia gasped and looked from Audra to the children. “Are you all right?”

  “We’ve got them.”

  “Got them where? How?” Rafe’s eyes narrowed on Ethan, and he realized he still had dried blood on his face.

  “We trapped them in the cavern.” Audra patted Maggie on the back while Lily slept in her little pack.

  “Audra single-handedly captured both of them, shoved them into that hole Seth got burned in, and by the time I got there, she was ready to just walk right out on her own.”

  “That is not how it happened. You saved me.” Audra threw her free arm around Ethan’s waist. He smiled down at her and tucked her under one arm, loving the feel of her.

  “Audra got the best of two men?” Julia looked at Audra, impressed.

  “You went into the cavern?” Rafe looked at Ethan, doubtful.

  Audra and Ethan took turns telling about the day, but they made it quick.

  “We need to get Seth home. He got knocked over a cliff.”

  “Hi, Rafe.” Seth stuck his head out of the cave.

  “You’ve got a broken leg?” Rafe stalked toward his brother.

  “Yep. My ankle. Hurts like crazy, too.” Seth didn’t sound all that upset about it as he came the rest of the way out, crawling on his hands and knees. His heavily splinted leg appeared last.

  Rafe pulled a paper out of his shirt pocket. “Seth, I got a letter while I was in town.”

  With his usual wild smile, Seth said, “That’s nice. I don’t reckon I’ve ever gotten a letter before.”

  Rafe pulled a second piece of paper out and extended it toward Seth. “You have now. There were two of them—one to me, one to you. From. Your. Wife.”

  Ethan felt his jaw drop open. He sputtered for a while before he could say, “Wife? Seth? You’ve got a wife?”

  “Didn’t you want to marry me a few weeks ago?” Audra stepped away from Ethan. Who braced himself to tackle her if Seth was in danger. His brother had a broken leg, after all.

  “And I’m quite sure you expressed an interest in being married to me, too,” Julia said.

  “But that was after you were already married to Rafe.” Seth took the letter slowly, staring at it as if it might bite. “There wasn’t much chance of you actually saying yes.”

  Seth opened the letter and read silently for a while. “Callie. Uh . . . she says we got . . . got . . . got . . .”

  Rafe shook his head. “I think married is the word you’re looking for, little brother.”

  “You said her name once,” Ethan said, remembering.

  Seth looked up from the letter. “I did? When?”

  “Yesterday, when we got shot at. You said you didn’t like the idea of building a cabin and living in it alone. Then you said you missed Callie.”

  “It sounds kinda familiar.”

  “Well, it oughta be if you married the woman.” Ethan swatted Seth on the head with his hat.

  Seth ducked and kept reading.

  Rafe looked down at his own letter. “It says she’s worried about you and has been looking for you ever since you ran off from her. She says you had nightmares from your time in the war and she doesn’t know if you’re thinking right.”

  “She’s got the right man,” Julia muttered.

  “It also says she’s coming here,” Rafe went on. “Apparently you talked about your family and she wants my help in finding you. In fact, she demands my help.”

  Seth went on reading his letter, and his eyes got so wide that Ethan was afraid his eyeballs would fall right out of his head.

  “If she knew your name, Rafe, why’d she take a year to come hunting for Seth? Don’t seem like she cared much about him.”

  “She doesn’t say, but Seth told her he had family in Rawhide, and that’s why she wrote to me here.” Rafe’s eyes lifted from Seth to Ethan.

  Seth squirmed from where he sat on the ground and stuck his nose even deeper in his letter. “Callie’s really upset.”

  “I think killing mad is a better description.” Rafe held his letter up. “Some of the time she sounds worried, then she kinda switches over to ‘he’d better be dead.’ She’s not happy with you, little brother.”

  Seth’s attention was riveted on the letter. Audra’s fingers itched to see what the woman had written to so completely trap Seth in the words.

  “Seth, for heaven’s sake, you ran off and left the woman?” Julia looked tempted to start pounding on Seth. Ethan wondered if he’d have to protect his brother from both women.

  “We’ve got to find her and help her. Get her out here.” Audra chewed on her bottom lip to keep it from trembling.

  Ethan edged closer to her. She was strong. She’d beaten up two men today. She hadn’t oughta ruin it now by crying.

  “No Kincaid is going to abandon his wife. Not while I’m alive.” Rafe looked torn between pounding on Seth and mounting up to find Callie.

  “Does she say how she’s living?” Ethan asked. “How she’s coming out? Can we go meet her? I hate to think of a woman alone, just like Audra and Julia. No one to protect her. Helpless.”

  Julia swatted Ethan on the arm. “We weren’t helpless.”

  “My letter says she’s headed for Rawhide.” Rafe handed the letter to Ethan. “She wrote the letter right before she started out on the train for Denver, planning to take a stagecoach the rest of the way.”

  Julia frowned. “There aren’t any stagecoaches to Rawhide.”

  “I reckon she’s finding that out about now.”

  Seth looked up from his letter, his confusion giving way to determination. “We’ve got to go meet her. How will we find her? I wonder what she looks like.”

  Julia slapped herself in the face with the palm of her hand and shook her head. Ethan heard a little groan of pain.

  “This letter is at least a month old,” Rafe said. “You know how poor mail delivery is out here.” He looked back in the direction of Rawhide. “She could be here any minute.”

  Seth tried to stand, and his gasp of pain reminded Ethan that the boy had a broken ankle. “Not sure how far I can ride.”

  “I’ll ride out in the morning.” Rafe looked at Julia. “We’ll ride out in the morning. We’ll head for Denver and hunt until we find her.”

  “There’s hardly a decent trail between here and Denver.” Ethan frowned. Then he remembered when he’d done nothing but smile. Ethan kind of wanted those old days back.

  “And what trails there are wind from town to town,” Ethan went on. “She could be coming down a dozen different directions, probably on a freight wagon. You can’t hope to find her, Rafe.”

  “We’ve got to get those men out of the cave first,” Audra reminded them. “We really can’t leave them in that hole. Worse yet, if they get out, they could attack us again.”

  E
than looked from Julia to Rafe. “You didn’t find that money, did you?”

  Rafe shook his head. “Had quite a while to look, too. I didn’t even think of a letter.”

  “I get mail from time to time. I thought of it,” Julia added.

  “When she asked,” Rafe said, “they handed those to me. Eth, Callie’s letter was to you and me both. Reckon Seth had nightmares about both of us.”

  “That cave isn’t deep enough to live in and there are no tunnels at all,” Seth said, pointing at the cave he’d just come out of, smiling. He’d been surprised for a few seconds about having a wife. But now he was his old loco self. “Where’s the fun in that? I guess I’ll need to build a cabin.”

  “Big enough for a wife.” Ethan felt very sorry for poor, abandoned, forgotten Callie Kincaid.

  Seth perked up and smiled wide at Audra. “Are you going to live here with me? And bring the babies? That’ll be fun.”

  “Maybe Callie shouldn’t be in that big a hurry to get here,” Julia said. She sounded exhausted.

  Chapter

  25

  “We’ve got ’em.” Rafe emerged from the cave entrance in his mountain valley, dragging Mitch along.

  Audra looked at Mitch and clenched her fist. “You are an awful man!”

  She didn’t slug him because he had his hands tied behind his back. It wouldn’t be one bit fair, though the scoundrel deserved it.

  The man’s head drooped low, and Audra saw an ugly bleeding cut on the back of his head. “Did I do that to him?”

  Ethan came next with Grove in tow. The man had a makeshift sling on his arm, and his head was covered with dried blood.

  “Did I do that to him, too?” Audra swallowed hard as she looked at the battered men. She felt tears well in her eyes, but she fought them down. She didn’t regret what she’d done in fighting for her life, but it was a shocking day all around.

  “The cut on Mitch’s head looks like a bullet wound.” Ethan sat Grove on the ground with no care at all. “I’d say he shot himself. Probably ricocheted one of his own bullets. But it’s a scratch. Unless it turns septic, he’ll be fine.”

  Audra exchanged a look with Julia. They’d been forced to stay behind with the children while the big strong men went in to capture the bad guys.

  As if Audra hadn’t already done all the hard work. “We know that can happen, don’t we? That’s how Wendell died. From an infected scratch.”

  “But Grove here, yep”—Ethan nodded toward the man with the sling—“I’d say you did that.”

  The tears threatened again, yet Audra was determined to be a ruthless, courageous warrior. She didn’t even let tears thicken her voice. “Where did you find them? You weren’t gone for long.”

  “They were still in that pit,” Rafe said.

  Led by Steele, five more of the Kincaid hands came out of the cavern. Every one of them had a lantern. Rafe and Ethan hadn’t tackled these men in that dark hole alone. The day was wearing down and it had been a long one.

  “Mitch climbed out before with no trouble at all,” Audra said. She thought of the way he’d come out of the hole in the pitch-dark, fast, unharmed, killing mad.

  “The way rock was shattered,” Ethan said, “I’d say Mitch’s wild shooting busted off any footholds he found at first. He probably knocked himself out cold with a ricocheted bullet, though he was awake when we got there. Both of them were conscious.”

  Audra cleared her throat and squared her shoulders. “I’m surprised he didn’t have a few b-bullets left.”

  She was strong. She was fearless. She was dangerous.

  Ethan looked at her. “Nope. Their guns were empty.”

  She was going to cry.

  “Mitch must’ve shot ’em all off at us—his and Grove’s,” Ethan added. “Which left them in the dark for a long time, and when we got there they were hurting enough and scared enough to be glad to see us.”

  “Not sure glad’s the right word,” Steele muttered.

  “They let us drag ’em up without any real escape attempt,” Rafe said. “At least no attempt until we had them trussed up tight.” Rafe jerked his head at the secure knots holding Mitch’s hands behind his back and a sturdy rope tying Grove’s good arm to the one in the sling.

  Mitch looked back at the entrance as if it were a monster’s mouth, complete with jagged teeth. “I hate that cavern. I’d rather be in a jail.”

  “You’re gonna get your wish.” Ethan sat Grove down beside his partner.

  Audra and Julia had stayed behind with Seth and the children. They’d done their best to rewrap the bandage on Seth’s leg and tried to get him to remember more about his wife. By the time the bandaging was done, Seth was ashen with pain.

  Julia had made enough supper for all of them and gotten a meal in Seth and Maggie both. Seth had finally settled into bed and fallen asleep as peacefully as Maggie. Then Audra had fed Lily and she’d gone to sleep in the fading light.

  Audra and Julia had paced in front of the cave, occasionally going back to the cabin to check on their charges, awaiting their men’s return.

  Now they were back and her eyes went to Ethan. She saw none of the terrible stress he usually bore with a smile when he’d had anything to do with that cavern. Its hold on him was finally broken. That made her so happy she almost cried again.

  It was going to be a wonder if she got out of this day without crying her eyes out, and she’d been doing really well at being a strong woman.

  Not counting right now.

  “I’m going to ride to town with these men.” Rafe looked at Julia. “You come with me, Jules. And you men ride along, too. I don’t want even a chance of these men escaping and endangering any more of us.”

  Rafe turned to Ethan and continued issuing orders. “It’ll be late into the night before we get back. Can you get Seth home?”

  “Yep. We’ll manage.”

  “My boss won’t quit,” Mitch snarled from where he sat. “He wants what you stole from him, and he won’t quit until he gets it. If you were smart, you’d give us that money and let us go.”

  “We don’t know where it is.” Audra wanted to cry. Which seemed to be her theme for the last hour or so.

  “I think if a man pushed you hard enough, you might come up with some ideas. The boss might just come himself. He’s not a patient man.”

  “You want a gag to go with those ropes?” Rafe asked.

  Mitch subsided into a sullen silence. He’d made his point.

  Audra wondered where in the name of heaven Wendell had hidden so much money that a man could afford to send these men after it.

  “You don’t need all of us riding with you, Rafe.” Steele returned his hat to his head. He’d left it behind when he entered the cavern. “I’ll take one man and head for the ranch with Ethan, help him get Seth home. We need to be watching for more two-legged varmints.”

  The sleep had given Seth renewed energy and he made the trip well enough.

  Audra didn’t have much chance to talk the day over with Ethan because of the men riding with them. Instead, she concentrated on making good time in the heavy woods. And fighting tears. For a woman who’d beaten up two armed gunmen today, she was feeling like a terrible weakling.

  Once they got home they were busy getting the girls tucked in and Seth settled in bed, his leg carefully propped on a pillow.

  It was late when Audra finally pulled the covers over her in the cool mountain evening and sank into her feather ticking.

  As Ethan joined her in their bed, Audra opened her mouth to say good-night and burst into tears.

  Ethan pulled her into his arms and held her close. Her face rested on his strong shoulders as he caressed her, murmuring soft words. Audra couldn’t hear them for a long time, but when her tears finally ebbed, she heard him say, “I’m so sorry, sweetheart.”

  He sounded as if his heart were breaking.

  “Why am I crying? We survived this h-horrible day.”

  Ethan hugged her closer and she
felt his soft kisses on her hair. “That’s why you’re crying, because you had a horrible day.”

  She cried harder and nestled against his sturdy chest, loving his strong arms. “I was so afraid, Ethan. I’m such a coward.”

  “No, you’re not. You’re about the bravest little thing I’ve ever seen.”

  Audra raised her head and Ethan handed her a handkerchief. She wiped at her soggy face and noticed she’d soaked the poor man’s nightshirt.

  Dabbing at it, she said, “I’ve been trying to be brave, but today all I’ve done is be afraid. Afraid they’d hurt me. Afraid for my children. Afraid for you.” Her voice broke again. When she could talk again, she added, “You’re the one who was brave. You hate that cavern but you faced it. You went down in there to save me. That’s the bravest thing I’ve ever seen.”

  Just the thought of what it cost him to come for her sent her into another fit of tears. “I have to quit crying. What is wrong with me?”

  There was silence while he held her, rubbing his hands on her back and her shoulders, caressing and soothing. Finally, into her hair, he whispered, “I love you, Audra.”

  The words hit her with the power of a lightning bolt, and she wrenched out of his arms to sit up. With her back to the window, she cast his face in a shadow and couldn’t read his expression. But why read an expression when she had the words?

  “You do? Really?”

  He dragged her back down and rolled her onto her back, leaning over her. “I really do. When I faced that cavern today, it was because loving you was stronger than my fear. I don’t think I’m ever going to like it down there, but the thought of losing you helped me realize the cavern . . . well, I’ve given it too much power over me. I’ve let that fear control my life. I let it send me away from a home I missed and brothers I loved. And the things you did today, leading those men away from me. Fighting them in that cavern, thinking and planning and remembering all you knew about the caves and tunnels—and doing it all when you were in so much danger, a lot of people wouldn’t have been able to make their heads work. It’s the bravest thing I’ve ever seen.”