Aiming for Love

by Mary Connealy

  “I won’t stand by while someone hurts you.”

  That made her smile, and her cheek stung a bit. “Let’s hope you don’t have to fight my big sister.”

  Not one second of humor flashed across Dave’s face.

  “I have to think about it first,” Jo said. “I could take you there, and we could slip around and look. Or wait until Ursula goes off. But if we were found out . . . it’s like the story we talked about from the Good Book. If I lie and Ursula finds out, someday I may need her to believe me, and she will remember my lies.”

  Dave blinked at her. Silent for too long. Then he asked, “What Bible story is that again?”

  “The one about crying out for help when it’s not needed. ‘The Boy Who Cried Wolf.’”

  He nodded silently for a time, then said, “Maybe you should talk with Ma about this. For now, let’s see what’s in this house. I might just move right into it.”

  “Oh,” Jo froze. “I was thinking I would move into it. Ursula doesn’t want me in the house while you’re here. She’s afraid . . . well, it’s nonsense, but she really is afraid we’ll all die.”

  “Did you tell her about Wax Mosby shooting Pa? Did that frighten her? I’d certainly understand that.”

  “No, well, yes, I suppose that would upset her, too, but she’s afraid you’ll bring a disease or bring some other kind of harm. Grandpa was fierce about us staying on—you called it Hope Mountain?”

  Dave nodded.

  “The last year or two . . . or maybe three of Grandpa’s life, he wasn’t thinking clearly. Not a day went by when he didn’t warn us to stay up here. Toward the end, he must have said it a hundred times a day. That the lowlands were full of danger and deadly sickness, sin, and evil men. He was frantic that we would break that one golden rule.”

  “Uh, you don’t think staying to the mountaintops is the Golden Rule, do you? Is that in your Bible?”

  “‘All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.’ Grandma said that was the golden rule, but she said it was easier to say, ‘Treat folks like you wish they’d treat you. Only don’t wait for them to be kind and honest. Be kind and honest first.’”

  Dave knocked on his head gently.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m trying to figure out where in the Bible there’s a story about a boy who cries wolf.”

  “It’s right in there. It’s in the smaller of the Good Books.”

  Dave ran his hand right up into his hair and nearly knocked his hat off. Then he scrubbed the top of his head and said, “I’d like to see both of your Good Books sometime. Maybe we can sneak and do that while Ursula’s not looking. For now, let’s go look at the cabin.”

  “I’m going to have a talk with your mother.” Jo turned and headed for the cabin. “You’re too old now for it to be anyone’s job but your own, but sure and away your ma shirked with her Bible teaching when you were young.”

  Dave came after her quietly. Too ashamed of the truth to speak in his own defense, no doubt. Well, he oughta be.

  She got to the cabin door, and a warm place right in her chest swelled. The cabin had been swallowed up by the woods. She wondered if the trees that had grown in close were holding up the house these days. But there was still a roof and a door that stood upright and was tightly closed.

  “Grandpa’s house. I feel like I’m opening a part of his life I never knew about. I wonder if Grandma even knew this place was here.” She had to lift on the door to drag it open. It swung inward. Swinging in was the usual way when the snow came feet at a time. Sometimes there just was no way to swing outward.

  The smell was first. It was musty and stale, but it was Grandpa. “This door hasn’t been opened, I’d reckon, since Grandpa came home the last time.”

  Dave came up behind her, and she realized she’d stopped in the doorway. She had to force the next step, but she took it and went in farther to find a cabin that was larger than the one Jo lived in . . . at least larger than their main room was. Grandpa had added three bedrooms to their home. This one didn’t have any other rooms. To the right was a four-poster bed, on the left wall was a kitchen—though there was no fireplace. A small table divided the room. There were things everywhere, all buried under years and years of dust.

  Jo gasped as she looked at a cabin far more beautiful than hers.

  “Do you have bedcovers like these?”

  “No, absolutely not.” She went to flip up the corner of a quilt faded almost to white. Dust puffed into the air, but the bottom was clean and made of bright blue and red cotton with countless pretty stitches, making swirls and flowers. The bed had corner posts and overhead a stretch of white lace that formed a canopy. “Grandpa never sewed. He had to’ve bought this pretty thing.”

  “Look at the plates and utensils.” Dave drew her attention to the kitchen side of the cabin.

  “We have tin plates and cups at home.” Jo walked the few feet to a beautifully made chest about waist-high with open shelves. On top was a huge glass bowl and sitting in the bowl was a pitcher. It was white with bright flowers decorating the fine, thin glass. Pretty cups and plates sat on the shelves, and in one carefully carved wooden box with no lid, she could see forks and knives and spoons. All with delicately carved handles.

  “And our spoons and forks are plain. Why would Grandpa have these things up here? Why didn’t he tell us all this was up here before he died? We could have used these things.”

  “You said he was confused. Could he have lost his memory of this somehow?”

  “That must be it. He’d have told us about these things.” Jo had to believe he would.

  “How did he haul it up here? He couldn’t have ridden his horse because that trail is impassable. Didn’t you say you have cows? How did he get cows up here when I had to work hard on that trail to get mine up?”

  Jo frowned. “We always had cows. I have no memory of him bringing them here, but then I was born up here, and everything was as it is now.”

  “I think”—Dave’s eyes seemed to look through the walls into some distant place he could only see in his mind—“I think there must’ve been an avalanche. There was one stretch of that trail that I had to climb up clinging to ledges with my fingertips. If your grandpa lowered his furs using a rope, he could get down. And if he left the rope, he could use it to climb back up. He could tie things off and hoist them up with the rope. But he couldn’t carry much, not hefting it on his back.”

  “So he brought things up, a few at a time? He carried them on his back all the way from where he bought them?”

  “Unless he had a packhorse stashed in the lowlands. Our ranch is close to the base of the trail. Not right next to it, but close enough your grandpa had to know we were there.” Dave shook his head. “I wonder if Pa knew him or if your grandpa slipped past our place on foot every time he went to town. Someone had to know him if he went into Bucksnort, the closest town, to trade. And it’s a far piece on horseback. If your grandpa was on foot, with a heavy pack, he’d be days getting there.”

  Dave reached into the top drawer and pulled out a leather bag. It was black with a little drawstring at one end. Dave tried to unknot the string and it snapped. The whole bag was brittle with age. He tugged to open it and the bag split, and coins rained down onto the floor.

  Jo squeaked in surprise. Dave grabbed at the little coin purse and stopped the money from falling.

  “These are twenty-dollar gold pieces.” Dave picked one up as Jo bent down and collected the coins that had fallen.

  “What is that? What is a gold piece? The Bible speaks of gold.”

  “It’s money. These are made of a valuable metal, and people in the lowlands would trade you fabric and food for one of these coins.”

  “Money.” Jo frowned and searched her memory. “Money is the root of all evil.” That’s all she could remember about money.

  “No, the love of money is the root of all evil. You can have it and use it, and if you don’t l
ove it over loving God and loving other people, it’s okay to use it. It’s handy. I could take one cow to town, and someone there who needed a cow would give me one of these.” He held up the coin. “Then I’d take it to the store and buy things I needed. Or”—Dave pointed at the big bowl and pitcher—“things I wanted.”

  “And there are a lot of them.” Jo straightened, one hand clutched around coins from the floor. With the other, she pinched a gold coin between her thumb and index finger and held it up to eye level.

  She studied the coin, then her eyes shifted their focus so she looked right at Dave. “Why would Grandpa do this? Why would he live with all these fine things and not bring them home to us?”

  Dave shook his head and looked around again. “He never brought anything fine and pretty home? Just flour and sugar?”

  “Oh, not sugar. Grandma thought it was a sign of weakness to want things from town. She only wanted Grandpa to get a few things, the bare necessities. Only things we couldn’t find for ourselves.”

  Dave picked up a small canister. “Did he then . . .” Dave was watching her so closely she wondered at her expression. “Did he like these things and want them, and he knew your grandma would be unhappy if he brought them home?”

  A faint memory tickled Jo’s thoughts. “He’d bring us candy.” Jo searched her memory. “No, he’d sneak us candy. I remember once, but it was so long ago . . . he gave us each a peppermint stick, and Grandma threw a terrible fuss over it. She tried to take it away and Grandpa—”

  Jo looked into the past and felt that strange burning in her eyes. “He made a joke of it, but now I know it wasn’t a joke. He sort of grabbed Grandma and was holding her while she tried to get the candy. Grandpa laughed and yelled, ‘Run, eat fast!’”

  Jo covered her mouth as she thought of Grandma’s fury. She’d been fighting mad. Grandma had always had a temper. “My sisters’n me ran outside laughing like wild critters. We hid in the woods to eat the candy. When we came back, Grandpa was getting his coat on to go outside. He told us, very sternly, we were never to eat candy again. We might die.

  “He was very solemn. Grandma sort of humphed like she did a lot, then went back to work, Grandpa opened a flap on a pocket of his coat and showed us three more sticks of candy. Then he held his finger to his lips and went out to do chores.

  “We all knew after that, we’d get candy when Grandpa came back from town, but never in front of Grandma. One stick of hard candy each, every time he went to town. ‘Our secret,’ he’d say. ‘If Grandma finds out, there’ll be no more of it. She doesn’t want me spoiling you with things from the lowlands.’”

  “Why is it such an old memory?” Dave asked. “He must’ve done it every time he traded.”

  “Yes, but he stopped when Grandma died. It was like he took on all her worst fears after her death. He almost never went to town, and when he did, he’d never bring candy. We weren’t babies anymore by then anyway. Only babies need candy.”

  “Your grandma liked things simple.”

  “I reckon that’s a nice way to say it. She was scared of everything, and she got mad when something scared her.”

  “And your grandpa must’ve liked a few fancy things. Since she wouldn’t let him have them down at your cabin, he hid them up here.” Dave shrugged one shoulder. “I suppose it’s not a bad way to keep the peace.”

  “Building your own cabin, then lying and sneaking for your whole life? That’s not a bad way to keep the peace? It seems terrible to me. But we all learned to do it because Grandma wouldn’t listen to any sass. I remember saying to her one time, something like, ‘It can’t be deadly for everyone down off the mountain or there wouldn’t be any people left alive and there wouldn’t be any towns for Grandpa to go trading.’”

  “And did she scold?”

  “She slapped me.” Jo rested one hand flat on her cheek, felt the tenderness, and thought of Ursula last night. Ursula had been there years ago and witnessed Grandma’s anger. Her big sister was turning into Grandma.

  “It was a hard and fast rule to never talk back to Grandma and to never talk about leaving the mountaintop. I knew better than to say anything.” Jo shook her head. “But glory be, my grandma had gotten half-mad with all her fears. I just had to say something to put a little bit of reason into our lives.”

  Dave had slowly moved nearer as she talked, as if her words drew him.

  “Grandma could hand out a lickin’, but she wasn’t one to slap us on the face in the normal run of things. In fact, that’s the only time I can ever remember her doing it. A’course, I was careful not to sass her again, especially not about going down the mountain.”

  Dave rested one hand on her face, bringing her out of her dark thoughts. She tried to forget the strange sadness the story woke in her. She looked up and saw kindness, compassion, and something else, something that drew her as the cold weather drew the birds south.

  Silence stretched between them, thick with pleasure and a kind of closeness Jo had never felt before. In fact, she’d never known it existed. Dave’s eyes flickered downward, and she could feel that quick glance like heat on her lips. She licked her lips to cool them. Dave’s eyes narrowed, and he seemed closer than before.

  She forced herself to go on. “I kept my thoughts to myself. But nothing could stop me from being curious.” She knew just how curious she was right now about the look in Dave’s eyes, and how it felt to be so close. She smiled, then stepped away from his touch, surprised at how much effort that took. “Enough of old memories.”

  Dave’s hand slowly dropped. “We shouldn’t be here alone together.” There was a roughness in his voice that seemed to rub against her in some mysterious way.

  He cleared his throat. “We’d best get back. I can get a herd of cows moved up here yet today. The cabin has no windows and only this one door. No fireplace. He made it so nice. Why did he skip that?” Dave sounded annoyed, and Jo turned to look at him, wondering why.

  “He probably cooked outside over a campfire. I think he stayed closer to home in the winter. We needed him to cut wood and fight the drifts to do chores.”

  “If someone else lives here, they’ll need the heat, so we’ve got to build a chimney.”

  Jo looked around. Yep, she’d need it to be warm if Ursula still wasn’t over her fit when the snow fell. That was going to be a lot of work, and she had no idea how to build a chimney. But it sounded like Dave might be planning to help her.

  Dave gestured at the door. “Let’s drive some cattle up here.”

  13

  Mitch skirted the edges of the ranch, looking for signs. He found plenty. None of it from his family.

  He had his ma’s last letter, and he had a good idea where they’d gone, just no idea how to get there.

  He and his brother had run wild in these hills as youngsters, and Dave always had his eye on Hope Mountain. They’d climbed the mountain and found some likely grazing land, but they’d never found a way up fit for cows.

  He remembered from the saloon, one man had said, “I don’t know where the rest of the family went. Into the highlands west of their place, I reckon.”

  The highlands, Hope Mountain for sure, and that was a good place to retreat to with gunmen on their tails, but where had the cows gone? All Mitch could think was either Dave and Pa had found a way up, or they’d blasted a trail. Either way, under two feet of snow, Mitch wasn’t going to be able to find the path, which meant he’d have to make his own.

  And the snow kept falling.

  The side of a mountain was nowhere he wanted to be.

  “He hit old Quill Warden. Couldn’t find the body . . .”

  The words that man in the saloon said came as close to knocking Mitch down as any ever spoken.

  And Wax Mosby. Mitch paid attention to any news from around his Western home. Wax Mosby was a known man and a dangerous one.

  Mitch knew an old corral his family kept away from the house by a warm spring that ran year-round. He turned his horses loose in i
t, not wanting their tracks all over. Because he knew this land well, he found a hidden crack in the base of the mountain only he and Dave knew and stashed his supplies, including his gold, in there. Then on foot, he scouted the ranch, quietly of course. He did everything quietly. There was no sign of life in the cabin or the bunkhouse.

  He quit his hunting as the sun rose in the east. Mitch was worn clean out.

  Resigned to the hard way of finding someone to welcome him home, he strode toward the first path to Hope Mountain that came to mind. He slung his rifle across his back, his saddlebags with a canteen and some jerky over one shoulder, his six-gun holstered on his hip, and headed out. Or better to say, headed up.

  As he climbed, the snow changed from soft, powdery stuff to needles of ice. The path, treacherous in the summer, was a nightmare under sleet.

  Why had he been so all-fired eager to leave New York City? A few folks shooting at him was stacking up to be pure fun compared to this.

  As the cows climbed through the narrow, upward canyon mouth, Dave, with Jo at his side, reached the top of the rocky trail where it curved over the canyon wall and headed down into the bowl of the valley.

  He found a wide spot, got off to the side, and watched his cattle march down into the lush grass. He saw the dried stems, hay made without him cutting a swath, brush against their bellies. A couple of spring calves kicked up their heels and dashed to the far end of the canyon. The cattle moved slowly, spreading out, ripping mouths full of grass, heading for the pond on the far end of the meadow.

  Jo sat calmly beside him, studying the playing calves with a pretty smile on her pink lips and a flash of humor in her sparkling blue eyes. Still wearing her odd clothes that hid her so well in the autumn forest. Her fine blond hair was in a knot on the back of her head, but plenty of it escaped, and she paid it no mind.

  He noticed her rest her hand on her mare’s shoulder and pet the old girl. Jo had found a new friend.

  “I should ride in the direction those calves are going. They might find a way out of here, and we’d have a time of it rounding them up.” He smiled at Jo, who’d been such a steady and constant companion. “You want to head over there with me? It’ll take an hour at least, over and back. But I think I’d better go.”