Alex wrenched his arm loose from the fingers that clung to him. He shuddered a bit when the man scowled, revealing broken teeth and an ugliness in his eyes that had nothing to do with physical appearances.
The man took all of five seconds to consider the situation. “She’ll have to come then. My brother will put up with it or die. It’s a long ride. I’ve got a horse but—”
Alex exchanged a look with Beth. It was wrong to bring her along, out at night with this unknown man. But—
“We’ll hitch up our buckboard and be right behind you.” Beth tugged Alex’s arm toward the stable where their horses boarded.
Alex fell into step beside her.
“Wait!” Beth stopped so quickly Alex lost his grip on her.
Somehow that made the whole unsettling situation worse, no Beth.
Forgive me, Lord, for being so weak, so cowardly.
“What?” Alex turned and went after her as she rushed for their building.
“I … uh … we … uh … you need the doctor’s bag.” Beth glanced at Alex, silently apologizing for the slip. They both knew that for the public to trust them Alex had to be the doctor, not Beth.
“Hurry.” The anxious, unpleasant man seemed to think they were making an escape. He followed right along with them. “I was over an hour on the trail and my brother doesn’t have much time.”
“Tell me what happened.” Alex opened the door.
Beth darted inside and back out so fast Alex didn’t even have a chance to join her. She had her doctor’s bag in one hand and her rifle strapped on her back, the muzzle showing by her right hand, the butt above her left shoulder. She always wore it this way when they went doctoring out in the country. The two of them turned and rushed toward the stable.
Only as they entered the livery and began, as a team, buckling the traces on their gleaming brown thoroughbreds, the whole outfit given to them as a wedding gift by Beth’s parents, did Alex realize the man hadn’t answered his questions.
He’d vanished. Now he reappeared at the livery door on horseback.
The man’s nervous rush had Alex pushing. “I didn’t even hear what was wrong with the brother.”
Beth looked across the horses’ broad backs, her concerned eyes a match for his. “Okay, done. Let’s go. He seems worried to death.”
“Do you know him? Is he from around here?” Boosting Beth up onto the high seat of the buckboard, Alex vaulted up behind her as she scooted over.
“Nope. But I’ve been away a long time. Half the people in town are strangers.”
Alex slapped the reins to his horses’ backs and they rushed out the open door of the stable.
The man rode ahead, setting a pace to the south that would exhaust the horses before long.
“What’s he going this way for?” Beth asked.
“Why not this way?”
“There’s nothing out this way. This land is so rugged and rocky, anyone who’s trying to carve a living out of this land is in for a bad time of it.”
“I can barely keep up with this guy. Does this trail ever branch off?” Alex slapped the horses with the reins. The man rounded a twist in the trail that climbed steadily upward. The trail got steeper and fell away on the left into a deep canyon.
Beth caught at Alex’s arm. “I don’t know anyone who lives out this way.”
Alex looked away from the increasingly narrow trail. “No one?” He carefully skirted a particularly slender section of the trail where the ground had caved away.
The road was shadowed from the setting sun and the notch in the trail seemed to open on an abyss. Who knew how far they’d drop if they went over. To Alex’s overactive imagination, it seemed like they’d fall for eternity.
Beth clenched her jaw and remained silent until they passed that spot. Now the trail, still narrow, was less treacherous. “Well, of course someone could be out here I don’t know, but look at how rugged it is. Look at the land. No cattle graze out here. This is wasteland. I’ve heard my folks talk about it plenty of times, that these highlands can’t support a ranch. And these woods go on and on for miles. They lead into the desert to the south, and the west is not much better. So where exactly are we going?”
“What do you think?” Alex looked up the trail. The man had vanished. What was going on? Why would he leave them so far behind? What if the trail branched off and Alex chose the wrong branch?
Alex slowed the team. They were losing speed anyway on the steep trail so it was more a matter of not goading the team forward. There was only one way to get the answers they needed.
“Hey!” His voice echoed off the hills and valleys. There was no answer. “Hey, mister.” Alex realized they didn’t know the man’s name. He’d told them nothing about himself.
“Stop the team!” Beth’s voice acted like a jammed-on brake.
Alex drew the team to a halt just before a bend in the trail that wound around an outcropping of rock. Gnarled trees blocked their view of the trail ahead so Alex couldn’t see the man.
The wind blew, whistling through the hills that rose around them. Alex strained to see the trail better as dusk grew heavier. One of the horses blew a whoosh of breath and shook his head, jingling the traces.
The darkness deepened.
“I don’t like this, Alex.” Beth surprised him by opening her doctor’s bag and producing a Colt revolver. “Something’s going on. Why did he lead us out here and abandon us?”
Alex looked from the gun to the bright gleam in Beth’s eyes and knew she’d use that weapon to defend herself if she had to. She’d defend him, too. Which sent a wash of failure and shame through him. He was still a coward. He didn’t even have the courage to prepare in the event of danger.
“Back the team up. Slowly,” Beth ordered.
“There’s a nasty cliff back a few yards. Help me watch for it.”
Beth was studying the back trail, the rocks overhead. Near as Alex could tell the woman was considering every possible problem before it happened. “Once we’re past that, there’s a wide enough spot to turn around.”
“I could go forward. I think the trail widens near that bend ahead.”
“No!” Beth raised her rifle so it was pointing at the sky, her hand on the trigger. “Back up. If he’s really in need of a doctor, he’ll come back after us. If he’s up to something, lying in wait right around that bend would be a real likely idea. Back the team up now!”
Alex obeyed her. Despite his years farther west with the cavalry and the training he’d had in survival, he’d never been in command. He’d taken orders, not given them, unless he was doctoring. Now wasn’t the time to start being in charge.
Alex eased the team back, watching the wheels as they neared the sheared-off spot that looked like a mountain-sized cougar had slashed at the trail. The horses seemed more than willing to push downhill instead of pulling up.
Beth watched for about ten seconds then a breath of relief caught Alex’s attention. “We’re past it. Now let’s go back another twenty feet.”
“There’s a spot where we can turn around.” Despite being something of a weakling in his wife’s eyes, Alex had driven his share of buckboards so he got the team backed properly and soon had them headed downhill back toward Mosqueros. They came past that treacherously narrow spot and Alex kept the team as close to the uphill side as possible.
“I wonder where he went.” Beth twisted to look back.
A bullet whizzed past her face. Missed her only because she’d turned.
“Get down!” Alex threw himself at Beth and the two of them tumbled over the side of the buckboard … and right down that cutout in the trail, into the abyss.
Twenty – one
We’ll ride out with you tomorrow and help you get settled.” Silas Harden handed Mandy a plate of food.
Beans, beefsteak, biscuits, and blazing hot coffee. The Harden crew had already eaten but their pot wasn’t empty, and they all settled in around the campfire, eager to listen to new voices. Mandy had t
old them their plans, and the Hardens had volunteered to help them get to the homestead. Mandy could barely conceal her almost desperate relief.
“Not necessary.” Sidney spoke around a scoop full of beans. He’d been eager to take their food, but Mandy could see his pride was stung by her tears. Sidney wasn’t going to accept anything else from the Hardens.
“I didn’t ask if we could.” Silas settled next to Belle without looking at Sidney. “I told you we were going to. You can ride with us, or trail after us if you prefer.”
Belle’s cool eyes went to Sidney with a very strange look Mandy couldn’t quite understand. Almost like Sidney was everything Belle expected a man to be. As if his behavior was no surprise.
“We’re coming.” Belle gave Silas a look of such solid support, Mandy could have built a cabin on that foundation. “We’ve got a while. It’s early enough we don’t have to worry about beating the weather. Silas and a few hands can run the herd in tomorrow morning and get settled up while we head for your property and get a cabin put together. My Silas is a hand at building.”
Silas smiled a private smile at his wife that made Mandy’s heart beat harder. She’d seen that smile pass between her parents many times. It was love, a private kind of love.
She and Sidney had never exchanged such a look. Would they ever? It occurred to her that a smile like that might come with time. And with knowing a person inside and out. She didn’t know much about Sidney, his childhood, his growing-up years. He’d come from Boston and he was a lawyer. There wasn’t much else.
“You’ll be glad for the help,” Silas said. “Winter comes early up here.”
“And stays late.” One of the blond girls, Emma, stretched her legs out toward the fire. She had a riding skirt on like Belle, and the same calm, competent look in her eyes. But there the resemblance ended. Mandy knew all these girls plus the baby boy were Belle’s children, but none of them looked a bit like their ma or pa except the little boy. Strange.
Mandy had a sudden flash of a wonderful idea. She clamped her mouth shut hard not to beg them to let her and Sidney go home with them. Why couldn’t they ask if the Hardens needed help? No shame in working for a ranch. They had some time before they had to put up a cabin. She and Sidney could come back to their homestead in the spring, have the whole summer to get settled. Mandy knew without a doubt, just from the way Belle had hugged her while she cried, that they’d be welcome, whether the Hardens needed hands or not.
It wasn’t a comfortable realization to Mandy that she wasn’t looking forward to being utterly alone with a gold-mining husband through a long, cold Montana winter. She suddenly felt ridiculously young and wanted her mama.
In Ma’s absence, Belle Harden would do.
They made quiet conversation around the fire. Mandy was surprised to learn that an old man among the hands, name of Shorty, recognized her pa’s name. He’d known Jarrod McClellen from years back in Colorado. It gave Mandy a strange feeling to get this glimpse of a grandfather she’d never known.
They talked about the life of a fur trapper in the Rockies and Mandy told about her family back in Texas until it was time to sleep. The Hardens provided Sidney and Mandy with bedrolls, but it was immediately obvious that the women slept on one side of the camp and the men on the other, neither Belle nor her married daughter, Lindsay, shared blankets with their men. Proper for a cattle drive, Mandy knew. The best way to preserve a smidgen of propriety when men and women traveled together like this.
Sidney only growled a bit as he went to bed down with the men. Not even he had much energy for nonsense. After the long days being bounced along on the train, stealing sleep in snatches, and the long rough day on the stagecoach, Mandy was falling asleep on her feet. She didn’t have a full minute to worry about how Sidney was handling another thwarted “wedding night.” Mandy was asleep before her head finished settling on her blanket.
She jerked awake in the pitch-dark and was on her feet and moving, her rifle around her neck and over her shoulder, before she was conscious of what had awakened her. She listened as her hand slid down the muzzle of her Winchester. She could pull that muzzle forward in one jerk, have her right hand on the trigger and her left steadyin’ the muzzle in half a heartbeat. She was the best shot in her family, better’n Pa or Ma, better even than Sally, and that was saying something.
It was coming from out in the pasture a ways, beyond the meager light cast by the red coals of the low-burning fire. Before she could step out into the dark, she heard movement and raised her gun, only to see Belle come up beside her, Silas right behind, and the whole camp stirring.
Mandy returned her Winchester to hang on her back and they all stood, frozen, listening.
“Horse.” Mandy said. “Have you got one foaling?”
Belle shook her head then said, “Least ways we’re not supposed to.”
The faint, distressed sound came again, and Belle made a noise of disgust. “It’s the blasted stallion of Tom Linscott’s.” Belle strode into the dark.
Mandy hurried to keep up. “A stallion is out there bothering the horses in your string?”
“Nope,” Silas said with a smile in his voice that Mandy couldn’t see in the dark, but she knew it was there all the same. “One of our mares ran off from town a few months back, and when we found her, she was running with Linscott’s stallion. We’re gonna have us a fine little foal. And that Linscott gets a stud fee for his horse. So we got us a bargain.”
Mandy and Silas moved after Belle, but slowly. No sense startling a mare busy adding to the horse population. As Mandy’s eyes adjusted to the dark away from the fire, she saw Belle kneeling beside a dark, wriggling lump on the ground. The mother licked and nudged at her baby.
“It’s a little colt,” Belle said, looking up from the baby. “I might just see if I can’t earn a few dollars on stud fees, like Linscott does.”
“We’re not raising that thing up as a stallion, Belle. That horse of Linscott’s is a brute. No one is safe within a country mile of the critter, and you know it.” Silas crossed his arms. “We have to geld him.”
Mandy noted that Silas’s order wasn’t given with an over supply of hope.
“We’ll see, Silas. We don’t have to decide tonight. I just didn’t think the horse’d been run off long enough to settle.” Belle laughed. “I can’t wait to tell Linscott. He’s loco on the subject of that horse of his. He’ll probably try and make me pay.”
Belle and Silas both laughed at that, and Mandy almost felt sorry for Tom Linscott.
The next morning they were up, fed a hearty breakfast, and heading for the homestead just as the sun began to lighten the sky. One of the hands made a fast trip to town and came back with some building tools. So, they could commence putting up a cabin right away.
Silas stayed with the cattle but promised to catch up with them as soon as he’d dealt with the cattle buyers and laid in supplies.
“Look at the colt, Sidney.” Mandy rode alongside her husband in the cool morning breeze.
The colt was pure black. Mandy recognized his regal lines, even in his skinny, uncoordinated movements. Mandy was tempted to agree with Belle that he ought to be held back for breeding.
Sidney glanced at the colt and shrugged. “A baby horse. So what?”
“He was born just last night.” Mandy knew Sidney hadn’t awakened. He was the only one in camp who hadn’t, save Tanner. “He’s a beauty.”
Mandy rode slowly, making sure the foal stayed ahead of her as it gamboled along behind its mother. With some trepidation, she leaned closer to Sidney. “What would you think about asking the Hardens if we could hire on for the winter? We could work for them and come back to put up the cabin in the spring.”
“No.” Sidney scowled at her in an expression Mandy was already fully tired of. “I’m not a ranch hand. I’m a lawyer. And besides, I’m going to dig for gold.”
“Being a miner isn’t any easier than being a cowhand, and a cowhand usually makes more money.” Mandy
should have never brought the idea up.
Belle dropped back beside them just as Sidney mentioned gold. “Best to use the land for wild game and a garden and lumber. You can live rich on the plants and on the animals that roam wild here and raise a good herd of beef with the sweat of your brow. It’s a rich land in ways other than gold. Gold is worth so much because it’s mighty scarce. Hard to find, harder yet to hold on to if you do find it. Helena started as a mining town and it only turned civilized when the gold played out. Finding gold is a purely uncivilized business.”
Sidney gave Belle the benefit of his scowl.
Belle held his gaze for far too long, as if she were studying him, looking inside his head, probably searching for a lick of sense.
Sidney turned away first and spurred his horse to ride with the men.
“I told Silas to send a telegram to your people in Texas, telling them you made it here safe and sound.”
Mandy gasped. “I meant to write a letter. I was so tired last night it never crossed my mind.”
“Well, just tell me what you’d like said. I don’t have any paper with me, but I can contrive a letter and get it to your folks. Maybe I’ll have Lindsay write it. She doesn’t get snowed in so early.”
Mandy reached out and caught Belle’s hand. “Thank you. That would mean so much to me.” For a second, Mandy was afraid she might cry again. “I never cry. What is wrong with me?”
Mandy looked away and her eyes settled on the foal. She tried to focus on the little guy to distract herself from the nonsense of tears. His mother, working today as a pack animal, was at the end of a string of horses. Because Mandy had dropped back to follow the colt, now she and Belle were bringing up the rear.
The shining black colt kicked up his heels and ran away from its mother. Mandy smiled to see his vigor.
Nodding, Belle said quietly, her eyes on Sidney, “Silas is my fourth husband and the first one who’s amounted to much.”
A squeak escaped from Mandy’s lips. “Four husbands?” She’d never heard of such a thing.
“The Rockies are a brutally hard land, Mandy.”
Sophie's Daughters Trilogy Page 15
