Sophie's Daughters Trilogy

by Mary Connealy

  Logan looked at her. Their eyes caught, hers bright blue and red rimmed. He wanted to paint her when she’d been crying. But he had no paint. “You’re right, Sally. But you’re the only woman I’ve ever met who made me even want to think less about art. I doubt I could really be good to you, but I care enough that I’d feel awful when I wasn’t, and that’s no kind of life for either of us.”

  She nodded. With a tug on her reins, she turned her horse to aim up the trail, searching for a place to hole up.

  With a good field of fire. So, if called to fight, he might get a chance to kill a man.

  Sick with dread, Logan fell in behind her and tried to force himself to think only about the scenery and what he’d do if he had a pencil and sketchbook and time. But instead he fixated on the beautiful woman riding away from him.

  A woman he could try to capture on canvas for the rest of his life without ever exploring all the expressions that flitted across her amazingly lovely face.

  A woman he’d just kissed mindless then thrown away with both hands.

  Twenty – two

  Right there, Fergus.” Tulsa raised his rifle in one smooth motion to his shoulder, sighted along the gun barrel, and took aim.

  Fergus looked in the direction his saddle partner was looking and saw two riders. Far up the slope.

  Tulsa jerked his gun down with a grunt of disgust. “Too far. All a shot would do is warn ’em.”

  “One of ’em looked like—a woman.” Fergus couldn’t take his eyes off what he’d seen. “An Indian woman with a gun strapped on her back.”

  “They’re too far away to be sure of that.”

  “I know it. But I’m sure just the same. And the other one was too big to be the cowpoke you shot.”

  Fergus and Tulsa exchanged a long look.

  “There could be other people out here. Maybe these aren’t even the ones we’ve been hunting. That cabin might belong to someone with no stake in this game.” Tulsa jabbed his gun muzzle at the place where the riders crossed just as they vanished into a cluster of trees.

  “That gun, the one the woman had strapped on—that’s the way the man I shot wore his gun. You don’t see that much.”

  “You think the man you shot was a woman dressed in man’s clothes?”

  Slowly shaking his head back and forth, Fergus rubbed his hand over the bandolier crossing his chest. The belt of bullets reminded him of how the little Indian gal had worn that rifle. How the cowpoke wore his, too. He tried to sort it out. “He was little enough to be a she, I reckon.”

  “I regretted shooting that woman off her horse when we waylaid those folks. I haven’t seen a woman in too long.” Tulsa’s smile was pure evil, and Fergus knew the man wasn’t talking about seeing. “Maybe we can have another chance.”

  Fergus knew the man was now more determined than ever to catch up with that pair riding far above; and that suited Fergus just fine. “They got off that trail somehow. We’ll figure it out.” Fergus gathered his reins.

  “Not that way.” Tulsa kept his eye on the spot they’d last seen the pair.

  “How else?” Fergus looked at the land between him and the riders. It was a terrible thing to imagine, jagged, no broken trail, impenetrable forest broken in places by sheer rock.

  “We go forward, find a way up from this end instead of going back. We’ll cut miles off the trip.”

  “You think we’re going to climb that mountain?” Fergus slung his reins around his pommel then lifted his hat with one hand and ran the other through his hair, agitated. Scared. Like that streak in his hair was a streak of cowardice.

  “Yeah. It can be done. Even if we have to go on foot. We’ll climb up there and get ahead of ’em, lie in wait, shoot ’em and strip ’em of their money and guns, and climb back down for our horses. Or we’ll take theirs and spend all the time we want riding back to ours. Let’s go.” Tulsa kicked his horse into a trot without waiting for Fergus to say yes, no, or maybe.

  Which made Fergus’s fingers twitch to put a bullet in the man’s back. When Curly had been alive, this’d been Fergus’s gang. He made the decisions, and Curly backed him. Tulsa never did anything but go along. Now, without it being two to one, Tulsa was giving orders, and Fergus didn’t like it. He took one long moment to think of killing Tulsa, taking all the money in those stuffed saddlebags of his, forgetting that pair riding high above, and lighting a shuck for San Francisco. It would be easy. Tulsa wasn’t even watching his back. But they’d been riding the outlaw trail together a long time. Right now, Tulsa Bob Wiley was the only friend Fergus had in the world.

  On the other hand, Fergus knew how much money he had, and Tulsa had an even cut. If Tulsa died, Fergus was a much richer man. And he could stay rich if he kept away from poker and whiskey and women. A man got poor having that kind of fun. Though what was the point of being rich if you couldn’t have some fun?

  Fergus set aside the idea of blowing his cousin out of the saddle. He could always kill his only friend later, should the need arise. He kicked his horse into a fast walk to catch up. It was unwise to turn your back on a back-shooter. Family sticking together wasn’t as tempting as cash in hand.

  Tom carried Mandy into the house with such quick, determined steps she had the feeling he wasn’t saving her so much as running to a place he could put her down so he could escape.

  Both babies yowled now from their bedroom.

  Tom looked at Mandy, his eyes so wide she could see white all the way around the pupils. His eyes darted from her, to her belly, to the door to the girls’ room. Mandy suspected that if he’d been in a room with three sticks of dynamite, their fuses all lit, the man wouldn’t have been any more upset.

  He bent to set her down on a chair then straightened without letting go. “You should go to bed. No, you should sit out here. No, let me take you in with the babies. Two did you say? Two babies and one on the way? In under three years. Is your husband a complete idiot?”

  Mandy could think of no response that should be uttered aloud.

  “I left my horses standing there untied.” He whirled around with her still in his arms as if he meant to go put up the horses, carrying her the whole time.

  Mandy’s belly relaxed and she could think again. And take charge. Someone needed to. Her husband wasn’t the only idiot man around. “Put me down.”

  Why, oh why hadn’t Sally gotten here in time?

  “No!” He shouted the word and looked at her as if she’d asked him to hurl her over a cliff.

  “I’m fine. The baby is coming but not this very instant. I’ll go check on the girls while you tend to your horses.”

  “I’m not leaving you alone!” Tom practically roared the words at her. “If your husband was here I’d snap him in two like a twig.”

  Mandy patted his arm. “Well, if he was here you wouldn’t be all upset because he isn’t here, now would you? So here or not, you don’t end up getting to snap any twigs.” She managed to catch his eyes, which were still darting around the room.

  It reminded her of a little bluebird that had fallen into the house through the chimney one day. The brightly colored bird had crashed frantically into the walls and ceiling while Mandy rushed to open every door and window, hoping the poor little animal would get out before it hurt itself.

  She hoped Tom’s blue eyeballs didn’t go flying out like that bird had once it’d found an escape hatch.

  “Put me down.” Small words. Spoken slowly, loudly. Direct orders.

  He seemed to be responding. Setting her on her feet, he hovered as if he expected her to keep sinking right to the floor. When she stood, that went a long way toward calming him.

  “Put the horses in the barn.”

  Shaking his head no frantically, he said, “Okay.”

  “Now, Tom. Hurry.”

  Those fluttering, flying eyeballs seemed to understand the word hurry. He turned and dashed out of the house so fast Mandy was relieved the door was standing open or, right now, there’d be a Tom Linscott-sh
aped hole in it.

  She focused on the crazy man who’d stopped by, to keep her from thinking of what lay ahead. Turning to the girls’ bedroom, she went to it, forcing a serene expression on her face, hoping not to signal to the girls all her many fears.

  The door swung inward as soon as she’d turned the knob. Angie, out of her crib, was working to escape.

  “I’m sorry Mama was slow, honey.” Smiling, Mandy scooped her up and gave her a hug. “I’m sorry I left you and baby Catherine to cry for so long.”

  “Mama sad?”

  Mandy tried to decide if there was something in her expression that prompted Angela’s question, or if she thought the word sorry meant sad. Giving the little imp another hug, she said, “No, Mama is very happy. We have company.”

  Angie’s brow furrowed. And why not? How could this little one know what the word company meant? Since no one had ever stopped by to visit before.

  Mandy carried Angie to Catherine’s crib, did a quick diaper change for Catherine, and helped Angie with her own newly learned potty skills in the little commode they kept inside. Then she scooped both girls into her arms with a hard hug and went back into the main room of the house. She settled them at the table and got two tin cups of milk ready and a slice of bread and jelly.

  Thank heavens the cow finally bore her calf and we have milk again.

  The girls finished their little snack while she had another contraction, this one so long and hard it scared her, but she didn’t think the girls noticed. It passed, and she picked them both up and headed for the rocking chair just as Tom came sprinting through the door she’d still never closed.

  “Put them down!” He rushed at her and scared the girls to death. When he reached for Angie, she shrieked and wrapped her arms around Mandy’s neck so tightly it threatened to strangle her.

  Mandy felt another contraction begin.

  Tom started pacing back and forth across the room.

  Oh yeah, you’re going to be a lot of help.

  Twenty – three

  Sally had an itch between her shoulder blades that told her to keep riding hard and fast.

  “Stop!” Logan pointed.

  Sure enough, there was a cave opening with rocks in the front that gave them nice protection and a good field of fire. Too bad all her instincts told her to keep moving.

  “I wonder how far we are from Mandy’s.” What a dream come true it would be to reach Mandy’s house. To have her fast shooting, deadeye sister at her side to face down these bad men. But Luther and Buff should be coming. Surely Wise Sister had found them. Surely they’d be here soon.

  Logan shrugged. “You have no idea exactly where she lives?”

  “There was a hand-drawn map from Helena to Mandy’s house, but I never had it. Pa got it in the mail from Luther and gave it to the colonel, who died with it in the gunfight. One of the men in our party knew this area so we trusted to him when we left the train to take a shortcut. He did his figuring and we were following him. I saw the map from Mandy and I heard the man leading us talk about how he planned to go. But I don’t know the area so it didn’t make much sense to me. I just knew the general direction. Then after I was unconscious, you took me on a day-long ride in the wrong direction.”

  “Not the exact wrong direction.” Logan shrugged.

  “I can’t even figure out if we rode toward Mandy’s or away. I know you said we headed mostly west, some north. I think Mandy’s cabin is mostly west, some south. We might be closer than we think.”

  And what if they were close? Sally thought of leading two back-shooters to Mandy and abandoned the idea of even trying to keep moving. “Up until now we’ve followed Wise Sister’s orders; no reason to stop now.”

  Logan nodded and swung down from his horse in front of the tall cave opening. There was space between the pile of huge rocks in the cave mouth to lead the horses inside. Sally saw nowhere likely to tie them up out here.

  Logan stepped in, leading his horse. “No, this isn’t possible. It can’t be.” His voice echoed out of the black opening that swallowed up his mount. He sounded strange, almost scared.

  Sally swung down and hobbled after him, not using her crutches. The cast supported her leg without pain. She was still a little edgy, as if even now someone was watching them, drawing a bead.

  Entering the cave with her black mustang following placidly along, she stumbled over her feet to a haul at what she saw. Then she forced herself forward to get herself and her horse under cover.

  There was a huge room that reached up at least twenty feet, but that wasn’t the unbelievable part. Weird columns of stone stood reaching from floor to ceiling like a dozen support pillars. The columns seemed to glow in the dark of the cave. Sally leaned close to the nearest one. It was whiteish gray and wet. She reached her hand out. “Don’t touch it.”

  “Did you see that, Fergus?”

  Snapping his head around, Fergus looked where Tulsa pointed. Straight up a sheet of rock that was mighty short on handholds. “See what?”

  “A horse. We rounded this clump of trees just in time for me to see the back end of a black mustang going behind those rocks.”

  “Which pile of rocks? This whole place is nothing but a pile of rocks.”

  “That mound chest high, in that clear spot.” Tulsa pointed as he urged his horse closer to Fergus. “There must be a cave behind that granite. I only saw one horse, but there’s not room behind there for two.”

  Tulsa’s eyes shone with a greedy, hungry gleam. “We’ve got ’em cornered if we can get up there fast enough.”

  Fergus looked all the way up that slope and gulped. It was a long, risky climb, several hundred yards. The last stretch looked purely impossible, but they’d decide if it was when they got up there. If they hurried, they could get within shooting distance in time to pin down this pair in the cave and take their time closing in on ’em.

  Fergus ran a hand down the bandolier of bullets on his chest. They had enough ammunition to start a war. They could pin those riders down for a long, long time. One of ’em could cover the cave mouth while the other climbed and got into position. With two of them, they could take all the time they wanted climbing up there.

  “Let’s go.” Tulsa rode his horse forward as far up the incline as possible. Then he swung down to use a scrub tree for a hitchin’ post.

  Riding along behind, it burned Fergus bad that Tulsa was giving orders again.

  “Move faster,” Tulsa said. “We finish this today, then ride for San Francisco for the winter. I’ve got a hankerin’ for some whiskey and a hand or two of poker. I’m tired of living hard and cold.”

  Hard was the way Fergus wanted to hit Tulsa. Cold, well, that might well be how Fergus left his saddle partner. Cold and dead after they finished with those riders hiding in the cave. Fergus needed Tulsa to make sure there was no one left to tell the tale. They’d finish this then Fergus would double his money with one smashing bullet in Tulsa’s back. It’d be the best day’s work he’d ever done.

  Tulsa yelled a few more orders as they clawed their way up that cliff.

  Fergus almost enjoyed how much that irritated him because it would make killing his friend a whole lot easier.

  Snatching back her fingers, Sally wondered if the columns held the roof up. “I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

  “They’re stalactites. Dear Lord God in heaven, thank You.” Logan’s voice was so reverent Sally knew the man was truly praying.

  And well he should be. She was glad these stone columns were here, too. “These are great. If those vermin catch up with us, we’ll have a great shield. All we’ve got to do is get behind these. As far to the back of the cave as we can.”

  “Wise Sister had to know they were here. How could she not have told me?” Logan reached out and rested a hand on one a few feet ahead of the one he’d forbidden Sally to touch. He had no reaction to her mention of gunfire.

  The man was a moron. A moron she was in love with.

 
; And what did that make her?

  “This is an artist thing, isn’t it?” Sally’s jaw clenched. She’d been being a good sport about his painting, hadn’t she? But there were limits.

  “I’ve got to get canvas. I’ve got to find a way to paint this.”

  He didn’t seem to have heard a word she said. Well, his head would clear when lead started flying.

  Of course maybe they were safe, far from trouble, and the itch she felt was just her being overly cautious. In which case, once she was sure they were safe, she might clear his head by slamming it into one of his stag-tights, or whatever he called them.

  Ignoring him, she led her horse into the cave to find a place to protect the mustang. The cave was deep, too, as if it sank into the heart of the mountain. Water dripped everywhere, and those weird columns glowed like lanterns, yet cast no light, so she could only see with the bit of light from the cave door. The cave floor was wet enough she paused to take her crutches off the saddle to keep her cast dry. Then she wove carefully between the pillars on the rough floor until she found a small spring near the back corner. Her horse moved past her, its nose reaching for the water, its hooves echoing in the cave.

  Though Sally worried about the water being safe to drink, a mountain horse like this little mustang was probably a better judge than she was, so she let the thirsty animal have its head.

  Going back, she relieved Logan of his horse while he stared at the column as if he could use it to see into heaven. Logan’s horse was soon beside Sally’s drinking with soft, rushing contentment. Unable to resist, Sally lay down on her belly to drink. She wondered if she’d have to lead Logan to water, like she had his horse.