No Way Up

by Mary Connealy

  The boy nodded. His silence, his stillness, was unnatural. As little as she knew about children, Angelique knew a boy should be active and noisy.

  Unless he was weak with hunger.

  Angelique had promised God that if He would deliver her from Edward’s cruelty, she would devote her life to her faith. In fact, she’d done more than promise. Even in the midst of her sorrows and long before the cruelty ended, she’d turned her whole life over to the Lord and committed herself to Him, striving to be faithful to His teachings.

  Edward had gone, yet new problems presented themselves. She’d done her best to keep her vow through it all. She found it simple to do that now.

  Trying for a hearty tone, hoping the woman might believe it came from having plenty, Angelique whispered as if she told a great secret, “Dora, will you please come in and eat with me? I don’t want to sit at a table filled with men. I would be glad to buy you a meal just to have your company.” Wanting to remember the woman’s quiet lie and not hurt her pride, Angelique added, “I will help you with the children so they don’t get lost. I would be so grateful if you would let me help.”

  Her eyes met the young mother’s, and both of them knew it was an offer the woman couldn’t possibly refuse. Maybe Dora would have refused for herself, but her children were hungry. Tears filled the woman’s eyes, though she didn’t let them fall.

  With a quick nod, she said, “Thank you. That is a kind and generous offer. We accept.”

  The train slowed, and they stayed busy holding the children so that the rough train with its heavy braking didn’t knock them all to the floor.

  Once they got into the station house, the woman was so hungry and so occupied with her children, Angelique was quite sure they didn’t notice she skipped the meal. There wasn’t enough to get three hungry mouths to California, but if Angelique went without, there was enough to get to New Mexico Territory. Maybe Aunt Margaret could help from there. Instead of donating to the orphanage, Angelique would have to ask for more to aid her new friends.

  Well, God had called her to the task, and she would not shirk.

  Her stomach growled, and she told it to shut up.

  10

  Heath swung his pack over his neck by its leather straps. He had venison jerky, hard biscuits, and a canteen. He planned on eating on top of the mesa.

  He tied the rope between his waist and Sadie’s. For some reason, it struck him as very right to be tied to her, which was pure stupid because he was a lowly hired man with a few dollars in his pocket, and she was part owner of one of the biggest spreads in New Mexico Territory.

  Not that long ago he’d wondered if she even knew his name. No doubt she had it now.

  He grabbed a slim outcropping just a foot overhead. There was a place for a toe at about knee level. He pulled himself up and looked back at Sadie, who stood watching him, arms crossed, as skeptical as any woman who’d ever lived.

  “Am I fired or not? Do you remember how we left things?”

  Shaking her head, she said, “I reckon you’re not fired. But I don’t know if Justin will pay you for this day’s work. Unless you’re back to work by midmorning, of course.”

  “Why’d you come along if you’re so sure we’re going to fail?”

  He remembered his brother Seth, in one of his crazy moments, asking, “Do you ever think wild wolves are calling you?”

  Heath had been the man of the family from his earliest memory. That left no time for such foolishness as thinking wolves could talk. But Heath had to admit that occasionally he found deep inside himself a wild streak. A deeply buried, well-controlled core of pure recklessness. That didn’t make a man crazy, and Seth wasn’t crazy—he was just sometimes way too close to going over the edge. Heath understood now how Seth felt.

  And all that crazy had to do with forgetting about this reckless climb with Sadie, and instead dragging her into his arms.

  He’d probably end up fired again.

  “I mostly came just because I was tired of listening to Justin and Cole order me around.” She sounded mighty sassy. “A big part of the reason I went to work at the orphanage was to do something useful with my life. Out here I was never anything but the lady of the manor.”

  He remembered his ma working their meager land by herself to grow a bare-bones garden. Hunting, milking the cow. Fighting blizzards while she kept body and soul together waiting for her worthless husband to stop by the house. He had a little trouble feeling too sorry for Miss Lady of the Manor.

  Thinking it unwise to tell her that, he began scaling. She was about ten feet below him, her eyes fixed on the mesa top, watching for a gunman. She had just enough slack in the rope to give him room to climb while she held tight, or at least as tightly as possible until he secured the next handhold. Once he was secure, she’d close the distance while he looked overhead. Then she’d get a good hold, and Heath would climb again. As if she really did plan to catch him when he fell.

  He paused to double-check the rope binding them together. It was solid. He’d done enough climbing in Julia’s Cavern—which was how he thought of the place—to know his knots.

  “You said you wore those britches and went out to ride and work with your brothers.” They looked to be spending long hours together today. He might as well get to know her better.

  “My brothers protected me from anything dangerous.”

  “Not a bad idea. Ranching is rough work. Wicked horns and hooves, rattlesnakes, cougars.”

  “They were protecting me from sweat, Heath.”

  He stopped and looked down at her, unable to stop a smile.

  Her pretty hazel eyes flashed with irritation. “From getting calluses on my hands. From messing up my hair.”

  With a short laugh, Heath said, “The more you talk, the more you sound like me.”

  “Your big brothers wouldn’t let you mess up your hair?”

  “Not that, not exactly.” He laughed again. “But they sure wouldn’t move aside and let me run my own land. I wasn’t in charge of nuthin’ and it didn’t suit me. Even though I own a quarter of the ranch, it’s just one big ranch. Not four separate ones. Or we ran it like that, anyway, even though it’s my name on the deed of my share of the acres. And being the youngest”—extending an arm overhead, he pulled himself up, then reached again—“well, it wasn’t ever gonna change.”

  The lower part of this cliff wasn’t real friendly, but it’d have to get a sight worse than this to keep him from reaching the top in short order.

  “So I took off. And probably made ’em feel mighty bad.” He didn’t know how he and Sadie had ended up talking about him. Getting to know her sounded fun. Talking over everything he’d ever done was just a flat-out waste of time. He quit talking before he said one more stupid word.

  He climbed for an hour before he found a ledge that was about a foot wide. Time for a rest. He swung up and sat on the ledge, then looked down. Sadie’s attention was on the rocks so she hadn’t noticed he’d stopped. He reeled in the rope hand over hand until she got to the level of his toes. Startled, she glanced up and her hand slipped.

  A tight shriek escaped in the quiet morning.

  Hoping she hadn’t alerted anyone, Heath hoisted her up. She dangled like a spider on the end of its web for just a few seconds before he quick settled her beside him. And there she sat, not one spidery thing about her.

  “Time for a break, boss lady.” Somehow he liked her better when he remembered she was his boss—or maybe he liked her in a more normal, friendly way. Being reminded she was his boss helped him not think so much about how pretty she was. Helped a little, anyway.

  Whatever mixed-up way he felt, it wasn’t salted with the frustration of not being the boss on his own land.

  Her cheeks were flushed from toiling up the cliff. Her hair was loose from its bun, and wisps of white-blond curls had escaped to frame her face. And in the middle of all that shone a pair of eyes, gold streaking through brown with hints of green. Eyes so interesting he could lo
ok at them all day just to try to describe them better. Except those eyes held the shadows of worry. More than for any other reason, she was here with him to get away from the steady fretting about her pa and loneliness for her ma.

  Sadie settled in on the ledge and brushed the hair back from her face. “We’re sitting on a ledge about fifty feet up.”

  Heath looked down. “I think it’s more like seventy-five. A long way to fall.”

  He checked the ledge for signs of crumbling. It was fine. They could sit here in safety a long old time.

  “Fifty or seventy-five, it doesn’t matter.”

  “What do you mean?” Heath was startled by her casual remark.

  “Once you’re past what’ll kill you if you fall, what do a few more feet matter?”

  Heath said, “True enough.” He handed her the canteen, and they both had a drink. “Ready to go?”

  Sadie nodded and climbed to her feet. Heath enjoyed the graceful way she moved for a bit too long before he shoved himself up. “We’ve got another maybe fifty feet of easy going.”

  “Easy?” Sadie peered down at the sheer rock.

  “Yep, compared to the last fifty feet. That’s the part Justin says can’t be scaled.” Heath braced himself to start climbing. “Remember to keep quiet.”

  Sadie was studying the rock and she turned to Heath. “What’s going on here?”

  Heath shook his head, confused. “Uh, we’re mountain climbing?”

  “No, I mean we’re talking about someone being up there while we’re planning to have to fight for every inch all the way up. If they got up there, so can we. And if where we are isn’t climbable, then we’re missing something.”

  The comment froze Heath in place. “You’re right.” He was silent for a moment before he said, “We’re either wrong about there being someone up there or we haven’t found the route they used.”

  Sadie could hear from Heath’s tone that he didn’t think he was wrong about there being someone up there.

  “We didn’t go all the way around the base. We were trying to stay away from places visible from the ranch. Maybe somewhere farther on we would have found a better way.”

  “Justin said he tried dozens of times to climb the mesa, and this spot was the one that got him the highest, remember? If someone came in and cared enough to work their way up, why wouldn’t they start here?”

  “This was the way I always tried, too. Maybe whoever’s up there at the top did climb here, but they’re just better climbers than we are.”

  “Or maybe there isn’t anyone up there after all.”

  Sadie faced the rock wall squarely and slapped it. “Which means we’re completely wasting our time. We might as well admit defeat.”

  “Sadie, I can climb this mesa. If we don’t make it today, I’ll get climbing tools and scale it another day.”

  “But there’s no good reason to go up there.”

  “Finding gold is a decent enough reason.”

  A furrow appeared on Sadie’s brow. “Is that what you’re doing this for—to find gold?”

  “I don’t have much in the way of a thirst for riches. I figure I could be a wealthy man back in Colorado.”

  “Really? Wealthy?”

  “Mighty comfortable at least. I own a nice stretch of land and have a good-sized herd of cattle. I reckon being wealthy means having all I need and plenty I want. And since I’ve got that already, gold wouldn’t change things much.”

  “I’ve seen gold change everything.”

  “Did it change your family?”

  Sadie hesitated.

  “I’m going to guess that means yes. What happened?”

  Sadie seemed suddenly very interested in the rock an inch in front of her face. “I feel like I’m gossiping about my family.”

  Which meant gold had changed her family for the worse.

  “Let’s do some climbing,” she said.

  She sounded so grim, Heath almost flinched. He decided to climb and he sure as certain kept his curiosity about what she was upset about quiet.

  He found the first handhold overhead, a notch in the smooth rock about two inches wide with a downward slant to it. He felt crumbling gravel along the top of the notch and brushed it clean. Most of the places he’d gripped were the same. There was no going fast. Instead it was nothing but slow and careful progress.

  Heath had talked this over with Justin in detail and he kept hearing Justin’s smug assurance that it only got harder the higher they climbed, until there was no way up at all. And Justin had tried and tried and tried.

  It would be a pleasure to make the boss—a man Heath respected greatly—eat his words. And Heath was pretty sure that had to do with his own big brothers and Justin didn’t deserve it at all. But it’d still be fun, and he couldn’t wait to prove everyone wrong.

  About three-fourths of the way up, the rock wall went completely smooth.

  “Hold up, Sadie.” Heath stopped, looked down and swallowed hard. She was there, sticking with him. There was no doubt in his mind he could get to the mesa top with the right equipment. But he didn’t have that equipment. He needed the spikes he’d ordered. He should never have let her come along.

  Just as he’d done every few minutes, again he tested the rope binding them. He studied the wall with the skill of a longtime climber. There were lots of little cracks, but from this point on they were thinner than his fingertips. Besides that, the hairline cracks almost all ran up and down, not side to side. They wouldn’t work for hands, even less so for feet.

  He knew what he had to do, and he hadn’t come prepared.

  He’d climbed around a lot in Julia’s Cavern, that beautiful, dangerous cavern near his family’s ranch in Colorado. And he’d gone along when people had come to see it, lured by Julia’s books. Both tourists and scientists had made the trip out. Many of them weren’t skilled at climbing treacherous walls, and a few, especially the scientists, had pushed into some risky areas. Heath had helped a lot and learned the ways of climbing rocks.

  And he knew he could keep Sadie safe—but not today, not without special preparation. Before he told her the bad news, he looked to his right and realized what he was looking at.

  The top of the pass where Chance had almost been killed. He was at the same level with it. Of course, anyone on the top of the pass could be looking right at him, watching him climb.

  Yet if he got to the flat top of the mesa, he’d be high enough that no one could see him if he was careful. If someone was on the mesa and watching, he could see who was riding into the narrow gap of the canyon mouth. He could signal to someone on the top of the canyon the exact moment to start a rockslide.

  The canyon top there had been swept clear of any loose stones, but what about the other side? The avalanche had come from the west side, which was now clean of stray rocks. But the east side was still studded with them.

  He had thought of the view from up here before, but only now as he was looking at it did he realize just what it meant. Two men, working together, could have timed that avalanche just right.

  And they could do it again.

  Maybe Big Red hadn’t even knocked down that fence. Maybe the fence had fallen with some man’s help.

  With Big Red in the canyon, every man on the ranch knew Chance would go in after him. It was a rugged ride, and Chance wasn’t a man to order others to do something he wouldn’t do himself. Besides that, Chance took the lead as he always did. Whoever started the rockslide didn’t wait for another of the cowhands to get in the way of those rocks. They’d aimed at Chance.

  They’d been thinking it was an accident, but in fact it was attempted murder.

  Who would want to kill Chance Boden?

  He was a wealthy man, and money often drove evil men to murder. But if Chance died, his wife would inherit, then his children. Killing Chance didn’t get a dry-gulcher anything.

  He needed to talk to Cole and Justin, find out if their pa had enemies. Someone needed to scout the top of that pass an
d see if they could read sign that the rockslide had been helped along.

  With a shake of his head, he remembered what was most important. He needed to get down off this rock. The taste of defeat in his mouth, he looked down. “Sadie?”

  She stopped climbing and glanced up at him. “What?”

  He swallowed hard. “We’ve got to go back.”

  “No!” She’d bullied her way into this climb, and he should have told her no from the start. Because he hadn’t, they now had to back down over one hundred yards, every step of it treacherous. And backward was always harder than forward.

  Worse yet, Sadie had to lead, at least until they reached the ledge they’d rested on. There was no way for Heath to get past her.

  His weak will had put her smack-dab in the middle of danger.

  11

  “You men help unload our order from that train car.” It chafed at Justin to be in town while his sister was attempting to climb a mountain, but there was no way to get men to follow if you didn’t lead, and he needed to run the ranch in Pa’s absence.

  And his stubborn baby sister just would not wait. He should have fired Heath Kincaid a whole lot harder.

  Justin had to admit he was real impressed with Sadie’s stubborn streak. Muttering to himself, he said, “She reminds me of me.”

  His boots stomped with hollow thuds on the train station platform, hurrying, trying to cut every minute out of this trip.

  His headlong rush broke off when a young woman, wearing a gray dress so faded he could only guess it might’ve been black at one time, appeared at the top of the platform steps. Messy hair, as yellow as the sun. She quaked like the leaves of an aspen. Her face was as pale as the snowcap on Mount Kebbel.

  Behind her, another woman held the quaking woman’s arm as best she could. But the second woman had a baby in one arm and she struggled to hang on to the quaky lady in the narrow doorway of the train.

  Both women were skinny to the point of being walking skeletons. But the one behind looked sturdier than the one ahead. The one behind also looked very, very worried.