by Kaki Warner
“I’ll be along in a moment.”
After the front door closed behind them, Richard frowned at Audra, then at the buggy house. Thankfully, neither the Abrahams nor Father were in sight. “Was that your father I saw, Audra?”
“My father? When?”
“Just now. Out back.”
She pretended confusion while her mind raced for a plausible lie. Then she smiled and shook her head. “You must have seen Uncle Edward, Father’s older brother. He took ill not long after my aunt died, and has been slow to recover. We’ve taken him in until Father returns.”
“I could have sworn he was the professor.”
“They do look much alike, don’t they? Although since his illness, Uncle Edward has become alarmingly weak. I’m not sure how much longer we can keep him here without proper nursing. But I would hate to put him in a home. They’re so awful. I’m quite worried about him.” She realized she was babbling but couldn’t seem to stop herself. She was a horrid liar.
Richard’s dark gaze bored into her in that intense way she had always found intrusive. “Maybe on my next visit I might meet him. Next week, perhaps?”
“That would be lovely.” The muscles in her face trembled with the effort to hold her smile. “But do let us know when you plan to come, won’t you, so we can be sure he’s up to a visit. As I said, he’s quite frail.”
“Of course. Until then.”
As he let himself out, Audra collapsed into the chair at the desk, tears further blurring her faulty vision. Now what was she to do?
Winnie came in, still winded from her chase out back. “What happened?”
“Richard Villars saw Father. I told him it was my uncle Edward, but I don’t think he believed me. He’s invited himself back next week to meet him. What should I tell him?”
“The truth.”
Audra pressed fingertips against her throbbing temple. “I fear it’s gone too far, Winnie. If Richard tells Uxley, he’ll feel honor-bound to bring my deception to light. Father’s reputation will be ruined and all his hard work will be forever shrouded in doubt. And if I go to jail for fraud, you and Curtis will be on the street and Father will be shuffled off to one of those wretched institutions for mentally impaired indigents. I can’t allow that to happen.”
“Mr. Villars care enough to propose to you last year. Maybe he still take you.” Winnie gave Audra a critical look. “’Specially you fix up some.”
Audra doubted it. Richard didn’t like being thwarted and had taken her refusal hard. But how could she have accepted him—even if she’d wanted to—without revealing Father’s dementia? And if he found out she’d been lying to him and had cheated him out of a coveted award, there was no telling what he might do.
“It’s too big a risk, Winnie. Richard has much to gain by exposing Father, and you know he has always been ambitious.”
“Then leave.”
She looked up in surprise. “Leave? How? You know I have barely enough money to keep the four of us fed. And even if I could afford it, where could we go?”
Winnie dug through the waste bin, then straightened, the sealed envelope Audra had thrown away earlier in her hand. “How about here?”
“Heartbreak Creek?”
“Why not? You say your daddy inherited a cabin there. Dismal-sounding town like that be a fine place to hide. I bet nobody there care that you wrote your daddy’s papers for him.” She tossed the letter on the desk. “Jail, marriage to Mr. Villars, or Heartbreak Creek. You pick. Though after thirty years married to that no-talking Curtis, I had the choice, I’d pick jail or that dismal place. Be livelier, that for sure.”
Audra pulled the society’s letter from her pocket and unfolded it. Richard had said something about a grant. If it was enough—
She gasped when she saw the amount. With that much money, they could cover a lot of miles—assuming Father was strong enough to make the trip, and the cabin was even habitable, and she was willing to leave everything she’d ever known.
A ghastly prospect, but what other option did she have?
Pulling out her pen and a fresh sheet of paper, she began to write.
Dear Richard,
I know this comes as a surprise, but Father has asked us to join him in New Mexico. By the time this reaches you, we will already be gone, and I doubt we’ll return in the near future . . .
Two
MARCH 1871, COLORADO TERRITORY
He should offer assistance. That would be the neighborly thing to do.
Instead, Ethan Hardesty crossed his arms and outstretched legs and settled back on the bench outside the Boot Creek Depot. The woman was clearly out of her depth. Yet she kept at it. He’d give her high marks for that, at least.
A gust of wind flipped up the hem of her skirt, giving him a fine view of narrow feet encased in delicate low-top shoes. City people. They never understood that in hard country like this, sturdy footwear was second only to a good jacket, no matter the season.
Hearing a ruckus toward the end of the idling train, he glanced back to see a drover lead a fractious bay down the ramp and hand the lead to an elderly African man who was obviously frightened of the animal. Sawing on the lead and stepping lively to keep his feet from beneath the prancing hooves, the man wrestled the horse over to where the woman was supervising the unloading of a closed, four-wheel, single-horse buggy in the Amish style.
It wasn’t going well.
In addition to getting in the way of the freight handlers, she was busy trying to calm the horse and the old man holding him, attend questions and complaints from a cantankerous Negro woman she called Winnie, keep an eye on a mumbling old man—probably her father—and hang on to a thrashing badger-sized dog that barked continuously.
It was like watching a circus. A poorly run circus.
Ethan couldn’t remember the last time he had been so entertained.
The man he assumed was her father made a shuffling escape, heading purposefully down the track toward the outskirts of town. Ethan knew there was nothing out that way but rough mountain country, so he kept him in sight, waiting for the woman to do something.
She continued to harass the freight handlers.
Twenty yards. Sixty. Was anyone watching the old fellow?
Hell. With a sigh, he rose and walked toward the woman. On the way, he stopped beside the dancing horse. Grabbing the lead close to the halter ring, he gave a hard yank to get the animal’s attention then looked him hard in the eye. “Whoa.”
The horse tossed its head.
Ethan yanked again, this time keeping pressure on the lead. “Whoa.”
The horse blinked at him, nostrils flared. After a brief staring match, the animal slowly let his head drop enough to ease the pull on the halter.
Ethan gave his neck a friendly pat and turned to the surprised Negro. “And your name would be . . . ?”
“Curtis Abraham. How you do that?”
“Hold him closer to the halter ring, Curtis.” He had to raise his voice to be heard over the barking of the dog. “Every time he moves, give him a yank and tell him, ‘Whoa.’ Don’t yell. Talk calmly and firmly and look him in the eye. Make him pay attention to you, not what’s going on around him. He’s just afraid.”
“Me, too,” the old man muttered, but did as instructed.
Stepping around the African woman, Winnie, who looked to be near in age to Curtis—spouses, perhaps?—Ethan approached the circus ringleader.
She was surprisingly small to be generating such a fuss, and was even able to convince two hulking railroad workers to do her biding. Ethan realized why when he stopped beside her. Despite that furrow between her dark brown brows, she was uncommonly pretty . . . in a fine-boned, delicate, citified sort of way. Hardly the type of woman he normally found attractive.
“Would you like some help, ma’am?” he asked.
She gave
him a distracted look, the dog squirming in her arms. “What?”
Remarkable eyes, even with the squint. A greenish hazel that he suspected would look greener if she wore something other than that drab gray dress that did little to set off her gold-streaked hair. Although why he would notice such things was beyond him. He was more partial to breasts, himself. And she had a nice pair of those, too, he was pleased to note.
She noted him noting and narrowed her eyes even more.
Removing his Stetson, he gave a slight bow. “May I help you?”
“With what?”
He tipped his head toward the old man scurrying along the tracks. “Him?”
“Oh, Lord!” Almost crushing his hat, she shoved the yapper against his chest and raced off, calling, “Father,” in a high, panicky voice.
Ethan looked at the dog in his arms, which had thankfully paused for breath, realized by the cloudy eyes it was blind, and thrust it toward the Negro woman.
She backed off, pink palms upraised. “Not me, suh. I’d as soon throw it under the train, and that would upset Miss Audra, sure enough.”
“Do you want the buggy unloaded, or not?”
She thought about it, then reluctantly took the dog.
By the time “Miss Audra” had returned, leading the mumbling old man by the hand, the buggy was on solid ground, Ethan had almost finished harnessing the bay into the traces, and Curtis was tying valises and boxes to the back of the buggy under the barked supervision of both the badger-dog and the Negro woman.
A forceful trio, the badger, Winnie, and Miss Audra.
Waving Ethan aside when he stepped forward to help, Miss Audra opened the door of the buggy and dropped down the mounting step. “There you are, Father,” she said in a voice much gentler than the one she’d used on the freight handlers or himself.
The old man frowned at Ethan. “Come for the transcripts, have you, Mitchell? They’re not yet ready. The girl has been dreadfully slow this time. You must talk to her, Mary,” he added to the woman waiting for him to board.
Mary? Ethan thought her name was Audra.
“I will, Father. In you go.”
Once she got him settled with a lap robe over his legs, she took the squirming dog from Winnie and set it in the old man’s arms like she was presenting a precious newborn. “And here’s Cleo.”
The old man grinned. The dog shut up. And the show was over.
If Ethan had expected a “thank you,” he didn’t get it. But feeling ornery, he couldn’t let the oversight pass unnoticed. “You’re certainly welcome, Miss Audra. Or is it Mary?”
“Miss Pearsall. Mary was my mother’s name.” She turned to squint up at him. “How do you know me, sir? Have we met?”
“Alas, no. And I admire your ability to disregard those pesky social courtesies and accept my help anyway. If you have no further use of me . . . ?”
She blinked, obviously befuddled. Confusion must run in the family.
“Then I bid you good day.” Hiding a smile, he tipped the Stetson and walked back to the stock car. Renny had already been unloaded. As he tossed a coin to the hostler, he saw the buggy disappearing down the road at a rapid clip. Fleeing, would be more accurate. Much too fast for a lightweight conveyance on a rocky country road. He could guess who was driving.
With a mental shrug, he put the woman and her amusing antics out of his mind and quickly saddled the big buckskin, securing his saddlebags behind the cantle with the fiddle case on top.
If he left now, he could be in Heartbreak Creek for dinner. His meeting with Tait Rylander and his wife—the two principals of the Pueblo Pacific Bridge Line through Heartbreak Creek Canyon—wasn’t until morning. Apparently there were issues with both the rights-of-way and the sluice bringing water from deeper in the canyon. Ethan’s employer, the Denver and Santa Fe Railroad, was leasing the Rylanders’ bridge line, and had sent him ahead to deal with those issues, and to get the surveyors back to work so the graders could get started.
He figured it was a two-week job.
Being a railroad advance man wasn’t the most inspiring or challenging work, but he’d been inspired and challenged before, and look where that had led.
Before he could deflect it, an image burst into his mind: three new graves lined up on the bluff beside the hospital, all dated October 21, 1868.
That familiar feeling of revulsion grabbed at his chest. He had been so brash. So stupid. The young architect, overrun with the arrogance and impatience of the untested, anxious to get started on his first solo project.
Instead, over that sultry summer at Salty Point, he had fallen in love, had his heart broken, and had seen his dreams shattered, along with the lives of two good men and the woman he had thought he loved.
A pitiful story. One with all the makings of a sensationalized dime novel.
Except it was true. And those graves atop the bluff were there because of him. So here he was, doing boring, uninspired work that carried little risk or reward. But at least he wasn’t responsible for anyone, and that suited him just fine.
After arranging for his traveling trunk to be delivered to the Heartbreak Creek Hotel, he left the depot, Renny stepping out at a fast pace, obviously as happy as his rider to be off the train and on solid ground again.
It was a beautiful afternoon with the clarity that only came in early spring, before summer’s dust hazed the sky. The mountains still wore caps of white, and the breeze was cool and heavy with the scent of wet earth and new grass. The freshness of it raised Ethan’s spirits and helped dispel the melancholy that always plagued him after a restless, dream-filled night.
He had ridden no more than half an hour when he saw a familiar black buggy stopped in the road ahead, the back tilted at an odd angle. As he drew nearer, he saw Miss Audra seated on the mounting step beside the open door, shoulders slumped, head drooping in her hands. A sad picture, indeed. The others were some distance away, enjoying a rest under a long-limbed fir. Even from thirty yards, he could clearly hear the badger barking.
“If it isn’t Miss Audra,” he called cheerily as he reined in beside the disabled buggy.
Dropping her hands, she squinted up at him through red-rimmed eyes.
She must require spectacles, he decided. No one would wear that expression without good reason.
“It’s you,” she said in a tone as welcoming as a stepmother’s kiss.
For some perverse reason, he found that amusing. “It is. I see you’ve broken a wheel. How unfortunate.”
She stiffened. “You find that amusing?”
“Not at all.”
“Then why are you grinning?”
“Actually, I was trying for a smirk.”
She gave a snort that ended in a sniffle. Then another. Horrified that she was about to cry, Ethan softened his tone. “May I offer assistance? Again.”
Shoving back a wad of hair that had slipped from her matronly topknot, she regarded him through eyes that were suspiciously wet. “Do you have a gun?”
Surprised, he nodded. “I do.”
“Then shoot me, please. I have reached my limit. Not in the head or face, mind you. I wouldn’t want to look a mess for my obituary photograph. Here in the heart will be fine.” She placed a hand over the bosom he so admired.
Leaning forward, he crossed his arms over the saddle horn. “Having a bad day, are we, Miss Audra?”
Her top lip curled in a sneer, marring an otherwise lovely mouth. “Armed and astute. A potent combination.”
Potent? How gratifying that she had noticed.
“Get on with it.” Closing her eyes, she hiked her chin in a martyr’s pose. “I await your pleasure.”
Even better. Several pleasurable scenarios came to mind, but he knew better than to voice them. “And the others? Shall I shoot them, too? I could start with the dog, if you’d like.”
&nbs
p; She actually seemed to consider it.
“Or I could simply replace the broken wheel.”
Her eyes flew open. “You can do that?”
“I can. Assuming that’s a spare wheel I see strapped to the bottom of the buggy and you don’t mind untying the luggage on the back.”
Hopping to her feet, she bent over to peer under the vehicle, this time hiking her skirts high enough to reveal trim ankles and rounded calves. “Good heavens! I had no idea that was under there.”
“Nor I,” he murmured, musing on what other delights might be hidden beneath that drab gray skirt.
“Excellent.” She straightened, shoved the hair back again and gave him a smile that lit up her face in an unexpectedly alluring way. “What can I do to help?”
Very little, it turned out, but that was due more to a lack of strength than a lack of enthusiasm. If the woman had been as strong physically as her personality was forceful, she could have held up the wagon with one hand while he replaced the wheel.
Instead, he used the biggest boulder he could carry, a sturdy three-foot log to brace under the axle, and a long, stout pole to lever the buggy off the ground—luckily Curtis had packed an ax. Once the vehicle was unloaded and the front wheels chalked, Ethan positioned the rock a foot behind the rear panel, slipped two feet of the long pole beneath the undercarriage and pushed down with all his strength on the part extending past the rock.
The buggy rose. Curtis slipped the brace under the axle, and from then on, it was simply a matter of exchanging the broken wheel for the spare. Thankfully the women hovered close by, poised to offer helpful tips in case he somehow lost the ability to reason or forgot what he was doing. God bless them.
Soon—even with their help—the new wheel was in place. While Winnie supervised Curtis in the reloading of the luggage, Ethan lashed the broken wheel beneath the buggy, then rose, almost bumping into Miss Audra, who had bent down beside him to inspect his knots.
“You’re sure it’s tight enough?”
