Whit rose slowly and backed through the tent opening, then walked to Oro lipping grass a few feet away. He pulled out his stash and turned to see the pup sitting behind him, head cocked, ears up. One ear flopped at the tip, the sign of a not-grown dog.
“A sharp one, you are.” He held out the rolled cake, and the dog sniffed once before inhaling the offering in a single swift gulp.
“Don’t choke on it.” He laughed out loud, recollecting Baker’s similar warning not an hour earlier. Gathering Oro’s reins, he swung into the saddle.
“You comin’ or stayin’?” Fool question for sure, but he’d soon learn if the dog was the fool or not.
A small yip answered and the pup wagged its tail.
Whit rode toward an open draw that cut around Eight Mile and pointed to the river gorge. The dog still trotted behind him, far enough back not to get kicked.
No fool there.
A wide park opened on the other side of the mountain, and Whit followed its western reach into higher country. An hour later it narrowed between rocky ridges and sidled up alongside the Arkansas River as it churned down the mountain, white-topped and roaring through rocky stretches, placid and smooth in others. Like a certain woman he knew.
Just as the valley opened out at Texas Creek, he turned Oro down toward the river, through the brush and juniper. A hunch told him where he thought men might build a rock fortress. He was right, but no one was there.
The stonework stood mute and unmanned. The new rail lay not far from the abutment, but without ceremony or defender. The dog trotted closer, sniffed around the rock work, and looked at Whit as if to ask the purpose.
“You’re right. Pointless. Absolutely good for nothing.”
Whit reined his horse through the trees and headed upstream. Martin Thatcher’s spread lay along Texas Creek. He’d turn in there, see if they had any word on where the railroad crews were.
Obliged for the Thatchers’ hospitality and information, but eager to get down the mountain, Whit thanked them for dinner and urged Oro back down to the river and onto a wagon road that led into Cañon City. The dog ran beside him, its tongue hanging out and a near grin pulling at its jowls.
“You’re a real maverick, aren’t you?”
Black ears lifted and the dog looked up as if agreeing.
“You like that name?”
A slobbery grin.
“I’m talking to a dog.”
Whit slowed to a walk, pulled off his hat, and ran his sleeve across his forehead. Would Baker allow a dog called Maverick on the place? He huffed. Maverick pricked his ears. They’d soon find out.
It was early evening before they made it to town.
This was not how he had planned to spend his time—dragging into Cañon City with a half-dead dog, looking for a foolhardy boy who joined a gang of roughs fighting somebody else’s war.
Martin Thatcher had told him both railroad crews had beat it into town and on to Pueblo and the roundhouse there. What were they going to do—fight over the train station? They’d just end up fillin’ each other with holes.
But according to Thatcher, the Denver and Rio Grande boys and the Pueblo County sheriff intended to borrow the cannon from the armory and blow one Bat Masterson and his gun-slingin’ friends back to Kansas.
Whit turned Oro down the lane beside his father’s church and rode back to the parsonage barn, where he watered Oro and Maverick and scooped cool trough water over his own head. Tired from riding and keeping a tight rein on his swirling emotions, he left Oro at the hitching rail and told Maverick to stay.
The dog dropped and laid its head on its paws with a heavy sigh. If Jody Perkins had as much sense, Whit could have been at home courting Livvy. Or at least trying to.
He slapped his hat against his thigh and stopped at the back porch steps by the columbines. They looked corralled, bunched together. Not free and spreading at the meadows edge in aspen shade. But he knew his ma’s love for the purple flower. Just like Livvy’s.
The back door opened and the woman herself stepped out.
“What are you doing here?” A knife in one hand and a carrot in the other. If one didn’t get him, the other would.
“Nice to see you too, Ma.”
Her tense shoulders relaxed and she let go a sigh. “I’m sorry, but Livvy told us you couldn’t come with her because of your work.”
He combed his wet hair back with one hand, watching his ma’s eyes narrow at the gesture and then drop to his sidearm.
“She was right,” he said.
“And how is that, since here you are?”
Women sure had a way of complicating a man’s life.
He moved up the steps, planted a kiss on her cheek, and stepped past her into the kitchen. “Do you have any coffee left? I could use a cup.”
Sweeping in with her usual grace, she soon had a full mug before him on the table and one for herself with a spoonful of sugar. Rather than her typical silent stirring, the spoon clanked against the cup indicating her concern.
“One of our hands, a boy about fourteen, lit out after the Denver railroad crew. Since we finished branding, I figured I could ride over to the river and haul him back by the ear. But they’re gone. Every last one, and a rancher told me they all headed to the roundhouse in Pueblo itching for a fight.”
His ma seamed her lips and laid her hand on the family Bible. “I have been praying about this war.” She slid a glance his way. “Among other things.”
Whit was undoubtedly one of the other things.
“Appreciate that.” He took a swig and held in a grimace. The pot had cooked down some. Fit to float a horseshoe.
“Before sunup we heard them ride through town. Some in wagons, the rest on horseback. Your father is over at the mercantile now, trying to learn what he can.” She raised worried eyes. “Do you think Tad Overton rode with them?”
Whit snorted. “Not unless he lit out after I saw him this morning.”
“So he is at home, with his mother?” A two-sided question if Whit ever heard one, and the weightier side concerned his sister, Marti.
He glanced toward the stairs.
His ma read the look. “At the library, or so she said.”
“Reading about dusty professors digging up dustier bones.”
“Don’t change the subject.” A coppery gaze held him, the same one that had peeled the veneer off many a tall tale. He might as well cough up the whole sorry story.
“Overtons don’t have a home any more. I bought it.”
She froze in her chair, her coffee cup halfway to her mouth. The copper turned to brass. “You what?”
“The widow wanted off the land. Too many bad memories. I bought her cattle, and Baker staked me on the land. It butts up next to the Bar-HB and we’ll run the cows together.”
She set the cup in its saucer and drew her hands into her lap, mulling over the news. “Did the Overtons leave the area?”
“I wish I could say they had. But Doc Mason evidently needs a nurse, and the widow is fit for the job, according to Tad.” He held the mug to his mouth, considered another swallow. “She didn’t do much for the boy the day he was shot, but I guess I shouldn’t fault a mother’s fear.”
“No, you should not.” She raised a hand to her throat, fingered the top opened button of her dress. “So they will be living in town.”
“If Doc takes her on.”
She took her cup to the sink and it clattered against the saucer. “Will you be staying to supper?”
The quiver in her voice decided him. “Yes.” He loved his parents, but an unfamiliar urgency was starting to gnaw at his gut. He drenched it with a final swallow. “If you’ll have me.”
She turned with a tight smile. “Of course we will have you. You are always welcome.” She tipped her head. “As is Livvy.”
He was wrong. It wasn’t a smile she wore standing there with her arms folded across her waist. It was the leer of a professional inquisitor.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
/> The ranch house, barn, and outbuildings spread across the verdant meadow like welcoming arms, and Livvy ached with longing. Not for home in her parents’ fine Denver parsonage, but home here, on the ranch. With Whit.
She was ruined for city life. For buggy rides through the park, for the stately brick church house, and for girls her age paying more attention to their latest fashions than to her father’s sermons.
Her father. The joyful bubble burst with a painful prick. The dear man had swept a rancher’s daughter off to the city to be his bride and here he was losing his only child to that same rancher’s foreman.
If he allowed it.
If Whit wanted it.
Panic tightened her chest and inched up along her throat. Pop may have made his opinion known where Whit was concerned, but Whit had never come right out and declared his feelings. And her father did not even know she and Whit had been working so closely. Of course he knew Whit worked for her grandfather, but he knew little else.
At least her trip back to the ranch had been faster than she’d planned to take with an injured passenger. Tad Overton was already gone when she’d stopped at Doc Mason’s. His ma had come for him days ago, Doc said as he took Pop’s money. And as Whit had assumed, she’d had nothing to pay the doctor’s bill.
Livvy slapped Bess into a jolting lope and every board in the wagon squawked in protest until she pulled up in a dust cloud at the barn. She looped the reins on the brake and leaped, very unladylike, from the board. Skirts were such a nuisance. Satchel in hand, she marched into the barn.
The shady interior hung like night, and she blinked several times, adjusting to the dim alleyway. The stalls stood empty and no one worked on anvil or tack. She strode to the side that opened into the corrals and the near pasture and counted the horses.
One was missing. A tall black-stockinged buckskin.
She hurried to the house and stopped at the kitchen door with her pulse pounding in her ears. Gripping the satchel’s handle, she pulled clean mountain air in through her nose and concentrated on slowing her heartbeat. With one hand she shook out her skirt, then checked her braid to find it still coiled in place. Another deep breath and she reached for the door knob.
Pop’s voice boomed from his study, rolled around the dining room, and shot into the kitchen. “That you, Livvy?”
She closed the door quietly behind her, determined not to match his uproarious greeting though she wanted nothing more than to run through the house like Marti would, jump into his lap, and confess her affection for his foreman.
Glancing at the untidy sideboard and dishes piled high in the wash pan, she continued into the dining room, past the wilted lilacs on the dusty table, and stopped at the door to her grandfather’s study. “Hello, Pop.”
Poise. Grace. Restraint. She drew them all together like ribbons on a package and pinned on a smile. “Did you miss me?”
The man looked up and his gray eyes sparkled. “You are a bright flower among dull sage brush. Come here, child.”
Delighted by his tender greeting, she pulled the mail from her satchel and dropped the bag before stepping into his still-powerful arms that encircled her in a great bear hug.
“We missed you, Livvy.”
We?
“I was gone for only a day and night. Surely you could get by without my cooking for that long.”
“Not just your cooking.” He held her at arm’s length and gave her a squinted appraisal. “I do believe you are more beautiful than when you left. Just like your mother and Mama Ruth.”
She giggled and worked free of his hands. “You are trying to get on my good side so I’ll give you fresh biscuits and Annie Hutton’s apple butter.”
He leaned back against his leather chair and twisted one side of his mustache. “That was mighty good what you left behind. We finished it off.”
“So soon?” She laid the mail on his desk. “I should have known. And my guess is that Buck ate the most.”
He grunted. “Not a chance with Whit keeping the jar at his plate, a knife in one hand, and a sour eye on anyone daring to reach for it.”
Laughter bubbled up and she walked back to the door. “I have your liniment here, and two more jars of apple butter. But I’ll need Whit and Buck to unload the supplies.”
Pop’s mustache fell and jerked her hopes down with it.
“Where are they? Out chasing mavericks?”
“I imagine Buck has his boots off at the bunkhouse.” Pop stood. “I’ll go get him.”
“Can’t Whit do that?” Why can’t Whit do that?
Her grandfather stopped directly in front of her and held her with a loving gaze. “He’s gone after Jody.”
A gasp slipped away before she could forbid it, and her right hand tightened on the satchel handle.
“Now don’t you worry. That Whit’s got a fine head on his shoulders, don’t doubt that for a minute.”
It wasn’t his shoulders she was worried about. “Where did he go?” Not the railroad war. Please, not the war.
“Overtons told him Jody joined up with the Santa Fe boys layin’ track.”
If she did not sit, she would faint and show her grandfather she was no better than the wilting lilacs. She leaned against the door frame, afraid to attempt the great distance to the nearest chair.
Pop took her by the arm and led her to the dining table, where he pulled out a ladder-back. Grateful, she fell into it and clutched the satchel to her breast as if it held all her strength and fortitude rather than tooth powder, a hairbrush, and Annie’s apple butter.
Pop took the next chair and turned it to face her. “Whit left the same morning you did with a couple things on his mind.” At that, the man’s eyes clouded with a private notion and his mustache jerked to one side. “He has some news I am sure he wants to tell you himself rather than have me spill the beans.”
Curiosity gained a foothold over worry, and Livvy relaxed as she leaned forward.
“No, I am not going into that,”—he raised a calloused hand—”so don’t ask me. But you should know that he is determined to bring Jody back from the rail war.”
She tightened her arms around the satchel again and considered pulling out Pop’s liniment to use as a smelling salt.
“He might be gone for a few days. But I’m sure he will be safe.” Pop fingered his mustache and nodded with a far-off look over her shoulder. “I’ve seen him use that Winchester a time or two.”
Maybe her grandfather wanted her to swoon, fall out right there across Mama Ruth’s beautiful dining room carpet.
Oh, Lord, please don’t let Whit get involved in the railroad war.
~
Whit’s ma’s chicken pot pie was bested only by his grandmother’s, and Whit raised a hearty “amen” after grace as he set about proving it. It was a wonder his pa wasn’t as big as a horse from his ma’s great cooking and a preacher’s sedate lifestyle. But the Reverend Caleb Hutton had never been one to simply sit by and let other men do the hard labor. Townsfolk still called on him when their foaling mares were having a hard time.
The man had a reputation.
Whit chuckled around a mouthful at memory of the oft-told tale of how his pa had delivered a foal during his first Christmas Eve service in Cañon City. Dolly, his ma had named the filly, and they had her still.
Soon he and Livvy would be creating their own family stories.
He hoped.
Suddenly sobered by the reminder that he needed to talk to Livvy’s father, he cut a glance at his own. “You going to Denver anytime soon?”
Marti, always two steps ahead of everybody else’s thought processes, held him in a calculating gaze. “What’s got you wanting to go to Denver?”
Whit straightened his back, hoping to bully her with his bigger bulk. She intimidated as easily as Livvy—not at all.
His pa took a healthy bite and closed his eyes as he chewed, clearly relishing his wife’s handiwork before he replied. “I want to stay close until this train war is cleare
d up.”
Whit’s ma made a clutching sound in her throat, and Marti’s attention suddenly fell to her half-empty plate.
“I understand that is the reason for your visit,” his pa said.
Guilt poked Whit like a pitchfork. He could take time to follow a fool boy into town but not for a legitimate visit with his folks. He coughed hard and ran the napkin across his mouth.
“Yes, sir, it is.”
His ma pushed pie crust around on her plate.
“Ma said you heard men ride through here early this morning, before daylight. Did you happen to look out and see anything? Specifically a stout little black horse with a white blaze?”
“Didn’t look out, but I saw that horse at the livery this afternoon. One of yours?”
His father’s characteristic calm set Whit on edge—like it always had. Rarely did his pa get excited about anything. A fine quality in a preacher, Whit supposed, but there were times when it drove him crazy with impatience.
He forced himself to stay seated, not dash out the door and run across the street to the livery. “More than likely.” But what was it doing here if Jody rode with the railroad men?
A sudden pounding at the front door jerked Marti from her chair before their ma could tell her to keep her seat. Whit followed, grateful for an excuse to use his legs.
Marti had the door opened wide to a breathless boy standing on the threshold.
“Mr. Sutton told me to run this to the pastor.” The youngster gulped air. “He in?”
“I’ll take it for him.” Whit held out his hand.
The little chest heaved, but the telegram remained tightly gripped in grubby fingers.
Whit scowled.
His pa came from the kitchen. “Thank you, William. Tell Mr. Sutton I appreciate it.” He slipped a coin into the boy’s hand and the youngster repaid him with a grin and dashed across the porch, down the path, and into the lane toward Main Street.
No wonder he’d waited for Pa.
Whit closed the door and followed his sister to the kitchen where they all resumed their seats. His pa laid the telegram beside his plate and picked up his coffee. A bronc-y gleam danced in his eyes as he ignored his baited family.
Straight to My Heart Page 14
