“I don’t want to steal anything,” Matty said, still trying to figure out the best way to placate Pop. There wasn’t anything of value here to steal. “And I can’t…exactly leave.”
Pop’s brow furrowed, his face turning an alarming shade of red. Then he put a hand over his chest and Matty noticed how hard he was breathing.
“Calm down a little. I’m a friend of Catherine’s.” Maybe calling them friends was a stretch, but he was worried about Pop as a gray pallor crept up the man’s face.
“Catherine?” Pop’s expression crumpled in confusion and his shoulders slumped slightly.
Matty still held his hands up in front of him as he stepped toward the older man. “Do you need to sit down?”
“I…I don’t know.”
Matty kept an eye on that cast-iron skillet as he took another two steps until he was within arm’s reach of Pop.
The older man’s eyes flickered and then cleared. “Matty?” The skillet clunked to the ground. It would need to be washed. Later.
Matty exhaled his relief. “You all right?”
“Chest is kinda tight.”
“Why don’t we sit over here?”
Matty guided the older man to the patch of shade thrown by the barn and settled him there. His breathing began to even out, but that sickly gray pallor remained. “You have attacks like that often?”
“Every now and then. Figure my heart’ll go out one of these times.”
“You ever think about having a doc check you over?”
Pop snorted derisively. “Don’t trust any of ’em.”
Matty raised an eyebrow. “Yeah.” Because Pop didn’t trust anyone. “My brother’s a doctor. I’d trust him with my life.”
Pop just grunted.
He sat with the older man until Pop’s breathing eased completely and color returned to his face. Did Catherine know he had spells like this? Why wouldn’t she insist on Pop seeing a doctor?
Looking around, he realized the tools were proof that the Pooles hadn’t lived as isolated as he’d imagined.
Had something happened in the past few years that had made Catherine and Pop withdraw even more? Was it as simple as Pop’s forgetfulness and distrust of just about everyone? Or was there more to it, like the situation with Ralph Chesterton? How could they not ask for help?
Matty didn’t know. He hadn’t intended to get involved in the Pooles’ lives, but it had happened anyway. And knowing what Catherine faced out here alone, what kind of man would he be if he just walked away when the time came?
*
That night, Matty held supper until Pop started to grumble. It was well after dark when Catherine ducked through the door. Her hair was damp, as if she’d washed up in the creek. She gave him a sidelong glance, not looking directly at him.
Pop snored away on his cot in the corner. Matty greeted her with a nod.
“Everything all right? No more run-ins?”
“Fine. Just busy.”
Her clipped words were the complete opposite of the wide, unguarded smile she’d gifted him with this morning. And there was a part of him that missed seeing it again.
He sat on the end of the bed with his back propped against the wall. He’d found and chopped a chunk of pretty oak into pieces and retrieved the pocketknife from the barn. Now he worked at whittling the chunks. He had a few finished rectangles piled next to him on the blanket.
“Your supper’s probably cold.”
She went to the stove and picked up the plate he’d covered for her earlier.
She inhaled deeply. “I’m so hungry, I don’t care if it’s cold.”
She sat cross-legged on the floor, wedging herself between the bed and table, stuffing her mouth even on the way down. He worked to focus on his whittling and not the way the lamplight glinted off her damp hair.
“I finished plowing the field,” she said between bites. “The moon came up, and I was so close that I just stayed with it.”
She must be exhausted. He was used to the draining days spring work required, but how much worse must it be for a woman virtually alone?
“I thought you might be avoiding me.”
After the bolt of attraction that had passed between them on the stream bank this morning, it was a valid guess.
He saw her face flush in the dim light thrown by the lamp and figured his guess was right.
Which did something funny to his insides.
He glanced over at Pop’s figure huddled beneath the blanket. “You notice him having shortness of breath? Going real pale in the face?”
She looked up at him sharply, her fork clanking against her plate. “What happened?”
“He came out to the shed and didn’t recognize me.”
“Was he violent?”
That she asked told him enough to know the answer to his question, but he asked anyway. “He threatened it before he started losing his breath. Has he been violent with you before?”
She looked down, hiding her eyes from him. “Only once. I wasn’t expecting him to be locked in the past, and he surprised me. He was very upset about it afterward.”
“What will you do if he gets worse? Starts losing touch with reality every day?”
She went back to her food, her head down. She shook her head slightly. “I don’t know.”
“Is there no one…a long-lost aunt or…”
She shook her head again. “Just the two of us. Before Mama died, it was the three of us.”
He hadn’t known her father had died young.
She went silent so that it was just the scrape of his knife and the clink of her fork.
“Have you tried to talk him into seeing a doctor?” he asked.
“He won’t.”
“But—”
She shook her head again and then raised her wrist to wipe her face. He squinted in the low lamplight. Had he made her cry?
He doubted she would welcome it if he reached for her, but his hand clenched around the wooden piece in his hand with the wanting.
This upset was more the reaction he’d expected this morning after the confrontation with Ralph. How did she keep such a calm manner with so many stressors?
“If…if something ever happens, you can come to my family for help.”
She sniffed once. She set her plate on the table. “What are you making?”
“Dominoes. You can play games with them. Like cards.”
“You like games.”
It wasn’t a question, but he was happy for the conversation—the most they’d spoken yet. “There’s always something going on in a family as big as mine. My brothers are competitive and I like the challenge of learning new games, new strategies. I’ll teach you if you like.”
She hummed and he took it for assent. “What kinds of things do you like to do? Read?” he asked, remembering the primers he’d found in her hiding spot two days ago.
She was quiet for too long. He lost concentration on the domino and looked up at her.
“I can’t read,” she admitted so softly that he barely heard her. “I never went to school, except for those few days…”
When he and Luella had been so awful to her.
“I’m sorry,” he said again, and again it seemed so inadequate. He’d been so arrogant, and so innocent of the harsh reality that life could be—as it had been to him only short months later.
On the heels of his apology, he wondered again: Was their teasing so bad that it had caused such deep scars? Or did something else keep her from returning to the classroom?
She shrugged, and her voice was suspiciously casual when she went on. “We’re a far piece from the schoolhouse anyway. It was too far for a child to walk, and my mama couldn’t drive me every day. It was too much.”
“I could teach you to read.”
The words were out before he’d really thought about them.
Her head jerked up, her eyes sharp in the low light. “Why?”
He dropped the knife and domino. They landed with a soft clack a
gainst the other wood chunks on the quilt. “Why do you have to question my motive for every single thing?” He raised one hand to ruffle his fingers through his hair, ignoring the pull of pain across his chest at the action.
She glanced over her shoulder at Pop, still snoring away and oblivious to their conversation. “Maybe because my only interactions with you before this were four days of you torturing me.”
“That’s an exaggeration,” he returned.
“Not by much.”
“Maybe if you got off your homestead and into the real world, you’d find out that I’m someone you can trust.”
She recoiled as if he’d struck her. Her eyes flashed as she reached for the quilt folded on the little stool nearby. “It’s late. Let’s turn in.”
“Catherine—”
She lifted the covering and blew out the lantern, leaving them in darkness. He sighed.
Using Pop’s snoring to orient himself in the darkness, he cupped both hands around the closed pocketknife and dominoes and tucked them on the small shelf above his pillow. He lay out flat on the bed, staring up into the blackness overhead.
He hadn’t meant to offend her.
She was like a green broke filly. He didn’t know all the things that spooked her, all the things that made her close off.
And what did it say about him that he wanted to know?
Chapter Nine
It was the middle of the night when Catherine woke, disoriented. What had startled her?
“The Johnny Rebs, they’re sneaking up on us.”
Pop’s growl sent fear skittering through her even as she fought the sense of disorientation to try to come fully awake.
“Pop?” She reached for the stove door, opening it to provide some light. “It’s just us—me and Matty.”
The orange light illuminated the cowboy, hair tousled and struggling his way upright.
He grunted. In pain? “I heard something. Outside.”
There was an audible thump from outdoors. Her heartbeat thrummed in her ears.
The cowboy’s feet hit the floor just inches from her hand propping her up.
“Where’s my gun?” he asked, and there was no mistaking the menacing tone of his voice.
“Not here.”
He grumbled something below his breath as he pushed to his feet. “Can you light a lamp?”
She scrambled to her knees. “You’re not going out there—”
But he was already on his feet, pushing open the door.
She used a twig from the basket beneath the table and lit the end of it in the glowing coals from the stove, then lit the lamp.
The cowboy took it from her grasp before she could protest and ducked out the door.
“Pop, stay inside,” she said.
She tromped out after Matty, receiving a glare over his shoulder. This was her home. She could defend it.
The darkness was close, encompassing. The moon had waned in the sky, leaving only the stars overhead for illumination.
Matty held the lamp out in front of him, lighting the ground as he approached the barn. She followed a few steps behind.
Until he stopped, holding one arm out to the side to prevent her from passing by.
“Somebody’s been out here.”
At his words, fear rose in her throat, blocking her from breathing for a protracted moment. Someone had been here, on her property?
“I’d piled everything closer to the barn… It looks like they tripped on some of this junk in the dark.”
“It’s not junk.” She barely breathed the words, terror crashing through her and muting her voice.
At her words, he threw a look over his shoulder and stepped into the doorway, flashing the lantern into the mule’s stall and where the chickens roosted.
“Whoever it was, they’re gone now. Animals are riled up, though.”
It was a small comfort. Someone had been here, sneaking around. In her place.
She didn’t feel safe, not at all. She had Pop’s old hunting rifle and was a decent shot, but had to keep it put up because of his sudden spells of memory loss and aggression. She had a hatchet and a hunting knife, but with her small stature, how could she hope to overpower someone larger than her?
“I’m going to make a pass through the woods by the creek—it’s the most logical place someone would hide if they were sneaking up. You all right?”
The cowboy turned his attention from where he knelt among the pieces of broken tools to her.
She clasped her elbows with both hands, folding her arms across her midsection. He stood up and took a step toward her. She took a step back.
“I’m fine. Just…just angry.” Yes, that was one emotion she could grasp, that she could share.
“You okay if I make a pass through the woods?”
“Of course.” She jerked her chin up, as if the force of that movement would make her words more true.
He held her gaze for a long moment, the lamplight softening his features. He opened his mouth as if to speak, then hesitated. Finally, he said, “I’d like to have my pistol returned.”
She nodded jerkily. Maybe he was right. Now that he knew what a danger Pop could be, he could take precautions with the weapon.
She didn’t like feeling unprotected, hated the feeling of violation that someone had been in her barn, spying on her belongings. Or worse, trying to steal something.
Matty disappeared into the darkness, taking the lantern with him. She let her eyes adjust to the low light before she slipped into the shed, where it was even darker.
“It’s all right, girl. It’s just me.” She ran her hand over the mule’s flank, felt the swish of its tail and the shifting of its feet.
The chickens clucked softly, a sign of their agitation when they would normally be sleeping.
The familiar barn smells were small comfort as the sense of violation sent continued shivers through her.
Catherine passed the mule completely and used her hands to feel her way to the inside wall of the stall. Her secret hiding place. The wood-paneled wall was made to look as if it backed up to the soil beneath the hill, but it was a false wall.
It was so dark in the barn that all she could use was the sensation of touch to move the top panel away. She ran her fingers along the flour sacks piled inside, exhaling a sigh of relief.
Whoever had been snooping in here hadn’t found the seed wheat.
By touch, she found the cowboy’s gun belt that she’d wound into a spiral, and the tin star and his pistol. She carried them pressed against her stomach with one arm while she used the other hand to replace the panel. She ran her hands over the smooth wood, making sure it was firmly in place and that no one would be able to notice a difference even if they looked closely.
It was all she could do.
And after tonight, it didn’t feel like enough.
*
Matty made his way through the woods toward the stream—the same direction he’d come across Catherine and Ralph yesterday morning—on a hunch.
An owl hooted, but other than that, all he heard was the crunch of his boots against a twig on the ground and his own breathing.
He reached up to swat a low-hanging branch out of his way and his collarbone pulled, making him hiss.
He didn’t like carrying the lantern—the flickering light it cast made him a target. But he figured someone who didn’t have the guts to make a known threat, someone who would sneak around, wouldn’t shoot him outright. He hoped.
Catherine’s white-faced fear remained front and center in his mind as he trekked through the dark.
She’d been shaking, as if the stiff night breeze might carry her away, but she’d clasped her elbows tightly to herself and he’d quashed any idea of reaching out to offer her comfort.
Didn’t mean he hadn’t wanted to.
That she battled her emotions with the same intensity as she faced replanting the fields and taking care of her Pop made him admire her. He couldn’t help it.
Who w
ould be snooping around? The neighbor was the obvious culprit after he’d confronted Catherine yesterday, but Sheriff Dunlop had taught Matty not to make assumptions.
Matty squatted on the stream bank, finding tracks. Big boots. Man-size tracks. Pop wore leather moccasins, like Catherine, so they couldn’t have been his.
Matty followed the tracks for a bit until he lost them in some underbrush. He’d come out again tomorrow and make a more thorough investigation.
He circled back to the shed, the lamp illuminating Catherine’s silhouette as he closed the distance between them.
She had his gun belt and weapon in hand, and he took it from her, trading for the lamp so he could wrap the belt around his waist.
“Thank you, Catherine.”
He threw open the cylinder and checked the chambers. Empty. He thumbed out enough bullets from the belt to load up and started sliding them into their spots.
“There were tracks down by the stream, crossing a little farther than where I met up with you this morning.”
A visible tremor went through her.
And he couldn’t resist his impulse. He holstered his gun and reached for her. He only clasped the bend of her elbow, barely breathing in hopes she would receive the comfort he offered her.
She looked up at him, eyes luminous and shadowed.
“It’s going to be all right,” he said. “I’m going to stay out here tonight. Keep watch.”
He waited for her to push him away, to reject the kindness he offered, as she had earlier, but her eyes closed and her head tilted down. And she didn’t move away.
He exhaled the tension he didn’t know he was holding on to.
“Do you think it was Ralph?” she asked softly.
“I don’t know. If it wasn’t, someone wanted it to look like it was him, making tracks from down where we met at the stream.”
He looked up at the stars overhead. “You want to tell me what Ralph might’ve been looking for?”
She shrugged slightly, finally dislodging his hand from beneath her elbow. She still didn’t trust him enough to let him in on the secret.
Her distrust weighted the silence between them, dissolving the camaraderie he’d felt building moments ago.
Love Inspired Historical October 2015 Box Set Page 9
