Finally, she reached out and pressed the tin star into his palm. “You’ll want this, too.”
He rubbed his thumb over the face of the star, the metal cool against his skin. This. This was how he could prove to her that she could believe in him.
“You might not be able to trust in me as a friend. But you can trust in this.” He pressed it back into her hands. “I’m honor-bound to do my job. And that includes protecting the people of Converse County. If you can’t trust in my friendship, you can trust in that.”
He left her with the star and the lantern and went back to the dugout. Inside, the stove door remained open, gilding the room with warm orange light from the coals inside. Pop had curled back into his blanket and was snoring once again. At least the older man hadn’t followed them outside. Likely he would’ve chased the intruders out into the night, and then Matty would’ve spent hours chasing him.
He picked up the small stool and the quilt off the cot and met Catherine just outside the door.
“What are you doing?” she whispered, glancing over his shoulder inside the soddy.
“I’ll stay out here tonight. Keep an eye on things in case whoever was here gets any ideas about coming back.”
“But you won’t get any rest.”
He couldn’t help the half smile that lifted the side of his mouth. She almost sounded as if she cared—as a friend, of course.
“I’ll be fine. I may not be able to help you with replanting your garden, but I can do this.”
She acquiesced with a single nod and he set up the stool around the natural curve in the sod house, several feet from the door but with a good line of sight on the shed.
Maybe it was a blessing that Catherine had asked him to fix some of the broken tools. If he hadn’t spread all the Pooles’ junk out in the yard, they may never have heard someone sneaking around.
Catherine didn’t seem to want to trust him enough to let him know what the trespasser might have been looking for. But tonight… He couldn’t shake the feeling that for once, he’d done the right thing. Started to build her trust, even if she couldn’t open up and tell him what the intruder had been after.
He only hoped it lasted until the morning.
He settled in for a long night of keeping watch.
*
Catherine lay on the cot—with the cowboy outside there was no reason to sleep on the floor—and stared unseeing into the darkness.
Had Ralph snuck into her barn?
Ralph and Floyd were a lot like her—they rarely went into town, kept to themselves. They’d been homesteading nearby for years.
But over the past year, Ralph’s attention had become more pointed. His marriage proposals and seeming desire for their land were a constant worry niggling at the back of her mind.
Had something happened on their homestead to make them desperate?
Was their desperation a danger to her and Pop?
If Pop found one of them sneaking around the property during one of his rambles, he was likely to get violent. Only, they were big enough and young enough to overpower her grandfather. No one except Matty knew about Pop’s difficulties with fading into the past. If that happened, could Pop be hurt or, worse, killed for attacking one of their neighbors?
Matty had said she didn’t trust him, but the truth was he knew more about her life than anyone else. He was closer, saw more than anyone who wasn’t family. And maybe that was what frightened her.
She had no room for childhood dreams. She’d given them up when she’d witnessed her mama being ostracized by the good citizens in town.
She’d been safe here on the homestead with Pop ever since, until now. Now Pop’s delusions were a threat, and so was whoever had come onto her property tonight.
She’d never been so grateful as she was to have Matty here to protect her, just for the night.
And that was dangerous thinking. If she got used to his assistance, then what happened after he left?
And he would leave. She knew he must be counting down the days until he was healed enough to walk away from here.
The fact that he could’ve asked Ralph to get a message to his folks and hadn’t confused her. Since his injury, he’d asked every day for her to help him return home.
Until today.
There was a part of her, a very small part, that wondered what it would be like to open up to him. To confide her fears. To find a shoulder to lean on.
She couldn’t. She didn’t dare. He had such a strong sense of right and wrong…if she told him about her parentage, there was a good chance he’d shun her like everyone else.
Chapter Ten
Matty squinted in the bright midmorning light, squatting to examine the ground at his feet.
He’d spent the morning wandering the Pooles’ property. Watching. And tracking. He’d walked alongside the meandering stream for a good long while, cut through the woods and walked bareheaded through Catherine’s fields before circling back to the soddy.
Pop was nowhere in sight. Catherine bent over a washtub, scrubbing clothes on a washboard. Her face was flushed, her hair curling about her cheeks in that short cut that shouldn’t look so feminine.
“Where’s Pop?” he asked, approaching. He needed to explain what he’d found, but if the old man was around, it might be better to wait.
She shrugged. “He went wandering a while ago.”
She shook out a men’s shirt that had once been white and while wet was now nearly transparent in certain places. Matty took it from her before she could protest and ducked beneath the string she’d hung between the sod house and barn. There were several clothespins in varying states of wear clipped to the line.
She watched him with that adorable wrinkle above her nose and he expected a protest, even as he pinned one shoulder and then the other to the makeshift clothesline with only a small twinge of pain across his chest.
The protest he waited for never came.
She went back to her washing, dunking a pair of trousers in the sudsy water.
He remained where he was. “How often does your Pop wander?”
“Most every day.”
This time she handed him the trousers without him having to ask. Their eyes met across the clothesline before she quickly turned back to the tub.
“How far does he range? Does he often take the same path?”
“I…don’t know. Why?”
Her eyes were shadowed as she handed him a pair of worn socks.
“I’m concerned about what I found. There’s two trails, well-worn and recent.”
He didn’t sugarcoat what he’d found. By now, he knew that giving her the full, unvarnished truth was the best course of action.
She went still, her hands clutching the edge of the washtub.
“Either your Pop has been wandering so much that he’s leaving a trail, or someone—maybe more than one someone—has been spying on you.”
He saw the tremor in her hands as she passed him another white shirt, this one slightly smaller. Hers?
“I really thought last night was a fluke,” she said. “I wanted it to be,” she whispered.
This time when she handed him a smaller pair of trousers, he clasped the fingers of both her hands in his. With the line between their hands, it wasn’t romantic; he only hoped it to be comforting. Her hands were cool and moist.
“You wanna tell me what’s going on?”
He saw her throat work as she swallowed. “Our neighbors…the Chestertons—erm, Ralph, in particular—have made some threats against me and Pop.”
He let his gaze linger, long enough that she flushed and her eyes flicked down to the ground.
“At me. Mostly me.”
“What kind of threats?” He had to work to keep his voice level as anger streaked through him. What kind of man threatened a woman?
She shrugged, her eyes still down and her voice low as she said, “He claims he wants to marry, that we can combine our homesteads and…have an easier time of it, I guess. No
t have to struggle so much to live off the land, if we teamed up.”
The disgust in her voice made it clear what she thought of that idea.
“And you’ve told him you’re not interested?”
She nodded. Color rose high in her cheeks. She still didn’t meet his eye.
“How many times?”
“One, that Pop knows about.”
He waited.
“And five or six more times, after that.”
He blew out a loud breath, startling her so that she finally glanced up at him and also jerked her hands away from his at the clothesline.
“Has he threatened you outright?”
She frowned. “It’s mostly implied. Statements like, You’ll regret saying ‘no’ to me. Things like that.”
He’d been right not to ask the man for help yesterday. He hadn’t known that he’d be leaving Catherine alone with a situation like this, had only that zing of intuition to rely on. But he’d apparently been right.
“How come you haven’t told Pop? About the rest of the times he’s accosted you.”
She tilted her head to one side, giving him an expression as if to say, You know why.
And he did. Pop was likely to react with violence toward the other man, which wasn’t a solution if no real threat had been made.
“I’d prefer you not tell him, either.”
He shook his head. “He should know—”
“Not yet.”
He blew out a breath but didn’t argue further. “I’ll be keeping watch tonight, and until we can figure a way to get Chesterton to leave you alone.”
Her eyes met his for a brief moment and he found himself saying, “Eye spy something blue.”
Her brow creased and she turned quickly back to the tub.
“The sky?”
He found himself flushing and scrambling for words as he clipped the trousers onto the line. “Yes, you’ve got it.”
What had he been thinking? He hadn’t. He’d been looking deeply into her beautiful eyes and almost gotten dizzy at the depth of emotion that had swirled through him, threatened to pull him under.
He wasn’t like his brother Ricky, who was known for his silver tongue—although he’d reformed since even before he’d married. Matty’s awkwardness was perhaps why Luella had broken things off.
Catherine didn’t even seem to notice.
She bent farther toward the ground, using her arm to fish for anything that might be at the bottom of the tub. “Won’t you become exhausted staying up all night, every night?”
“I’ll make do. I’ll catch some sleep during the day, if I can.”
She didn’t come up with any additional clothing, and he ducked beneath the line, his mind continuing to churn.
“Are there any other neighbors close? Other than the Chestertons?” If so, maybe one of them could help with the situation, or at least send word back to the sheriff.
“All the land north of us belongs to one rancher. He doesn’t bother us, and we keep to ourselves.”
“Maybe I should pay a call on both.”
Her brow scrunched. “A social call?”
“Sometimes being friendly is the best way to get information.”
She didn’t look convinced.
*
Catherine trailed the cowboy as they crossed the field toward the Chestertons’ place. Until he turned his head to look at her over his shoulder and raised his brows at her. She moved to catch up, walking at his elbow.
What had prompted her to do this?
This morning marked six days since the hailstorm and flood, and as of this morning, she’d discovered that the wheat crop wouldn’t recover. The spikes had been too far developed and the crushing weight of the hail had destroyed them.
She needed to focus on replanting the fields and had noticed damage to the barn that needed repairing, too. But she didn’t trust the Chestertons as far as she could throw them, and when Matty had said he was going to talk to the men, she’d been interested. This was her life. She wanted to know what he was going to say, wanted to get a sense if Ralph would leave her alone.
So when the cowboy had asked if she wanted to come along, she’d found herself agreeing. She’d left a stew cooking over a low fire with Pop to tend it.
She’d vacillated whether to tell Pop about Matty’s suspicions about how often someone had been coming onto their land, but ultimately she’d decided not to. There was no use in upsetting her grandfather, not when they didn’t have definitive proof of Ralph or Floyd spying.
Why had she agreed to come? Matty hadn’t pushed. He’d probably asked only to be polite, but here they were, trudging along together. As they crossed over the edge of the Pooles’ property, she could see bluffs in the far distance.
They crossed over a shallow ditch and the landscape changed from field grass to dirt. They’d made it to the Chestertons’ place.
The field was unevenly plowed. Pockets of murky brown water were dispersed throughout, but the job of plowing had been badly done in the first place. The hail had wreaked havoc here, as well. Their crop was beyond recovery, just like Catherine’s.
She hadn’t been here in years. Maybe not since before her mama had passed and another family had lived here. She didn’t expect the dilapidated building—really just a shack. It was small; she guessed the inside would be as small as the soddy she shared with Pop.
But one side of the roof was falling in and the wood showed cracks clear through to the interior—some through to the other side.
Nearby, the barn was in just as bad shape. A large hole gaped black in the roof.
There was no sign of livestock, but Ralph stepped out of the shack.
“Afternoon,” Matty said.
“This a social call?” Ralph asked. He stood with one hand propped on his hip, eating what looked like a biscuit. Crumbs littered his beard.
“House needs some repairs. Can’t invite you in today. Could use a woman’s touch to fancy it up.” His eyes slid to Catherine and away.
Matty ignored his jab at Catherine. “We won’t stay long. Not feeling particularly social. Your brother around?”
“No. Why?” Ralph’s gaze narrowed.
The cowboy didn’t answer immediately, letting his gaze roam. “The storm hit your barn hard, looks like. I didn’t notice the other day when I passed through.”
Ralph’s expression was narrow and suspicious, but he shoved the biscuit into his mouth, taking a large, messy bite.
“We’ve fallen on some hard times.” Crumbs sprayed from his mouth as he spoke.
“Our wheat crop suffered, too,” Catherine said.
His attention shifted. She quailed beneath the hard light in his eyes.
“You gonna replant?”
She heard the deeper question behind his words. Didn’t she have a stockpile?
“We’ll need to do something to survive the winter.”
“So will we.” Ralph’s words sounded like a threat. When he smiled, it was more of a sneer. She could almost hear his unspoken words, It’ll be easier to team up.
A shiver snaked through her.
“When’s your brother going to be back?” Matty asked.
Ralph’s eyes slid to the side as he shrugged. Either he didn’t know, or he wasn’t telling.
*
Matty squared his shoulders, hoping the sunlight would glint off the badge pinned to his chest and remind Ralph of his position in the town. He had a vested interest in keeping Catherine safe, same as he did for any other resident of Bear Creek.
“Catherine mentioned you’ve been making some unwelcome advances.”
He hadn’t meant to just lay it out there, but he wasn’t known for his subtlety. And sometimes a man needed the words said outright.
Ralph’s face showed no surprise. And then his mouth split in an ugly smile. “I didn’t know it was unwelcome.”
She muttered something at Matty’s side. Sounded like, Yes, you did.
“I certainly ain’t the kind
of man who pushes his affection on a woman who don’t return it.”
Beside him, Matty felt Catherine almost vibrating with tension, with the words she was no doubt holding back.
He touched her elbow, just a slight brush of his fingers, trying to let her know to stay calm and let him handle this. Maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea to invite her along, but he’d been hoping to give her some comfort by confronting Ralph Chesterton outright and coming to a resolution.
“Now you know,” Matty said, forcing a calm note. “I’m glad we got that resolved so easily. Now Catherine can rest easy that you won’t be talking to her again about marriage or her property.”
The other man wasn’t smiling anymore. The slight narrowing of his eyes and the hard glint in their depths were warning signs that Matty knew well enough. But he nodded, a slow bob of his head.
“That’s real good,” Matty went on. “I’d hate to have to get the sheriff’s office involved. More involved than me coming out here to talk to you.”
“If that’s all you came to say…I’ve got work to do.” Ralph’s lips parted, but his expression couldn’t be called a smile.
They took their leave.
Catherine was quiet as she walked beside him. He didn’t think this was her normal, pensive quiet.
“Something tells me that won’t be the end of it,” he said.
“You don’t think so?”
She kept her head down. She didn’t sound terribly surprised.
“I’ll keep watch. I still think you should let Pop know. Have you changed your mind about talking to him about any of this?”
She shook her head. “He gets lost in his memories enough as it is. If he starts feeling threatened, it might make it worse.”
He exhaled. The woman was stubborn, but he could also see her point.
He didn’t like the way Ralph’s eyes had turned hard when he looked at Catherine. Didn’t like the thought of her alone out here with no protection.
“I’m still thinking of visiting the big ranch. Having someone else looking out for you would be smart once I head home.”
Because he knew it couldn’t be long until the sheriff’s search party, or his brothers, would be coming for him. His time here with Catherine was short.
Love Inspired Historical October 2015 Box Set Page 10
