She looked back. Took such a long look at his face that he wondered what she was staring at. Then she saw the gun and visibly relaxed.
Shaking her head as if to clear her muddled thoughts, she said, “Keep moving.”
Turning, she vanished into the woods. He had to admit she was right. This was no time to rest. He went after her, hoping they got out of sight and the dust settled before those men came.
“I’m not waiting one second longer.” Cam Scott slapped his leg and launched himself toward the door.
Cam grabbed his hat off a peg in his raw, floorless cabin. He snarled over his shoulder at Trace Riley, “I can’t believe you just rode off and left my sister with a stranger!”
Everyone at the table started talking at once. Cam’s wife, Gwen, with two youngsters. Deb, Trace’s wife and Gwen’s sister. Adam and Utah, Trace’s hired men. They’d all come over to Cam’s house to help him build his cabin and had been waiting for Penny to return ever since.
“He’s a Pinkerton agent.” Trace was out the door on Cam’s heels.
“You left Penny based on nothing but the word of a stranger who’d already shot someone right in front of my eyes.”
“He shot Raddo, and so did you, and so did Gwen. That makes him our friend.” Trace was right behind him.
Utah came fast.
Trace yelled, “Adam, stay and guard the place. Hide Raddo’s horse and bury his saddlebags. I don’t want anyone who comes looking for Raddo or that horse and money to see it unless we’re all here.”
They’d had to backtrail Raddo to find his stakeout. But McCall had pointed out where he’d first seen Raddo slinking along. Raddo’s behavior had drawn the detective’s notice and gotten him involved. Cam’d found a fine animal and saddlebags loaded with enough gold coins to make Raddo a rich man. And he’d struck none of them as rich.
A mystery.
One Cam didn’t have time to solve right now. He looked down at a fistful of gold coins and wondered about them. They were twenty-dollar double eagles, and he hadn’t seen many of them in his life. They were heavy and stamped with a picture of the head of the Statue of Liberty. He’d passed them around, and Utah’d seen them before, but no one else had. And sure not a stack of them like this.
“Cam, take my horse. He’s fastest,” Adam hollered after them.
“Thanks,” Cam called back to Adam, then added, “Hey, if a gunslinging stranger comes along, just go right ahead and hand over Deb to him. I’d as soon my wife not leave, but he can have Trace’s.”
“I told you he had paper work,” Trace snapped. “Add to that, I rode the whole way there with him. He’s an honest man, I’d swear to it. A city slicker, though. I wouldn’t’ve left him there, but I figured Penny could get him home. And the sheriff is a slow-talkin’ man. He was fixing to keep us there for a long spell, and I’d already told my part three times. I knew about Raddo chasing after us, but I wasn’t even there when he was shot. I was all out of things to say. I wanted to get back here and get to work. You’d have left her, too.”
Cam didn’t answer that because he didn’t want to admit Trace might be right. John McCall had been here for a spell after Raddo was shot, and Cam had never for a minute considered the man wasn’t who he said he was.
Cam had taken only a passing notice of Trace coming home alone. They’d talked about it, and Cam had trusted that Penny would come along in an hour. When the hour stretched to two, Cam started glancing up from where he was building on Penny’s cabin. He’d picked a spot to work where he could see all down the trail. They’d been gathered for afternoon coffee when the third hour passed and Cam snapped.
“I can’t believe I’ve been dawdling all this time. If I could reach it, I’d kick my own backside.” Cam broke into a run for the corral.
Trace said, “I’m sure he’s not the cause of whatever trouble they’re in.”
“So, you admit they’re in trouble?” Cam vaulted over the poles of the corral fence, grabbed a lasso, and dropped a loop over Adam’s horse. He was saddling it almost before the rope tightened around the horse’s neck.
“They’d be here by now if they weren’t.” Trace sounded grim as he slapped leather on his black stallion.
Utah was a step behind, but he was better at just about everything than the rest of them, so he rode out on the trail toward Dismal at the same time they did.
Deb, Gwen, and the children stood at the door, all of them looking worried.
“I don’t like things upsetting Gwen, Trace. Considering Raddo tried to kill her today, she offered her life to save the children, and she ended up shooting him, I’d say she’s had more than enough. And now here I am riding off and leaving her.”
“But you’re not leaving her alone. Adam’s a top hand.”
“No, not alone, but I’m sure not there to protect her. Just like I wasn’t there to protect my sister.” Cam slammed the side of his fist into the pommel of his saddle, then kicked the horse into a trot and led the way down the wooded trail. They came out into the broad valley where Cam had claimed a homestead, then turned and, three abreast, set out galloping toward town, hours away on a fast horse.
Adam’s horse was the fastest critter Cam had ever seen. Utah’s was plenty fast too, and Trace’s wild-born mustang was one speedy animal. While they couldn’t run at top speed the whole way, all three men were riding horses with plenty of stamina.
“I’m not waiting for you.” Cam didn’t even spur the horse. Instead he bent low over its neck and pressed with his knees. The horse knew he was asking for speed and gave it to him. This beast surely loved to run.
He left Trace and Utah in the dust and tormented himself with thoughts of just how lost one woman could get in a wilderness this vast.
Another trail popped up in front of her, this one even smaller than the one up at the top of the cliff. She took it.
Finally it felt safe to talk. The woods closed around them. No openings, not even overhead, where they could be visible by the men if they found that cliff.
“Falling over a cliff was the luckiest thing that could’ve happened to us.”
A strange noise from behind swung her around to see that McCall had walked into a tree branch. “It was not. I can name ten things luckier than that.”
He was a mess. Maybe they’d come upon some water and he could wash some of the blood off of him.
“Now we’re ahead. And we came on this trail headed downhill.”
“We’re walking uphill and sideways as much as downhill.”
The man really should just listen. He was no hand at wilderness travel. “It’s mostly downhill, I can tell. Especially that cliff—that was a big ol’ step down.”
“Can’t argue with you there.”
“And you found my gun. I appreciate it. I’ll take it back as soon as we find a place to hole up. I’d better recheck the load. A fall like that might shake things up. But there’s no time for that now.”
“I’ve got an Army Colt like this one. I checked the shots and repacked a couple of them while I’ve been walking. It’s ready to fire.”
Well, the man knew guns at least. Still, she wanted to check it herself. “Let’s hope we don’t need it, but if we do, I’ve got my bag. It near to strangled me a couple of times when we went over the cliff. I’m glad I didn’t lose it. I’ve got bullets and powder to reload.”
“The only reason we’d need to reload is if we get in a shootout. Let’s try and avoid that.”
“This is our chance to plan.” Penny kept her eyes sharp. “I want to find water.”
“You’re thirsty?”
Penny skidded to a stop and turned to face him. “I wasn’t until you mentioned it. Anyhow, that’s not why I want a stream.” She started off again. “A stream will run through the lowlands between mountains. I’m hoping we find one and can follow it up or downstream, keepin’ our feet in the water. That’ll put an end to our trail.”
“And then?” McCall sounded funny. Almost like he wished he were
leading. Except of course he had no idea where to go. Neither did she, but she knew terrain. She could read signs as well as her brother Cam, better honestly, but she didn’t like reminding him of that. It pinched his manly feelings. As it probably would with McCall. And she didn’t want any manly feelings to add up to stupid.
“We’re almost out of daylight,” she said. “I don’t want to chance walking in the dark if I don’t have to. We’d have to inch along. We might walk right off another cliff that makes the last one seem like a wide and well-traveled road.”
“So, find water, then walk to quit leaving tracks, then a hideout before dark, then what?”
“Then what? As if that’s not enough to do in the last half hour of dusk. Wait, do you hear that?”
“Water. It’s a trickle, but it’s close.”
“Yep.” Her relief was huge. “When we do all we need to do before dark, and it’s plenty considering dark is almost upon us, we need to figure out where in the world we are and how to get back home.”
She considered herself an optimist, but honestly sometimes it was exhausting to be so blasted chipper.
“I was hoping,” McCall said, “somehow you kept track, or were you knocked out, too?”
“No, they spared me that.” It made her feel like she’d failed, like he was branding her a greenhorn for not being able to see through a tarp. Since she knew better, she ignored it, yet it wasn’t that easy. “But under that tarp for hours, I wasn’t even sure which direction we were going for a long while after we left town.”
“North, I think.” The mostly unconscious man she’d been riding with had an opinion. “I felt heat on my left. Sunlight.”
“I reckon you’re right, but while you were knocked cold as a snowcapped mountain, we didn’t go straight in one direction. Nope, no idea in the world, and these mountains are a mighty big place. I’m not worried about it, much. I can live off the land, hunt, and find trails traveled by men, maybe a town.”
She thought of Trace Riley, who’d been stranded out here as a half-grown boy. He’d been so lost he couldn’t find a town. Penny didn’t think that’d happen to her, though the trees blocked her vision of all but a few jagged peaks. The sun was mostly set, but there was enough of it that she knew which way was west. As those peaks loomed high overhead, almost laughing down at her, she admitted—privately—to having some doubts.
Honestly she thought of herself as a woman who always looked at the bright side, but right now it was taking all her gumption to do so.
Where were they? Where had they been driven? If she could find the stream and wade along it for a few miles, pick the right spot to step out, then there’d be no trail left to follow.
And then she’d figure out where they were.
CHAPTER
4
The water poured out of a stone ahead of them. Not a stream but more like a spring that fell one hundred feet or so. John came up beside her, and together they gazed down over the gushing water.
“Yep, if we can just figure out how to get about one hundred feet straight down, we’ll be set.”
Miss Scott punched him in the shoulder. He didn’t even blame her.
“We can get a drink at least.” John needed it badly. He cupped water in his hands and drank deeply. It was so cold it made his teeth hurt, but it felt good going down. “I wish we had a canteen.”
“While you’re at it, wish for a couple of horses, and why not wish for a cavalry unit and to be flown on angel wings right back to Cam’s place?”
The woman had a practical bent and apparently an inability to keep her mouth shut.
“That way.” She pointed straight into what looked like an impenetrable forest. So far, she’d done a real poor job of leading them on this little trek in the woods, considering the cliff, but walking in water to cover their tracks was an idea with merit. Maybe they should find a way to get down there.
She seemed to be beating her way through the woods this time. No trail. Not even a pathetic, mostly invisible one. He hadn’t appreciated those before now.
Crawling over felled trees, shoving through brambles of undergrowth, every step took time and effort. Then she dropped about a foot. He grabbed her and dragged her back.
She turned, still firmly in his clutches, and arched a brow. “What are you doing?”
“I’m saving you from falling over another cliff.”
Miss Scott gave one shoulder a bit of a shrug, followed by a tilt of her head. “Thank you. I do appreciate that. But I wasn’t falling. There are rocks here almost wide enough to look like a stairway. We can get down to where this water joins that stream.”
She pointed down. He came forward so they were side by side and saw it. A steep, rough little stretch, but with good layers of rock jutting out like an unfriendly staircase. “Are you sure we should go down there? This is like a crack in the earth.” He looked into the dark hole. Though it wasn’t actually a hole, not really. It was wide enough that he could see a sizable stream. Other springs trickled and cascaded here and there to make the water into a true creek.
“That stream down there is flowing to somewhere. I think we can follow it, at least for a while. Let me go.”
He hadn’t really noticed he was still hanging on to her. He released his grip, and she turned and went on down.
Calling softly after her, John said, “I’m torn between following right on your heels in case you need me to grab you again, or hanging back. I might fall off this stairway of yours and sweep you right off the mountainside.”
“Go ahead and wait.” She said it almost as if she didn’t trust him not to fall. That was just plain insulting . . . even if there was a smidgen of truth to it.
He waited a few moments, then down he went. She was right—it was honestly the simplest traveling of this whole misadventure. No cliff. No invisible trail. No tarp. No whack on the head.
They made short work of descending into the huge crack in the earth, and when they got down it was perfect—except night had truly fallen in the shadowed canyon. A stream about twenty paces wide glistened and tumbled. It was flanked by flat, sandy banks, and walls rose on both sides to a dizzying height.
The stream wasn’t deep, and if it got deep, the shoreline was wide enough for them to walk on. Assuming the shoreline didn’t vanish right about the same time this trickling creek turned fifty feet deep.
She reached the bottom and gave him one backward glance, as if to say she would come back and save him if necessary. Insulting again, but still, he appreciated that. It bolstered his spirits.
Before he reached the bottom, she set out walking right down the middle of the stream.
“Hold up.” He wasn’t bolstered enough to keep walking. “We’ve been busy running for our lives. But my head hurts. Let me bathe these lumps I’ve gathered and see if the wounds need bandaging.” John drank his fill, then splashed water onto his face and scrubbed. Dried blood darkened his fingertips. Gingerly, he touched a lump on the crown of his head that was the size of a chicken egg from where that low-down varmint hit him with the butt of his gun. Another smaller gash cut across his forehead above his right eye. He’d landed face-first. He’d been faking unconsciousness, and even if he hadn’t been faking it, his hands tied behind his back would have prevented him from breaking his fall.
He regretted the new cut on his head, but he’d seen a bit while he lay there, and it might help them get even with the men who’d done this.
John washed again and again, and still his hands were blackened by blood and dirt. He started to feel a little sorry for Miss Scott. “I must look awful. It’s a wonder you didn’t run from me as fast as you did those bad men.”
“You look better now.” When she finished taking a drink of water, she pulled a kerchief off her neck, soaked it, and pressed it to the back of his head. “That’s a bad bump.”
“I noticed.” He found his own kerchief in his back pocket and pressed it against his forehead with his left hand while he went on washing with his
right.
“McCall,” Miss Scott said, “I’m long past judging a man by anything but his character. You’re a good-lookin’ fella, though with a couple of wicked blows, you look pretty dreadful. You’ve held up well in this mountain run we’re on, but it doesn’t change that you’re here to kidnap a child.”
John bent to bathe the blood out of his hair.
Miss Scott left off pressing the rag to the wicked lump on his head and wrung it out. “The reason I mention your looks is because I don’t care a whit what you look like. What bothers me is you coming for my nephew.”
“The boy’s grandparents want to care for their orphaned grandchild. That doesn’t make them bad people.” Though John knew them more than a little, and what he knew wasn’t encouraging.
“Those low-down Chiltons hated Abe and did everything in their power to make his life a misery. And they never said a kind word about their only grandson, Ronnie. So why did they send you out here to take him back to them? He’s in better hands out here with Cam, and we’re not going to stand by and let you kidnap him.”
“It’s not kidnapping to take a child home to his grandparents when his parents are dead. And it’s not kidnapping to come right up to you and clearly state my intent. Kidnapping is what these outlaws did to us. Surely a woman so wise to the ways of the West can see the difference.”
“The main difference is that one is a whack to the head, another to the heart. In the end, someone’s still taken away against their will.”
Since John had some misgivings of his own about taking little Ronnie, he decided not to pursue the point. He had even deeper misgivings about a lone man transporting a toddler across the country. He could just imagine the crying.
“If the Chiltons think they’ve got a claim on those children, then they need to talk to the law, talk to a judge, and do it right. Don’t send a man out to grab him.”
“They didn’t send me for the children, they sent me for the child. They make no claim on your niece.”
“You mean they heard the folks caring for two small children had died, and knowing there were two, they only showed interest in one?” Miss Scott’s crankiness turned to fury. “Were you supposed to find a home for Maddie Sue? Or did they want you to just abandon a three-year-old girl in the wilderness with people they thought weren’t fit to care for their grandson?”
The Unexpected Champion Page 3