The Unexpected Champion

by Mary Connealy

  Luth went to his horse, already saddled and ready to go. “Start searching first thing in the morning. Don’t come back until you find them. Or their bodies. But don’t let yourself be seen following them.”

  “This wilderness is huge.” McCall sat on the floor of their hideout cave, his wet legs extended toward the fire.

  “You don’t miss much, do you, McCall?” She had to give him credit, though. He didn’t do any whining.

  “I’m so sick of this, I’d like to—”

  Not much whining anyway, and since she’d found a gift for ignoring him—and she actually agreed with him—it didn’t bother her overly.

  “I was awake the whole trip.” It was baffling how lost she was. “Yes, the trip took hours and we wound around, but I think we headed mostly east, then north. To get home we should head south and west, right? Simple.”

  “I’m starving.”

  She sat up and faced him. “Listen, it doesn’t do one lick of good for you to complain.”

  “Sure, it does some good. It keeps me from running around in circles screaming.”

  “Look, McCall, your whining is—”

  “Stop calling me that.”

  “What? A whiner?”

  “No, I don’t mind that. I deserve it. I’m annoying myself even more than you.”

  “I kinda doubt that.”

  “Stop calling me McCall.”

  She met his eyes and arched a brow at him. “It’s your name, right?”

  “Call me John.”

  “Nope. That’s too friendly. I’m not feeling all that friendly.”

  “You’re my best friend in the world.”

  Somehow, she doubted that. “Because I helped us fall over a cliff? Because I’m feeding you? Because I have yet to punch you when you start fussing?”

  “Well, all of those, honestly. Except you have punched me a couple of times.” He rubbed his shoulder.

  She laughed. “Now that I think of it, you’re becoming a good friend, too. Not best. I reckon Cam is my best friend, and I’m partial to his wife, Gwen, and her sister, Deb. Besides Trace, Deb’s husband.”

  “That’s all family. You can’t count family.”

  “I like Trace’s hired men more than you.”

  “Two of them.” John nodded with what looked like complete satisfaction. “I’m third, then. I can live with that.”

  She laughed again. She had to admit Trace’s hired men had never made her laugh. “Okay, you can call me Penny. As for getting out of this wilderness, all I can figure is that coming down the waterfall took us miles away from any settlement. We can’t pick a direction until we get out of the canyon, and we are headed north, not south. We just walked into the belly of a wild land, and there’s no easy way out.”

  “Have you heard of the Donner Party?”

  “I don’t think it’ll come to that. Maybe if we’re still out here come winter. And you seem like the gentlemanly type, so you’d probably let me be the cannibal and you be the food.”

  “There’s your sunny outlook again. I’ve noticed you’re an optimist.”

  “Yep, that’s me. Always the bright side.”

  “Good, then you’ll see the bright side when I give you some bad news.”

  There was an extended silence.

  Penny leaned forward, so he knew he had her attention.

  “What bad news is that?”

  He paused because they’d been getting along really well and he hated to end it, and he was probably going to.

  “That stream we hiked in, that waterfall we climbed down, that cliff we fell over . . .”

  “Are you just repeating the steps of our journey? I don’t see why when we were both there.”

  “No, I’m just mentioning them because they’re all going to be mighty big obstacles.”

  “But we’re past them now. Of course, there may be more trouble ahead, but—”

  “The thing is, I’m mentioning them now because . . . because they’re going to be even harder tomorrow, going upstream, climbing up a waterfall, going up a cliff, because we have to go back.”

  He leaned back against the rock. Might as well get comfortable while he waited for the explosion.

  CHAPTER

  6

  “Go back?” Penny exploded to her feet.

  “Hush, you could give away our hiding place.” The lunkhead didn’t even stand up. In fact, he seemed to be making himself comfortable.

  “And there you go making my point.” She did drop her voice, and she moved so she leaned against the tunnel wall across from him. If someone came bursting in, guns blazing, they’d see the lunkhead first.

  “We are hiding right now from armed men who seemed to have a mighty powerful itch to do us harm. And it all has to do with that filthy murderer who’s been plaguing us all winter. Considering how relentless Raddo was, and how ruthless Whisper Man acted wanting to know if Raddo told us anything, there’s a better’n good chance that when we got away from them, they didn’t just shrug their shoulders and go on home. Those men are still hunting.”

  “I think we probably lost them.” He sounded like he was fighting not to laugh at her.

  She clenched a fist and considered doing something that’d make him get real serious, real fast.

  “Men who didn’t turn a hair when they knocked you over the head. Men who—”

  “Men”—John cut her off and sat up straight. For the first time she saw the fire in his eyes—“who need to be stopped.”

  He’d been acting cool, but he was furious. “Men who are kidnappers for hire, connected to Raddo, a vicious murderer. Men willing to do murder themselves. Men who attacked a Pinkerton agent and think they can get away with it. They are not going to. Not while I’m alive.”

  “Which you won’t be,” Penny said, pointing out the obvious, “if you walk up on an armed man.”

  “Well, that’s why I’m lucky to have you. You can help me sneak.”

  That bought him a few seconds of silence while she tried to figure out what he meant by that, considering she was hollering at him right now . . . well, hollering with her voice real quiet, but she was sure he felt the yelling. The fire crackled, embers glowing as red as a lake of fire. She hoped he could see she matched him for fury. Which made her mention, “Right this minute you shouldn’t be feeling all that lucky.”

  She sure hoped he heard the threat in her words. She saw him glance at her hand, clenched into a fist. And at that bag she’d never been separated from, that held their food, her weapon, honestly way more things than a woman needed to survive in the wild for a good long while . . . unless you got peppered with lead, of course.

  “It’s simple, Penny. I’m going after those men.”

  “Let’s go to a town, report this to the sheriff, and round up a gun for you.”

  “I’ve got my hideout gun in my boot.”

  “A real gun, not that peashooter. Then we’ll find my brother and tell him what happened, then go after the kidnappers with a posse.” Now she sounded like she was afraid. Which she was, but she didn’t like admitting that to anyone, man, woman, or child . . . especially this man.

  “You go ahead and find a town and a sheriff and a posse if you want, but first thing in the morning, I’m going back.”

  “I want them too, McCall. I no more intend to let this stand than you do. I just don’t want to go after them outgunned and outnumbered. Four armed men to two people with two guns between them—one of those guns little more than a toy.” Although Penny could rain trouble right down on those men, she reckoned.

  This greenhorn was calling her a coward, and it stung. But it kicked in all her stubbornness to refuse to let him insult her into doing something as stupid as tracking down those varmints and showin’ them a little frontier justice. She felt a yearning to do just that, but she kept her mouth clamped shut until she was sure she could control what came out of it.

  When she had a hold on herself, she asked, “Do you know how to read a sign?”

>   “Read a sign? You mean like the one printed over the sheriff’s office in Dismal that says Barber Shop and Jail?”

  He was just teasing her. She hoped.

  “No, read signs, like follow a man’s trail through forests and over mountains. You know we walked down that stream to hide our trail, well, that’s what I mean by signs. I was doing my best to leave no sign of which way we went.”

  He heaved an impatient sigh. “If I see a footprint, I can tell which end is the toe, so I know which way a man is going.”

  “But in the woods, you have to notice if a twig is snapped off, then see if the break is raw or weathered, so you know if someone passed through recently. And know if the twig was broken, or the grass bent over, by a man or an elk or a grizzly bear—there ain’t always footprints, just signs that someone has passed through. You have to listen to the birds to see if they suddenly go silent. It means something is disturbing them—and don’t forget that sometimes the thing that is disturbing them is you, so you need to judge that. You have to smell. The forest is full of smells. Some of them belong, almost all of them belong for a fact. So, you eliminate anything that’s supposed to be there, which you know if you’ve had experience in the forest, and pick up on the scent of a man or horse. You have to—”

  “All right.” He waved both hands at her like he was shooing her away. “I know I’m no good at it, Penny. That’s why I said I was lucky to have you. But if you’re not going to help, I’ll bet I can find my way back to where we escaped. I don’t have to read signs to follow this stream backward to where we came down the side of that waterfall. From there I can find that little trail, find that cliff we went rolling down, climb up it, and I’ll bet at the top of it, I’ll find the hoofprints of shod horses. I’ll be able to tell if four riders hunted us together or split up. I can follow that to where we were held captive. Maybe the wagon will even be there, and if it’s not, someone had to drive it away. It’s not that easy to hide wagon tracks.”

  “It’s not that hard, either.” Penny crossed her arms, hornet mad thinking about those low-down hombres who’d plucked her up and carried her off with no more regard than they’d show a gunnysack full of taters.

  He glared at her. “So no, if I see a busted-off twig, there’s a good chance I’m not going to know if those men did the busting, you did it, or a grizzly, but I’m thinking those men chasing us were racing around, and they weren’t being all that sly. I’ll bet they left plenty of good tracks. And,” he added, “I’m figuring they’ve given up on the search by now.”

  “Don’t gamble your life on that.”

  “I’ll be watchful in case they’re still around. I’ll just be sniffing up a storm thanks to your warning, though the men picked me up and tossed me on the ground and I didn’t notice any particular smell. But I’ll use my nose as well as my eyes and ears. When I find where we were held, I’ll pick out their leader and follow him as best as I can.”

  His voice rose with each word. “If I lose him, I’ll find him again. It’s how I make my living, and I’m good at my job.”

  “Quiet,” Penny hissed and looked down the tunnel that led to whoever might be out there.

  “You can go on home.” He surged to his feet, closed the distance between them, and jabbed one finger at her chest. His voice dropped to a cold whisper. “But I’m not going to leave this to a sheriff who might think his jurisdiction is the edge of town. So yes, in the morning, I’m going back.”

  “Then I reckon I’m going back, too.”

  His jabbing finger dropped. He straightened away from her and his brows rose in surprise. “Really, you’ll go with me?”

  “Might as well. The one thing I haven’t mentioned about this is . . . well, I haven’t wanted to think about it.”

  “What’s that?”

  “What my brother will be going through right now. He’s a man to protect what’s his. When I don’t show up at his place, he’s going to come looking, and he’ll come hard. He’ll find those men and the wagon tracks, though it might take time. But then, Trace Riley is with him, the man who saved the children from that wagon train Raddo and his outlaw gang massacred. Riley is the best I’ve ever seen in these mountains, and my brother and I are both good, so that’s saying something. He’ll be coming, too. Maybe more than just those two. I hate knowing how Cam is feeling right now from worrying about me.”

  “Should we head back now? It’s dark, but if we go slow—”

  “Thanks, I appreciate that. But no, we wait until it’s daylight. I could make it, probably, but let’s give those men who kidnapped us a chance to calm down and holster their guns. But, in the morning, we move fast. Get some sleep, John. I’m not waiting for you tomorrow.”

  She thought he might start yelling again. Instead he smiled, and those teeth shone like the sunrise. She went to the opposite side of the fire, as far from him as she could get, extended her wet feet toward the fire, and took her own advice.

  CHAPTER

  7

  Penny hissed.

  John crouched low and froze. He’d learned that mighty fast. Of course, she’d pounded it into him all morning.

  He listened. He looked. He did it all without moving. She’d almost clobbered him for turning his head earlier, when they were hiding from what turned out to be a deer.

  The wilderness wasn’t his strong suit. But for the love of Mike, the woman was inching along. He could’ve walked all the way back to Philadelphia by now.

  Still, if he annoyed her and she clobbered him, he couldn’t hit back because he didn’t believe in hitting a woman.

  So he froze, just as he’d been trained.

  He didn’t see anything, didn’t hear anything. Even Penny wasn’t visible. She’d slid behind a tree, and in these dense woods, that put her out of his sight, too. Bad enough he couldn’t see whatever made her hiss, but he couldn’t even see her.

  He hoped he was hiding properly from whatever she was hissing about.

  Then she jerked on his pant leg, and he jumped and yelped like a wounded hound. She must’ve crawled on her belly because he hadn’t seen her coming. She jerked her head, which meant for him to get moving.

  He was getting great at communicating with her without words. In fact, he preferred it when she didn’t talk. When she did, she usually had something to say that he didn’t want to hear, so this suited him just fine.

  They’d been hours on the trail. He couldn’t see the sky most of the time, but it had to be past midday, and they’d started at first light. They’d come upstream to the base of the waterfall, climbed the rocks alongside it, and walked back to that cliff. Once there, it hadn’t been hard to get to the top.

  Not running for your life made everything easier.

  At the top of the cliff things had gotten slow. Penny had seen tracks, and she’d gone to inching along. All John could do was be quiet.

  And now he’d embarrassed himself by jumping and squeaking like a frog on a hot rock. A cowardly frog on a hot rock.

  “This is it. They’re gone.” Penny talked right out loud, like she had no worries about the outlaws being close at hand.

  “How can you be sure?”

  She arched one brow in a way that John had never been able to do. He envied her mobile eyebrow.

  After too long a silence, she said, “I’ve circled the wagon site twice. I found tracks, three heading one way, one another. You saw them, didn’t you?”

  John tried to think of an answer that didn’t make him sound like a complete failure. And he tried even harder to ignore the warmth creeping up his cheeks. He was blushing, and he wished that cliff was handy so he could toss himself over it again.

  “No, I didn’t see them.” He sounded defensive, and that embarrassed him even more. He dug in and said with absolute confidence, “If I’d been in charge of finding tracks, I’m sure I would have. But I’ve been leaving all of it to you and just following along and being quiet when you tell me to.”

  Penny shook her head and looked so
disappointed in him he was half afraid he was going to get his fingers whacked by a ruler.

  Penny turned to a tight opening in the trees. “Wagon tracks right here.” Crouching, she pointed to a pair of surprisingly subtle indentations. “See them?”

  John did indeed see them. And he saw more. Behind a scrub pine. He reached through the prickly needles that lined a trail so narrow John couldn’t believe they got a wagon through. He lifted up a tangled mess. “They left a rope behind.”

  “That’s the one I got off my wrists.” Penny absently rubbed her wrists as if she was just now untied. “I remember tossing it when we lit out. They didn’t find it and take it with them. So now I know for sure we’re in the right place, though I was confident before.”

  “Did a single rider go off alone?”

  “Yep, but I’ve had a fine idea, McCall. One I think you’ll agree to, even though you don’t seem overly worried about facing down an armed man alone.”

  John crossed his arms and waited.

  “We could go to town and fetch our horses. That’s not too cowardly for you, is it?” She did a good job of sounding reasonable and nice and even a little like a delicate female who’d like to ride rather than walk for miles. It was a pathetically false effort—but he appreciated that she attempted it.

  “The three men rode away in a group, but judging by these wagon tracks”—she pointed to a farther area of ground that looked pretty bare to John, though there might be a few broken twigs among the rocks and grass—“they didn’t go back to town. They lit out in a new direction. I want to follow the trail that goes back to Dismal. We can fetch our horses, stock up on supplies, then ride after this coyote armed and loaded, ready for the long trek ahead of us.”

  She gave him a pat on the shoulder as if encouraging him and continued in her falsely sincere voice, “Won’t that be better?”

  On the one hand, having a horse was necessary, and he admitted he hadn’t thought of it last night when he was giving his high-minded speech about bringing down a criminal.