by Ivy McAdams
The way his eyes moved and didn’t come back to hers made her stomach sink. They were up to no good.
“What are they?”
“Our first stop is your cabin.”
Chapter 12
Sadie frowned, a pulse of shock running through her. “My cabin?”
“Your father’s cabin,” Clay said. “Ace wants to clean it out. I guess he heard about your engagement and figured you wouldn’t need it anymore.”
Her eyebrows tightened. “He heard?”
“I didn’t say anything. I swear. Not my business to be blabbing.”
Her hands tightened on the reins, and she stared at the sway in Mason’s shoulders as he plodded along ahead of them on his black Morgan horse.
“What does he want?” she asked after a pause.
Clay shrugged. “Any valuables. That place will be ransacked once you leave. He wants first dibs on the goods.”
A sneer curled through her lip. “He could just ask instead of robbing me. In front of my face, besides!”
“Well, you weren’t exactly invited along.”
Her eyes cut over to Clay. His strong jaw was set, lips slightly pursed, eyes on the road ahead. She hadn’t seen him look so lethal before. It was frightening, but thrilling. The intensity in his eyes drew her in, had her leaning a few inches out of her saddle. She started to reach out and place her hand on his arm, but thought better of it.
“What do you mean?”
“Ace didn’t want you to go. He wants to keep you close by. You’re his piggy bank right now.” He rolled his eyes, cutting his gaze over to her. “He was afraid if I took you away that you wouldn’t be back in time to make the swap for the money. He set the pickup date in the letter to your aunt. You’re supposed to be at the Emerald Falls train station for the swap the day after tomorrow.”
She swallowed a knot of nerves. Two days before they realized Aunt Hilda would most certainly not pay a ransom for her. She wiped a moist palm on her trousered knee.
“Is that what the two of you were fighting over?” she asked.
His eyes softened, lips pressed together. “You heard that?”
“Some of it. We all did. The other ladies seemed surprised.”
“I’m sure it was alarming. I don’t question Ace. He’s given me a lot, like all of us, but something came over me. I had this assignment to run for Ace, but I couldn’t leave you there. Not alone.”
“Clara’s there. Bridget and Ginny. They’re nice.”
“It’s not safe. Not with all the others.”
His eyes were on the woods again. A wide opening in the trees was approaching ahead of them. They were nearing the road.
Her fingers fidgeted with her reins as she let his words sink in.
Not safe.
The outlaw himself had said it. A small shiver shook her core. Had she been unsafe the entire time?
“Most of the Van den Bergs are good people, don’t get me wrong,” he continued, “but there are some I don’t trust.”
Her mind jumped to Tom and his friends torturing the poor fox, and an unpleasant taste spread over her tongue.
“Like Tom?”
He studied her for a moment before answering. “Especially Tom. He takes without asking. He’s not equipped to be around civilized people.”
An image flashed in her mind of the first time she’d seen Tom’s cold dark eyes, peering out above the black bandana covering his face. The blood in her veins ran cold.
“So I’m here then?” Her voice barely topped a whisper.
The muscle in Clay’s jaw flexed. He ran a hand through his bronze locks. She clenched her reins tighter, wishing she could do the same.
“It took some convincing,” he said, “but Ace relented and said you could come with me. I guess I had a better ultimatum.”
He’d argued with Ace on her behalf? Something fluttered in her chest, and she pressed her palm against it. Her pulse pattered against her fingertips. No one had ever been so concerned about her well-being. Her father had been a good, hard-working man, but he’d had no qualms about hiding her out in the woods with him after her mother passed away. It’d been a lonely and laborious childhood. The abandoned ache in her chest confirmed what she’d always known. It hadn’t been the right choice for her. It’d been cruel, and she’d always resented him a little for it.
Clay, on the other hand, hardly even knew her and was fighting for her against an outlaw gang leader.
Her neck and cheeks flushed at the thought.
He wasn’t like any outlaw she’d ever heard stories about.
She waited for a beat in hope he'd elaborate on his ultimatum, but he rode on in silence.
“What about the assignment he sent you on?” she asked, adjusting her focus. “What is it?”
“An interception. We’re going to reroute Ellard’s mail.”
“What do you mean reroute?”
“Ellard is a sheep farmer. He ships sheep as far as Texas. He has a big establishment—“
“I’ve heard of Ibis Ellard,” Sadie said. She was proud to know anyone in town, even if he wasn’t a particularly decent man.
She'd studied the families in Emerald Falls from afar as a child, learning their names and stories. The information she didn't know, she made up, developing elaborate stories of their pasts and turning each into a fully-fleshed person in her own mind. Even if she knew little of the truth. She drew in a lot of hearsay from customers at the general store or Papa's vendor site. Once a week they'd spend an afternoon selling their tanned hides and apricots, and then she'd visit the store for their weekly wares. Unfortunately, she didn't see the townspeople much more than that.
“Then you know he’s a wealthy man,” Clay said.
She nodded.
“Unfortunately for him, he’s also not very smart. He ships all those sheep third party and doesn’t trust his delivery team. So the pay for the sheep comes by mail.”
“You’re going to steal his money?”
Clay paused, rolling his tongue against his teeth. “We’re going to relieve him of the extra funds he obviously does not need, yes.”
She scoffed. “That’s just plain stealing.”
“Maybe, but he owes Ace a little money too, and he refuses to pay.”
His eyes didn’t falter. There was no twitch or tell in his muscles to make her believe he was lying.
“Why does he owe him money?”
Clay rubbed at the back of his neck with a half shrug. “Ace and Jeremiah used to work on Ellard’s ranch. Years and years ago. Ellard didn’t take care of his boys. Didn’t pay them right. They worked like dogs and didn’t get taken care of proper. Things really came to a head one night and half of Ellard’s hands split. A fence got broken. A lot of sheep got loose. Ellard paid some of his loyal boys to track down the offenders and get rid of them.”
Her voice trembled as she spoke. “Get rid of them?”
Clay nodded, jaw tight. “Yep. Two of the hands got shot, killed. Ace cut one off before he got to Jeremiah. Didn’t end well for that fella. But then Ellard got the law involved. Thankfully Ace outsmarted them. It was a big mess though.”
A mix of emotions yanked their way through her chest. Destroying Ellard's inventory and livelihood was wrong. Stealing his cash money was wrong, but ordering death on people, especially ones you treated like slaves, was inexcusable. If he was as wealthy as Clay implied, and as she'd heard around town, then he had more than enough money to employ healthy and satisfied ranch hands.
“I can see why Ace is so angry,” she said.
Ahead of them, the trees tapered off into an open stretch of fields and a red dirt road running north and south.
Mason drew his horse up and pulled his hat down to shade his eyes. “Which way, boss?”
Sadie stopped her mare behind Mason and lifted in her saddle to look past him, trying to gain her bearings. Then Clay’s fingers were on her elbow. They were rough but gentle and ignited a spread of warm goosebumps across her skin. She
looked at him, memories of the last time he’d touched her flooding back. His eyes were deep, dark, and hazy, and something told her he was thinking of that moment too.
Then he nodded his chin down the path to the right.
“Emerald Falls is that way. Which way to your cabin?”’
With an uneven breath, Sadie looked around Mason to the path again. She recognized a group of trees and the last three posts of an old dilapidated fence. She pointed to the north.
“It’s a few miles back that way. Not far.”
Mason continued onto the road. In the back, Clay let his fingers slip away from her arm. Her skin felt empty without him.
The horses shuffled forward as a group, their hooves dragging onto the red dirt road.
“You live a fair way out,” Clay ventured. “Was your daddy a rancher?”
She scoffed under her breath. “That would be a better reason, wouldn’t it? He had some sort of self-inflicted isolation he stood by. We don’t own much land. Just a small cabin.”
“It’s not so bad being away from town.”
Clay’s face was relaxed as he stared down the path ahead, a content tilt to his eyes and lips. As if he truly believed the sentiment. The very idea hurt her chest.
“Sure, if you had anyone else your age to talk to. Or anyone besides your own father even.” Guilt immediately twisted her gut, and she bit her lip. “I mean, he was a good man, my papa. He took care of me. He bought me things when he had a spare nickel, but for the most part, it was more important to him to live out here than to let me be close to people.”
“Was he hiding from someone?”
She shook her head. “No. People in Emerald Falls seemed to like him just fine. What little we saw of them anyway.”
“So he had some other secret.”
Her back straightened like a feather-ruffled turkey. “He had no such things. He was a simple hard-working man. We worked together. There was nothing to have secrets about.”
Clay lifted one shoulder in a lazy shrug. “Sounds like a man with a secret to me.”
“Maybe he just likes the peace and quiet out here,” Mason offered.
Sadie wanted to thank him for his interruption on Papa’s behalf, but Clay cut in first.
“Raising a bored child? That doesn’t sound like peace and quiet.”
Her mouth set in a firm line. “I didn’t complain.” At least not too much.
“It’s okay, Miss Tanner. Children need interaction. A parent is not enough. Sometimes even a sibling isn’t enough.”
“What about your mama?” Mason asked. “Did she like living out here?”
Sadie shook her head. “Mama never lived out here. We only moved from town after she died.”
Mason hid his grimace under a hand, rubbing fingertips over the dark stubble on his chin.
“It takes a strong woman to survive without her mother, I imagine,” Clay said.
“I was eight. Just a child. I remember her, of course, but it didn’t affect me as much as when I was older. I missed her a lot more. It is hard with only a father around,” she agreed.
“Good on him for raising you so well.”
Her nose wrinkled. “You don’t even know me. I could be a mess.”
“Maybe not,” Clay said, “but you’re no mess. You’ve been through a lot in the last few days. Kidnapped. Lost your father. Had to bed down in a campsite with a bunch of lowlifes.” Her head snapped around, shocked he would put such words in her mouth, but he was grinning. It eased the frustration from her bones, and she smiled back.
“It hasn’t been all bad,” she ventured.
A familiar darkness fell over his eyes, and his voice dropped to a lower tone. “I’d hope not.” The fire in his eyes had her taking a ragged breath, wishing she had a paper fan to cool her neck with. She must have amused him, because he countered with a hearty chuckle. “I mean, we’ve got some scruffy fellows back there. But—“
“But I wouldn’t shy away from all of them.” The words just fell out, and Sadie’s tongue ran over her dry lips.
One of his eyebrows twitched, and his grin grew. “That right?”
“Well, I mean, I agree. The lot of you are a bit scary. I didn’t know what to expect.” She cleared away a sudden nervous grating in her voice. “But you’re not scary. I was a bit shocked to find that out, actually. Who knew that there were outlaws that weren’t exactly undesirable?”
His eyes sparkled. “You think I’m desirable?”
The heat that rushed into her face nearly took her breath away. She turned her burning cheeks back toward Mason and the road ahead of them. The veer off to her cabin was nearly upon them.
Thank goodness.
She cleared her throat and urged her horse to pick up the pace. “We’re almost there.”
Clay and Georgene hurried to ride along at their side.
“That’s refreshing to know,” he continued. “That I’m not the scary outlaw you thought I was. You know, I thought you were a prissy city girl.”
She glowered. “Really?”
“Sure. Pretty dress. Traveling on the train from the city. Your hair was done up nice. Throwing a fit over sleeping on the ground. You looked like any other city girl I’ve met.”
Frustration steamed out of the collar of her simple cotton shirt. She wasn’t sure what was worse, the way Clay made “city girls” sound so bad or the fact that she’d always dreamed of living in a big community. That she aspired to be the dreaded city girls he spoke of.
“Well, I’m not,” she spat.
“I know. You shoot guns and you’re wearing pants.” He laughed aloud. “Ain’t no city girls doing that.”
She glanced down at the clothes she’d borrowed from Clara. It wasn’t what proper ladies wore, she knew, but she was so used to them that she hardly noticed.
“I see it,” Mason said. The horses perked up, jumbling together as they funneled down the narrow path to the cabin in the woods.
“This is it,” Sadie said, glancing once more at Clay as they neared.
His good humor had faded into a concentrated face as they approached. He was back to working at what he did best, she assumed. Scoping things out and thieving.
The horses nickered as they grouped up next to the hitching post in the center of the lawn. Clay gave Georgene a pat on the neck as he took a look around the clearing and the late afternoon sun filtering through the trees.
“The evening’s coming. Let’s see what we can get finished before nightfall. Mason, you want to check that the coach is still running on schedule for tomorrow?”
The other man frowned beneath the low rim of his white hat. “Back in Emerald Falls?”
“Yes, sir.”
Mason looked between his companions and cleared his throat with a firm nod. “I’m on it.”
The big black Morgan horse tossed his head with a snort as Mason heeled him back out onto the road. The two disappeared in a cloud of red dirt and hoof beats.
Once he was gone, Sadie peered at Clay silently.
They were alone. For the first time since their morning out by the river.
Nerves buzzed through to her fingertips, and she turned her body to throw her leg over Clover’s back and dismount. Clay was still watching the opening in the tree line where Mason had departed. Beneath him Georgene stomped a hoof impatiently, blowing wide nostrils.
Then Clay’s eyes were on Sadie, piercing right through her body and into her soul. He dismounted in one smooth motion and rested his hands on his hips.
“Guess we can get to packing things up while he’s gone.”
She looked back to the cabin with a new flutter of nerves. “There’s really not much here. Just some hides and a few rations for the winter.”
“That’s just fine, Miss Tanner. We’ll let Ace know we got what we could.”
Clay pulled an oatcake from his saddle bag. As he let Georgene nibble the treat from his hand, Sadie walked along the front side of the cabin to the door. It didn’t look any diffe
rent than it had when she’d left it days ago, but it was strange being back without Papa. It would seem so large and hollow without him there.
She pressed her palm against the thick wood of the front door and pushed it open. As it cracked open from the frame, a musky stench hit her. She grimaced, peering inside. Across the large open room, sunlight fell inside through the frame where the back door had once stood. It hung in cracked pieces by one remaining hinge.
Sadie gasped, eyes darting around as she stepped inside.
The room was a long rectangle, a doorway on one end leading to her bedroom. What was usually a tidy living space was in shambles. The wood table in the middle of the room was turned on its side, one leg broken off, and the former contents scattered across the floor. Papa's bed tucked into the corner was nearly broken in two. On the far wall, the crates that used to hold their winter stores were destroyed. Ravaged vegetables and rations were tossed in all directions.
The air reeked. An animal had gotten to their supplies. Sadie felt deflated as she turned to call out to Clay.
Something shifted in the dark corner opposite the open door. Her breath caught in her throat as a giant grizzly bear turned its massive form around to growl at her.
Chapter 13
Sadie shrieked and stumbled back across the room. She fell over a broken chair with a gasp. Furniture scraped and moved as the bear wheeled around and charged.
She pulled herself back over the debris. There was no way she could outrun a bear. Papa's rifles were propped next to his bed, too far for her to reach. She was going to be crushed, eaten alive in the house she grew up in.
Her shoulder hit the overturned table. It was heavy and blocked her path. She cowered against it with a scream, throwing her arms up to shield her face as the grizzly rolled its giant body off the floor onto its hind legs and roared.
“Sadie!”
Clay’s boots came thundering inside. Gunshots went off above her head, and the bear bellowed. She clutched at her ears, another scream scraping up her throat as she ducked away from the chaos.
Another pop of a gun. Sadie looked up just in time to see one of the bear’s massive paws rip into Clay’s jacket. The force nearly dropped him to the ground, but he managed to swing his revolver around again for another shot.