Achoo!
She jumped, clutching her throat. She wasn’t alone. The noise was high-pitched—no horse or man sneeze. “Hello?”
Out of the dark corner crawled a small boy.
Oh Lord, Burt—Pitch—knows! He knows Micah is his boy. She rushed to enfold him in her arms. “Micah, I’m so glad to see you.”
He didn’t reciprocate. “Don’t say you saw me, please, or I’ll get into the worst kind of trouble.”
“With your mother?”
“And Mr. Crabtree. He said I needed to wait here and not tell anyone or my surprise won’t happen.”
“What kind of surprise?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I get to ride Jasper, but Mr. Crabtree says it’s special because I’m the smartest, best boy he’s ever seen.”
With a click of the latch, the barn door opened. Burt Crabtree paused in the threshold, eyes narrow. “What do we have here?”
Micah spun around. “I’m sorry, Mr. Crabtree. I didn’t tell her I was here. She just found me.”
“She did, eh?”
“Yessir. Do I still get my surprise?”
“Of course.” He withdrew something from his coat pocket that flashed in the light. A knife, and not one of the dull ones from his kitchen.
“What’s that for?” Micah’s voice was high with fear.
“Don’t worry, Micah.” Fletcher Pitch licked his lips and grinned. “I have a little surprise for Miss Bracey too.”
CHAPTER 20
Dash didn’t bother to stomp the snow from his boots before charging into the general store. There wasn’t a second to waste.
Isaac rushed past him, his gaze frantic as he searched among the women gathered in the sewing section. His shoulders slumped in obvious relief. “There she is.”
“I don’t see Abby, though. Or Micah.” Dash swept his gaze across the floor, looking for the child’s feet.
“I’ll ask Geraldine if Micah came back.”
“Ask about Abby too.”
“Hey.” Knapp bustled around the counter. “You’re tracking dirty snow all over my store.”
“I’ll mop it later. Something important’s come up.”
“That’s what Miss Bracey said.” Knapp withdrew a paper from his apron pocket. “She left this for you.”
“Where’d she go?”
“It’s probably in the note.” He took a half step back. “I have customers to see to.”
“Of course.” Dash carried the note to the window by the checkerboard table. She’d been sloppy folding it—and writing it. Blotches of smeared ink obscured the scrawling penmanship. Just looking at it made Dash’s throat tighten. He needed Isaac to read it for him. Isaac knew almost everything now. He turned to beckon his friend.
Isaac was in the far corner of the store, blocking Geraldine from the others’ view. To anyone else, it might appear they were having a romantic conversation, but from Dash’s vantage, he could see Geraldine’s tears and Isaac’s comforting touch on her hands.
He couldn’t interrupt that, but he needed help. He was stupid, Dim-witted Dash, a lost cause—
That wasn’t true. Abby said word blindness had nothing to do with intelligence. Reading and writing would take him longer, that was all. And take practice. He’d do some of that practicing now, and if he couldn’t do it, he’d disturb Isaac.
Dash set the page on the table and stared at it. He had no paper to use to cover the words he wasn’t reading, so he used his gloves. It might look funny, but it worked.
He could recognize his name fine. The next word was I, so that was easy too. What followed was difficult, with an ink blot over it.
A. M. I am. He worked out the next word. Pibing. But pibing didn’t make sense. That b must be a d. Piding? Riding. That made sense.
I am riding to Burt—the next word must be Crabtree’s. He skipped it. “‘I am riding to Burt Crabtree’s to … enormous ink blotch.’ Ugh, Abby, why didn’t you blot the page? Not even Isaac will be able to read this. ‘I am riding to Burt Crabtree’s to something something. Saw the t-i-n—’”
Tintype. Dash was across the store in a heartbeat. “Geraldine, I need that tintype. Abby says it’s Burt Crabtree.”
“Burt?” Isaac’s jaw went slack.
Fingers trembling, Geraldine fumbled with her purse clasp. “She didn’t say anything, just that I shouldn’t be alone and she had something to do.” She shoved a fabric-wrapped rectangle at him.
He wasn’t delicate, shoving the material aside. Dear God.
“Have you seen Burt, Isaac? He was working on the school, wasn’t he?”
“He left before you came to get me.” Isaac stared at the tintype. “That’s him, all right.”
So Burt left the school. And he guessed what Abby’s errand was. She’d gone straight to him.
Dash had no choice. He marched to the center of the room and pulled his commission book from his pocket. “Folks, listen up. I’ve got an announcement, and I can use all the help I can get.”
Abby stepped backward, tripping over her hem but managing to steady herself against the drafting table. She couldn’t escape, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t lure Pitch deeper into the barn. There. Far enough. Shout from your diaphragm.
“Run, Micah, run! Fast as you can to get help. He’s a bad ma—”
Pitch spun, chasing Micah outside, giving Abby time to try the window. It was locked, but she—ow. Pitch gripped her arm, hard as a tourniquet, swinging her around. At least it looked like Micah had escaped. Good boy. Pitch gripped her so they were nose to nose. She had no choice but to inhale his stale coffee breath.
“That wasn’t helpful of you. I want my boy back.”
“And I want my father back, but neither of us are getting what we want.”
“Your father?”
“Charles Bracey. You slit his throat on the bank steps in Chicago four years ago.”
“Ah, you are related to him. I never forget a name. Or a face. But I figured the odds were pretty slim that we’d both be here starting fresh, as it were. Now I see we both hid our true reasons for coming to Wells.”
“Your fresh start wasn’t convincing. No provisions, and your knives are dull as hot butter.”
“This one’s not, though.” He swung her around so her bustle pressed into his stomach, pinning her arms. She kicked backward, but cold pressed into the lace trim at her neck, near her ear. It pierced her skin, sending shafts of pain through her body.
“If you don’t move, the knife won’t nick anything crucial. But if you keep kicking at me, I can’t promise you won’t get split the same way as your father.”
What choice did she have but to fall still?
Still didn’t mean compliant, though. She scanned the barn, looking for a weapon, anything within reach. If she could bend down to her calf for her knife—
Oh Lord, show me how. Show me when.
Instead words came to her mouth. “We know you’re here, Fletcher Pitch. They might not know who you are yet, but they know Micah’s your boy, and you’ll never get him. Ever.”
The knife pressed deeper. “I should just kill you right here, but you were good to my boy. And you could prove useful.”
“How could I ever be useful to the likes of you?”
“I need to think it through first, how to get them to take my offer.”
“What offer?”
“Micah for you.”
“No one will agree to that.”
“Lassiter would. Love makes a man do just about anything.”
“He doesn’t love me.”
“Come on, now, Abby. For a teacher, you sure are a dunce. Lassiter can’t take his eyes off of you.”
It wasn’t true. Dash felt guilty, that’s all—
“We’re going for a ride.” He dragged her to the horse stalls, and she stumbled to the ground. He gripped her wrists together, and before she had the presence of mind to kick, he bound her hands together. The knife skimmed from her neck, cutting farther down. “Just a
reminder what’ll happen if you fight me again.”
Blood darkened her coat. “I’m bleeding.”
“Of course you are. Stanch it if you want.” He reached up her sleeve. “Don’t all women keep handkerchiefs up here? Eureka.” He stuffed the hankie in her fingers, and she bent her elbows to press her bound hands to the wound. Then he took two hankies from his pocket to help curtail the blood flow—no, not to help her. He pried her jaw apart and shoved them into her mouth, so deeply she gagged.
She was still half retching when Pitch hauled her atop his horse.
“This is Jasper,” he told her in a pleasant tone, as if they were conversing about the café menu. “He had a bursa, but I got him seen to. By your fella, in fact. I can’t bear the mistreatment and suffering of animals.”
Only humans, apparently.
Pitch opened the barn door, obstructed from the schoolhouse by the farmhouse. None of the men working on the roof could see them as Pitch led her and the horse out into the crisp cold. Then he scrambled behind her on the saddle and wrapped his arms around her.
Jasper trotted around the back of the barn and into the cottonwoods. A little farther, and they reached the road.
Dash would have no idea where she was or how long she’d been gone. Unless …
Pitch muttered something about the fork. When they took it, a narrow path more than a road, she loosened her fingers and let the handkerchief at her neck fall to the ground.
CHAPTER 21
Dash rode Six hard all the way to the school, where he dismounted in under a second. “Isaac, you know what to do.”
They’d worked out a plan, and there could be no mistakes now. Isaac, Knapp, and a few other men garnered the attention of those working on the roof while Dash and the Miller brothers, Frank and Sy, slipped around the back into the open field behind the school. If they stayed north of the house, Burt—Pitch—shouldn’t be able to see them coming.
Slowly, slowly, they climbed over the rail fence marking the boundary between Burt Crabtree’s and the school, continuing on to the rear of the house. Dash gestured for them to get down and mouthed a countdown to them. Thirty, twenty-nine.
They nodded, remembering what they’d volunteered to do. They now had twenty-eight seconds to get into position.
Dash scrambled, ducking, around to the front porch. Shame there weren’t more men—law enforcement would help, but the sheriff was off assisting a widow with a broken window. Knapp had left Sheriff Grayson a note.
Three, two, one.
Dash didn’t try to be quiet anymore, mounting the porch steps and kicking the front door. Its feeble lock gave way to his boot. The back door broke open with a crash too. The Miller brothers were inside.
No one in the parlor. Dash took the stairs two at a time, leaning to one side so he’d be harder to shoot if Pitch had a yearning to lean over the banister and kill him. Sy and Frank were behind him; he could hear their boots. The entire downstairs must be vacant.
He took the first room. Looked under the unmade bed, behind the chest of drawers. Nothing. “He ain’t here,” Frank yelled from the second bedroom.
“Or here.”
They met in the hall. “We should check the cellar.”
“I did,” Frank said, his face greenish. “Found a body. Had a deed to the house in his coat pocket. I think he was the real Burt Crabtree. Do you suppose this Pitch fella, well, you know?”
“I do.” A snarl curled Dash’s lips. No wonder “Burt” hadn’t wanted him to go down in the cellar with him.
They’d seek justice for the true Burt, but in the meantime they had a job to do. “The barn, then. It doesn’t have windows facing this direction, so he may not know we’ve been in the house, but we shouldn’t count on it. Oh, I forgot.” The Millers suffered from hay fever. “You don’t need to go any farther with me.”
“I said I’d help,” Sy insisted. “Killer, barn full of hay, and all.”
Frank nodded. “The others should be here any moment too.”
Armed with hammers and whatever other tools they’d been using on the roof. Lord, let it be enough.
When would Dash learn it was never enough, in his own strength? I need Your help to read a letter, and I need it to apprehend Pitch.
God had sent him help in these men. He nodded at them. “Then keep your heads down, boys.”
They hurried outside. Dash shoved the barn door open, sliding to the side to find cover in case Pitch was hiding with a gun. The Miller brothers hid behind a pair of barrels. Sy plugged his nose to avoid sneezing, managing to hold it back.
Dash heard nothing, not even a snuffle from the brothers or the horse. He craned his neck and looked to the stalls. They were empty. “He’s gone.”
“Are you sure?”
“Not a hundred percent, so cover me, if you’d be so kind.” Dash abandoned his concealed nook and poked into the corners, behind barrels and sacks, before he called them out and allowed himself to investigate the worktable by the window.
Sy gave in to his sneeze.
“What’s all that stuff?” Frank pointed to the spilled box on the ground.
Dash pointed at the metal plates. “Dies. Engravings. And these are his tools.” Burins of different sizes and shapes, chisels, calipers, dumped on the floor.
“That’s how you counterfeit? With those little things?”
“Part of it. It’s a many-step process. As far as we’re concerned right now, it’s evidence. Gather it, will you? Put it in a box, a crate, anything you can find, and get it back to the sheriff’s office.”
While Frank gathered the evidence, Sy tugged a handkerchief from his coat pocket and wiped his nose. “What are you gonna do? Hey, where are you going?”
“To look for Abby and Micah.”
“I’m coming too.” Sy stuffed the hankie in his pocket. “Frank don’t need me to take this to the sheriff.” Clearly he wanted to protect his little brother.
“Where’re you going, though?” Frank dropped a handful of burins into a box. “They could be anywhere.”
“They might’ve left a trail in the snow.”
Isaac burst into the barn, followed by a group of half a dozen men: Knapp, Topsy, Mayor Carpenter, and a few others Dash had seen but never spoken to. A regular posse, all ready to assist. “Where are they? Where’s Micah?”
“Gone.” Dash explained their findings. “I’m heading out. Pitch is dangerous, so no one need come with me.” They’d been warned more than once, but Dash had to be certain they knew what they were in for if they came with him.
“You best believe I’m with you.” Isaac was at his side. “I’m not going back without Micah.”
“And the rest of us ain’t letting that crook take our children,” a farmer said.
The mayor lifted his chin. “I don’t cotton to criminals abiding here. I say it’s past time this Pitch learned his lesson.”
Dash looked each in the eye, finding resolution and purpose there. He couldn’t have asked for better companions. “Say your prayers, men, and keep your wits about you.”
Horse tracks—from one horse, probably Jasper—led Dash and the others through the near-foot of snow behind the barn to the road. No surprise there, because the blizzard wind had scraped this section clear of snow. No tracks to follow.
Isaac grunted. “Pitch could’ve gone any direction. How do we know where to start? We’ll have to split up.”
“No.” Dash stared at the ground, hunting for the slightest sign. “He didn’t go past the schoolhouse, because no one saw him, which means he went north, at least for a while.”
Topsy rode abreast of Dash. “One horse or two, going single file?”
“He only had the one, I think. Nice horse, but he wouldn’t win any races, especially not with the additional weight of Abby and Micah in the saddle.” Not to mention the awkwardness of the arrangement, three people astride.
“Not Micah. Look.” Topsy pointed.
Two figures on a single horse had turned the co
rner from the road that led to the Elmores’ place.
“Micah!” Isaac sank his heels into his horse’s flanks and sped off.
Dash followed after, a thousand questions competing for supremacy on his tongue.
Isaac dismounted and ran to pull Micah off the horse, whirling the boy in a circle. “Your ma and I were so worried.”
“I didn’t know what to do.”
“So he ran to our place,” Bynum explained.
“That was smart, Micah.” Dash kept his voice even despite his heart hammering in his throat. “Can you tell us what happened? It’s very important.”
“I went to the schoolhouse with Kyle. Mr. Flowers was there and he asked me to help him plan a special supper for Mama. But then Mr. Crabtree told me he had a surprise for me in his barn. He’s so nice to me, I said yes. I thought I was gonna ride his horse.”
Dash nodded with encouragement. “What next, son?”
He looked at his feet. “I don’t want to get Miss Bracey in trouble.”
“You won’t. She was there for work.”
“I don’t think so, sir. She was snooping.”
Good for her. “It’s good that she did, in this case.”
“Oh.” Micah’s brows knit in confusion. “I hid from her because I didn’t want to miss my surprise. Mr. Crabtree told me it had to be a secret and he’d be right back. But then I sneezed and she saw me and she said we needed to leave, and then Mr. Crabtree came. He didn’t look right.”
“What do you mean?”
“He just didn’t look nice anymore. He had a knife. Miss Bracey told me to run, so I did what she said. I forgot to think where I was going, though, and I got lost.”
“Ended up at our place,” Bynum added. “Told me what happened, and I’m confused as can be about the whole mess, but I thought I’d better get him back to his mother and find the sheriff before I paid Burt Crabtree a visit.”
Dash met his gaze. “Sheriff’s busy. And Crabtree’s gone. With Abby. We have something he wants.” He didn’t dare say Micah’s name aloud, but the men seemed to understand, even Bynum, who didn’t yet know the truth about Abby, Dash, and Fletcher Pitch. Pitch would undoubtedly offer to trade Micah for Abby.
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