In Too Deep

by Mary Connealy

  “So whoever came out here, it had something to do with Wendell?” Ethan just wasn’t quite sure what that meant. “If they found out you were here, it’s because they found out I married you. That’s the only trail that leads here. So why did he call you that?”

  “That awful man could have destroyed your entire ranch.” Her whole face crumpled. “And it has something to do with me. I’m the cause of this night’s madness.”

  “Not the cause, darlin’. The cause is laid right at the feet of whoever lit the match.”

  “Ethan,” she said, resting a hand on his wrist, “I’m afraid.” His wife, who’d spent pretty much every minute since Ethan had known her trying to prove she could take care of herself, said, “I don’t want you to leave me alone.”

  And that’s when Ethan knew he was going to have to do something that burned him worse than fire. Something that made it almost impossible for him to smile. That ate at his gut until he wanted to kick something.

  Chapter

  15

  At the sound of pounding hoofbeats, Rafe whirled around, his revolver drawn.

  “Ethan sent me, Rafe,” Steele shouted as he rode up to Rafe’s cabin. “We need you to come home. Ethan’s hurt. We had a fire. His shirt caught. He’s all burned up.”

  Rafe was dragging Julia toward the horse before Steele had finished asking him to come home. Julia didn’t need to be dragged, though. She was in fact passing him.

  “Seth, you come, too. With Ethan hurt, we’ll need extra hands over there,” Rafe said.

  Seth was already rushing for the horses, as well. Something eased in Rafe. Seth had been eager to explore the cavern today. His brother wasn’t too loco to know they had to get to Ethan fast.

  Steele came prepared. He’d brought mounts for all of them. Left them on the east side of the stream, crossed it on foot, caught one of the horses Rafe kept pastured near Julia’s old cabin, and rode on to the ranch Rafe had claimed.

  Fording the stream, which was impassable on horseback, cut hours off the distance between Ethan and Rafe.

  Rafe had plans for a bridge, but he hadn’t quite found the time for that yet.

  Steele gave Rafe the details on the fire, Ethan’s burns, and the attack on Audra. Steele talked about Ethan with more than just tolerance—there was respect. Ethan had proved up for the old cowpoke.

  They rode into the ranch yard in the late afternoon to find Ethan standing at the cabin door with Audra wedged between him and the outdoors, Maggie in her arms.

  Ethan looked up, saw Rafe, scowled, then immediately replaced his frown with his more usual careless grin.

  Audra turned to see what Ethan was smiling at, and Ethan slipped past her.

  Audra was squawking. Rafe wasn’t sure just what the woman was squawking about, but she came along right behind Ethan as the two followed Rafe, Julia, and Seth into the barn.

  As Rafe dismounted, Audra came rushing into the barn after Ethan. “You need to stay inside until your burns have healed.”

  “Hey, Rafe, Seth. Glad to see you.”

  Stripping the leather off his horse, Rafe listened while Ethan and Audra fussed at each other. He also heard something more. Audra’s concern. Ethan’s placating wish to make his wife happy. They cared about each other. When he came out of his horse’s stall, he saw Ethan giving all the horses a bit of grain.

  “Let’s see the burns, Eth,” Rafe said.

  “I’m not taking my shirt off in front of your wife, Rafe. It’s just blistered, nothing serious.”

  “It is too serious.” Audra jammed one of her little fists on her hips. Rafe wondered why on earth Ethan couldn’t control this quiet little woman Rafe had given him. She was by far the easier woman to handle. Sure he couldn’t control Julia, but Julia was . . . was . . . well, she was Julia, no more needed to be said.

  But Audra was Audra, for heaven’s sake.

  Shaking his head, Rafe said, “Let’s go inside.”

  “No, not yet.” Ethan didn’t ask and he didn’t try and sway anyone to his way of thinking. He didn’t even have a smile on his face. “I want to show you and Seth what we found.”

  “Ethan, no. I don’t want you to go.”

  “Audra Kincaid!” Ethan turned and glared. “You stop your fussin’ right now, woman.”

  Audra’s mouth gaped open but no words came out.

  Frankly, Rafe was speechless himself. He’d never heard Ethan sound quite so . . . in charge.

  “You go on in with Julia and the girls.” Ethan jabbed an impatient finger at the house. “I want to talk with Rafe and Seth about what went on here. It won’t hurt my puny burns to walk around in the woods and show them the tracks we found.”

  Audra finally managed to get her mouth shut. Then her eyes went wide and sad and it looked like she was going to start in crying.

  Rafe grabbed Seth by one arm and Ethan by the other. “We won’t be gone long. I’ll make sure he doesn’t hurt himself.” He dragged his brothers out of the barn at a near run, and he didn’t have to drag much at all, because they were all too willing to hightail it. When they got outside, he looked back to see Julia pick Maggie up with a sweet look of love in her eyes. It made him restless to have young’uns of their own.

  “Thanks for getting me out of there, Rafe,” Ethan muttered.

  Rafe laughed. Seth gave Ethan a wild grin.

  The three of them walked along, Ethan in the middle but leading the way because he was the only one who knew it.

  Ethan in charge of the situation and Rafe’s ranch. And Rafe in charge of running away from the wives.

  It wasn’t Rafe’s ranch anymore and that pinched. But there was also a flash of respect for his brother that he’d never felt before.

  “The man who was in the barn ran into the woods right here.” Ethan should probably be ashamed of himself for snapping at Audra that way, but she’d obeyed him. The feeling of power made his heart pound and his poor burned shoulders square. Pride. Male power. It was such a great feeling, Ethan knew for sure it was a sin.

  Of course she’d been about to cry.

  At which point he might have agreed to do anything to get her to stop.

  So that was cowardice . . . which might be a sin, too. Honestly it seemed like a man sinned nearly every time he drew a breath.

  But Rafe had saved him.

  Big brother came through.

  Ethan shook his head at the strangeness of being married. Then he remembered the nights. Holding Audra in his arms. The wonder of what passed between a man and wife. That was strange too, in a mighty fine way.

  He led the way into the thick woods surrounding the ranch and it was like being swallowed up. The forest and scrub brush closed around them and cut them off from any sight of the house or barn. The land was wild and untamed. They had open meadows where their herds grazed. It had taken a lot of scouting to find grassland in this rugged, mountainous place. It was one thing Pa had done well with all his trapping and the extended trips away from home. He’d come back and said he’d found a trail to a grassy valley. Pa would go to town, sell his furs, and buy the land, then come back and they’d spread their herd over an even wider stretch. He’d built a good-sized holding by the time he died.

  Ethan crouched by the first track. “I put some rocks around this footprint and warned the men to stay away. It’s one of the clearest.” The ground was studded with rocks. Between the rocks the land was covered thick with undergrowth and centuries of fallen leaves and limbs. There were game trails in here, but it took a knowing eye to spot them. Once in a while there was a bit of clear dirt, and a running man had landed a foot here, square in the middle of such a spot.

  Ethan glanced over his right shoulder. “You’re a good tracker, Seth. Not as good as me, but decent.”

  “I can out-track you with my eyes closed. Always could.” Seth knelt beside the track, studying it. “I got better during the war, too. Scouting was my job.”

  “You might as well look too, big brother.” Ethan gave Rafe a
big old grin. “Who knows? You might see something useful.”

  “I was tracking when you two were still in diapers.” Rafe clenched his fists.

  Since they were about as close in age as three brothers could be, it was a joke. Ethan didn’t worry that Rafe’s fists would fly. They’d had their share of fistfights as boys, but it had mostly been high spirits. There’d been a punch in the nose and an occasional black eye that had set a temper off now and again, but mostly the trouble passed before they drew blood.

  “Now, don’t go pounding on me,” Ethan said. “You promised Audra you’d treat me real gentle.”

  Rafe hunkered down straight across from Ethan. Seth was on Ethan’s right. Suddenly the three of them looked up from the footprint and started laughing.

  Ethan reached out and rested a hand on Seth’s shoulder, ignoring the scars he could feel, and the possibility that Ethan might soon have a few of his own. “I’ve missed both of you. It’s great to be home.”

  “Haven’t you always been here, Eth?” Seth asked.

  That question surprised Ethan, but then why should it? Seth was gone. He hadn’t known what Ethan and Rafe had been up to. “Nope. I guess we haven’t much talked about it, but I spent the last few years wandering out West, spent time in California and a fair stretch at sea.”

  “You worked on a ship?” Seth asked.

  “Yep. I sailed around Cape Horn on a clipper ship. We went from San Francisco to Florida. It was during the Civil War, so we didn’t go farther north than that.”

  “I remember you took off before me, but I didn’t know you stayed away. I figured you were here at the ranch.”

  “Nope.” Rafe looked between the two of them. “I’ve been alone here for years. I’ve been hoping and praying that whole time you’d come back.”

  “And now we’re here and you two are both old married men.” Seth grinned and his wild blue eyes flashed. Then the grin faded and his brow furrowed.

  “What’s the matter?” Ethan braced himself for more of Seth’s craziness. He’d been acting purely sensible for nearly a minute now.

  “Shh . . .” Seth put a hand up. “Let me think.” Seth shook his head slowly, as if trying to stir his brain around a little. “Something about what we just said almost . . . almost seems like . . . like . . .”

  Seth stared off into the distance. Ethan exchanged a quick glance with Rafe and went back to watching Seth. Worried about him. He had so many more clearheaded days than at first. Ethan had gotten to thinking that if the nightmares would just stop, Seth would be okay. But there were still moments when Seth seemed purely loco, right while he was wide awake.

  “I don’t know what it was, just a flash of something.” Seth rubbed his head. “I think maybe I’m a little jealous of my two big brothers. You both seem to like being married. I wonder how I’m ever gonna find a woman out here. You two have married up the only ones there are.”

  “Colorado is getting to be a settled land.” Ethan clapped Seth on the shoulder and felt those old, twisted scars. “When the law comes in, so do women. You’ll find yourself a wife, Seth.”

  Seth shrugged in a way that dislodged Ethan’s touch. “I’m a mighty ugly man under this shirt. I don’t reckon any woman is going to want any part of me.” He rubbed his head again. “These tracks are bigger than my foot and deeper than the track I leave. But it doesn’t take much to weigh more than me. Big shoes usually mean a tall man.”

  “They’re not as deep as mine, so he’s between me and Seth in weight, I’d say, not heavy.” Rafe ran one finger along the edges of the track. “No sign of being worn down at the heel. We’re looking for someone with new boots.”

  “He’s got a long stride.” Ethan pointed to another track barely visible, close against a rocky spot under a gnarled pine tree. “I’d say that makes him a long-legged man. More proof he’s tall. He’s running. Audra told me she saw him running flat-out away from the barn, and he looked tall and skinny to her.”

  “You got any cowhands fitting that description?” Seth asked.

  “A few.” Ethan rose from where he studied the tracks, and his brothers stood upright, too. “And it includes two new ones who came in yesterday. Steele is keeping an eye on them, and he’ll pay attention to where they walk so we can have a look at their tracks to compare. They’ve both got new boots on, but then several of the hands do.”

  “He might not be one of your men, either. How carefully have you tried to backtrack him?”

  “Steele’s sure he slipped around in the woods and came back onto the property. Probably helped fight the fire he started.” Ethan’s fist clenched as he thought of it. “Which makes him a low-down, belly-draggin’ sidewinder.”

  “Let’s see what else we can find from his trail.” Rafe jerked his head and they all moved carefully along.

  “I’ll show you the trail Steele found. If any of you think Steele’s got it wrong, speak up. I sure wish the trail’d read a different way. I’d like it better if I didn’t think someone on my ranch started that fire.”

  Ethan enjoyed working with his brothers again, despite the trouble that’d brought them together. When they were young, they’d been a good team. “When are you going to build a cabin, Seth?”

  Seth looked up from a heel track. “I guess I’ve got to have a building up before snow flies, right?”

  “That’s right.” Rafe had gotten ahead and he dropped back. Again waiting on his little brothers, Rafe’s take-charge attitude always grated when they were kids. Not enough to keep Ethan from loving his brother, but it was a burr under his saddle, no denying it.

  Now it wasn’t so bad. It felt familiar. Rafe taking the lead was part of coming home.

  “You need to live on the property.” Ethan looked through the woods, and an opening in the trees let him catch a glimpse of his tidy cabin. He felt some guilt. He should give Seth the homeplace and do the building. He was better able to do it. “I claimed my acres. Rafe claimed his and bought some more land. We can add that to Pa’s holding and now yours. The Kincaid spread is a mighty big ranch these days.”

  “We’ll get your cabin up in plenty of time, Seth. We now hold water rights that will give us control of the whole stretch between here and my land.” Rafe paused, nodded. “It’s over a thousand acres with the land Pa left us. The Kincaids will be a name to be reckoned with in Colorado Territory before long.”

  “We can buy more land as we can afford it.” Ethan felt the satisfaction of it. Having his own place felt good. Having his brothers close at hand felt even better. The three of them together. A big swath of land. The Kincaid Ranch. They were a team.

  “But I don’t want to live alone all winter,” Seth said.

  Trust Seth to not want to be part of the team.

  “That won’t be very fun.” Seth wiped his hands on his pant leg.

  Sweaty palms. It was an affliction Seth had brought back from the war. Whatever kind of crazy Seth had been after what Ethan had done to him, he’d been easy with it. A boy who took terrible chances all the time wasn’t given to nerves or worry.

  “It’ll be lonely.” Seth stared at his hands as if he wondered why they were sweating. “I miss Callie.”

  “Who’s Callie?” Ethan asked.

  Seth wiped his hands again and didn’t answer.

  “Seth, who’s Callie?”

  Seth looked up and narrowed his eyes at Ethan. “Callie who?”

  “Callie I-don’t-know-who. You just said you miss Callie.”

  “I don’t know anyone named that.” Seth gave Ethan a look that seemed to question Ethan’s sanity.

  Ethan tried not to return the favor.

  “I just don’t want to live in these mountains—snowed in, stuck inside a cabin all alone.”

  “We’ll figure it out, Seth.” Rafe frowned. “We’ll get the cabin up and you have to live in it about half the time, but the rest of the time you can stay with Ethan or me. Take turns.”

  “If we build it on the south edge of your prop
erty, you could come to my place and sleep at night,” Rafe offered.

  Seth shook his head. “Snow gets mighty deep in these mountains.”

  “And we’ll get a bunkhouse up. Spread the cowhands between our three places. That helps. I . . .” Rafe’s voice faded for a few seconds; then he went on more quietly, “I’ve lived alone for three years since Pa died and you’re right—it’s no fun.”

  “I haven’t even been to visit his grave.” Ethan tugged the brim of his hat low. “Nor Ma’s. They weren’t a good pair, those two.”

  “Nope. He was gone more than he was here, even before Ma died.” Seth dropped to his knees beside a new track. “Afterward, we about raised ourselves.”

  “And after you two left, he barely called this place home,” Rafe added. “It’s a wonder he’s buried here. He came riding in late in the spring, his horse loaded down with a winter’s worth of furs. He was so sick with a fever that he fell off his horse in the ranch yard.”

  “You said earlier he got to spending the whole winter away.” Ethan hadn’t realized just how much Pa had been gone.

  “The ranch was his, but I got to thinking of it as mine. I hadn’t seen him in nearly a year when he died. He’d come through in the spring the year before on his way to sell his furs and stayed around for a while, complained about you two being gone when you should have been home running the ranch.”

  “A man who’s never home has a lot of nerve complaining because his sons go a-yondering.” Ethan smiled to cover his regret for abandoning Rafe. His regret for the years of living with one parent sick in her head, another as good as gone.

  “He was raving when he got here. He kept talking about his fur traps. Crazy, telling me to get them for him. ‘Go get them.’ He must’ve said it a hundred times in the few days he spent dying. A man is dying and all he can think about is his traps. When he made any sense at all, he wanted you two to be here. Talked about his family. Talked about Ma, wanted me to get her. Said he wanted us to be together. Told me I should take care of his family.”