In Too Deep

by Mary Connealy

  “I need those bandages now, Audra.” Julia was giving orders. Everything seemed normal. Except for Rafe having a bullet wound. “For heaven’s sake, stop dawdling and get them.”

  Ethan snagged Maggie from Audra as she passed. Maggie started bouncing in Ethan’s arms, enjoying the commotion.

  “I’m going to go help Steele backtrack those horses.” Seth left the room. He sounded calm, sane, responsible.

  Nothing like a squirrel.

  Ethan decided to enjoy it for as long as it lasted. “Be careful. Whoever was shooting at us wasn’t too particular where his lead went flying.”

  “Start talking, Rafe.” Julia could have taken charge of the cavalry with that voice.

  Seth ran. Ethan looked after him enviously.

  Ethan had enjoyed the sight of his wife with a rifle in one hand and a baby in the other. But now he was left to face Rafe’s bullet wound. Add in the burns on his back and the attempt last night to burn down his barn and steal his wife.

  Suddenly everything was purely serious. So serious, Ethan couldn’t even smile.

  Chapter

  17

  Audra held the bandage on Rafe’s hand as Julia fastened it in place. When Audra straightened, she turned to her stubborn husband. His wounds were far worse than Rafe’s little scratch and he’d been dodging any doctoring all day.

  “Your turn now, Ethan.” The sun had set. The men had all retired to the bunkhouse. Steele had posted guards. Audra hoped the man had chosen people he could trust.

  Ethan gave her that vapid grin, but Audra wasn’t having it. “Let’s have a look at you. Now.”

  Ethan’s smile melted like soft butter in a skillet, and Audra didn’t mind one bit being the one to wipe the smile off his face.

  “Yeah, Eth. Your turn.” Rafe hadn’t been an easy patient. Audra could tell he wanted someone else to suffer. “The womenfolk are done tending my scratch. Let’s have a look at the burns.”

  “Sit down here, Ethan. I have the most doctoring experience of anyone here. I’ve tended my father.” Julia pointed at the chair Rafe had just vacated.

  “Who died.” Rafe patted her on the back. “That’s no recommendation, Jules.”

  “And delivered two babies.”

  “I appreciated the help, Julia,” Audra said with an apologetic smile, “but really, you just caught them. There wasn’t much doctoring beyond that.”

  “Which still makes me the most experienced doctor of the four of us.”

  “I’m not letting Julia see me with my shirt off.” Ethan had a faint blush on his deeply tanned face. Audra couldn’t take her eyes off this vulnerable side of her always overly casual husband. The man let almost nothing upset him. Though Audra had seen him get worked up a few times, now he was embarrassed over Julia seeing his back.

  “It’s not fitting. My burns are fine. Rafe can have a look at them if you’re so all-fired worried.” Ethan scowled. “Upstairs.”

  “Now, Ethan . . .” Julia sounded like she planned to coax Ethan into obeying her. That was quite a change from her usual general-on-the-battlefield manner.

  Marriage had mellowed her.

  “I’ll take a look at the burns, honey.” Rafe was more begging than ordering. Marriage had mellowed them both. “If Ethan needs you, he’ll tell me—right, Eth?”

  “Right.”

  Audra saw Ethan’s insincere smile and knew there was no possible situation in which Ethan would ever find himself in need of his sister-in-law’s medical assistance if it required him being shirtless in front of her. And now somehow Audra wasn’t allowed to help, either.

  “I’m going to go see how bad those burns are.” Audra looked after Ethan and Rafe as they left the room, anxious to be with them when they talked about Ethan’s wounds.

  “Help me finish this stew first,” Julia snapped. “Rafe and Ethan don’t seem to need a woman’s help.”

  Lily lay kicking happily in her drawer. Maggie sat on the floor trying to put her foot into her mouth. Audra wondered if too much chewing could be bad for a child.

  Julia grabbed a carrot and started paring it. “We can watch the children, get an evening meal on, and probably build a new room on the house while Rafe doctors your bashful husband.”

  Julia’s annoyance didn’t much bother Audra. She was used to it. In fact, having Julia here reminded Audra of all she’d gone through last night and today. “Both of our husbands could have died.”

  Julia’s cranky expression changed to a worried frown. “That man last night called you Mrs. Gill.”

  Audra nodded. She’d told Julia all about it. “It’s got to have something to do with your father.”

  “And the only thing that could make someone come after my father is that money. We’ve got to find it and give it back before somebody gets killed. Could we have missed a place when we were hunting through the cabin or that shack in town? Could Father have gold or cash buried somewhere?”

  “He could have buried it anywhere,” Audra said. “But how did he move it out here?”

  They stared at each other. Audra sliced an onion, thinking back over the trip from Texas. “Could he have stuffed gold bars or coins into a . . . a false bottom of a packing crate? Or maybe a hidden pocket of a satchel?”

  “Gold is so heavy. He couldn’t have carried much. He wasn’t a strong man.” Julia sank down onto a chair by the table.

  “If it wasn’t gold, then what else? A fortune in paper money takes up a lot of space.” Audra pictured the few boxes they’d brought along. She could swear she’d packed them all with Julia’s help and knew what was in each of them.

  “Maybe the money he stole isn’t that much.” Julia began peeling potatoes. They’d had meat simmering before the shooting started. Just because there was a fire, an attack, and their menfolk were hunting for outlaws didn’t mean they didn’t have to eat.

  “Maybe it’s only a fortune to the man he took it from.” Audra would see one hundred dollars and think it was a fortune. “Maybe a small bag of gold coins was enough to wipe this man out and bring him after Wendell. Maybe Wendell carried it around in his pocket.” She scraped the chopped onions into the pot and washed her hands.

  “Maybe. But whoever Father stole from is hiring men. He had to have lost a lot for that to be worthwhile.”

  “Not if he simply wants revenge. Maybe he’s vindictive. Maybe he’s a man who never gives up.” Audra felt tears burn her eyes and wished she could be stronger. Hold up under pressure better. “What are we going to do?”

  The dark expression on Julia’s face suddenly lightened into a smile. “You really like Ethan, don’t you?”

  Audra thought of the things that had passed between her and Ethan. She did indeed like him very much. In fact . . . Audra looked over her shoulder to make sure Ethan and Rafe were gone upstairs and Seth hadn’t come in.

  “I’m falling in love with him, Julia.” Audra considered that to be a very foolish act on her part. “I don’t know if Ethan can feel such a thing for me. He doesn’t seem to let himself feel anything deeply. But I know I would be devastated if something happened to him.”

  Julia suddenly set her potato aside and threw her arms around Audra.

  Audra hung on tight.

  “We can’t let anything happen to our men,” Julia said.

  Those words were like an oath spoken before God. “No, we can’t. And if this man is after something he thinks we have, then it’s our problem. We’re the ones who’ve brought danger to our men.”

  Julia pulled back and looked in the direction Ethan and Rafe had disappeared. “Which means it’s our job to keep them safe.”

  “Where could that money be?” Audra wanted to be with Ethan. She wanted to doctor him, find excuses to touch him, make sure he knew how much she cared. But to really help him was more important.

  “When he was dying, out of his head, what exactly did Father say? It was about the cavern. Is that right?”

  Audra tried to remember. “He didn’t say anything sp
ecific. Ranting, mumbling, he said ‘deep.’ ” Audra closed her eyes to bring Wendell’s feverish words into focus. “He’d told me about the money that first night you were missing. All about his gambling and stealing the money and running. But there was nothing about where it was except that he hid it deep.”

  Audra tried to squeeze out of her memory exactly what Wendell had said. “Later he said he struck it rich. He said he hid a fortune. I was trying to get him to pray with me. I knew he was almost out of time. I feared he was using his last bit of strength on money when he needed to be making his peace with God, so I cut him off, tried to get him to forget the money. But I couldn’t get through to him. If I’d been a stronger woman, I’d have stood up to him long before I did, before he was too sick to reason with.”

  “I think . . .” Julia hesitated. “I mean, I don’t judge my father.”

  “I try not to.” Audra was sorely afraid that despite their best attempts to not judge, they had indeed both judged that Wendell was facing a long, hot eternity.

  “What I mean is . . .” Julia swallowed hard. “Father didn’t live a godly life, but I believe he had his chance. Any words either of us said, we can’t waste time thinking they weren’t the right words.”

  “But isn’t that a Christian’s foremost job? To speak the truth? To spread the word?”

  “It is, but we did that with Father. You’re upset because you didn’t say it with enough fervor, or at the right moment, or you didn’t say it often enough or loud enough. I think about that, too. I was so busy trying to keep peace, walking out on him whenever things got too tense. I should have stood face-to-face with him and demanded he listen.”

  “You mean, instead of leaving, you should have had ugly shouting matches with him in front of Maggie?”

  Julia and Audra looked down at the sweetheart who was pulling herself up on the table leg. Finally Julia said, “No, I couldn’t do that.”

  “And it wouldn’t have worked anyway.” Audra knew Wendell quite thoroughly after three years of marriage. She was sure Julia knew him even better.

  “Which brings me back to my point. Father had his chance to believe. Whether through our words or the words God has written on every man’s heart. And now he’s gone and we’re left with his mess to clean up. And we begin cleaning it up by finding that money so we can return it to whoever he stole it from. That’s the best way to get the attacks to stop and protect our men. We have to find that fortune. What else did Father say?”

  “He said no one would ever find it. I remember he laughed when he said it. Smug even when he was dying. He said, ‘I stuffed it in deep. Down deep and . . . dark.’ He said deep and dark. I was barely listening to him, but I remember thinking deep and dark sounded like that cavern.”

  “But he never said the word cave or cavern? He could have just meant he was burying it down deep.”

  Audra tried to visualize Wendell as he lay feverish and irrational, and as always, unkind. “Not the word cavern, but he said, ‘I put it in a hole.’ As far as I know, Wendell didn’t even know about that cavern.”

  “Audra, come on up here and give me a hand,” Ethan called down the stairs.

  Julia shook her head. “We’ve got to figure this out. How much time have we spent around the cabin looking for a hole he might have dug somewhere on that rocky ground? Maybe he marked it, left a pile of rocks so he could find the spot again.”

  “We only really looked in town.” Audra rubbed her forehead and felt her furrowed brow. Even dead, Wendell was giving her wrinkles.

  “Because we know every square inch of our cabin and there’s certainly no fortune stashed anywhere.” Julia jammed her hands on her hips and began tapping her toe. “And the ground’s so rocky I can’t imagine where he’d have buried it.”

  Despite the seriousness of the day, Audra almost smiled to see Julia returning to her old self. Rafe getting shot had turned her attention from issuing orders for quite a while. But of course it couldn’t last. And that was fine because Julia’s take-charge attitude was one of the things Audra liked best about her.

  “Now you go on up to tend your husband.”

  “Yes, Julia.” Audra wondered if Julia could tell she was being gently mocked.

  “I’ll get a meal on.”

  “There’s bread in the cupboard. And—”

  “I know how to get a meal.”

  “I know you do, Julia.”

  Julia quit tapping and waved her hands to shoo Audra away. “Go on up now. I can handle the meal and the children.”

  “I know you can, Julia. With your eyes closed.”

  Julia quit shooing, looked Audra hard in the eye, then burst into tears and threw herself into Audra’s arms. “I’m so glad they’re all right.”

  Audra held on tight and had a bit of a cry herself. Then Ethan called again and they broke apart and mopped their eyes.

  “Before I go, I’ve been worried about my little brother and sister.”

  “Yes, Carolyn and Isaac.”

  “I don’t know quite what to do. I’m especially worried about Carolyn.”

  “Because of how your father treated you?”

  Nodding, Audra said, “All this talk of Wendell and this thieving has made me almost frantic to know how Carolyn is. She’s only eight years old. So she’s probably safe from my father”—Audra swallowed hard when she almost said selling—“marrying her off to some man he owes money to.”

  Audra thought of how bossy Julia and Rafe were and knew the difference between a well-meaning—though bossy—friend and a cruel, heartless tyrant. “I need to somehow let Carolyn know I’m all right. And if she needs a home, I could give her one. Ethan said I could bring her and Isaac here.”

  “Of course you can.” Julia rested her hand on Audra’s arm.

  “But how do we get her here?” Audra noticed she was wringing her hands. Not the strong woman she wanted to be at all. Trying to sound more decisive about her inability to solve her problem, she listed off all the things that had been stopping her.

  “Even if I asked Ethan for the money for her train fare, and even if she took the train, it doesn’t come all the way here and she wouldn’t dare travel alone. And going back to get her would take weeks. And what about Isaac?”

  “You can’t go alone, not with two little ones.” Julia seemed full of even worse reasons. “And if Ethan went with you, he’d be gone a long time from the ranch.”

  “At least now I can tell her where I am. Rafe wanted us to keep quiet about the wedding, but now that a man attacked the ranch and called me Mrs. Gill, clearly my connection to your father is known. If Ethan says it’s all right to mail a letter, I thought maybe, since you’re so much closer to Rawhide, you and Rafe could see to getting it mailed.”

  Julia bristled. “A woman shouldn’t have to ask permission of her husband to write a letter.”

  “I’ll ask anyway. And Isaac is six by now. Old enough to be learning how to be a man at my father’s knee.” Audra’s heart hurt to think of it.

  “We’ll talk with the men and see if they think it’s safe now for you to write the letter. Maybe Rafe can think of some way to contact your family. Now that you’re remarried, your father can’t find a new husband for you.”

  “And that may be the very best thing about being married to Ethan.” But as Audra ran up to care for her new husband, she thought of a lot of reasons she liked about being married to Ethan that had nothing to do with her father.

  “Hi, honey.” Ethan couldn’t believe how much he liked being married. “Rafe says I’m going to be fine.”

  Rafe smacked him on his not-burnt arm. “I did not say that.”

  “Don’t you hit him, Rafe Kincaid.” Audra stormed across the bedroom. A cute little storm. Her fiery expression couldn’t have raised a single blister on Rafe’s tough hide.

  Ethan smiled. “I’m fine.” His shoulder burned as if his shirt were still on fire. He smiled bigger.

  “I said I think you’ll be fine if you don’t b
reak those blisters.” Rafe looked at Audra as if he wanted to team up with her to tuck Ethan straight into bed. Maybe they’d give him a bottle of milk with a nipple attached while they were at it. “I think he’s safe from an infection if the skin isn’t broken. Once there’s a break, I’m afraid of what might happen. Which means”—Rafe glared at his brother—“you need to be careful.”

  Ethan spared one withering look at Rafe. “I can’t sit around worrying about my blisters. I’ve got a ranch to run.”

  Audra leaned so close that Ethan could smell her. A woman was a wonderful thing.

  “How far down his back are the burns? I couldn’t tell if new blisters were still being raised when I looked earlier.”

  “The big ones go down to the bottom of his shoulder blade. There are smaller ones on his arm. And he only has them on the left side.”

  Audra rested a soft hand on Ethan’s right shoulder while she looked over his left and down his back. She was so close, he could have pulled her into his lap without a bit of trouble.

  “Did any of them break?” Audra straightened away from him and glared, yet not a fraction as fierce as Rafe. “While he was out there having a gunfight on a mountainside?” She leaned in and looked right into his eyes. “After you promised me you’d be careful.”

  “Now, honey, don’t go getting all worked up. I’m fine. No broken blisters. And a few broken blisters wouldn’t kill me anyway. I’ve had my share of blisters in my life, for heaven’s sake.”

  “Not like these. Ethan Kincaid, if you won’t promise me—”

  “I’ll stay a week.” Rafe interrupted Audra’s scolding, which reminded Ethan of how much he loved his brother. “I’ll run the ranch while Ethan rests.”

  Which reminded Ethan of how his bossy brother drove him half crazy.

  “But you’re not done building your cabin.”

  What Rafe didn’t say was that he’d run this section of the Kincaid property to suit himself. Make sure everything was in order after Ethan had had time to mess them up. All Ethan had to do was agree to be coddled and he’d prove everything his hired men believed about him, everything Rafe believed about him, and worse yet, everything he didn’t want to believe about himself.