by Linda Ford
“I watched him until he went inside, but he didn’t have a limp.”
“So it wasn’t their father?” Her shoulders sagged with relief.
“I went after Beth. She was in the bedroom, sitting on the floor in a corner, holding Jeannie tightly. I don’t know if she said anything to her sister, but Jeannie hung around Beth’s neck as if she, too, thought someone was after them. I squatted before them, afraid to get too close. Their fear was like a living, breathing thing in the room. I asked what was wrong. Poor Beth. She could hardly speak. All she said was, ‘Get Sammy. Bring him home. Don’t let anyone see him.’ I asked why and she just rolled her head back and forth. I touched her shoulder and said I would. She practically jumped out of her skin when I touched her.” Logan turned from the window, his eyes clouded with pain. “I thought she was over being so guarded around me.”
Sadie ached for him. He had done nothing to earn Beth’s fear, but she couldn’t tell him her suspicions. “Maybe she sees all men as being like her father.”
He looked past her. “We need to get to the bottom of this.” He drew her after him across the floor to the store area, where they collected Sammy and his peppermint stick. Logan asked his uncle to add two more to his bill and selected two for the girls.
They each took one of Sammy’s hands, crowding close to his side to shield him from curious, prying eyes, and hustled across the street and into the living quarters.
“What’s going on?” Sammy demanded all the way and again as they stepped into the kitchen and released him. He faced them, his expression hard. “Where’s Beth and Jeannie?” Suspicion colored his words and his hands rolled into fists.
“In there.” Logan pointed to the bedroom.
Sammy hurried across the floor. Logan followed and signaled Sadie to come along.
“We need to find out what’s going on.”
They stood side by side in the doorway as Sammy went to his sisters. He took one look at them and his whole body tensed.
“It’s him, isn’t it?” He didn’t wait for an answer and, instead, sat beside Beth, crowding to her side.
Sadie drew her lips in and blinked as tears stung her eyes. These children were genuinely afraid of their father, though Logan seemed to think the man he had seen didn’t fit the description of the father.
Logan studied the children. “I’m going to get to the bottom of this.” He spun about and headed across the kitchen.
Beth’s eyes widened, though Sadie would have thought it impossible for them to get any bigger. She shifted Jeannie to Sammy, who held the little girl tight. Beth bolted to her feet, pushed past Sadie and raced after Logan, grabbing his sleeve before he reached the door.
“What are you going to do?”
Logan’s shoulders rose and fell. “Whatever is wrong has something to do with the stranger I saw in front of the hotel and I aim to find out what it is. Enough of this fear and hiding.”
Beth blinked back tears. “Please don’t say anything about us. Please. Promise me.” She wrung her hands as she pleaded with him.
Sadie wanted to hug the girl, hug all of them and assure them they were safe, but she feared to move. The moment was fragile with fear and tension, and one wrong move would send them all into panic. She wasn’t sure what they would do in such a state.
Logan rested his hand on Beth’s shoulder and she let him. In fact, Sadie thought the girl practically leaned into the touch.
Sadie wondered if either of them was aware of it.
“Beth, I won’t tell the man you are here. I promise.”
She sagged with relief.
“But I will get to the bottom of this. You can tell me yourself—” He waited, giving her lots of time to answer, but she only rocked her head back and forth. “Or I can find out some other way.”
Beth stepped away from his hand and covered her mouth against a strangled cry. She studied Logan for a moment. “Remember, you promised not to say anything about us.” She fled back to the bedroom and huddled down beside her brother and sister.
Logan’s eyes dipped at the corners. His lips pulled in.
Sadie went to his side and touched his arm. She wished she could say something, but not a single word came to her mind. This whole situation brimmed with raging fear and drowning uncertainty.
He groaned and pulled her into his arms, leaning his face against her hair. “What is she so afraid of?”
Sadie pressed her cheek to the rough fabric of his shirt. Her suspicions—no, her certainty—about Beth’s fears tore one ragged strip after another from her heart. Every searing pain carried her own pain and fear. What would happen if Logan knew what Sadie knew?
“She—” She choked, knowing she could not reveal Beth’s secret any more than she could reveal her own. It would ruin them both. “I expect she has her reasons.”
Logan didn’t move, yet she felt him pull back into himself. “It would surely help if she’d tell me what they were.” He eased away from her though his hands remained on her arms. “Just as it would help if you told me what happened to make you so wary.” He studied her for a moment, as if reading her thoughts. “Did your parents hurt you?” His eyes narrowed. “Did your father beat you?”
She tried to look away, tried to cloak her thoughts, and wondered if she had succeeded.
He tipped his head in a quick nod. “It is something to do with your parents, isn’t it? Are you ever going to tell me about it?”
She opened her mouth, but nothing came out. Nor did a thought form in her head, except for the dread and horror she had carried with her for four years.
Logan’s expression went from sorrowful to determined, and he left the house.
Sadie went to the window to watch him stride from the yard. Her chest hurt and she rubbed at it, knowing the pain would ease but would never entirely go away.
Logan disappeared around the corner.
Her insides cried after him. Come back. Let me explain. She longed to have him hold her and erase the ached that festered in her heart. She pressed at her breastbone. Telling him the truth would destroy everything. She must remember that.
Jeannie whimpered in the bedroom and Beth made soothing noises.
Sadie sucked in air until her lungs could hold no more, then slowly released it.
All that mattered was keeping these children safe. She tiptoed into the schoolroom and peeked out the door to watch Logan go into the hotel.
Oh, to be a little bird and fly after him and hear what he had to say.
*
Logan’s back teeth hurt from the pressure he put on them. To see the children so afraid was torture. To know Beth was so desperate she would appeal to him for a promise and even let him touch her without recoiling made his insides ache. He wanted her to learn to trust him but not this way.
But all that paled in comparison to the sheer panic he had seen in Sadie’s face when he’d asked her to tell him what her parents had done. Suspicions grew in his mind. Things he didn’t want to believe. But he wasn’t naive enough not to know ugly, horrible things happened.
Still, to know in a newspaper sort of way was entirely different than thinking people he cared deeply for might have experienced them.
His heels thudded hard on the solid ground as he crossed the street. As if he hoped he could stomp out the fear he saw in the children and Sadie.
He paused in front of the hotel to bring his raging emotions under control. He needed his wits about him if he was to discover the truth and protect Sadie and the children at the same time.
He slipped into the hotel unobserved.
The stranger banged on the counter. “Hey, where is everyone? I need service.”
Logan ducked behind a big plant to listen and observe.
The proprietor stepped into sight. “Hold your horses. I’m coming.” Bespectacled, thin as a whip, Mr. Hawkins often left the hotel to go next door and visit Dorie and Daisy at the café. He could keep an eye on the front of his establishment from where he customarily sat, b
ut if his cup was still half-full of hot coffee, or his meal half-eaten, he finished before returning.
“Took you long enough.” The man was overly aggrieved, in Logan’s opinion.
Mr. Hawkins took his place behind the counter. “Are you looking for a room?”
“A room and some information.”
“The first I can offer. Can’t necessarily say the same for the second.”
The stranger signed his name, laid down some coins and pocketed the key to his room. “I’m looking for my kids.”
Mr. Hawkins drew back. “I do not have them.” He glanced at the register. “Mr. Harlan Perrin.”
Not Mr. Weiss. That would explain the confusion Logan felt at the conflicting descriptions and information he’d found. Even as Logan branded the name on his brain, he almost laughed at the shock in the Mr. Hawkins’s face.
“Never said you did. There are three of them—a girl of twelve, a boy of seven and a little girl of three.”
Logan’s insides froze over. He was after the Weiss children even if he did have Beth’s age wrong. She was thirteen. But who was he? Not their father. Was he the man Uncle George had seen but a different man than the blacksmith spoke of?
“They your kids?” Mr. Hawkins asked.
“I’m their stepfather.”
“How did you come to lose them?”
Logan heard the suspicion in the hotel owner’s voice and knew the stranger would have a hard time getting any direct information from him.
“I left them safe and settled out of town a ways, and when I come back they’re gone. Don’t know if someone took them or what.”
“Sounds like something you should talk to the sheriff about. He’s across the street and down past the town square. Can’t miss him.” Mr. Hawkins closed the register and shoved it under the counter to inform the man the conversation was over.
Logan slipped away while Mr. Perrin stared a challenge at the impervious Mr. Hawkins.
He scooted down the road to the Jesse’s office and quickly let him know what was going on, including the children’s reactions. “I don’t like it. See if you can stall him.” He hurried out the back way and returned to the schoolhouse.
Sadie jerked about as he entered the room, her hand going to her throat. “You startled me.” She glanced toward the bedroom door and edged toward him. “They refuse to come out. What did you learn?”
He pulled her closer, both to ensure the children didn’t hear and to find comfort in the contact. They moved to the far window and looked out. He wrapped an arm about her shoulders and spoke softly. “He says he’s their stepfather.”
She jerked about to face him. “No!” Tears filled her eyes. “That means both parents are dead. How awful.” She pressed her face to his chest and shuddered.
He hugged her to his heart, wanting to end the fear she and the children shared. “It certainly is. And it makes me feel better to know their own father wasn’t the one to hurt Sammy.”
“Did you tell him where they were?” Her voice was muffled against his shirtfront.
“I didn’t speak to him and Mr. Hawkins suggested he take his questions to the sheriff. I hurried away and spoke to Jesse. He’ll do his best to delay the man, but he said he can’t put him off more than a few minutes.”
She tipped her head back. “Are you suggesting we should hide them? Where?”
“We could take them to the ranch. They’d be safe there.”
“Yes. Let’s do it. Hurry. I’ll get them ready.”
“I’ll need to get a wagon.” He was on his way before he finished the sentence. It seemed to take an eternity to reach the livery barn and hitch a couple of horses to the wagon he rented. Every moment dragged. He went down the alley to the school, hoping Jesse had delayed the stepfather.
Sadie was watching for him and hustled the children out as soon as he appeared.
Beth glanced over her shoulder and looked right and left as she raced across the yard, holding Jeannie by the hand. Sammy didn’t waste a minute, either. “The three of you hunker down in the back.” He turned to Sadie. “Jesse will be here soon, no doubt.”
She nodded, her eyes troubled. “I’ll be okay.”
“I’ll be back to make certain you are.”
“Thank you. Children, enjoy your visit.”
Beth reached for Sadie’s hand. “Thank you.”
Logan turned the horses about and, rather than set them into a trot, he pulled them to a halt. Jesse stood in the middle of the alley, blocking the way. And Mr. Perrin stood beside him.
Jesse at least looked regretful.
Mr. Perrin looked anything but. “I hear you took my children from my house while I was away.” The voice grated against Logan’s nerves.
In the back, Beth smothered a cry.
The knuckles of Logan’s hands popped as he squeezed his fists tight. The faint sound hammered in his head, a bitter accompaniment to the muffled sounds of distress coming from the back of the wagon. If not for his friend, Jesse, at Mr. Perrin’s side, Logan would be tempted to bolt the horses past the stepfather without regard for any injuries that might occur. He’d consider them justice injuries in repayment for the marks on Sammy’s back.
“Don’t suppose they happen to be in the back of that wagon.” Mr. Perrin’s voice had a peculiarly annoying quality to it, half overbearing, half whining.
Jesse lifted his hands in a gesture of apology. “He’s their stepfather.”
A clatter behind Logan drew the attention of all three men in that direction. The children scrambled out the back and raced toward Sadie. She stepped aside to let them in, said something, then pulled the door closed behind them and, head up, chin jutted out, crossed the yard to stand by the wagon.
Logan kept his eyes on Mr. Perrin, but he felt Sadie’s presence in the depths of his rolling emotions and welcomed it. He would have touched her shoulder, but his hands were firmly clamped to the reins and wouldn’t uncoil.
“What seems to be the problem, Sheriff?” Sadie asked in a good schoolmarm’s voice.
Logan was not fooled by her calm tone. He’d seen her like this before when she had gone to investigate Sammy’s situation. He could have warned Jesse and the man beside him that there was no stopping her when she’d made up her mind. His hands relaxed and he almost grinned as he waited to see how she would deal with this.
Jesse’s expression grew hard.
Logan could almost feel sorry for him. He had a job to do that was about to put him in conflict with both the schoolteacher and the Marshall family. It couldn’t be easy. But Logan would not allow his friendship with Jesse to cloud his judgment regarding the children and their stepfather.
“This is Mr. Perrin,” Jesse said. “He’s come to get his children.”
“That a fact. And I presume you asked him what arrangements he’s made for them?”
Jesse opened his mouth but, before he could answer, Sadie strode to Mr. Perrin, her hands on her hips.
“Because we found them in dreadful circumstances. A house that was barely standing. No food.”
Mr. Perrin waved away her protests. “I’ll take care of them. Not that it’s any of your business.”
Uh-oh. Logan knew how Sadie would respond to such words.
“Sir, that is where you are wrong. I believe every adult has the responsibility to see that children are safe and cared for. I would never stand aside and ignore a child’s need.”
Mr. Perrin took a step back at her vehemence. Then he seemed to collect himself. “I’m their stepfather. Ain’t no one gonna take those kids from me.”
Sadie closed the distance between them. “Someone is going to make certain that the children are safe and properly cared for.” She swung around to confront Jesse. “Isn’t that right, Sheriff?”
Logan almost felt sorry for Jesse. Almost, but not quite.
Jesse blinked. “Of course I’ll make sure of it.”
Sadie eased back. “Fine. Then until you’ve checked things out and found them sa
tisfactory, the children can stay with me.” She marched away.
She passed Logan, sparing him a challenging, pleading look, and continued on, almost reaching her home before Mr. Perrin recovered from her onslaught.
“Now wait just one minute,” he called. “What gives you the right to keep my kids? I’ll be taking them with me.” He started after Sadie.
Logan was on the ground before he took a second step. “You stay away from her. You hear me?”
Jesse stepped between the two men. “You’re staying at the hotel. That’s no place for the children. Leave them with Miss Young while you show me the home you have prepared for them.” He guided Mr. Perrin around.
“I don’t need to show you anything.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.” At least they could trust Jesse to check things out.
“If you must know, I have a house in Wolf Hollow and arrangements with a woman to take care of them.”
“Fine. Then you won’t mind showing it to me.”
Mr. Perrin scowled. “I sure ain’t goin’ back there today. I need a hot meal and a good night’s sleep.”
Logan held his position until Jesse had accompanied the man back to the street and out of sight, then he jogged to the house. He stepped inside and leaned against the door. The children peered out from the bedroom. Sadie stood by the table, her arms wrapped about her, her eyes wide.
Logan started to laugh, which earned him a scowl from Sadie.
“I don’t see anything funny,” she protested.
He stopped laughing though he couldn’t stop grinning. “It was great to watch you stand up to that man.” He reached for her hands and pulled her close to smile down at her. “You were magnificent.”
Her cheeks grew pink.
As she looked up at him, the color in her cheeks deepened, perhaps because she saw the admiration and something sweeter, stronger and infinitely more enduring that filled his heart and likely his eyes. He shifted his attention to the children. “Did you see her?”
Beth nodded.
Sammy asked, “Where did he go?”
No need to ask who he meant. They all knew.
Logan told them what had been said.