Another cry tore out of his chest and died on the wind. “Help us. Help me. I can’t do this on my own.”
The yellow dog was gone.
Like a gunshot, the words drew him up and he looked behind him for—what? The yellow dog was gone. What did that have to do with anything?
A spark lit in the back of his brain, and he whirled his horse around, squinting through the dark and blowing snow and off his trail in what he thought was the direction of the knoll. The wind hadn’t shifted until after dark.
Chapter 19
Head down, Clay hunched his shoulders and heeled Duster straight into the icy cold screaming off the mountains. The gelding reached through it, pushing against the wind’s knife-edge, climbing toward the knoll.
The red sandstone stood colorless and bare, blown clear of snow, but not the brush around it. The scrub oak at its base bowed with a heavy load where snow had swirled over the rock and sucked back against it. Clay remembered that brush. The dog had bellied in under an arched branch, following a rabbit’s scent. But now there was no opening. Just a snow-covered mound.
The dirt had blown clear. No tracks to read. No clues to say whether it was just a pile of snow blown in or a cougar taking shelter. Clay tugged his right glove off with his teeth, pulled his .45 and stepped down, holding the reins with his other hand. He eased closer to the lump. Toed it with his boot. Felt a growl.
Cocked the hammer.
A head raised, and yellow eyes challenged him.
Recognition hit, and the dog’s ears flattened with a whine.
Clay’s heart slammed into his ribs, and he eased the hammer up and holstered his gun. Another whine, and he knelt and reached in around the dog.
“Papa?”
The frightened little voice burned through Clay like hot steel, and he pulled Willy from the dog’s sheltering cradle.
“It’s Mr. Clay, Willy. Take hold round my neck.”
He unfastened his slicker and covered the boy, then stepped up to the saddle.
Reaching under his slicker, he drew his gun. “It’s going to be loud, Willy. Hang on.”
The dog flattened its ears and looked away.
Clay fired once and then again, hoping—no, praying—the wind carried the sound to those who needed to hear it.
With a catch in his voice and a quick arm around Willy, he looked at the yellow dog. “Let’s go home.”
~
Sophie’s head jerked up at the incongruent noise. A gunshot?
She held her breath, straining to hear above the crackling fire and wind buffeting the house. There—again. Her pulse spiked. Was it her imagination?
Mae Ann slept in the other chair, feet tucked beneath her with still enough room on the seat for her precious boy to snuggle with her—if he’d been there. Madeline lay swaddled in her arms. Dare Sophie raise a mother’s hopes over what might only be a tree limb snapped by the storm?
She added wood to the fire and sat on the hearth, facing the door, willing it to open and Clay to stride in strong and tall with the boy in his arms. Oh, God, show him the way to Willy.
But for the wind and fire, all was silent, and it was silence that had alerted her to begin with. An uneasy feeling that afternoon when the birds stilled and the sky turned to slate. Something had been missing. A consistent noise or presence that suddenly wasn’t there. And that presence was Willy.
The front door crashed open and she cried out.
Mae Ann sat up with a start.
Clay blew in, his yellow slicker flapping at his legs but tight around his middle and bulging. He came straight to the fire where he knelt and set two small booted feet on the hearth. “You can let go now, Willy. You’re home.”
“Papa?”
Sophie swept the baby from Mae Ann’s arms and sobbed as the mother fell to her knees in front of her son, doing the same.
Deacon came next, slamming the door behind Mae Ann’s dog, which ran across the threshold and shook snow from its back.
Deacon pulled his boots off in the jack, then pegged his slicker and hat on the wall, as did Clay. Gun belts hung from both men, and Sophie shivered at the sight. Life in the high parks often came to a standoff between man and predator. Thank God, tonight’s bullets had signaled survival.
She hurried to the kitchen with Madeline tucked against her and dumped old coffee grounds into a tin on the counter.
Clay followed and drew her into his arms, holding her as if he feared she might blow away.
“Thank God,” she whispered. Something had happened out there in the wind. Something that cut clean through him. She sensed the difference but didn’t ask. Patience was not her strong suit, yet she waited, one arm around him in gratitude, Madeline cloistered between them in the other. Prayer rose silently from her soul that he would tell her.
“Sophie, can you bring me some towels?”
Clay kissed the top of her head. “I’ll get the coffee going.”
Still holding the baby, she laid her other hand against his cheek, red and cold as ice. “Thank God. Thank you.”
His cold lips took hers with sudden urgency and shot icy fire through her veins. She lingered a moment, then gathered every length of toweling she could find in the kitchen. At the hearth, mother, son, and dog formed an unusual trio. Willy’s boots sat beside him, his clothes not as wet as she’d expected. The dog, however, was shivering uncontrollably, soaked to the skin.
“Koogu hepped me,” Willy said, patting the dog’s wet head.
Mae Ann rubbed Willy’s hair. “Would you get him some dry clothes from upstairs, please?”
“Of course.”
When Sophie returned, Clay had joined them and was rubbing the dog with another towel.
Remarkably, Madeline slept through all the tromping around, but Sophie’s arm was nearly numb. She gave the dry clothes to Mae Ann, then sat facing Clay but next to Cougar who smelled more like wet cougar than wet dog. “What happened?”
The muscle in Clay’s jaw clenched and he shot a look to Deacon in the other chair, then back to the women.
“When I found them, the dog was curled around Willy, covered in snow. No telling how long he’d been like that. They were tucked in under a scrub oak on the knoll. This side of a patch of red rock.”
“That’s not far,” Mae Ann said, her voice breathy and full of tears. She helped Willy get his arms in the sleeves of a dry shirt, and between errant sobs, hugged him and kissed his cheeks, red and chapped from the cold. “Maybe a half mile. Was it on one of your circles?”
“Twice that hound earned his keep.” Deacon’s crusty voice caught an edge on the last word, and Sophie looked over to see him rubbing his mustache with the back of his hand.
“He warned Cade when Mae Ann was in a fix up at the old farm a few years back.”
Mae Ann wiped her eyes and kissed Willy’s head, then kissed the dog’s head too.
Clay hadn’t answered her question.
Sophie touched his arm. “What made you look there?”
He covered her hand with his, strong and hard and still cold. “I took Willy for a ride up there the day his sister was born. Showed him his pa’s land. The yellow dog went with us. Tonight Willy must have gone looking for his pa.”
His voice got thick and he shook his head like he couldn’t talk.
“And Cougar went with him,” she whispered, throat squeezing with gratitude for the Lord’s unlikely guardian. But she couldn’t wait, she had to know. “What made you think to look there, off your planned search area?”
Clay swallowed and pushed his hand through his hair, then looked at her with a hundred words in his eyes. Not one came out of his mouth.
She balled her fingers into fists, wanting to press the point. Impatient curiosity roared as loud as the wind, but she held off in front of the others and added her question to a list that was growing longer by the day. The moment was one of victory and relief, and she’d not spoil it to make a stand on principles.
She turned to Deacon. “Wher
e’s Blue?”
The old fella huffed. “In his hidey-hole at the barn is my guess. That’s where I’d be in this storm.”
“Cougar will stay here tonight.” Mae Ann rubbed his coat again with the dry end of a wet towel. “Do we have a soup bone or anything for him?”
“I’ll check.” Sophie handed Madeline to her mother and flexed her arm on the way to the kitchen, as well as her sensibilities. Why wouldn’t Clay talk to her? Why were words so difficult when he did everything else with patient precision? What was he hiding? The questions were growing like nettles and just as stinging in their irritation, but she shoved them down and set about scraping leftovers into a pie pan for the dog.
Few things conjured comfort like hot coffee on a blustery night. She carried a tray of tin cups and cookies to the hearth, then returned for the pie pan and set it before the shivering dog.
Deacon’s eyes lit up at the sight of sweets, and he helped himself to a handful.
In the wake of such intense relief, fatigue slid up behind her and sank into her bones. Mae Ann had to feel the same, and Sophie encouraged her upstairs with the children. The night would be short, and they all needed as much sleep as they could get.
At the landing she looked down at the men and dog by the fire. Only one was watching her. True to her nature, she was half one emotion, half another—gratitude and vexation. The see-saw wavered between the two. She pressed her fingers to her lips and tipped them toward the weary man who watched her.
He fisted his hand and held it over his heart.
~
From the old leather chair, Deacon snored like a locomotive. Dawn whispered at the window, and Clay took the coffee pot and mugs to the kitchen. He’d never shut his eyes.
He tugged into his coat and boots and set his hat, and at the creak of the door hinges, the yellow dog trotted out into the snow ahead of him.
Cougar. Heck of a name for a dog, but it had the yellow eyes and big feet to go with it, as well as the good sense to shelter Willy.
Why?
The single word spiraled up from a dark corner Clay rarely looked in. Why was one of those questions he didn’t ask unless it had to do with sick or injured livestock. In those cases, why could lead to a cause and therefore a remedy, at least a comfort. But asking why where people were concerned had never given him anything but more pain.
Why had his mother died in the fire?
Why did his father beat him? Curse him?
Why had he let the fire-crazed horses run out of the barn and over Clay in their panic to flee?
The cold knifed through his pants and into the leg that hadn’t been properly set.
Only once since he’d left his childhood behind had he asked a man why, and that man was Garrett Wilson. Why had he trusted Clay after he’d drunk himself senseless, nearly shot up the bar, and landed in Wilson’s “Iron Bar Inn,” as the sheriff called it.
Garrett’s answer rang as plain on this cold morning as it had four years ago in that jail cell—Somebody needs to.
That’s when things started to change for the better.
Clay’s boots crunched through six inches of crisp white that had fallen after the wind died last night. Everything lay still beneath it, and no birds sang in the trees.
Something was different about the morning. More than just a fresh start—more of a relief. A memory cracked through the shell of his heart like a hatchling, and it frightened him as much as the futility of his search frightened a prayer from him the night before.
A prayer that had been answered.
No way in a hundred would he have thought to ride up to the knoll. He and Deacon wouldn’t have circled around to it for a couple hours, maybe more. The clear morning sky after the storm might have set that red sandstone off in the perfect light, but it would have been too late by then. The probability twisted his insides.
Why?
He pulled his gloves on and tromped across the yard, around the barn, and away from the word where he could stand out in the open and watch the sun rise.
Like every sunrise before, it drew him. They always had, though he didn’t know—there it was again—why. He dipped his head until his hat brim cut the line where sky met land. And at the moment white light broke the edge, the blister in his soul split open with the sound of her voice.
He’s faithful, Clay. Look at that sunrise, so fresh and perfect. It’s His mercy, brand new every morning.
The pain sent him to his knees, and he clutched at his chest. Lanced by forgotten words, the blister drained through his every pore and ran down his face like acid.
All these years he’d hidden from the memory, the loss, the tenderness of his mother’s voice. It wasn’t worth the impossible price it cost him to remember. Yet she’d drawn him without his knowledge. He could no more break his connection to her than he could his connection to dawn.
“Oh, God.” His voice came strange, strangled. Breath burned his lungs as if it were his first and last. He suddenly understood the source of thought—of the dog, the knoll. The recognition of God’s presence in the storm shattered Clay to the core.
“You told me where to look.”
Another gasp, tight and searing. “You found him. Because You love him.”
He dropped back on his boot heels, squinting against the blinding light reflecting from every crystal for miles around, stunned by the beauty, but more so by a truth that far out-weighed all the unanswered whys of his life.
“You found me.”
Chapter 20
Saturday morning, Sophie slid a perfect chocolate cake from the oven and set it on the counter to cool. Mae Ann made the best cake on the Front Range, and Todd had frequently reminded Sophie of that fact ever since he’d tasted Mae Ann’s efforts years ago. But Sophie’s butter-cream frosting made tree bark edible, so she didn’t mind offering her cake to the Parkers while Mae Ann was in confinement.
If she could call it that. Nothing very confining about the woman seeing her husband off and coming down to the kitchen for meals. It was all Sophie could do to keep her from helping with the cooking.
Abigail Eisner had been another one quick to return to her normal routine, though Sophie felt, under the circumstances, that it was best for Abigail.
None of the men had been on hand this morning for breakfast, including Willy, whom Mae Ann insisted sleep with her the last two nights. After the emotional drain of him having gone missing, they’d stayed abed most of yesterday, and Sophie took a light dinner up. Aside from that, she’d had the kitchen to herself, but today her mind was scrounging for where everyone was. Clay in particular.
He and Deacon were probably looking after late heifers or checking on the young bulls. Riding fence line or looking for injuries among the horses, or one of the other hundred things that kept ranchers out at all hours.
Images of the Fairfax ranch rose with a quickening in her breast, and she marveled again that Clay had been thinking what she was thinking about changing the name, as if he knew.
Like he’d known where Willy was. Her instincts told her the Lord had answered everyone’s prayers, possibly even Clay’s, if he’d prayed. But again, he wouldn’t tell her. Ire whipped through her like the butter, sugar, and cream she was beating into frosting.
Well, she knew a few things too, and one was how different Clay had been when he came through the door with Willy snugged tight in his slicker. Oh, how she longed to hear the real story. The story of Clay’s heart that he kept to himself.
Lately, she looked forward to meals more than she ever had before, because they brought Clay nearer. So had Mrs. Fairfax’s tiny kitchen, and Sophie’s imagination had soared uncontrollably at what it would be like to be the mistress of that cozy home and to share it with Clay.
It was a shuddering thought, and it rippled through her, tying all her hopes and dreams together in one big bow. And that’s where doubt settled in—right under the bow.
What if he never opened up to her? Never shared his past. Never told her w
hat had made those brutal scars on his back or the reason he limped. The reason he didn’t talk about his family.
Could she marry him knowing nothing? Even Mae Ann as a mail-order bride had known something of her betrothed before agreeing to marry him sight unseen.
That night, habit had her boiling water for baths until she remembered that no one would be riding into town for church. Deacon hadn’t even shown up for supper, and when she asked Clay of his whereabouts, he merely hitched the side of his mouth and gave her a warm look. Many more of those warm looks and she wouldn’t have to heat water at all.
Sunday morning she woke to melting ice dripping from the eaves and hurried down to start coffee and hotcakes. Everyone joined her, and she could see Mae Ann’s longing for her husband in her eyes.
Deacon showed up with a trimmed mustache and no spurs. Apparently someone was going to church.
“You’re looking mighty sassy this morning,” Clay said over his syrup-drenched hotcakes.
Seated directly across from Sophie, Deacon watched her over the brim of his coffee cup.
What was that about?
Setting his cup on the table, he straightened the slightest bit. “Miss Sophie.”
He never called her that. Oh dear. She knew what he was going to say, and part of her didn’t want to hear it. Not here in front of Clay and Mae Ann.
She scooted her chair back.
“I got somethin’ to ask you.”
Reluctantly, she remained seated.
“I ’spect you know how I feel ’bout your ma, and if’n it seems right to you, I’m gonna speak to the preacher today.”
Mae Ann grinned like a schoolgirl, and Clay slid her a sideways glance.
No one said anything, but every eye turned to Sophie, including Willy’s.
After a moment, Deacon cleared his throat and started to say something else.
She interrupted his intensions. “It is truly thoughtful of you to consult me, Deacon, but Mama is a grown woman and she knows her own mind. I dare say she’s like a girl when you’re around, so I’m sure you both will be very happy together.”
It took every ounce of her fortitude not to look at Clay. They hadn’t spoken of a wedding or mentioned any plans at all since the picnic.
An Impossible Price: Front Range Brides - Book 3 Page 17