Aiming for Love

by Mary Connealy

  “She’ll have awakened your pa and ma by now,” Jo whispered. “But there’s no room in there for you.”

  Dave waited a minute for his heart to stop trying to pound its way out of his chest. He remembered catching her after she’d stolen that tin cup.

  He’d known someone was about. Things had been moved around at night, and he was watching. It was a good thing because if he hadn’t been, he’d’ve never found her.

  Oh, he was good, mighty good in the woods. But the way she moved, she was more shadow than woman. He’d found her hiding in the forest, but only because he knew where she had to be did he manage to get his hands on her.

  He could tell he’d shocked her then. Well, good. Maybe she’d think he was such a fine tracker that she wouldn’t bother to hide from him.

  He sure hoped that’s how it went, because he’d never catch her if she knew how lucky he’d been.

  “I managed to sneak up on you, huh?” Jo chuckled quietly. The men slept all around him, except for those out riding herd.

  Which made him realize what woke him up. She was still shaking his shoulder, so gently it was like being rocked in a cradle.

  If it wasn’t for that, he’d’ve fired every one of his men. As it was, he’d have to fire himself, too, so he decided to just forget it.

  Then she quit shaking him, and he really missed her touch.

  “Follow.” Jo stood, silent as a breath of wind, and walked out of the tent without waking his slumbering cowhands.

  He followed, hoping he was half as quiet. He couldn’t hear anything from inside the building, either. Could Ilsa be so quiet and gentle she checked over a patient without waking him?

  Strange bunch these Nordegren women. Strange, wild bunch.

  “I have a fine place where we can drive your cattle. There’s a natural canyon wall that’ll hold ’em on three sides . . . I think. I’ve never gone all around it, but it looks like there’s no other way out. It has a narrow entrance that will be easy to block. If you want to go up there and see it, I’ll take you. If the meadow suits you, we’ll come back and get the cows.”

  The campfire jumped and drew Dave’s attention. One of his men was up and stoking the fire, building it up. The soft clop of hooves told him a rider came in from checking the herd.

  The soft cry of a mourning dove said the sun was coming, and he realized the gray had lightened. No outcry from the cabin. Pa had lived through the night. Dave felt the sting of tears at the thought because he’d been so sure Pa would be fine. But that first look, that bullet to the gut. Only now Dave admitted how scared he’d been. But Pa would make it. The cows would have grass. And a beautiful wild woman had just asked him to go riding.

  He swiped his eyes with the back of his hand and dug deep to control the foolish inclination to cry with relief. Then he smiled. It was a good mountain morning.

  “Let me talk to Ma, and we’ll see what Ilsa says about Pa. If he’s holding up, we’ll head out.”

  Jo nodded. “If you’re right about how fast your herd will eat down this grass, you might not have much time. And when the snow comes heavy up here, everything’ll get a whole lot harder.”

  “I’m more worried about Wax Mosby than I am about snow,” Dave said quietly. “You said there is another way up here.”

  “Grandpa only spoke of it, so I’m not sure where it is, but I know it’s a mighty mean trail. The one you took is the pick of the litter. It’s the way Grandpa always went.”

  “If there is a way in, I want to see it.” Dave watched the sky go from a pale blush to bright blue. The sun finally came with power. “I’ll talk to Ma, and if things are all right, we’ll go.”

  10

  Jo stayed.

  It suited her to watch the camp wake up. To watch Dave walk to the little shed they’d built and go inside.

  She remembered thinking Ilsa was doing this last night, staying back, watching. Now Jo realized she did it, too, and she’d been doing it all her life.

  She watched.

  She watched wild animals.

  She watched her sisters.

  And for the last few days, she’d watched Dave and his men. Her curiosity wasn’t what made her hang back and watch. That didn’t explain it. No, it was just her natural way to wait, think, study.

  Now here she stood watching. Why did she do that? She wondered if it was normal. But how could any of her life really be normal when she’d spent it up here with only her sisters for company?

  With a sinking heart, she had to wonder if living such an isolated life had made her into a strange version of normal. Or was she the truest kind of person? Had her life, lived so alone, made her the purest form of herself?

  As she waited, she adjusted the quiver of arrows she always carried, strapped so they hung across her back with a leather strap over her head, under her arm, and across her front. Then her bow went on top of the quiver, the arc of wood at her back while the string crossed the opposite way of her quiver, making an X right over her heart.

  Dave came back right away. Whatever he heard must’ve reassured him. Then he went to a line of horses picketed to graze and threw saddles on two of them. She heard him murmur something to the men. All of them were now up and moving around.

  Dave led both horses over to her. In the light of the new day, with no forest to cast shadows, Dave’s eyes went to her cheek, and he frowned.

  “How’s your pa?”

  Nodding, Dave said, “He’s doing good. Ilsa was changing the packing on his wound. She said he has no fever, and that’s a real good sign. I meant to spell Ma last night, but she said she fell asleep beside Pa, and they both slept straight through until Ilsa came in. I told my folks we were going to saddle up and go scouting for pasture, and they didn’t try and get me to stay.”

  “Saddle up? D-Dave”—Jo hadn’t meant to stutter—“I-I haven’t been on a horse in years.”

  Dave gave her a rueful smile. “Well, this is a steady mare. If you want to ride, I think she’ll suit you. If you don’t, then I’d understand if you just want to hike around.”

  “No, the pastures I want to show you are at the far end of our home. We’d be all day walking there, so let’s ride.”

  Dave helped her mount up, and it was an undignified business that left her unsettled because he’d touched her, and except for him taking her prisoner yesterday, she hadn’t been touched by a man since Grandpa died, and he wasn’t one to give a little girl a hug.

  Yesterday had unsettled her, too.

  She showed no sign of settling anytime soon.

  Jo turned her thoughts away from such nonsense, grateful he’d helped lift her on the horse.

  “What direction?” Dave asked.

  Jo risked releasing her grip on the saddle horn with one hand and pointed toward the woods he’d caught her in. “We go that way, and there’s a trail we can get the horses through, but how do I make it go?”

  Dave chuckled. He reached over and took the reins from Jo, which were just something else to hang on to, so it gave her more than she wanted to do. He started out.

  “I’m leading the horses, but you’re the one who knows where to go. I think I know the trail you’re talking about, but if I head wrong, speak up.”

  “You are heading wrong.” He was going too far toward the trail the cows had come up yesterday. “Go straight ahead, now that way, around that clump of aspens.”

  “There’s no trail.”

  Jo didn’t know what to say to that. There was a trail, and when he saw it, he’d know. It didn’t show, not from here.

  Dave followed her pointing and rounded the aspen. He whistled quietly. “I’ve never noticed this.”

  “We get elk up here a lot, and they use this because it’s unusually wide for a forest trail, bigger than what a deer would leave.”

  They couldn’t ride side by side. Dave guided his horse ahead, still hanging on to her reins, leading her horse through the dappled forest trail.

  With Dave in charge of the horse, Jo
could almost enjoy the feel of the big critter moving along, carrying her. Trees of every kind arched overhead like a ceiling.

  She remembered Grandma talking about churches she’d been in, and Jo had always wondered if the stained-glass windows were as pretty as her forest in the fall.

  The gold color of the aspens and cottonwoods were splashed with orange bittersweet berries and red leaves from the sumac. There were pine trees with the lush needles and pinecones hanging low on their evergreen branches. A gust of wind scattered a bit of snow, not heavy, and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, but the weather was changing up here. There was no time to waste guiding Dave to the high meadow.

  It was a long ride, and the morning was half-gone when they came out into a clearing at the base of a stony wall of rock. “There it is.”

  “This clearing isn’t big enough to—”

  “Not here.” Jo pointed again. She’d like to lead, but she didn’t have the nerve to take her reins back. The horse would probably just stop.

  Skeptical, Dave glanced back a couple of times, but he rode on right toward the mountainside.

  They came up to the rock wall.

  “Turn to the right, and ride alongside the wall. There’s a gap that doesn’t show from this direction.”

  Dave did exactly as he was told.

  It touched something in Jo that, despite his doubts, he was listening to her. Trusting her.

  Dave knew better than to distrust Jo.

  He’d seen plenty of odd things in the mountains, a gap that was hidden from the eye among them. But he sure wanted to scoff.

  Then the solid wall of rock opened to his left. The rocks were sheer, forty feet high, but there were enough uneven and discolored spots that what looked like just another stripe of color was really the wall stopping with another wall right behind it and space between them. He turned and looked at the trail, bordered on both sides by sky-high walls. He kept moving, riding right in. It looked like it ended ahead, but by now Dave was sure it wouldn’t. He got near the end, and it curved off to his right and took a sharp upward slant. His horse seemed calm as it walked onward and upward.

  The ground was uneven, not worn down by years of heavy travel, but a herd of elk could come this way easily enough and so could his Thoroughbred and cattle. Getting them started up this narrow canyon mouth might be tricky, but once they got one cow going, the rest would follow. The trail rose more sharply, but it was wider and better traveled than the trail they’d taken the cattle up from their ranch.

  The sky overhead was a narrow line, then he gained the top of the rock walls and a valley swooped down below him. Dave wanted to draw his horse and look at this beautiful, vast grassland, just stop and savor the view. But his horse kept going, and Dave saw it was also a sharp descent, so he let the horse have its head while he looked at the swaying grass. There was a pond on the far end of what had to be hundreds of acres.

  And no sign that another man had ever set foot here.

  Well, Jo knew it was here, so she’d come. Probably her sisters, too. Even her grandpa. But no one had stayed, and Dave was suddenly jealous. He was going to have to let Pa have this for the winter. And Pa was going to want to keep it.

  Dave had always regretted his brother, Mitch, going off to the city, though he claimed to love it there. But what if Mitch would come home? This valley was big enough to support another family. What if he’d live here, side by side with Dave?

  He loved his big brother something fierce, and missing him was like a sore on his soul. It never went away. And with trouble down at the ranch, they could really use another strong man at home.

  11

  A Few Days Earlier

  Colorado

  Mitch knew this land like he knew his own face. And he was a man who had for years owned an excellent mirror, so that was saying something.

  The land outside the train flashed past as the sun set. The view eased into his bones.

  Home.

  A shrill whistle said they were stopping, and Mitch knew just where. The train had few travelers, and he’d spoken to none of them and done all he could to draw no attention, including moving from one passenger car to the next every few hours. There were four cars besides the engine and caboose. He hoped if anyone noticed he was missing, they’d assume he’d just moved.

  He stepped out of the train when it stopped at a water tank in the middle of nowhere. No one paid him much mind when he unloaded his horses. And he’d paid the conductor good money to not notice, and the stock car was the last one before the caboose. Mitch just saddled up, loaded all he had carried along on his packhorse, and rode back the way the train had come until he’d rounded a curve so no one could see him. Once the train chugged away, he turned to go west. A long way west.

  He’d packed wisely, a bedroll and filled saddlebags.

  And though it hadn’t been his plan, he’d brought every bit of his wealth, all in the form of gold.

  Now, finally, he was on the last stretch. A journey he’d begun planning the second time someone almost killed him.

  He’d spent two months quietly getting his affairs in order, letting his arm heal, and doing some investigating. The would-be murderer had spoken the truth. Now Mitch knew his enemy.

  He couldn’t find proof that would bring someone who’d hired murder to justice, so he gave in to the longing that had been growing in him to go home.

  During those two months, he’d very quietly sold all he owned. He’d hired eager, competent managers so the new owners would be successful . . . and his enemies would be harmed.

  With no one knowing he’d turned all he owned to cash, he announced a trip to Europe. He was very careful not to do it with much fanfare, but enough so the news would reach the ears of his enemies and lead them astray. A man named Mitch Pierce—the name Mitch had gone by in New York City—had boarded a ship heading for England.

  Then a man named something else had gone west on a train heading for Chicago.

  He changed trains and his name in Chicago and tarried long enough to see if he could pick up someone trailing him. He hadn’t been followed. Then he’d moved on to St. Louis and a new name and then on to Omaha. He was there when the Panic hit. Banks failed, starting in New York City and tumbling across the country like falling dominoes. Millionaires like Jay Cooke and Henry Clews went bankrupt. These were men Mitch knew, powerful men who were too deep in debt from building railroads and factories.

  He’d tarried in Omaha and read all he could find about the economic crisis. The ruthless businessman in him wanted to go back to New York. With the gold he carried, he could pick up whole buildings, whole railroads, for a fraction of their worth. If he did it right, he could come out of the Panic as one of the richest men in America.

  But then, when the next panic came, it might be him filing for bankruptcy.

  No, instead, he held on to his money. The Panic didn’t appear to be ending any time soon, and he got word that his old business partner, Pete Howell, the man who wanted him dead, had lost everything just as Mitch had arranged. And that was before the business world collapsed. Then he heard that Katrina’s father had lost everything. Katrina was the woman Mitch had thought he could love—or at least marry. She’d helped Pete pay for the assassin. Learning that was a betrayal that made Mitch furious. But he realized it hadn’t broken his heart.

  That he’d misjudged both Pete and Katrina was a goad that convinced him more than even the hired gunmen that he needed to go home.

  Mitch carried a fourth name along with him to Denver.

  In Denver he’d packed for the frontier and bought two good horses—one for a pack animal. He’d planned to find a bank and have the gold locked away, but with the Panic, Mitch didn’t trust any of them not to fail.

  He’d carted the gold along and taken the train as far as he could south out of Denver, heading for a place no one wanted to kill him.

  His fancy city clothes had been left behind, traded for rugged broadcloth shirts, denim jeans, sturdy boo
ts, and a buffalo-hide coat—and from the moment he’d ridden away from that train, he went back to his real name.

  It was full dark, but he knew the land well enough to find a game trail taking him toward the mountain where his family ranched. It was a winding path, but it went the right way, mostly west, climbing into the foothills of the Rockies.

  He’d lived away from the Circle Dash a long time now. Over ten years since he’d gotten wounded in his first Civil War battle and been told his fighting days were over. Ashamed to not fight, he’d found a way to serve by helping out an officer.

  He discovered a knack for organizing and planning, and a flare for ruthlessness. He’d done some spying and rose to the attention of a general. At the end of the war he’d stayed in the East. Suspicious and private by nature, he’d called himself Mitch Pierce when he did his sneaking around during the war. Once the war was over, he stuck with that name. He’d never been the friendly type.

  First, he worked for a steel mill, then he owned one. It’d taken the guts of a riverboat gambler, but Mitch had risked a whole lot of money he didn’t have and struck it rich in the boom after the Civil War.

  He owned one mill, then two, then five, then a bank and a row of New York City buildings. He’d invested in railroads and plenty more. There were some who whispered his name along with Vanderbilt, Carnegie, and Astor. He could’ve been one of those robber barons. He found that a talent for risk taking and ruthlessness was a good fit for that world.

  And then someone tried to kill him.

  Mitch had killed the man and found a thousand dollars in gold on him and a note that said it was taken in payment to commit murder.

  Then the second attempt. He’d wounded a hired killer so badly the man would never shoot again.

  And for a man with a reputation as a fast draw, not being able to shoot was a death sentence. Others would come after him, hunting a reputation. They’d pick him off like a wolf pack sniffing out a three-legged bighorn sheep. Mitch had investigated and found the killer had vanished. Mitch suspected the man was dead.