Sophie's Daughters Trilogy

by Mary Connealy

  Sally’s mouth barely moved as she responded. “I’ve heard of it.”

  Logan saw Wise Sister wrapping around and around. Sally’s ankle was now so thick with the white cloth that it should hold the bone steady enough to heal.

  “Keep talking.” Sally’s request was more of an order.

  “It fires off a spray about once an hour. And it’s so hot you have to stay well back.”

  Sally’s eyes were open a slit, boring into Logan as if she were trying to climb out of her body and into his. Which Logan couldn’t blame her for. She couldn’t have been real thrilled with her current condition.

  “I stay there a few weeks and paint. Then I come back here. Wise Sister and her husband Pierre have lived here for years. I met Pierre when I first came into the area, and Pierre acted as my guide. He told me he lived in a spectacular place. We came up here, where he’d lived with Wise Sister for years. I asked if they’d stay on, work for me, help me find my way in these mountains.”

  Logan glanced at Wise Sister, who caught the look and shooed his hands away from Sally’s ankle, then nodded encouragement for him to keep talking. Holding the limb motionless seemed to be helping because a bit of color returned to Sally’s cheeks.

  “For three years I’ve been coming back here.” Logan went back to holding Sally’s hand. “Pierre and Wise Sister built my cabin for me, with huge windows to let in the light and the view. And as I got to know them, Pierre the rover, Wise Sister the homemaker, I came to love it here. I hope to come back every summer for the rest of my life. Or at least until I’ve painted it all. Which should take the rest of my life, so that’s the same thing.”

  Sally caught hold of his hand so tightly Logan wondered if he’d be able to paint when this was done. He found he didn’t really care enough to let go.

  “I’ve had the notion that maybe this is where God had the Garden of Eden.”

  A soft sniff of humorous disdain sounded from Sally, and she wrinkled her nose and spoke through gritted teeth. “Too hard of a land for the Garden of Eden.”

  If she could laugh at him, it was a good sign she was listening … and maybe not hurting so badly.

  “It is that. True enough. And it sounds to me like the Garden of Eden was an easy life. But the beauty makes up for it. It’s staggering. The sun rises from the east in a splash of glory. It’s often blazing red in the west at night. There are majestic elk, powerful buffalo, towering lodgepole pines, and soaring eagles. God has created many beautiful things, including—” Logan checked himself before he mentioned Sally. She was so lovely. “Surely God never has created anything more beautiful.”

  Wise Sister worked quickly, gently binding Sally’s leg.

  Sally swallowed convulsively but never once cried out. Logan was impressed beyond words.

  When the leg was tightly bound, Wise Sister brushed Sally’s hair back from her face. “Ribs next.”

  Sally gulped audibly.

  “You.” Wise Sister looked at him and he straightened, ready to do whatever would help most. “Go.” Wise Sister jerked her hand toward the door.

  “But I—”

  A threatening grunt erupted from his housekeeper’s throat. “Woman. Only women.”

  Logan knew wrapping ribs was the usual treatment. And that no doubt needed doing without the nightgown in the way. He wanted to stay and help. But as usual Wise Sister was terrifying, also undoubtedly right. He left, but he didn’t like it.

  He paced, went into his cabin, twiddled his thumbs, and went half mad with worry and impatience before he remembered he knew how to draw. “I can sketch her face.” He slapped his shirt pocket. No pencil. He’d lost it when he’d dropped his sketchbook. He was always scrupulously careful with his equipment because of the work it took to haul it in here. But a woman had been plunging past him after all.

  It didn’t matter, he had another pencil. Rushing to the trunk he hauled in here every year, he threw open the lid. “Got to get her face down on paper.” It burned in him. To think he’d forgotten.

  He pulled out a fresh sketchbook. “Can I do it? Can I capture her beauty and courage?” He only knew he’d never be satisfied until he’d given it every ounce of his talent and effort.

  Each spring, he also brought canvas and as many pots of oil paint as he could carry. Then he steeped himself in this magnificent place and immersed himself in art all summer.

  The winter began threatening in September. Leaving would have torn Logan’s heart out except it was about the same time he ran out of canvas and oil paint and sketchbooks. So, he hauled it all home, sold what he could bear to part with, and spent the winter in his parents’ house in New York City painting, using his sketches and memory to supply the colors.

  He took his first stroke of pencil on paper and felt all his nervous tension melt away as it always did when he let himself get lost in his art.

  What would his family think of Sally’s portrait? His doctor father and four doctor brothers loved him and admired his work, all while telling him good-naturedly that he was out of his mind to spend his life drawing pictures.

  They’d calmed their teasing some since he’d started making a solid income with his painting, squeaked his way into a few museums, and appeared in the pages of Harper’s Weekly. They were almost used to his scenery. But they’d never seen a drawing of a woman he’d done. Even the one portrait he’d done of Wise Sister he’d left behind for her.

  Sally’s face appeared on the paper as if it flowed out of his fingertips. He didn’t hesitate for a second. The ability to draw and paint was something he’d been born with, and even he didn’t understand it. But with or without understanding, he was completely confident when he was creating.

  He filled the first sheet with a profile, another one of her sleeping, another one of her in his arms. As he drew that, it struck Logan that he’d never attempted to draw a picture of himself before. He just let the image come, but wondered if that was what he really looked like. Could a person have an honest image of himself?

  Next he caught her terror during the fall and lived that horrifying second again, when she’d caught on that branch and their eyes had met and he’d reached out but not far enough. The picture was awful. Drawing her fear was like living it through her. It was an honest picture, but painful to see and too personal. Logan tucked it into his trunk, not eager to see it again.

  He drew her from the back, with that rifle in place. He drew her in chaps and wrote the words “Buckskin Angel” across the top. Then he thought of that tiny ribbon and used his imagination to put her in a dress.

  Wise Sister pushed the door open, looked around the cabin, and made an unbelievably rude noise. “Done. Go.”

  She waved a shooing hand at him, then hustled to his fireplace and began building a fire. Only then did Logan realize night had fallen. A lantern was lit. He supposed he’d done that at some point.

  Shaking his head, he made a pile of his drawings, amazed at the number he’d done, and put them off to the side. He saw the fire catch, then Wise Sister—as she always did—stopped to stare at Logan’s favorite painting—Blazing Land.

  He’d done it the first thing when he’d come back this spring, of the view outside his window. A brutally beautiful sunrise, the snowcapped peaks in the background and churning water in the foreground. This was a picture of the spectacular place he’d chosen to build his cabin, at the most glorious moment he’d ever seen.

  The color of the sun that morning had turned everything outside his window into dancing fire. Logan hadn’t done a bit of sketching. He’d just stretched his canvas and started painting. He hadn’t been able to confine Blazing Land to a smaller canvas.

  It was a foolish picture, Logan knew. First of all, huge. What had possessed him to use so much of his precious canvas on one painting? And the style, not his usual.

  He’d had it churning to try his hand at a new style they were calling Impressionism. He’d studied it during the winter, and that perfect sunrise had demanded to be done
in that style. He wanted the strong, undiluted colors. He wanted to paint in the outdoors and try to capture a moment and a feeling and a flash of sunlight, rather than go out to sketch and come back inside to create.

  He’d done lots of sketching outdoors in his earlier years, especially tramping around Yellowstone. Who could stay inside in this stunning wilderness? But now he was doing the actual painting outside. He loved the slash of the paint knife and the thick colors until the painting was almost three dimensional. But such a huge picture … it reached the ceiling of his cabin, and the walls were eight feet high.

  But he hadn’t worked outside with Blazing Land. If he’d painted it outside, he couldn’t have gotten it in the door to his cabin. Now he couldn’t get it out. If he did get it out, he couldn’t pack it on horseback to the nearest town. If he could figure a way to pack it to town, it wouldn’t fit on the train.

  If he somehow found a train car that could handle it, he couldn’t find a home or museum anywhere that could get it inside its door.

  Add to that, the Impressionist style was still controversial and often rejected by museums outright. No museum would want it.

  It had been pure indulgence. A foolish picture indeed. And yet he couldn’t stop himself from doing it just the way he had.

  Logan seriously suspected that Wise Sister thought he was an idiot. But as Wise Sister studied that painting, the feeling bloomed like the most glorious flower that she understood, at least a little, that art could have value.

  Her scowling, taciturn expression softened, and Logan knew that, as much as Wise Sister scolded, she approved of him in a way that defied her own common sense. He was surprised to realize it meant more to him than the highest compliments of the art critics back in New York.

  He smiled as he hurried out to visit his Buckskin Angel.

  Seven

  Sally hurt like she’d been thrown off the back of a bucking bronco, then stomped on by a longhorn bull, then chawed on by a lobo wolf.

  Worse yet, God, have mercy, she was feeling a lot better.

  It had been a pack of wolves chawing while Wise Sister had splinted her leg and wrapped her ribs. Besides the breaks and bruises, she’d taken several blows to the noggin, and her vision was blurred. She’d sworn Wise Sister was three people at one time. But maybe that’s just because the quiet old woman hurt her as bad as three people. Three people with wolf teeth.

  She’d finally—almost fully—remembered what had happened, and her heart was hurting as bad as her body. Mrs. McGarritt—dead. The sight of Paula McGarritt, lying dead, on her back on that trail—Sally’d had one brief heartbeat to see her and the sight haunted her now every time she closed her eyes.

  Colonel and Mrs. McGarritt had been close family friends. They were honorary grandparents to Beth and Alex’s baby. The others riding with Sally were solid, knowing hands. Soldiers almost to a man. Tough, competent, trail savvy, and they’d been mowed down by yellow-bellied cowards.

  Sally had done her best to put a bullet or two into them. The others with her had done their share, but Sally had heard the wrong guns still firing as she fell. The dry-gulchers had won. Sally had to figure everyone with her was dead. The members of her company would’ve come if they were alive.

  As vague memories returned, she knew there’d been no sounds from above, except what she knew were bodies being thrown off the trail. From the bones she’d seen, Sally knew for a fact those coyotes had done this before. They were making a living at it.

  But they’d made a mistake this time. The colonel was an important man with important friends. He came from a well-respected family that owned a big chunk of land in New Mexico. The colonel wasn’t going to be shot to doll rags, tossed over a cliff, and forgotten. Folks would come hunting and they’d stay on the hunt until they had answers.

  Someone would come for her, too. Sally had sent that letter on to Luther and Buff, who were to meet her train and guide her out to Mandy’s. She’d be discovered missing within days.

  Luther was smarter in the woods than Pa, even Ma. Maybe not Beth, but no one was better than Beth. Luther would be back-trailing her as soon as she didn’t make the place where this shortcut crossed the trail to Mandy’s.

  If the man—Logan—who’d found her hadn’t hauled her a day’s ride away from that hill, Luther might be there to find her already. But Wise Sister was certain Sally had needed doctoring, so it was as well Logan had done what he’d done.

  Didn’t matter nohow. Luther’d still come, just take him longer. Luther and Buff could read sign like the written word. They’d come and find her, and she’d be on her way to Mandy’s.

  Urgency pressed on Sally when she thought of Mandy with a baby on the way. The last letter they’d gotten from her was as polite and perky as all Mandy’s letters, but Sally had heard a thread of desperate loneliness in Mandy. Ma and Pa must have, too, because they agreed to let Sally come north and stay.

  Suddenly Sally wanted to see her pa so bad it was the worst pain of all. She’d tried so hard all her life to be special to him. And she knew he loved her dearly, especially if she rode at his side and worked the ranch hard. Why had she ever left home? To her horror, she burst into tears.

  The door swung open and her rescuer walked in. He saw her tears, and Sally waited for him to run.

  Fine with her. She couldn’t seem to stop crying and she didn’t need to shame herself in front of a strange man.

  “Sally.” He said her name like a prayer and closed the door—with him on the inside. He hadn’t run? What kind of strange behavior was that for a man?

  Instead, he hurried to her side, just like she wasn’t bawling like a motherless calf. Pulling up a chair with a scratching noise that made her head ache, he sat beside her and lifted her hand with such gentleness she only cried harder.

  She swiped at the tears streaming down her face with her free hand but decided it would hurt too badly to pull free of his grasp. Besides, it felt nice.

  “What can I do to help you?” Logan leaned close and whispered. “I’m sorry I left. Wise Sister threw me out. I wanted to stay and help but”—he smiled sheepishly—“I’m kind of afraid of her.”

  A ripple of laughter broke through Sally’s shameful tears. “Nothin’ you can do. I reckon I’m just beat up is all.”

  “Beat up.” Logan produced a snow white handkerchief and handed it to her. “Broken leg, knocked cold, fell off a cliff, shot. Yeah, I think beat up about covers it.”

  “I’m seeing two of you.” She mopped at her eyes but kept a hold on his hand. It made the world spin just a little less.

  “A concussion.”

  “What?”

  “Doctor talk.” Logan smiled.

  Sally felt an ache in her chest that wasn’t the same as her battered ribs at all. Still, what else could it be? His eyes, a warm brown that matched his unruly hair, seemed so full of sympathy Sally clutched his hand even tighter.

  “My father’s a doctor.” Logan rubbed his thumb over her palm, like a caress, and it distracted her from her tears. “It’s what they call a hard whack on the head that knocks you unconscious and makes you see double.”

  “Or triple.”

  “Ouch.” Logan winced. “It’ll clear up in a day or so.”

  “My sister’s a doctor, too.”

  “Really?” Logan sat up straight, eyes wide with surprise. “A woman doctor? I’ve heard of a few of those, but not many.”

  “Well, to hear Beth tell it, they weren’t real nice about it. But she managed to find a doctor who’d let her study with him. And now, in Mosqueros—in Texas where I’m from—we only have her and her husband to do all the doctorin’, so folks let her help them—some—as long as Alex is there, too. Makes her cranky, but she puts up with it.”

  “It made me cranky when my father tried to force me to be a doctor.”

  “Instead you live in the middle of nowhere on a mountaintop?” Sally narrowed her eyes as she tried to remember and that made her headache worse. “We did ride
to a mountaintop, didn’t we?”

  “Well, I suppose, though there are higher mountains around it, so maybe not the very top.” There was a look in his eyes that drew her—warmth, depth, kindness. He was different than any man she’d ever met.

  “No one for you to doctor around here.”

  “Except for the occasional woman who falls out of the heavens.” Sally was surprised she had the strength to make even that weak joke.

  He flashed a smile full of even white teeth, a generous and easy smile that made her want to see it again. She tried to think of something else funny to say, but that also made her headache worse. In honesty, breathing made her headache worse.

  “First time I’ve ever wished I’d paid closer attention when Father was trying to wring a little help out of me.” His nice smile faded, replaced with regret. “I know I hurt you bringing you up here, but we couldn’t go up the way you came down. Those men, whoever shot you, were still up there, or they could have been. I felt like you had to have care. Wise Sister knows everything.”

  “Everything?” It made Sally think of her ma, and she almost started crying again.

  “Well, maybe not everything.” Logan studied her and his thumb rubbed her palm again as if he could see her struggle. “So far she hasn’t taken up painting and bested me there.” Logan looked at a woven mat hanging on the wall. “Although she made that, and to me that makes her an artist, even though it doesn’t require paint.”

  Sally hadn’t paid much attention to her surroundings, but she’d noticed this mat of knots and dyed string, beads and bits of feather and fur. As she studied the wall, she saw more. She saw carved leather and a soft, beaded dress that made her heart ache a little. There was a painting, too. And Logan had said Wise Sister didn’t paint. That must mean that he did it. And thinking about a man paying attention to the beauty of a woven mat made her headache much worse. And had he said Wise Sister hadn’t bested him at painting?

  “But she’s better at everything else.” Logan diverted her with his story and his strong, callused hand. “As soon as you’re healed, I’ll take you back to town.” Logan frowned. “The trail isn’t safe, though, I guess. Judging from the other bodies we found.” Logan looked warily at her. “Do you remember that?”