“Much hunting for you, Sally girl.” Wise Sister didn’t come inside. She headed for a stump near the house, stained rust brown from blood. With little noticeable exertion, she heaved the haunch onto the stump with a dull thud.
Sally didn’t bother asking why Wise Sister thought they searched for her. She trusted Wise Sister’s instincts. “Tell me about the men.” She followed Wise Sister the few feet to her butchering block.
“I saw no one.” Wise Sister produced a knife from a sheath on her waist.
Sally heard movement behind her and knew Logan had left his precious painting to listen to the talk. She did her best not to sniff at him—the pig who had kissed her and made her feel things then so politely told her he couldn’t do her the enormous favor of keeping her as his queen in a fool’s kingdom.
“Tell me.” Sally watched Wise Sister sharpen her knife with a little round stone that lay beside the stump.
With the scratch of metal on rock, Wise Sister spoke. “One group searches widely, the other wisely. The first, coyotes; the second, wolves.” Wise Sister looked up with a smile as sharp as her knife. “I left sign for the wolves.”
Sally smiled back.
“What’s this talk of coyotes and wolves?” Logan asked, coming up beside her. Too close.
She was tempted to jam her elbow into his stomach. “Luther’s close. Wise Sister left a trail for him to follow. It’ll lead him here.”
“Not a trail.” Wise Sister shook her head firmly. “I feared the coyotes would find it. Even coyotes know the woods. But I let them know you lived. To keep searching. That we know they’re hunting. Your wolves left markers, good, not easy to find. They weren’t for me. So they must believe others come.”
Nodding, Sally said, “Maybe. The people with me, the colonel and his wife, were important folks. Someone will come hunting. Luther is leaving a trail for those folks to follow.” The smile was impossible to contain. Luther was close. She knew it. She fought off a horrifying urge to start leaking salt water. “How long until they’re here?”
“Sally, Wise Sister said she didn’t leave a trail.” He patted her on the arm in sympathy.
The obvious had once again made its way out of Logan’s mouth. Luther was going to find the man very annoying.
“Soon.” Wise Sister ignored Logan. “They’ll find their way.”
“And the coyotes?” Sally knew Luther might be pressed to get here before the men who were searching for her.
Wise Sister frowned and told the straight, uncomfortable truth. She tapped her chest with her knife. “I was careful with the sign I left, but coyotes are wily. They may come, too. Even first.”
A little shiver of fear ran up Sally’s spine. “We’ll need a lookout, day and night.”
“I’ve hunted coyotes before.” Wise Sister turned to her task and began skinning dinner.
“So have I,” Sally said with grim determination. “I’ve got my Winchester.”
“We can’t shoot any coyotes or wolves this close to the cabin.” Logan gave a firm nod of his head.
Sally pulled her own knife with relish. She raised it just enough to get his attention. Then, after his eyes had widened with alarm, she hobbled over to help Wise Sister.
“Maybe I’ll thank that little cowpoke before I shoot him.” Fergus stretched his legs out by their fire, enjoying the night and the campfire and the stars overhead.
“Don’t know where he got to, but sure enough he hasn’t gotten away.” Tulsa poured a cup of coal black brew into his tin cup.
Fergus loved the wild land. Having someone to hunt up here was a pure pleasure. “We’ll keep our eyes open and prowl around. Maybe I oughta build a cabin up here. Government threw me out of Yellowstone. Maybe they’ll keep their paws offa me up here.” The scalding coffee burned Fergus’s tongue, but nothing could lessen his pleasure. A stick broke in the fire and sparks shot skyward, scenting the air with wood smoke. “I reckon I’ve been living in the high-up country for forty years now, Tulsa. Reckon I’ll die here, rich on stupid travelers and fat elk. It’s a good life.”
Mountains loomed above them, the white caps dazzling in the summer sun. Quaking aspen shivered and twirled their leaves between the lodgepole pine and heavy underbrush. A man could get mighty lost up in this land. But time to time, Fergus had needed to get lost. So he’d come here, knowing well how to live until it was safe to get himself found.
“I ever tell you I had another brother, Tulsa?” Fergus was in a mood to spin a yarn, and thinking of these rough mountains made him think of Curly, and that led to wandering inside his head until he came to his boyhood.
“Cain’t say you have. I’ve got me a coupl’a sisters and a little brother myself. No idea if they’re alive or dead. You know where your brother is?”
“Nope. Haven’t seen my baby brother in the whole forty years I been up here. He was a lot younger.” Fergus’s memories soured as he thought of the drunken old man who’d married his ma the year before he and Curly had left. He’d had a heavy hand with Fergus’s ma and wasn’t against turning his fists on her boys. Fergus remembered well the day he’d finally gotten old enough and mean enough to make the old man back down.
“The man, Reynold was his name.” Fergus shook his head. “He was kin to my real pa. He had the same white stripe in his hair that Curly and I have. Called it the family mark. Different last name though. He tended a saloon and helped himself to the whiskey. Moved around a lot because he’d get fired.” Fergus had put himself between the old brute and Curly all the time and taken what beatings he could to protect his little brother. He’d done his best with his ma, too.
“Came a day when Reynold couldn’t push me around anymore. He was giving my ma a thrashing and I stepped in, got in a lucky hit that put my ever-loving daddy onto his knees and ended up stomping the old man into the ground.”
“Did your ma finally feel safe from him? Did you throw him out?” Tulsa leaned forward and lazily refilled his cup.
“Nope, I got thrown out instead.”
Tulsa froze with his coffee half poured, and the flowing liquid overflowed the cup, streaming onto Tulsa’s leg. With a shout of pain, he dropped the pot and cup and jumped up to swat at his leg. The pot landed bottom side down. The coffee was spared, so Fergus made no mind of Tulsa’s dancing.
Finally the man settled down and looked at Fergus. “Your ma tossed you out?” A cynical frown curved Tulsa’s lips down.
Fergus knew Tulsa had a real good idea of how it’d been for Fergus and Curly. Fergus wondered what had happened to the baby Ma had just borne when Fergus had lit out. He’d always felt bad leaving the little one to his scared ma and brutal pa.
“Yep, Ma gave Curly’n’ me the egg money and told us Reynold would kill us if we were there when he woke up.”
“Why didn’t she go with you?”
“Scared he’d catch us, maybe.” Fergus caught at the streak of white on his temple. “Ma used to talk about my real pa some. She said there was family, and if we could find them they’d take us in. Said there was family pride in sticking up for each other. Don’t see how that’s true. If my pa and Reynold were kin, then it seems like not beating on your children would be part of sticking with your family.”
Shrugging, Fergus added, “Ma made my pa’s family sound like good folks. Couldn’t tell it by Reynold, though. I use his name as an alias. I like the idea of being an outlaw with that man’s name. Hope I leave some dirt on it.”
Tulsa grunted and reached for the coffeepot.
“So Reynolds wasn’t interested in whether we lived or died. Ma liked a man around and had her some trouble finding one. Ma wasn’t a woman to be any better’n she oughta be, so decent men weren’t interested.”
“My ma neither.” Tulsa poured more coffee and settled in again, ignoring the splash of wet on his thigh.
“I was sixteen. Curly was twelve but getting tall, and he could do the work of a man. We took out. I managed to steal a couple of horses and we rode west. We foun
d a wagon train and signed on to work for a coupl’a families. Ended up in Denver and then headed into the mountains with an old trapper. Trapped when the trapping was good, stole a payroll and a horse when times were lean. When I found Yellowstone and saw all the people coming in, not wise in the ways of these mountains, I knew it was my own private gold mine.”
That’s when he and Curly had teamed up with Tulsa, younger than Fergus by a dozen years or so. Letting Tulsa join up with him and Curly was like having a little brother. Fergus ran his hand into his gray hair with the white stripe. The years were gone. His life more over than not. He sighed and wondered again about that baby.
“Always hoped that brute, Reynold, was nicer to his own child than he was to Curly and me. I’ve had an urge to go back, see if the baby needed saving. But it’s a long way and that baby is a grown man now, and it’s too late to change a thing.” For all the sinning Fergus had done in his life, that was the sin that gnawed at his guts. Picturing that baby growing up with those heavy fists flailing at him. He’d protected Curly, but he’d left that baby behind to the wolves.
Fergus’s yarn was spun and he felt the worse for having talked about it, so he turned his attention to what was in front of them. “I want that cowpoke dead. This is a good life. The livin’ is easy. I don’t want trouble on my back trail whether I stay here or go.” And that long ago memory of his ma telling him the family stuck together, a family Fergus had never known, helped make him hungry for revenge against that cowpoke that had escaped while Curly had died.
Tulsa nodded and pulled his gun to check that it was fully loaded. “A good life for sure. We gotta make sure that cowpoke and whoever is takin’ care of him are dead.”
Fergus’s family stuck together. Or so he’d been told. So he’d stick with hunting the cowpoke for Curly’s sake, and he’d stick with silencing a witness for his own.
When this was over, he’d still rule over this land—his own personal gold mine.
And that cowpoke would be dead.
Fourteen
Sally’s alive.” Luther straightened from the little pile of stones weighing down the leather. The leather had the McClellen ranch brand marked clear, newly cut. The stack of stones had obviously been deliberately left as a marker. “This is off her boot.”
He looked up in time to catch a blurry wash over Buff’s eyes, almost as if the man was ready to cry. Luther would have made fun of the old coot if he could speak past the lump in his throat. “This is Shoshone sign.” Luther looked into an impassable pile of rocks at the base of a mountain. “Sally, or whoever left this, must know there are bad men searching for her because there’s no effort to point us toward a trail.”
“So where is she?” Buff asked.
Luther studied Clay McClellen’s brand on a piece of leather. Only Sally would have known someone would come looking and understand what that meant. “Shoshone markings.” Luther pointed to a few other cuts in the leather. “Makes sense that if someone carried her off, it’d be an Indian, a Shoshone. Them and the Nez Perće are almost the only ones left hereabouts.”
“I heard they’d driven the tribes off Yellowstone. They might’ve come up here.” Buff stared at the mountains around them. “I did a fair sight of trapping in Yellowstone in the early days, before we was saddle partners, Luth. Figures there might be some native folks in these hills.”
“The rain wiped out the trail the same day we found it. But that first day we saw that someone rode away carryin’ a load. Maybe Sally riding double with someone.” Luther thought of the men they now followed and itched to face them. Two against two, even odds. He’d have done it, but he wasn’t interested in arresting them and hauling them to jail a hundred miles away. And he didn’t see any point in a shootout that would risk their lives and not bring them one step closer to Sally. So instead they’d dogged the other men. Luther hoped he’d find a sign of Sally first. And, if he didn’t, Luther and Buff would be on hand to protect her.
“The marker was set up by a solid wall of rock with nothing to give us a direction. But it was left by a knowin’ hand. Someone afraid the outlaws would see it first. So there’s no clue to what direction to ride. We’ll have us a time tracking our girl down. But maybe whoever was helping her will come again.”
“And in the meantime, we’ll hunt.” Buff reached out and took the bit of leather from Luther’s hand and stared at it a long time.
“See anything there that’ll give us a direction to hunt?”
“Wise Sister.” Buff closed his fist on the leather.
“What?”
Buff shook his head.
Waiting a minute, Luther decided his friend had no more to say. No surprise there. “Let’s see if we can pick up a trail from whoever left it there.” Luther looked at the wall of rock looming over that marker. “Could they be up in the highlands?”
“Don’t see how.” Buff’s hand clutched at that leather as if he had to hold on to save his life. “There’s no way up. Anyway, you’d be an idiot to climb up onto the top of a mountain.”
“What kind of idiot builds his house at the top of a mountain?” Mandy was purely perturbed, and considering her earlier decision to stop restraining herself and let Sidney handle the real her as best he could, she would have asked her husband that to his face if she didn’t have two sleeping babies on the ground beside her while she sighted her gun on a mule deer.
It was a long shot, but Mandy had to take it. This was the spot her girls had chosen to nap and she couldn’t leave them to slip closer. And their cabin was right on the tree line. The new house would be well above it. So her idiot husband had chosen her hunting grounds for her. She couldn’t quite bring herself to be grateful for his love of that mountaintop mansion.
The shot was five hundred yards. Worst part was she’d wake the babies up when she took the shot. No, worst part was she was doing her best to hide behind some rocks waiting for some game to wander close. Normally, she’d have stretched out on her stomach and gotten comfortable while she waited. She knew how to be patient when she stalked game. But these days, her round stomach was in the way.
The wee one inside of her gave her a kick and she smiled, looking forward to meeting the little tyke. A boy, she thought, just because it was time. Her ma was living proof that a woman could have long strings of one then the other, so she didn’t put too much stock in any notion of it being time.
The deer moved a bit closer as it grazed. Then it lifted its head, maybe catching a scent of her, but she was downwind, though the wind up this high sometimes swirled around, defying a true direction. More likely there was something else in the woods bothering it. Even a bird taking flight or a raccoon too close at hand would startle a deer. Whatever the reason, the timid critter wasn’t going to get any closer.
Mandy drew in a long, slow breath and steadied the gun on her shoulder, feeling her nerves cool. Her vision sharpened, her hands steadied, her blood chilled. Her finger tightened on the trigger. She released the breath halfway, then held it and took the shot.
Catherine and Angela jumped and woke up squalling.
The deer slumped to the ground.
She now had supper. And two crying babies.
With a sigh, she calmed her daughters, hung her rifle in place across her back, and then rigged Catherine on top of the rifle. She took Angela’s hand and walked to the horse, tied back a ways.
Tom Linscott.
She caught herself thinking about him every time she got near a horse.
As she led the horse to the deer, she reminded herself that it was not Tom she thought of. She did her best not to think about him. It was that sturdy little foal and his massive, handsome stallion.
Tom?
No, nothing about him was proper to think about.
As she hung the deer and bled and gutted it, then slung it over the horse’s shoulders, Mandy had plenty of time to wonder how Belle Tanner had fared with the foal she’d gotten out of Tom’s stallion. But that wasn’t thinking about Tom.
She slung the deer over the horse’s shoulders. Next she settled Angela on the saddle, swung up behind the cantle with Catherine on her back, and made her way home. She wondered how Belle’s mare had handled the long walk home over the rugged trail to the Harden ranch. Had Tom gone to visit the little foal? Had he approved of the care Mandy had taken of it that winter? It was the foal’s health that was her real focus.
That had nothing to do with Tom.
Mandy prepared a huge stew that would feed even all of Sidney’s workmen for a couple of days. And imagined the powerful muscles and sleek beauty of that magnificent stallion Tom had ridden.
But she didn’t really wonder about Tom. Nothing there to wonder about.
With Catherine strapped on her back and Angela clinging to her skirts, Mandy finished preparing supper. When her stew was thick with venison and her garden vegetables, she set it to simmering, and the warm, savory smell of meat and onions began to fill the cabin. Then she went back to work finishing the deer.
It did cross her mind to try and figure when Tom would come. Would it be before or after the baby was delivered—a time fast approaching. Wondering about company wasn’t the same as wondering about a man.
Returning to the butcher block outside, she lifted her razor-sharp cleaver just as Cooter, the younger of Sidney’s bodyguards, came walking alone down the slope from the mansion site.
A chill ran up Mandy’s spine. She took one quick glance then paid rapt attention to the work in front of her. Mandy had felt Cord Cooter’s eyes on her many times. But both guards stayed close to Sidney. That was their job. So what was Cooter doing down here when Sidney might need his body guarded up by the big house?
Cooter was about Mandy’s age, dark hair with a strange streak of white at one temple. He had reddish skin and lips that were too full. His eyes were a cold blue and they didn’t miss much. The man had never spoken to her. He’d never come close to touching her. He’d never done a thing that could give Mandy an excuse to ask Sidney to fire him. But Mandy trusted her instincts, and she didn’t like this man. He showed what kind of snake he was without saying a word.
Sophie's Daughters Trilogy Page 45