“What we need to do is lock you up in your room until you get this blame-fool notion out of your head.” John waved his arms in a wild gesture that was nothing like the slow-talking old-timer.
Sadie and Heath stood shoulder to shoulder and faced the two Boden brothers and a fuming John Hightree.
Heath liked teaming up with her.
“It sounds like Sadie’s going with or without your permission.” He didn’t know what was wrong with him, but he was having the time of his life. Maybe he missed his bossy big brothers more than he realized.
Cole accused Justin of handling Sadie all wrong. Justin turned and called Cole a namby-pamby city boy. John started hollering at them both to take their sister in hand.
Sadie spoke to Heath quietly, under the noise. “You’ve climbed around inside a cave?”
“Yep, I spent a powerful lot of hours underground.”
Sadie’s eyes widened. “Hours? How big is this cave?”
He’d have answered. He enjoyed that beautiful, dangerous cavern on Kincaid land and would have enjoyed describing it to her.
“I’m going to set your bedroll on fire after you fall asleep on it. That’ll stop the nonsense about taking Sadie up that dangerous mesa.” John made it much harder to talk and that was a shame, because Heath was enjoying his private little visit with her. He leaned in a bit closer.
“I’ll tell you all about it while we’re climbing.”
“When do we go? Tomorrow morning, bright and early?”
Heath said, “I won’t have the supplies I need by tomorrow, but I’m hoping I can find a way up that doesn’t require climbing tools. I’d like to head out before sunrise. If I go in the full dark, we can just walk right up to the mesa.”
“And that’s final,” Cole said, breaking into their conversation. Heath wondered what exactly was final, but he figured he could guess well enough.
“I want each of you to give me your word you won’t talk about this.” Heath gave each of them a hard look. “It’s strictly a secret between the five of us in this room.”
“Are you giving us orders now, Kincaid?” Justin growled.
“Sure, now that I don’t work for you anymore, why not? Don’t reckon you’ll take orders worth a hoot, but I can still give ’em.”
“Then you’re hired. And I’m sending you to the line shack on the far side of Mount Kebbel until spring.”
“No, you’re not. I’m fired and I like it.” It was surprising how much he enjoyed defying the Boden brothers and their foreman. In fact, it hit him hard that he wasn’t cut out for taking orders. He’d never liked it with his big brothers but figured that was personal.
He was just now figuring out he liked to be in charge. That was the root cause of his leaving the Kincaid spread. No matter how hard he worked, he knew, as the little brother, he’d never really be his own boss. Except now that he knew it, maybe he could find a way to get along with them.
If the Bodens yelled at each other and him and Sadie much longer, he might get his whole life figured out.
“You’re staying out of shooting distance of that mesa, and I don’t think you should be outside until we get to the bottom of this.” Cole spoke as if it were a law enacted by the Congress of the United States.
Sadie gasped until it was almost an inverted scream. “I’m going.”
Cole added, “It’s time you calmed down and saw some sense.”
“You can’t stop me.”
“I sure as certain can.” Justin glowered at her. “You’ll do as you’re told and stay to the house like a decent, obedient woman had oughta and that’s final.”
9
Sadie had the door open and was outside the second Heath tapped in the hour before dawn.
They’d had to delay the climb several times, but finally today they were going.
He nodded and adjusted the heavy pack on his back. Then, as he touched one finger to his lips, they turned and strode out of the ranch yard.
It had taken longer than she’d hoped to hear from Ma, until at last she sent a telegram saying Pa was being treated by Dr. Radcliffe. He’d been with the doctor for two weeks. They hadn’t amputated the leg, though it might still end up that way. Still, the doctor was confident that whatever else happened, Pa would live.
Sadie was glad for the delay because a letter arrived before they left and it was encouraging. Her worry for Pa had been a difficult and constant presence. Now, with Ma’s letter, Sadie started to feel like her head was clearing enough to go pay attention to climbing the mesa.
She’d left both her brothers behind, who were wide awake, sitting in the dark, and seething. She ordered them to be completely silent and not light the lantern. Heath wanted nothing to give their departure away.
Cole and Justin had hated that. It was close to the best day of her life.
“Are we—?”
“Shh.” Heath cut her off and whispered, “Sound carries in the night.”
Which she knew good and well. Slightly embarrassed to be admonished, she walked quickly and quietly toward the mesa. They’d never see a thing short of a blazing fire at this time of night. No sunlight to glint off anything, and because dawn was approaching, the moon had set and the stars, though vivid, provided little light.
Finally they reached the mesa. Heath patted the solid rock as if he were greeting a good horse. He started on the south side and headed along the east, the side visible from the ranch.
“I want to be done with this side before the sun comes up, but in the dark I can’t see footprints or a trail of any kind. But I should be able to feel my way up Skull Mesa if I find a climbing spot better than the one Justin told me about.”
Matching his whisper, she asked, “Didn’t you just tell me we had to be quiet?”
“Now we can whisper a bit. The rock will swallow up the sound.” Then he said no more as he ran his hands along the rock wall.
Sadie had no idea what he was up to. Well, of course she knew. He was looking for a way to climb. But since there wasn’t one, she saw no way to help him. The dawn was pushing back the dark. Black turned to gray. The swaying winter grass surrounding them, stretching back to the ranch house and for miles in every direction, started to take shape. They’d gone a bit more than halfway around just as the sun rose, so they were now on the west side, farthest from the ranch house, cast in deep shadows. It was a long, slow process because the sides of the mesa were folded in a way that made Sadie think of the heavy drapes hanging in her pa’s office. Sometimes the folds in the solid rock were deep enough they stepped into the rock completely. But for all the unevenness, it was a mighty smooth mesa if a person wanted to climb it.
Heath worked quietly, touching as though, even with the breaking dawn, he didn’t trust his own eyes, as if searching for something that he’d only know by feel. He stopped just before he got far enough around to step into the light.
He glanced at her, a furrow of worry creasing his brow. “This is the spot Justin said he’d gotten the highest on.”
“I always climbed right here, too.”
Heath turned back to the rock, then whipped his head around. “You’ve climbed out here?”
With an unrepentant grin, she replied, “More than either of my brothers. I used to tell Ma I was going for a walk and then come out here. I heard Justin and Cole talk with Pa about how high they’d gotten, and I never told them I’d climbed higher than anyone. I knew Pa would forbid it if he knew.”
“Well, aren’t you a little scamp, Sadie Boden.”
She gave her head a sassy nod. “And I’ve looked as close all the way around as you have. This is the best way, but I doubt you can make it.”
“Best maybe, but there ain’t nuthin’ easy about it. I’d hoped to find something better. There are a few more yards to explore if we go on around, but I don’t want us to be visible to the ranch yard. I reckon we might as well climb here. Justin said he’d sent the men to work in directions away from here. A few men have to stay at the ranch, th
ough, so we’re less likely to be spotted if we’re on the west side.”
His jaw clenched. “I haven’t found a single thing encouraging climbing, Sadie. Are you sure you want to come?” Then Heath’s eyes slid down her body, and his brows arched high. “Y-you’re not wearing a-a-anything.”
“Of course I am.” Sadie fought a smile.
“No, I didn’t . . . I mean, uh, you are wearing something, of course you’re wearing something. It’s just your . . . your skirt is missing. That is, you don’t have a dress on.” He jerked his eyes back up to meet hers, cleared his throat. “You do have pants, uh, trousers . . .” He had a faint flush on his cheeks.
She’d managed to embarrass him half to death.
Good.
Heath stared her in the eye so rigidly she could tell it was taking every ounce of his self-control not to look lower.
With a smile, she said, “Ma and Pa both agree I can leave off the skirts when I’m out of town. It’s dangerous and foolish to ride in a skirt, especially if I’m working cattle. I suspect that goes double for climbing a mountain. That’s different from a sedate ride into church on Sunday morning. Or taking the wagon to town for supplies. I’ve always worn britches when I was working outside, then I put my dresses back on inside.”
Heath seemed to physically rip his eyes away from her. He faced the sheer rock wall. Looking away from her. Determinedly. “It’s good sense to not climb this mountain in a skirt. Mighty smart of you, Sadie.”
She was tempted to do something like scream just to see how high a man this tense could jump. Maybe they’d get to the top without any climbing at all.
Of course she was supposed to keep quiet.
Still facing away, Heath swung his haversack around and dropped it by his feet. “Justin told me how high he got starting from this spot. I plan to use the chisel when the handholds quit, hoping I can carve places to grip all the way to the top. I ordered some spikes from the blacksmith; they’re like nails that weigh a pound apiece. The blacksmith’s not done with them, so I’m aiming to manage without them. If I can’t, we’ll have to try again another day.”
He crouched, flipped the pack open, and pulled out a hammer, then a chisel. He had rope around his neck and under one arm.
Sadie looked up and up and up. They were in shadow, yet the daylight was upon them. She knew what they were up against.
“You’re a madman. You can’t cling to the side of this mountain and chisel at the same time.”
Heath pulled the rope off his neck and tossed it on the ground, turned, and grinned at her. His blue eyes seemed to glow in the shadows, and having just called him mad, she thought she saw a flash in his eyes that was untamed, maybe slightly crazy. But no, Heath was a steady hand at all times. Justin had said so. It was the main reason her brothers had let her go off with Heath on this mission.
That and two weeks of relentless manipulation and nagging.
Cole had predicted they’d admit defeat and be home in time for breakfast. Justin thought they’d last until the noon meal. John had grumbled too much to make a guess.
Heath slid a rope around her waist, and she shivered—a warm kind of shiver—to have him so close.
“What on earth are you doing?”
“I’m going up first. You watch where I find handholds and footholds and climb after me. This rope is so if you fall, I can catch you.” He gave her another of those wild flashing smiles. “And if I fall, you can catch me.”
Sadie snorted to swallow the laugh. “Fine, let’s get going.”
She didn’t mention that she expected to be home for the midmorning coffee break. She’d asked Rosita to make gingerbread.
The sweet young mother looked near collapse.
Angelique knew how that felt.
Being near it herself.
For days she’d dozed, but never really slept. Who could sleep on this clattering, huffing beast? She was filthy, her clothes coated in grit. Her hands were smeared with soot, and she could only assume her face was too. She had shivered her way across the country with a threadbare coat and her single dress. She wore everything she owned on her back. Her only luggage was her weary old black reticule with her carefully hoarded bit of money.
Now she sat, feeling like a victim of some violent storm that would not end. Her eyes barely open, watching someone suffer similar torments, with the added burden of three children to tend.
The train whistle jerked her fully awake. Another town coming up. Finally. A chance to stretch her legs and eat something.
Brakes engaged and squealed. A little boy, twisting in his seat at that moment, pitched face-first toward the squared wooden edges of the train seats. Angelique, from two seats back, dove for the tyke.
The child shrieked. Angelique’s shoulder hit the filthy train floor and rammed into one of the metal legs of the bench seats. The boy landed in her outstretched hands. She wrapped her arms around him to cushion his head from the unforgiving wood and iron . . . and hit hers instead, so hard stars exploded behind her eyes.
The mother cried out and stood. The other children began sobbing.
Aching everywhere, Angelique ignored the pain and looked down at a little boy who couldn’t be more than four. He cringed and whimpered as if she were going to hurt him, as if he weren’t the one who’d come out on top in this dramatic little introduction.
The pint-sized pill probably blamed her for his hitting the floor. Masking her pain—which wasn’t too bad since it fit with her general misery—she stood, easing the child to his feet. The mother managed to take his hand and guided the boy to sit by her. With two more children in her arms, Angelique wasn’t sure how she did that.
“Thank you so much.” The woman’s eyes brimmed with tears, and Angelique seriously considered joining her in a good cry. “This wretched train. When will this ride end? Are you all right?”
It was touching that the woman, with all her cares, gave Angelique a thought. A true mother’s heart for everyone, it seemed.
Because she liked speaking to someone, rare in a train filled with men, Angelique sat down and faced the mother. Her children were wide awake now and fussing. The little boy crushed himself against his mama. A toddler girl wept and clung in her right arm and a fussing infant squirmed in her left.
Because Angelique had no hope the two older children would want a stranger near them, Angelique said, “Let me hold the baby. You look all in.”
Angelique gently took the tiny child and eased her onto her own shoulder without waiting for permission. “What’s your name? I’m Angelique.”
The mother tried to stop her from this brash kidnapping, but exhaustion slowed her down so much it was a feeble attempt, and Angelique gained possession of what looked like nearly a newborn.
“I won’t move out of your sight.” Angelique hadn’t been around children very much, being an only child herself, and her only schooling came from tutors. She’d hoped for babies when she married, but they’d never come. That was at least partly because Edward paid her very little marital attention.
She hadn’t been married long at all before she became grateful for any neglect he might show. He had other women to whom he openly paid improper attention, and Angelique wondered often why the vile man hadn’t married one of them.
“I’m Dora Webster.”
The infant snuggled against Angelique’s shoulder just as the door opened and the conductor came in and shouted, “Next stop, Bennett.”
The train whistle blew another deafening blast and set all the children off again. By the time they’d calmed—or as close as they were going to get to it—the conductor had passed into another car with his announcement.
Leaning forward, Angelique said, “I’m glad we’re to a town, Dora. It seems like forever since we’ve had a meal.” She thought of her remaining coins. Aunt Margaret had been generous to her so she was well funded, but she intended to give every penny she could hoard back to her aunt or donate it to the orphanage. She’d eat another sparse meal,
only she was famished past anything she’d been before, and she’d been hungry many times.
The child sitting beside the mother, the little boy, gave her a wide-eyed look. A moan escaped him, and his hands rested on his stomach as his head pressed into his mother’s side.
“We’ll just stay on the train,” Mrs. Webster said, her voice unsteady, her hands shaking. “I don’t want the children to get lost.”
Angelique peered out the window at the tiny approaching town, little more than a train station and a few scattered buildings beyond. Getting lost was hard to imagine. She looked back at Dora and noticed how thin she was, her wrists little more than skin over bone, her cheeks sunken. The wide-eyed boy’s look had been one of near desperation.
Or hunger.
Angelique had only joined these folks a day ago. She’d seen them climb down off another train and sit at the depot with her. She arrived there ahead and had already eaten, while the mother had come straight from the train to sit on a bench with her three children, then boarded when Angelique’s train pulled in.
They hadn’t gone into the diner at that station to eat. Now they weren’t going in again.
Angelique could think of only one reason for that. These folks had less than she did.
“For I was hungry and you gave me meat.”
The words whispered quietly in Angelique’s head as she cuddled the baby and wondered what to do.
“I was thirsty . . .”
“Where are you headed?”
“I was a stranger . . .”
“We are meeting my husband in California. He built a home for us near San Francisco, but I stayed behind until my baby was born.” A fond light shone in the mother’s eyes. “I miss him terribly.”
“I was sick . . .”
Dora looked down at the oldest boy. “We are looking forward to seeing Papa again, aren’t we, Son?”
“I was in prison . . .”
Angelique had to admit this train had a prison-like quality. She’d been sentenced for quite some time and would be released from custody when she reached Skull Gulch. Until then, there was no escape. She paused to be thankful no one was naked.
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