They gazed down at the pretty sight for a bit longer, yet Heath didn’t want to spend a long time on the mesa top. Justin and Cole would be champing at the bit to find out what was up here.
He trusted them to stay in place, but they’d be mighty grumpy.
Taking back a few bits of proof wasn’t a bad idea, so Heath picked up a mostly burned cigarette. A few of the hired men smoked them, but not everyone.
He lingered over a boot print. He was a good tracker, and he’d recognize this boot if he saw it again.
Someone came up here often. There was nothing to make him think anyone lived here or even spent the night. But someone came up here, and had many times. Someone who wanted to keep an eye on the comings and goings at the Boden ranch.
It was hard not to suspect that one of the cowpokes was involved. Heath wasn’t sure whoever watched from up here worked for the Bodens, but they had to be talking to one of the hands.
The attack on Chance had been too well-timed.
They set the ambush with the rockslide in place days ahead. They had to. It took time to arrange something like that. They had to be ready before they tore down that fence and herded the small group of cattle into that unwelcoming canyon.
Once the cattle went missing, Chance might’ve gone after them at any time. When he did mention his plans, someone got the word out. Two men were in place when Chance went in, and it was too farfetched to believe two men were ready to strike all day every day. There had to be someone giving them information.
“You really think one of the men who works for Pa betrayed him?” Sadie stood, watching the ranch yard, as if she could stare hard enough to see the betrayal in a man’s heart.
Heath didn’t respond. He saw no reason to drive the point home. She knew what he’d say. Betrayal hurt. Heath had learned that at a young age from his own father.
“Let’s go on down.” He picked up the pack he’d carried and turned to Sadie. Her hurt was painful to see. He couldn’t resist offering her some kind of comfort, so he walked to her side and took her hand. “C’mon. We’ve seen all there is to see. Now let’s find our way down the mesa the same way the varmint who shot at us went.”
They got to the edge, where Heath tied them together again, then took his first step onto the trail.
It was sharply sloped at first, but soon he could see that someone had cut this path into stair steps nearly as steep as a ladder. It was so old, the steps had worn down to nearly nothing. They worked just fine, however.
They angled into the heart of the mesa. Heath walked on as the gap they were in narrowed into a near chimney until he could reach out his right arm and brush the wall. He wondered just where they would end up. As the space tightened, he found it hard to breathe, like what happened occasionally in the cavern back home. He kept descending, and the narrow cut rounded the gap and went on down like a spiral staircase.
Despite the choking tightness, it was easy to keep his balance with the walls so near. If a man climbed this way a few times, he’d get fast at it. It wouldn’t have been hard for that gunman to get to the base of Skull Mesa, grab his horse, and gallop away. But how had Heath missed the bottom of this? How had Justin never seen these obviously ancient steps?
The moment never came when Heath had to resort to climbing. He had gotten used to the steep stairs and was making good time. The stairs emerged into the sunlight as they left the tight gap in the mesa walls. Soon a cliff yawed beneath his feet.
“Whoa.” Heath skidded to a stop on the gravel-strewn ladder. His next step was onto nothing. A drop of at least fifty feet straight down to a pile of jagged stones.
Rocks cascaded over the edge and bounced against the wall as they fell.
Sadie bumped into him, and for a few seconds he teetered on the brink of eternity. His arms waved wildly as he fought for purchase.
Life and death warred over him. A gust of wind would be enough to knock him either way.
A rock slipped under his foot, and he lurched forward, falling.
He was yanked back.
Something held him on this side of the Pearly Gates.
Sadie.
Her delicate hands had the strength to hang on. His balance restored, he took two quick steps back, crowding her up behind him. It took a minute, but finally he could breathe again. He hadn’t had time until now to be terrified of what had almost happened. If he’d fallen, with the rope tied between them, he’d have dragged her to her death, as well.
He thought of Sadie’s words earlier, that they could have died under a man’s gun, and he’d brushed it aside. It was not their time. Right now it was taking him a while to find that calm.
“I’m so sorry.” She leaned forward and spoke over his shoulder.
A glance back showed worry etched in her brow. Her eyes darkened with sincere regret. Heath would have kissed her if he wasn’t afraid of falling off the cliff.
“It cut away so suddenly.” He couldn’t let her take the blame for their near accident. “I’ve just been walking along, enjoying the easy way down. Honestly I was daydreaming, thinking of how jealous Justin and Cole were going to be. My carelessness nearly got us both killed.”
He turned around carefully. “I’m the one who’s sorry. And you saved me, Sadie. Thank you.”
And then, dangerous trail or not, she was a step above him, and he looked her right in the eye, then pulled her into his arms and kissed her. It felt so shockingly good. A celebration of survival, the good spirits of being fully alive. He was so deeply moved by the perfection of that kiss, it was a wonder he didn’t go tumbling head over heels.
Except he did.
In a distant, reasonable part of his mind, he knew a man didn’t fall in love with a woman because she saved his life. That was just foolish.
But something roared to life in him. Something big and wild and reckless that made anything he’d felt for her before—and he’d felt plenty—a pale ghost compared to now.
The kiss broke off when Sadie jerked her head to the side. He’d given her no choice. He’d grabbed her and swooped down on her like a predator.
Now was when she slapped him. Or told him to keep his filthy hands off her. Or sent him down the road with a warning never to come near her or her ranch again.
And why not? He hadn’t been fired for a while now.
“Heath Kincaid, this is no time for kissing. I swear you pick times deliberately when we have to stop and get right back to work. A curious woman would wonder if you even really have any honorable interest in me. And if you do, why don’t you call on me as is proper and ask me to come out riding with you?”
Which didn’t sound like a woman ordering him out of her life at all.
“Sadie, will you come out for a ride with me the very first chance we get?” He found that inner wild man that reminded him of his big brother Seth. “And where hopefully no one will shoot at us?”
Her smile was bright enough to shame the sunlight.
“And when neither of your big brothers is around to watch me like a hawk.”
“Uh, Heath.” Her smile shrank away.
“Nor John Hightree, who seems to be acting for your pa.”
“Heath, we’d better—”
“Nor Rosita, who has the chaperone instincts of a convent full of pistol-packing nuns.”
“Justin is watching us right now.” She near shouted to get him to shut up.
“He is?”
“Yep, with a spyglass.”
Heath turned, and sure enough, there he was—right where Heath had told Justin to position himself to watch for anyone approaching the mesa from the west. “We’re not so far away that I can be mistaken about him loading his rifle.”
“Nope, maybe we need to figure out how to get to the ground. You might need to run.”
“I’m not running away from your big brothers.” Heath noticed he’d thrown Cole in. Just because he was staked out on the other side of the mesa didn’t mean he wouldn’t hear about this. Justin would make sure o
f it.
Sadie grinned. “I’m glad.” Then she arched her brows. “And don’t worry, I can save you from both of them.”
“I sure hope so.”
“John and Rosita will be a bit more trouble.”
Heath figured he could handle both of them and the Boden brothers, too. “I’m hoping Justin’s heart isn’t in shooting me.”
“Knowing you got to the top of the mesa and he never did will be almost as much of a goad as witnessing our kiss.”
“I’ll kind of enjoy teasing him about the climb.” Heath quit thinking about Justin then, since he couldn’t do a thing about him right now. “And I enjoyed that kiss enough to stare down anyone who says they disapprove, so long as it’s not you.”
Patting him on the arm, she said, “I very much approve, Heath.”
He liked the sound of that. “Let’s see if we can figure out how to get the rest of the way down. Then if Justin does decide to start shooting, I can at least not fall to my death on top of being loaded with flying lead.”
“This next ledge is almost a sideways cut in the rocks. It isn’t even visible from a few feet down or up.” Heath was leading them at a snail’s pace down the mesa. He called up, “But once I found it, it worked fine. Do you see where it is?”
“I see it. It’s no wonder the man who shot at us got down fast.”
Heath was about thirty feet from the base when he said, “That’s the last place I can find. There’s no way down from here; it’s as sheer as ice. We’re still above the height that will kill us.”
“Especially if we land on that talus slide.” Sadie was letting him go first, then following when he had a firm place for his hands and feet. She reached his side and looked at him.
“I can lower you down with the rope, and I’ll use the spikes to get myself down.”
Sadie studied the ledge from where her hands clung to the slot her toes were in. “That will work, but it doesn’t explain how fast the man traveled.”
“If he had a rope fastened, he could rush right down.”
“But then the rope would be hanging there for all the world to see.” Peering down, Sadie added, “And he can’t possibly jump. Those rocks look mighty jagged, and besides, how does he get up?”
“It’s going to have to be the spikes, I reckon.” Heath reached for his pack.
“Wait a minute.” Sadie ran her hands along the ledge at her feet. “There’s something here. It feels like one of your spikes, only it’s curved at the end.”
Heath crouched and reached past her, brushing her ankle, which made her blush. “It’s a hook, hammered into stone just like our spikes.”
Heath pulled the rope off his neck and snagged the noose end. “We can just climb right down. I think I’ll be able to swing the rope and have it come unhooked.” With a frown, he said, “Can our man be a good enough roper that he can toss a loop on this thing from thirty feet down?”
“Either he can or we’ll soon figure out what else he does. Let’s go. We’re still ahead of Justin.”
“I’m pretty sure he’s setting a pace deliberately to get here the same time we reach the ground,” Heath said. “I’d better untie us.”
Rather than battle the rope, which was always tough to undo after long stretches climbing, Heath pulled out his knife and, with a quick slash, severed the rope from around his waist. He hooked the longer rope to the hook and said, “You want to go first?”
“Nope, you need the head start.”
He grinned as he slid down the rope so fast that she was purely impressed. She swung herself over the edge and did her best to copy him without falling all the way down.
“Come on down as far as you can,” he called. “I’ll get to the ground and be ready to catch you.”
Sadie didn’t bother to mention seeing Justin come riding out of the pass. Her brother had gotten down and found his horse in record time. There was a good chance she wasn’t going to get to jump into Heath’s arms, and that was just the worst kind of dirty shame.
Heath went on and landed on his feet as nimbly as a cat. He was on the talus slide, and rather than turn and pick his way to safety, he looked up, staying to help her down.
Heath looked behind him. Justin was close enough now that he heard him coming. There was no time to try to save himself now, so Heath, with shocking recklessness, shouted up to her, “Slide down. I’ll catch you.”
Sadie did as she was told, but when a solid grip landed on her waist, she knew it wasn’t Heath who had her.
“Let go. I’ve got you.” Justin had arrived.
Sadie sure hoped he hadn’t ridden his horse right over the man she fully intended to marry.
Justin carried her off the rocks, which was just foolish because she could have walked off without a bit of trouble. Then he tossed her up onto his saddle. “Kincaid, get the horses. I’ll give Sadie a ride back to the house.”
Sadie looked over her shoulder in time to see Heath smirk.
“Before you ride out, take a look at this wall.” Heath caught the rope they’d slid down and, with a couple of tries, flipped the rope right off the wall. It dropped, and he coiled it and stared upward. “This wall looks sheer all the way up, but about fifty feet up it folds in on itself. The way the rocks caved in here filled in the bottom of that fold so solid that . . .” Heath shook his head. “I don’t quite understand why we can’t see it, but it’s there.”
Justin studied it for a long time. “I can’t see it. I see the slide here, but it’s not filled in up higher. Looks solid to me.”
“Almost like it used to be open and it got slammed closed by the hands of God,” Heath said quietly.
They were silent a moment, then Justin said, “Come on in so we can talk it all through before I fire you.”
He was talking to her, not Justin, when he arched his brows and said, “I’ll be right along.”
Justin spurred his horse without giving Heath a second glance.
Once they were out of Heath’s earshot, Justin said, “He’s nothing but a penniless cowpoke, Sadie. I like him, but he ain’t near good enough for you.”
Justin was a tough man. He wore civilization very lightly. He was too quick to swing a fist and was wickedly fast with his six-gun, though he’d never had much call to aim it at men.
Long hours of brutally hard work breaking wild mustangs and wrangling thousand-pound longhorns had turned his muscles to corded steel. There wasn’t much Justin could lay his back to that didn’t give way. There weren’t many men Justin could face who didn’t back down.
It all came down to Justin being a dangerous man.
Even knowing all that, it was also a fact that he was her big brother. Which made her feel perfectly safe when she swatted him in the back of the head.
His hat nearly flew off, but he caught it and clamped it back on his head. He didn’t look overly upset with her. Nor did he apologize for his words about Heath.
“It looks very much like one of the men you and Pa hired at the CR is part of a plot to kill all of us,” Sadie told him.
Justin slowed his horse as he turned to focus on her instead of his plans, which, she suspected, were all about how to make Heath sorry he was ever born. He asked with keen interest, “What makes you say that, especially when I was talking about Heath?”
Sadie leaned closer and looked her brother in the eye. “I just want you to realize that makes you a poor judge of men, so I’m not likely to listen to a word you say.”
21
Heath wasn’t apt to listen to a word Justin had to say.
Not when there was a killer loose.
To Heath’s way of thinking, there wasn’t anything more important than what he was feeling for Sadie, but they all needed to stay alive before he could court her. So while it was less important, catching the would-be killer had to come first.
He walked into Chance’s office in time to see Cole narrow his eyes, then swing around to glare at Heath.
Justin was nothing but a tale-bearing ver
min. It didn’t worry Heath, though, because he had the perfect distraction.
“We can climb to the top of Skull Mesa anytime we want. I’d judge it to take about a half hour to hike up, a lot less to come back down. We can start having Sunday afternoon picnics up there if you’re so inclined.”
Cole and Justin looked to be circling to attack, but that stopped them in their tracks.
“You really found a way up there that easy?” Justin drew near, not a clenched fist in sight. “I saw you get up, but I only spotted you coming down when you got to the part where you had to climb.”
“That mesa is high enough, I couldn’t see a thing from where I was standing.” Cole had the biggest area to watch, the stretch leading from the ranch house to the mesa. Justin was in charge of the west side, not visible from where Cole had stood sentry.
“But then you came up to the edge and disappeared. I thought you’d sat down to have lunch or take a rest. Then all of a sudden you showed up right near the bottom.”
“You know how rough the edges of the mesa are,” Heath said. “They’re mostly sheer walls, straight up and down, but it’s not a smooth, round circle.”
Justin didn’t interrupt, which Heath took as a good sign.
“From up on top, there’s a cut that curves back toward the heart of the mesa, then twists around and comes on down. It’s a steep slope, but we found a way to walk it. No climbing necessary.”
“And then it ends abruptly,” Sadie said.
Heath barely controlled a shudder as he remembered just how abruptly. “I figure a man standing on horseback could grab hold and pull himself up to where he can just walk right up the mesa. He wouldn’t need any kind of climbing equipment except a rope. We can go back up right now if you want. Plenty of time before sunset.”
“I do want to go up. Sadie told me you found plenty of signs up there—a man there recently and what looks like an old village of some kind.”
“A village?” Cole blinked. “No one mentioned a village to me.”
Yep, Justin had been too busy talking about Heath not being good enough for their little sister. Which was nothing but the plain truth.
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