Long Time Gone

by Mary Connealy

Chance liked the way Dr. Radcliffe said “we” as if he were part of this now.

  “We could lay thick blankets in a wagon so the ride would be less dangerous for you, and we’d need to find somewhere close. Let me think.”

  There was a long silence. Chance looked at Ronnie, and the two of them turned back to stare at the doctor, awaiting his answer.

  Finally the doctor’s chin lifted. He left off his beard-stroking. His eyes took on a bright gleam and he smiled. “I know just the place.”

  “I got a letter from Ma! She and Pa say we can come!” Sadie looked a little dizzy with excitement.

  Justin was hoping her excitement would just sweep her right out the door all the way to Denver.

  “Heath,” Angie said with a bright smile, “that means you get to meet Sadie’s parents.”

  Justin really needed to catch Angie up with what was going on around here. “Heath has been working on the CR since before Pa was hurt. In fact, Heath saved Pa’s leg—maybe even his life.”

  “Th-then why does he need to go to Denver?”

  “I don’t.” Heath gave Sadie and her happiness a nervous glance.

  “Because he hasn’t met them as their son-in-law yet.” Justin spoke over top of Heath.

  Sadie’s smile faded, but her shoulders rose and her chin raised higher. Justin was struck by how much she looked like Ma. Right down to the grit.

  “If we’re needed here, we stay. Ma’s letter said a few other things. She’s upset we didn’t tell her about Cole right away. She had heard that Heath was shot, and I’d never told her that. Oh my, she had quite a lot to say. Now that I consider it, waiting to go until she calms down isn’t that bad of an idea.”

  “I’ll take you to Denver sometime, Sadie. And we need to go visit my family in Rawhide. We’ll see your folks. And then on our way back we’ll get off the train in Colorado City, ride to see my family, then come on back here.”

  “That will be fine.”

  “You’re going to Denver now.” Justin broke into their reasonable little talk.

  “Just because you found her name—”

  “You’re both going.” Justin cut Heath off. “With Dantalion gone and winter setting in, it’s a good time. They can’t regroup until spring.”

  Heath snorted. Mighty rude.

  “Why aren’t you two sitting with Cole?” Justin wished he’d had more time to talk sense into Heath. Why the man felt it necessary to tell Sadie every single thought in his head was a mystery.

  “Mel is here.” Sadie mentioned Melanie, the daughter of their nearest ranching neighbor, Jack Blake, and a lifelong friend of the family. “Found my name where?”

  “In a note—”

  “We hauled Dantalion’s body up the cliff.” Justin cut Heath off, trying to stop him from telling Sadie everything. “We left his body hidden in the woods. If one of our cowhands is a traitor, I don’t want them to know he’s dead. We’ll take him to the sheriff as soon as we can.”

  “I’ll leave so you can discuss this without an outsider listening in.” Justin heard pain in Angie’s voice. “In fact, now that Mel is here, I should get back to the orphanage. I’m in the way here . . .” Her voice broke then, and she quit talking altogether and turned to leave the room.

  Justin grabbed her. He wasn’t going to add hurting her feelings to the day’s troubles. Not when she’d worked so hard with them to save Cole.

  He turned her to face him. “I’m being a half-wit, I know that. Heath and I found out something I don’t think Sadie should know.”

  “Sadie? But Heath will tell her the minute—”

  “I’d hoped”—Justin was having trouble letting anyone finish a thought—“I could talk him out of it, but he’s determined.”

  “Sadie girl, your big brother and I found a notebook.” Heath spoke so quietly, Justin could barely hear him.

  Justin fumbled in his pocket and walked over to hand a little packet of papers to Sadie, opening it as he went. “Your name, with the word bait beside it.”

  Sadie stared at the paper a long while, then swallowed hard. “And you think Heath and I should leave? That I should go see Pa and Ma in Denver so I’ll be safe?” Her voice rose with every word. “Even though Heath and I would have to abandon you and Cole when there’s danger all around?”

  “That’s not—”

  “Yes, that’s exactly what he wants.” Heath talked over top of Justin this time. “And I told him we aren’t going.”

  “We’re not going anywhere, Justin.” Sadie took Heath’s side completely.

  “No, I can see you’re not. All right, we’ll hire more cowhands, do a better job of posting sentries. We know the danger and we’ll be on guard.”

  “Only you can’t hire a bunch of tough men to ride for you because you don’t know who to trust. You already know someone at this ranch has betrayed you. And our prisoner in town was a man hanging around in Skull Gulch. Right where you’d go to hire more men. Maybe men are waiting in town right now, hoping they can hire on.”

  “We need to ferret out who we can’t trust,” Justin said. “And I’ve got an idea how to do it.”

  “Whoever it was planned to report to Dantalion most likely. Now that he’s dead, your traitor has no one to tell his tales to.”

  Sadie asked, “Can’t you at least trust John and Alonzo?”

  Heath and Justin exchanged a long look.

  Sadie nodded. “I would trust John with my very life. And we have good reason to believe we can trust Alonzo.” She said to Angie, “The day Cole was shot, we found Alonzo’s father holed up in an old house, the house Maria was telling us about that night I came to the orphanage. Alonzo’s father had a gun drawn and aimed at us because he thought we meant him harm. Alonzo helped calm things down and convinced his father to put his pistol away. If Alonzo had bad intentions toward the Bodens, that would have been his chance to do terrible damage. And he was with us when someone opened fire on us.”

  “Maybe,” Justin said, “but he and his pa had gone ahead. They weren’t under fire.”

  Sadie gave a sigh. “As much as we want to believe Alonzo isn’t the source of the trouble, we still don’t want to tell him what we are up to. Even if he’s loyal to us, careless talk might spread the word without any betrayal intended. And that includes your talk, Angie. Be careful not to mention this to anyone, not even casually.”

  “Keeping my thoughts to myself is a habit I’ve developed to an art.”

  “What does that mean?” Justin asked.

  She shook her head at him and waved away the question.

  Heath took up the story. “We need to figure out who at the ranch told Dantalion where your pa would be the morning of the avalanche. And those outlaws held off the attack until we were on the way home from de Val’s hacienda. Someone gave them the word we were headed that way. We’d be dead if we hadn’t turned off the main trail and ridden up that nightmarish shortcut.”

  “The only ones who knew,” Heath went on, “were your cowhands. Just as they were the only ones who knew your pa was headed into the path of their avalanche. One of them passed word on to Dantalion on mighty short notice.”

  Justin nodded. “And whoever informed him might be planning something else and have it ready for the next time we’re vulnerable. Our backstabbing hired hand might ride out to find Dantalion, not knowing he’s dead. If we lay a false trail, we could watch and see who the turncoat is. You noticed I left Dantalion in the woods, didn’t you, Heath?”

  Heath’s head lifted slowly. Bright blue eyes flashed. “I did, but I thought it was because you didn’t want to upset the ladies.”

  “It had occurred to me that no one knows he’s dead but us.”

  With a tight smile, Heath said, “We have to act fast. Whichever of your cowpokes was tipping off Dantalion may already have tried to contact him.”

  “This time the ones setting a trap are going to be us Bodens.” Justin took the notebook and pressed it into Sadie’s hands. “See if you can read the ea
rly parts of this. We haven’t had time to do more than take a glance, and it’s small, tight handwriting. We’ll drop Dantalion off in town and make sure the sheriff keeps things quiet. Then we’ll set a trap for the rat who’s betraying us while he’s on our payroll, and once it snaps shut, we’ll see if he starts squealing.”

  10

  Justin and Heath slipped into the woods to pick up their man. Angie watched with Sadie standing at her side until raised voices sounded from Cole’s room.

  Angie gave Sadie an alarmed look, and the two of them rushed toward their patient.

  “If you make one more move . . . !” Mel shouted.

  “I’ve had it with being in this bed.”

  “And I’ve had it with trying to convince a stubborn ox to act like a sensible adult man.”

  “You can’t come into my house and insult me.”

  “Sure I can. I’ve been doing it for years.”

  “I want you out of this house right now.”

  “If you move again, I’ll throw a lasso over you and hog-tie you to that bed!”

  Angie whispered to Sadie as they hurried along, “She talks to the children like that, though usually not at the top of her lungs.”

  “Sister Margaret did mention she’s not a natural teacher,” Sadie whispered back.

  “You’re all treating me like I’m a child,” Cole shouted angrily.

  “No,” Mel snapped, “we’re treating you like you’re a badly injured man who needs to give himself time to heal. Anyone with a shred of brains would know that and stop acting like a child.”

  “She’s never actually roped one of the children,” Angie said. She paused before adding, “That I know of.”

  “I’m healed up enough to help protect this ranch.”

  “You make one wrong move and tear open that bullet wound and you’ll be fighting for your life again. And even if you don’t kill yourself, you still won’t be of any help.”

  Angie approached the door with Sadie only a step behind.

  Mel sat on the edge of the bed with both hands pinning Cole’s shoulders down as he struggled to get up. Which couldn’t be good for him.

  “If you think I’m so fragile, stop being rough with me.” He wrenched sideways, gave a loud and—Angie thought—rather phony moan of pain, then grabbed Mel by the waist and tossed her back.

  She dove forward but missed him as he rolled to his feet. She landed flat on her face on the bed. Without pause she crawled on her hands and knees toward Cole on the far side. He grabbed a chair as if he planned to use it to drive her back. Maybe add a whip.

  “What is going on here?” Sadie roared over the chaos.

  Cole froze, the chair lifted up, its legs pointed at Mel.

  Mel’s head turned hard. She missed bracing her hand on the bed and fell headfirst to the floor. She landed with a hard thud at Cole’s feet.

  Looking down, Cole asked, “Are you all right?” He set the chair aside, careful not to set it on Mel. It looked to Angie like he was grateful to put the heavy thing down.

  Mel dragged herself up so that her head popped up over the mattress. She’d had her brown hair in a braid when she arrived, but now long curls bounced wildly over her eyes and hung halfway down her back. She shoved the curls back from her face and, when they fell right back, blew at them with a tired puff of her lips. “Your brother is the worst patient who ever lived.”

  “Your old friend Melanie—”

  “It’s Mel!” This was a correction Angie had already heard several times. Nobody but nobody called Mel Blake, Melanie. Angie had no idea why the woman was so adamant about it.

  Cole smirked as he looked down at her. “You are the worst nurse who ever lived.”

  Sadie blinked. Angie wondered what she’d do, whose side she’d take, but then Sadie started laughing. The laughter grew and then Cole broke into laughter, too.

  Mel rolled her eyes heavenward, then turned to glare at Cole.

  He looked down and laughed harder. “You’re a bigger mess than I am, and I’ve been shot.”

  Mel chuckled at the comparison.

  Angie smiled, but privately she thought they’d both lost their minds. “Cole,” she said calmly, “I respect your wish to help, but could you please just rest a few more days? While I think you’re close to being up and around, don’t forget you were fighting for your life up until only two days ago. We were so terribly worried about you. If you can’t stay in bed and rest for yourself, could you do it for us?”

  Cole’s laughter died. He looked impatient enough to gnaw a hole in the wall to escape his confinement. That gave Angie an idea. “Justin and Heath brought in a notebook you should see. There’s a lot of tiny, cramped handwriting at the beginning of it. Could you go through it, see what it says? You could do it lying down, and it really would be a great help. It’s a job that has to be done.”

  Sadie came up beside Angie. “She’s right, we need to read it. And there’s the other papers Heath brought. Justin read through them, and they seemed to be nothing but notes about money, but someone needs to go through all of it carefully. You understand money, and you’ve got keen enough eyesight to decipher the handwriting.”

  Eyes narrowed, Cole said, “You think I’m going to sit around and read notes and do busy work while someone’s trying to kill my family?”

  “Let me get it. I think when you see the last page you’ll decide it’s a lot more than busy work.” Sadie hurried from the room.

  Angie wondered just how she’d gotten into the middle of this family crisis. She hadn’t meant to. But she’d been needed, even with all the Bodens here, to take a turn sitting with Cole so he was never alone. She hoped she’d acquitted herself well with her questionable nursing skills. He hadn’t died on her watch, so she thought she could claim it a success. She ought to go back to the orphanage while everyone was still breathing.

  Sadie came back at a run and nearly skidded to a stop, the little notebook in hand. “Please, Cole, will you get back in bed?”

  Angie had seen Sadie spitting mad, and she’d seen her worried sick, exhausted from the long hours at Cole’s bedside, and she’d seen her sweet and gentle with her new husband. But through it all, Sadie had always been straightforward. She said what she meant so that those around her knew exactly how she felt. When Angie thought of the years she’d spent keeping every thought and emotion hidden from her husband, a man who knew how to spot a weakness and use it against her, it was as refreshing as rain in the desert.

  But right now Sadie looked sly, even sneaky. She waved the book at Cole and said, “I’m not going to show you what’s in here unless you agree to rest.”

  Even her sneakiness was right out front, which probably meant it wasn’t sneaky at all. She was blackmailing her big brother.

  “What is it about that notebook that has you so up in arms?” He still stood on the far side of the bed.

  “Under the covers, big brother, or I walk out of here with this, and you know you’re too weak to catch me. You’d better believe me when I say you’re going to want to read it. Among other things, it’s got Pa’s name in it with a line drawn through it, then in tiny print the word missed. There’s something in here about you and me, too.”

  Cole came around the bed, and Sadie ran out of the room. Cole reached for his side and winced in pain, and then with his face dark like a coming thundercloud, his eyes flashing with impatience, he shouted, “All right, I’m getting in bed.”

  “Angie,” Sadie called, her voice coming from a distance, “let me know when he’s all tucked in like a good little boy.”

  That started Cole glowering, his fists clenched.

  Angie said quietly, “The note about Sadie worried Justin enough he tried to get them to leave the ranch, but Heath and Sadie won’t abandon you when the trouble is so close.”

  Cole quit fuming as furrows of concern appeared on his brow. He nodded at Angie. She wasn’t sure why Cole was fighting with Mel and why he seemed to clash with Justin until she was afrai
d—even with Cole laid up—the two brothers might come to blows. It wasn’t unusual for him to snarl at Sadie, and she snipped at him right back. And he seemed to delight in insulting Heath, but usually that just made Heath smile.

  When she dealt with him, he seemed like a perfectly reasonable man. Very intelligent. Polite almost to a fault. She could tell he had city manners, and she knew he’d gone back east to college and lived in Boston for a time.

  Why didn’t they all just talk to him in rational ways? It worked just fine for her.

  He climbed into bed and pulled his covers up. Mel smoothed them, and he glared at her until she stopped.

  She grinned and said, “I need to head for town. The children need me.”

  Mel headed out just as Angie raised her voice, “He’s resting now, Sadie.” More quietly to Cole she said, “I’m afraid Sadie is in terrible danger.”

  The change in Cole’s expression was deadly.

  “You have to rest right now and regain your strength. With Dantalion dead, those who are after your family may need time to reorganize. But there’s no doubt in Justin’s mind that they will attack again. So use this time to heal. Please.”

  Sadie returned with her book and went straight to Cole. She handed it to him, then sat down on his bed and flipped it to the back. “Let’s start here.”

  Angie saw his eyes focus, then narrow.

  Rosita chose that moment to come in, and Sadie said, “Rosita, look at this.”

  Angie left to get dinner. She already knew that notebook was a portent of menace coming straight at the Bodens. She wished Justin and Heath would come back. And she wished this time she wouldn’t fill the kitchen with smoke.

  11

  “We need to get back.” Heath swung up on his horse.

  The body had been turned over to Doc Garner.

  Sheriff Joe was thumbing through his pile of wanted posters.

  The town’s undertaker was building a coffin. Dantalion was going to be buried quickly and quietly.

  Justin felt itchy, like he’d left a new calf alone in the path of a wolf pack. Or in this case, he’d left his wounded brother and his baby sister and the rest of the folks at the CR in the path of outlaws bent on killing. But they had to make one more stop.