“But he didn’t.” Wyatt said into the silence following Kid’s broken confession.
Throat raw, Kid shook his head. “No. She died an hour, maybe two later. I don’t really know how long she lasted.”
“You were with her when she went.” No question or doubt in his voice.
One nod. “She opened her eyes and she was so scared.” His voice broke. “She didn’t want to die. But her body wouldn’t listen to her and nothing that Noah did helped.” The snow had soaked through his denim and the cold crept up his legs, but he noticed it only in the abstract. The cold kept him in the present even as the past dragged at him.
“What did you do Kid?”
Not wanting to answer, he shook his head. Caroline’s blue eyes pleaded with him, the muscles in her hand spasmed and she couldn’t hold on, so he covered her hand with both of his, anchoring her. He’d never wanted to beg for anything as much as he begged for her to live. The obscure veil between he and the world lay in tatters all around him. The pain in that room—the misery—it threatened to pull him apart, but he fought to hang onto her and when she arched her back, a soundless scream riding on her gasping breaths.
Her terror crashed the last barrier he’d managed to keep up and he let her in, he took it all.
“What did you do?” Wyatt repeated the question. “Noah couldn’t help her and Caroline was afraid. What did you do?”
“I made her not afraid anymore,” he whispered. “I took her terror, took it all, and I gave her peace.”
She died with a small, affectionate smile on her pale, colorless lips. The light in her blue eyes turned dull and dimmed forever. A tear slid down his face and then another. He sniffed and bowed his head, shoulders shaking. “She died.”
And for the first time since she passed, Kid let himself grieve the woman he’d called friend and lover.
Instead of moving away, Wyatt put an arm around his shoulder and let him. He cried until his voice was gone and his vision blurred and still all he saw was that sweet face, a constant in his life that had been rudely, and utterly extinguished.
He cried until he had no more tears, no anything. When Wyatt made him stand up, he did and he leaned on the brother all the way back to the house.
Evelyn
10 Days Since Lawrence, Kansas
* * *
The buffalo robe did little to keep the cold off of her, though hugging it closer to her face did help diminish the smell. Her traveling companions, an older man with tired eyes and his son, kept mostly to themselves. The son did not want to be on the journey at all, his aggravated stares out the window and dull smiles whenever his father tried to point out something interesting made that perfectly clear. The stagecoach would take her all the way to Fort Worth, skirting Indian Territory.
They’d crossed the Red River the day before, a harrowing series of moments as the horses struggled to ford what was supposed to be a low point on the river. Water had run into the coach and flooded the area around her feet. Changing out horses daily meant they continued the relentless southern drive with only a few breaks, including the one coming up at a small way station sitting in the middle of the loneliest landscape Evelyn had ever glimpsed.
The coach came to a shuddering halt and the driver yelled out. “Thirty minutes.”
Evelyn’s companions rose and stepped out of the coach before the driver even got the steps in place. But all three turned to make sure she stepped down and both father and son helped her. She didn’t lean on them long, though her legs were stiff and sore, her backside utterly numb. She didn’t think she would ever feel it again. Pulling her coat tighter against the wind, she nodded a polite thank you and glanced around the desolate little stop on their journey.
A peaked roof topped a long cabin, tucked right up against a much larger barn. The driver spoke to another man and they were busily unhitching the exhausted horses and leading them toward the barn. A third man emerged. Evelyn admired the dedication at the way stations. Every single one they’d paused at tended to the horses first and the passengers second.
The father and son disappeared in the direction of the outhouse, but she walked on, stretching her legs. Soon, they would load back up for another brutal jouncing ride. Once she arrived at Fort Worth, she would have to see about purchasing coach fair to San Antonio. From there, she would have to purchase a horse and head west alone. Enough coin to see to the task rested in the seams of her dress and more coin hid in the purse affixed to her wrist. Having grown accustomed to the extra weight, she had to check it periodically with a squeeze to make sure she still had it.
The steady progress kept her mind occupied and the weariness in her body distracted her from the bruises on her heart. Every mile they traveled was another mile between her and her father. Leaving before he had been buried would haunt her, but her father would understand.
No, more than that…he would have encouraged it. Practicality demanded she could not see her goals through trapped in the tiny town or if the threats returned before she could escape. After all, the men wanted their slave back. They had been unable to obtain him from her father. It wasn’t much of a leap for their attention turn to her.
Evelyn had no idea where Mr. Lewis had gone and she didn’t want to know. Her father paid for his freedom in blood. She hoped he honored that noble sacrifice and lived a full and happier life somewhere else. It was the least the man could do…
Enough. She consciously pushed those thoughts back. Dwelling on the loss would cripple her and she had no time for tears. None. Pressing a hand to her chest, she felt the shape of the metal hidden behind the fabric of her dress. The oblong, rectangle of metal was thin and flat, but the warmth of it weighed on her more than the coin she carried or the names carved into her mind. She’d memorized all of the names on the witness list, including Ethan Harlow.
“Excuse me, miss?” A woman’s voice surprised her and Evelyn turned around. Dressed in dark gray muslin and a heavy coat, a woman with tired eyes, but a friendly smile stood there. “I have hot tea inside, if you’d care for a cup and some sandwiches. I’ve prepared pails for the menfolk, but if you’d like to eat at my table…”
The invitation was gracious and Evelyn summoned her manners and returned the smile. “Thank you, very much.”
“Of course. A long trip is hard enough on a lady without having to eat as they bounce you all over the place. I’m Abigail—Abigail Turren. My husband sees to the horses here.” And she seemed especially grateful for a female companion. Sympathizing with that need over her own for solitude, Evelyn followed her back to the house that turned out to be modest, but clean.
She sipped the tea and ate the hot stew with warm rolls. It was plain fare, but her stomach ached from the dried sandwiches and hard meat rolls they’d eaten at nearly every other stop. Abigail chattered away and Evelyn nodded at the appropriate moments. Maybe it was the years of traveling with her father, but she recognized the need for company and the enthusiasm that Abigail embraced her with—right down to the crumby pie she secreted over after a quick look outside.
Most of the male passengers wouldn’t step foot inside the station house without specific invitation and Abigail’s husband remained outside helping the driver hitch up a new team. When Abigail excused herself to deliver lunch pails to Evelyn’s traveling companions, Evelyn took advantage of the respite to pull out the pendant. Tracing her fingers over the words, she read the directions again.
To anyone else, they would be odd symbols and unintelligible whereas, in reality, they provided a map, including details of how to travel into the wilds and what landmarks to use to gauge the distance. Though the pendant itself was more than twenty years old, she suspected the larger landmarks such as the twin rocks and the rivers would be relatively in the same places.
Once she arrived at the mountain, the instructions said to follow the eastern slope and to always look for the hidden path. She didn’t quite understand that, but she supposed it would become clearer once she reached her des
tination. The creak of the floor board beyond suggested Abigail was returning, so Evelyn hid the pendant away.
“The driver gave me your bag. There seems to be a bit of a problem with one of the wheels so they want to replace it. It could take a couple of hours. How do you feel about a bath?”
Torn between impatience at the delay and the promise of hot water and a scrub, Evelyn sighed. “I would very much appreciate that, but do we truly have time?”
“We will.” Abigail beckoned. “We have a large cistern here that heats up, it’s not as fine as one of those eastern hotels with their bathing rooms, but we manage and I can fill a tub with steaming water. If you’d like to change, I can air out that dress and then you’ll at least be fresh when you board the coach again.”
“If only we could say the same of my male companions.” It was a weak attempt at humor, but Abigail laughed merrily and whisked her down the hall. The woman’s solicitous attempts to see to her comfort warmed Evelyn’s heart. A couple of hours of respite, she could afford that. They would be on their way again soon. She only demurred the airing out of her dress and she made sure to keep her necklace and money purse within arm’s reach of the tub.
Fortunately the small bathing room included a bolt for the door. While Abigail had given no hint of betrayal in her manner or behavior, she was not the only person present at the way station and Evelyn did not possess a gun or any sense of how offensively she would react should someone try to corner her. No, it would be better—and safer—for everyone should she not be compromised in such a way.
By the time the coach driver called for them to load back up, Evelyn had bathed, changed into fresh undergarments, but re-donned her wrinkled traveling dress. The condition of it mattered less to her than the money sewn into the hems. She’d taken the time to brush out her hair and shared another cup of tea with Abigail. The way station wife packed another meal for her, including sandwiches as she had for the men earlier and added a little meat pie under it all.
Oddly, Evelyn experienced a pang of regret as they said farewell. Abigail’s quick hug startled her less than the woman’s words. “I do not know what loss grieves you so,” she murmured quietly in a voice no one else was likely to hear. “But my heart is heavy for you. You mustn’t bury it so. It will poison you.”
Uneasy with the woman’s insights, Evelyn drew away a polite step. “Thank you for your kindness, Mrs. Turren. I shall ever be grateful for it.” But she would not allow this woman, kind or not, deter her from her path. Her rage was a cold, deadly flame and the only heat she truly felt. Nursing that candle would keep her going, for surely without it she would fall utterly apart.
Abigail’s expression tightened and her eyes grew sad. “As you wish. But know my door is ever open.”
Her sense of disquiet grew at the knowledge in Abigail’s soft brown gaze, as though the woman saw straight through to her soul. Evelyn, you must remember that we are not alone in our gifts. Many more walk along the roads around us, living out their lives, and keeping their secrets. We must always keep it secret, keep it safe, lest someone attempt to cage us or kill us—or, worse—use us. We are not alone. Promise me you will never forget that and don’t trust strangers because they too may know our secret or seek to reveal it… The warning echoed loudly in her ears and Evelyn retreated to the coach. Allowing the driver to toss her bag back to the roof, she accepted his hand to climb inside.
Clasping her hands tightly together under the buffalo hide blanket, she avoided making eye contact with the woman who had shown her such utter generosity. She knows. The words murmured from the secret place inside of her. She knows. Keep yourself secret, stay safe.
Evelyn didn’t relax when the coach pulled away with a bounce and she didn’t dare look back. The miles passed sightlessly out the window and still she kept her hands fisted together. Her male companions fell asleep with the swaying rock and bounce, Evelyn did not.
She kept watch.
Must keep it secret. Must stay safe.
Kid, The Mountain
“I don’t understand why now.” It had taken him most of the day to even form a coherent sentence again after breaking down in the snow. If not for Wyatt, Kid imagined he’d still be out there, frozen to death. Instead, he sat in a chair next to the fire with a heavy blanket wrapped around him a steaming bowl of stew in his hands. Quanto occupied the other chair; the old shaman had sat with him all afternoon while Kid stared at the flames, barely aware of anything beyond his own abject misery.
“Why now, what?”
“Why does it hurt so damn bad now? Caroline—” He swallowed the lump that formed at her name. “She died last summer. It’s been months. I haven’t…” He stopped talking, bleakness colliding with guilt in the pit of his stomach.
“You haven’t thought about her months,” Quanto finished for him.
He answered with a mute nod, not trusting his voice. Not trusting much of anything considering the blackness yawning open inside of him. The world was a duller, emptier place and it was as though Kid could feel every broken moment.
Leaning forward, Quanto stirred the fire with a long poker, tipping a log over to one side until it cracked in two and sparks shot up. “You are like these logs. You have been burning for a very long time and you don’t know whether the flame is yours or someone else’s. Caroline was important to you.”
Kid swallowed and nodded once.
“The ability to care for another, to love another, is one of the greatest gifts we ever receive. It also carries with it the potential for a terrible price. You miss your Caroline…”
“But she…” How did he put it into words? How could he say the thoughts he had and not feel the guilt over his selfishness?
“Say what is in your heart.” Quanto answered his unspoken questions. “You cannot lance the wound if you do not let it all out.”
Strangely, the advice made sense. It was the first time something seemed to have appealed to the rational side of his mind, a part he’d thought completely gone since the incident with the soldiers and Ben. Anger awoke beneath his grief, because Ben had been terrified. As terrified as Caroline…
Everything inside of Kid stilled and he opened and closed his mouth several times, because his thoughts and emotions seemed to be cascading and he couldn’t find one to latch onto. Quanto added another log to the fire and waited for him, his patience like a steady lantern in the dark, unfamiliar territory Kid waded through.
“I cared about Caroline Carson,” he fought to get back to the original subject. At least this time when he said her name, his throat didn’t threaten to close. “Maybe love is the right word, but it wasn’t the same as Sam loves Scarlett or Cody loves Mariska.” He knew exactly what those two emotions tasted like and he’d envied them the result. Not the journey—too much confusion and misunderstanding and fraught with dangerous excess at times—but the results? Yes, he envied both men what they’d found. He’d seen it again with Micah, stained as Kid’s experience had been at losing Caroline and made harder by Micah’s terror when they thought Jo, too, would succumb to the fever.
“I went to see him.” The memory bubbled up. “After Caroline died, I went to Micah. I hurt so badly. I’d never felt that before, not like that, and I didn’t know how to—how to deal with it. So I went to Micah. I knew he would know.” His older brother was always so calm, so easy to be around. He didn’t mire his emotions in riddles and complicated layers. He accepted people for who they were, made them feel good about it and he was the easiest of any person Kid had ever been around, except that day. “But he was so scared. He’d found her, he loved her, and he was so tied up with what was happening to her. He couldn’t see anything else…”
Once he’d found the thread, Kid couldn’t let it go. He kept tugging, pulling at the knot of emotions cramping his soul and unraveling the bitter revelations. “He needed me.”
“And you helped your brother.” Quanto’s soft statement echoed a second memory shelling free inside of Kid.
> He nodded slowly. “I pulled some of the terror away, as much as I could. I was drowning in it…choking on it. But he needed me.”
“Did you tell him what you were doing?”
Kid shook his head. “He needed to focus on Jo—hell, he needed Jo. She didn’t die.” The corners of his mouth turned up a fraction. Micah’s utter joy when Jo opened her eyes, when her fever broke had been a beautiful, sweet thing. “When she woke, he was okay again.”
“But Caroline wasn’t going to wake.” Quanto reminded him. “So you wouldn’t feel that joy.”
“No. But I didn’t love her the way Micah loved Jo. I cared about her, I wanted her to be happy—” His voice broke. “I didn’t want her to die.”
“We never wish those we love death. Death means we must say goodbye even when we’re not ready.” Something else whispered beneath Quanto’s words, but Kid couldn’t focus on it.
“But why does it hurt so much now?” They hadn’t really answered that question. He pulled his gaze from the fire and looked over at the worn visage of the shaman. “I wasn’t in love with her. I cared about her, but I cared about a lot of the people who died. I’d known—hell, I’d known most of them since I was boy or they had been children. The deaths were pretty indiscriminate, taking the kind hearts as well as the mean spirited. We lost almost the entire town.”
“Only you know the truth of it for certain, but I have an idea.” Quanto steepled his fingers together and watched Kid with solemn eyes.
“Why do I get the feeling I won’t like what you’re about to say?” He meant it as rhetorical question. He hadn’t liked much of anything in the last few months. But if today were any indication, he couldn’t keep going the way he was. Not blind. He needed a direction, any direction, and he’d come to the mountain for this man’s wisdom. If he respected nothing else about the choices he and, in all fairness, everyone else on the ranch had been forced to make, he’d respect this one. Eating the last bite of the stew, he put the bowl down and shifted forward, elbows on his knees. “Tell me, please.”
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