The Timeless Love Romance Collection

by Dianne Christner

  “Me? Let Frankie freeze his own tail off.” Ernie pulled on his flattened military-style wool hat, emblazoned with the round CCC emblem on the front. “I got invited to some folks’ for the weekend, and I ain’t turning down good home cookin’ for a dimwit like Frankie White.” He straightened his hat in the glass. “Besides, I doubt the rest of ’em are still there. Cynthia’s uncle was in some all-fired hurry to get to the Tetons, so they probably done left.”

  “What about you fellas? Tanner? Jenkins?” Justin put his hands on his hips, turning to two other guys who were lacing up their boots. “Don’t ya wanna at least see if they’re all right?”

  “They’re fine. Quit your worryin’. It’s a little squall, nothin’ more.” Tanner shook his head. “And besides, I’m goin’ to Jackson for the weekend. Already got my tickets.”

  Justin pushed a window open a crack and peered at the gray sky. “Lieutenant’ll kill Frankie if somethin’ happens.”

  “Let him.” Ernie shrugged. “Frankie short-sheeted my bed a week ago, the little squirt. Got me put on KP duty. If Lieutenant don’t kill him, I’ll do it myself.” He pointed at Justin. “And he’s the one who put ice in your bed that time, too, Fairbanks. You oughtta let him squirm.”

  Justin didn’t answer. He ran a hand through his hair, jaw clenching as he stared at the cloudy horizon. And then he turned and marched out into the cold wind, slamming the door behind him.

  By the time Justin came to the end of the shortcut path to the lake, clouds had boiled in thicker, and bits of snow drifted on the blustery wind. Chilly darkness descended over the wooded slopes, turning their exuberant green into ominous gray.

  For the first time in a year and a half, Justin had skipped evening formation, leaving behind the olive drabs for his fur-trimmed boots and itchy wool winter coat: a belted surplus cast-off from the Great War, too short and too tight around the collar. Cap and gloves and as much stuff as he could shove inside an old military pack before snowflakes began to whirl.

  Justin held his cap on with one hand as the wind picked up, following the faded trail through clumps of sage that sloped down toward the lake. A canteen slung across his chest and dread weighing down his boots.

  Over the rim of a grassy ridge he spotted a curve of dark water. Fremont Lake was famously cold and surprisingly deep; it stretched down six hundred feet in the middle. Its oblong, slightly bow-shaped shores stretched around the forested Wind River Mountains and up past the ponds the Fremont CCC guys had carved from among the pines. From one side of the lake Justin could see the faint outline of Gannett Peak through the clouds, its white, snowcapped lines appearing briefly like a mirage.

  He fingered the paper in his pocket, pulling it out and holding it up to the dull gray glow. The wind tried to whip it from his fingers as he turned it sideways, trying to make out the rough, scrawled handwriting and drawings.

  When Justin breathed out, turning his head to keep out the cold-smarting wind, his breath misted like smoky morning, frigid predawn December, back at the Kentucky farm.

  “Frankie!” Justin cupped his hands around his mouth and hollered, but no answer came except the crush of pines and tinkling aspens, their branches roaring together with the next blast of wind. A shower of pale snowflakes sifted down through the tops of the pines, settling in a soft white line on tawny grass.

  Justin shouted again and then marched through the empty shores and patches of trees to the closest road, hoping against logic that there’d be a motorist there—packing up from a picnic perhaps—and he’d beg a ride to the other side of the lake. To the slopes of the Wind River Mountains indicated in the map, if Justin could read the scrawls correctly.

  As soon as he rounded the bend, lake spray spitting against his face, he saw it: a shiny 1934 Ford parked off to the side, its sleek surface spattered with droplets. Stray grasses whipped under the windshield wipers, and a thin crust of snow lay in the grooves of the long, burgundy-brown hood.

  An ominous sensation rippled through Justin as he cupped his hands around the snow-beaded glass, praying with all his heart that he was wrong. It couldn’t be. Please, God, not the Parkers’ car.

  Then Justin spotted it: Lia’s pretty hat and white gloves there on the backseat, tucked over a spray of wildflowers. The little hole at the end of the index finger barely visible through the darkened glass.

  For a split second Justin hesitated, backing away from the car and turning back toward the CCC camp. Wondering if there was still time to get the lieutenant and call for help—maybe send up a rescue crew.

  But when a second gust of wind, stronger than the first, blew snow in his eyes so thick he could hardly see, Justin felt a panic pulse in his veins. He had to leave a note—beg for help—but how?

  A message spelled in rocks on the dirt side of the road? No, that wouldn’t work. Snow could pile up over his crooked words and obliterate them in a minute—not to mention all the time he’d waste hunting for rocks in the wind.

  Justin rested both hands on his head, trying to keep his wool cap on. Then he tugged hard at the metal door handle. It didn’t budge. He tried the other then grabbed a thick fallen limb and began to pound at the back passenger window in desperation. Harder, harder, splinters flying. Until finally the glass cracked like a sudden spiderweb, streaking the smooth glass.

  Justin heaved the limb one last time, smashing through the glass and shielding his eyes from the shards. A chunk of glass collapsed in gleaming pieces, scattering the snow-crusted grass and smooth leather seat inside the Ford. Snow and leaves fluttered across the boxes and jackets in the backseat—everything packed for the trip to the Tetons.

  Justin reached through the shattered window opening and dug through Lia’s modest pale blue handbag, catching the side of his arm on a sharp shard of glass. Blood dripped onto the leather seat as he sorted through her hairpins and lipstick, and at last his fingers closed around a colored pencil.

  A prayer of hope rose inside him like a shout, filling him with a strange calm. Organic and unexpected, like prayers and God-clinging had become a second skin in this short year and a half.

  A far cry from the rebellious and heart-angry soul who’d plowed his car into Reverend Summers.

  Justin drew out the pencil, scratching another gash on his forearm against the broken glass, and scrawled a note for help and a crude map on one of Lia’s sheets of sketch paper. He anchored the note in place against the back window with handfuls of heavy stones, dug from the fragrant, sandy lake soil.

  Justin wrapped his sleeve around the cuts on his arm, stanching the flow of blood, and lifted his eyes to the snow-filled sky. Bits of white flew faster and faster, shrouding all but the faintest lines of Gannett Peak.

  He tossed the pencil and sketch pad back into the car, and something caught his eye: a bit of dusty fabric that made him do a double take. That familiar bleached blue with fraying edging.

  His CCC bandanna, folded carefully around a framed photo of her father. His black-and-white smile so tender Justin felt he could almost reach out and touch it. Loopy words in dark ink lined the corner of the photo—a note to Lia?

  Justin stood there a moment, shivering and holding his sleeve against his bleeding forearm. Whistling wind fluttered Lia’s sketchbook pages and hairpins across the floorboard of the car, rattling the chocolate-brown ribbon on her hat. Sending it scudding across the seat and bending the brim.

  Justin reached back through the broken glass and began gently tucking Lia’s handbag, hat, and gloves under Cynthia’s silk scarf along with her wilting flowers. But letting his palm linger just a second on the worn finger of Lia’s white glove, he changed his mind and stuffed both gloves in his breast pocket.

  Snow poured down in heavy gusts, spitting ice and laying white in the hollows of fallen limbs and thick pine branches as Justin broke into a run toward the ridge overlooking the lake. Frankie’s map branched off from the trail the Fremont guys had started to clear-cut for a trail a few weeks ago, still closed off with a rough pine-
log gate.

  Frankie had really done it this time. Besides the snow, the wooded slopes beyond the gate hid wolves. Wolves normally tended to avoid humans, slipping through shadows in graceful silver whispers. But with all the new towns encroaching into what had once been wilderness, new roads hacked into dense stands of virgin timber, sometimes the wolves became desperate.

  The mountain slopes also harbored grizzlies. One of which could tear a man to pieces in minutes.

  Justin ran the length of the lake until he felt his legs and lungs would give out, his boots hanging heavy on his feet. Mile after mile, wind stinging his face in snowy blasts. He stumbled over downed branches and hidden ridges in the snowy grass. When he came to the gate, he paused just long enough to catch his breath—bending over double—and then hopped the gate and took off through the trail, its dense carpet of Ponderosa pine needles now damp with snow. Eerie quiet closed in around him as snow-painted pines and junipers towered around him, closing him in until he could no longer see the lake. Leaving nothing but an angry patch of gray sky brooding overhead through the wind-trembling limbs.

  A gust of wind whistled past him, nearly knocking him over, and tugged at the leather strap of his backpack. Reminding him of the ribbon on Lia’s hat, ruffling from wind through the broken car window. Snow dusting its brim.

  The coiled brown ribbon like a curl of her hair twisted shyly around her finger.

  And he pushed his way deeper into the forest.

  Chapter 7

  The rough trail wound upward through the woods, tracking so steeply at times that Justin had to crawl on his hands and knees over rocks and boulders, muddying his hands. White and yellow cinquefoil bloomed along the trail in open spots, frozen in beads of sleet. Sagebrush and shrubs grew so thickly in several places that Justin could barely find the trail.

  Dense stands of pines and Douglas firs closed around the trail, blotting out the meadow patches and making a gloomy canopy. Evening fell, a dusky coyote gray, and sleet came mixed in the snow in stinging squalls. Wind screamed through the pines and across the exposed rock ridges like an angry wildcat as Justin stopped to catch his breath.

  He shouted again for Frankie but heard only the whistle of wind.

  In the dim half light of a stormy sky, Justin huddled in a space between two fir trees. He unfolded Frankie’s map and held it tight as wind snatched at corners.

  The script hooked and looped in fine black lines, as if written in quill pen, and a few spatters of ink dotted the margin. A corner of the yellow paper crumbled in his fingers, brittle thin. Justin turned the paper over, wondering for the first time if Frankie was right—and the letter was authentic.

  Either way, Frankie was an idiot for leading a bunch of girls up into the mountains in September.

  Justin stuffed the letter in his pocket and followed the trail up the side of the ridge, breaking off a thick pine limb in case a grizzly got a whiff of him—or his backpack. Not that it would do much good anyhow against five hundred pounds of angry bear.

  Justin made his way around a bend by a raging stream, its banks white with rapids and snow-clogged mosses, and shouted until his voice felt hoarse. Exhausted and not sure where to go next. He leaned, shivering, against a sturdy whitebark pine to rest, praying that he wouldn’t be too late—that God would hold off the snow and the bears, and help him find his way through the thick maze of darkening trunks and heavy fringes of silent pine.

  Seeking the lost—is that not what Jesus Himself had done when He left behind the ninety-nine good souls for hard-hearted fellows like Justin? Calling out for the lost sheep in the storm, and giving His very life to bring it home, safely tucked under His nail-scarred hands?

  Just like Reverend Summers, laying down His life for the likes of Justin Fairbanks.

  For even if he had lived, Justin knew the reverend would have loved him. Would have forgiven him, even there, covered in blood and broken glass. Ever hoping, ever praying, for the light to shine on the dull walls of Justin’s dark heart.

  He could still see it: the reverend’s last struggling breaths as his life bled out. The shock in his wide eyes, and the startled recognition as they came to rest on Justin’s face while Justin stumbled toward him, lurching sideways in a drunken haze as he tried to pull open the reverend’s smashed car door. The stuck car horn shrieking in strident fury.

  Justin remembered the hot scald of tears that had poured down his senseless face as his alcohol-leaden mind tried to take it all in, blubbering nonsensical words. And the reverend lifted one trembling hand and rested it—in inconceivable gentleness—on Justin’s bruised and bloody head.

  And let it fall there, lifeless. Limp. The warmth bleeding out of his fingers in the stiff rainfall.

  “You’re a good fellow,” he’d said to Justin that day across the table, heaping strawberry jam on his biscuit.

  Justin had stumbled away from the reverend’s battered Buick and crawled back into the steaming, glass-strewn wreck of his father’s Model T in a sobbing mess, trying to rev the gas in a vain attempt to flee. To forget. To force open his swollen eyes and pretend the whole thing had never happened. He careened sideways into a storefront and heard the vicious tearing of metal. Crushing weight on his arms, his feet. His consciousness fading like a falling curtain.

  Shouts. The scream of a police siren. Brilliant lights and blinding pain …

  “Frankie!” Justin cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled again, praying with all his heart that he could find the reverend’s daughter before it was too late.

  Something rattled the leaves near the trail, breaking a branch. Justin stiffened and jerked his head up in the gloom, clenching his cold-stiff hands against the bracing gusts.

  A noise like a voice and then silence.

  And then he heard it over the wind: a crash of twisted underbrush. Snapping twigs and heavy footfalls, and the sound of tearing leaves. Faster, faster.

  Justin raised his pine limb and whirled around, ready to beat off a coiled mountain lion or tooth-bared wolf. The shadow came faster than Justin could think—and he swung—almost whacking the daylights out of a shadowy figure.

  “Don’t shoot!” came a familiar whiny voice, shrill with terror. Cringing and cowering. Covering his head with skinny arms.

  Justin did a double take, nearly dropping the branch. He reached out with one hand, grabbing the guy’s shirt collar in a tight wad and jerking him closer. The last bit of remaining daylight falling, low and dark, on the thin lines of Frankie White’s pale, terrified face.

  Frankie’s purple lips shuddered and stammered with cold.

  “Frankie Stinkin’ White,” Justin hollered over the wind, rattling him back and forth. “Did you bring them up here? Where are they?”

  And Frankie began to nod and bawl, pointing up through the woods.

  Justin drew back his other arm in a clenched fist, ready to knock Frankie’s teeth into the nearest clump of cinquefoils.

  In the shadowy darkness under the pine branches and stormy sky, Justin caught a faint glint of muted light on Frankie’s face. The terrified whites of his eyes, and tears streaking down his pale cheeks.

  Justin’s heart raced, adrenaline pounding, but for some inexplicable reason his fist wavered. His fingers loosened, and he slowly lowered his arm.

  He gave Frankie a shove, releasing his collar. “I oughtta pound you to kingdom come!” he shouted over the blustery gusts, his fingers still curled tightly shut. Not entirely sure if he’d decided not to sock Frankie. “You outta your ever-lovin’ mind? What in the name a goodness were you thinkin’?” He surveyed Frankie’s dirty, stained summer shirt and trousers and his flimsy leather loafers. “And dressed like some sorta ballroom dance boy at that?”

  Frankie didn’t reply, his skinny shoulders shuddering with sobs.

  “Answer me!” Justin grabbed his shoulders and shook him again. “Where are they?”

  “I didn’t know it was gonna snow,” Frankie blubbered, wiping his face with dirty fingers. �
��Honest, I didn’t.”

  “Course you didn’t! You ain’t been here long enough to know anything about Wyoming. You’re a city boy!”

  Justin’s heart pulsed in an odd sort of pity at Frankie’s dirty, torn shirt and muddy shoes. One pant leg wet from apparently misstepping in a creek or something—and the shoe squished when he moved. The sole had come loose on the other, which had obviously been re-glued several times and patched with cardboard.

  “My ma’s gonna kill me.” Justin had to lean closer to make out Frankie’s words through wimpish sniffles. “Lieutenant’s gonna send me home, and we’ll lose the house. We’ll be on the streets.” He doubled over, arms wrapped around himself as he shivered, gasping back sobs. “I know it’s my fault. I’m such a stupidhead. My brothers and sis ain’t gonna have nothin’ to eat, and it’s all my doin’. My brother’s sick, too, and they can’t pay for a doc without my paycheck.”

  Frankie moaned, burying his head in his arms. “I thought I could do this job okay, but I ain’t. I’m gonna be back in Ohio again, doin’ nothin’ while my brother dies.”

  He sobbed again then abruptly kicked a tree in anger. Making him howl louder.

  “Frankie.” Justin grabbed his shoulder, trying to pull him away from the tree as he kicked again wildly and then tried to ram it headfirst. “Get a hold of yourself, for Pete’s sake! Cut it out!”

  “I can’t face ’em!” Frankie’s voice strained with tears. “I’m done for.”

  “Lieutenant ain’t gonna send you home.” Justin jerked him still.

  “Oh yes he is! He said if I so much as screw up one step on this hike, he’d can my tail first thing in the mornin’. Charlie bailed like I thought he would, and once the rest of us got lost, I didn’t know what to do.”

  Frankie tried to head-butt the tree again, letting out a roar of grief, and Justin grabbed him, wrestling him to a halt and slapping his cheeks. “Pull yourself together, fella!” He stuck his face close to Frankie’s. “We’ve gotta get the others, and you’re gonna help me. You know where you left ’em?”