Blue Dalton

by Tara Janzen

“Stay,” she hissed, pushing him back down. Trapper groaned but settled in beside her. “Good boy.”

  Tomorrow, Blue. Plan for tomorrow, don’t think about tonight. She pushed and shoved her coat into a pillow and nestled her head into its downy comfort. Two deep breaths later her pulse began to slow, and the weariness she’d battled all day finally began to win. Tomorrow you find your future, your fortune . . . Walker can . . . who cares what he does? Think of Lacey’s Lode, of old sterling falling through your fingers, all yours, of stones brighter than the sky above, of metal worked into beauty and matrix shot through with rich turquoise . . . a treasure hoard hidden in the Sweet Mary by renegades on the run, a treasure found by your father and willed to you . . .

  Walker watched the last flame flicker and die in the growing darkness of the fire ring. He scooped the accumulated snow off his thigh and squeezed it into a soft, malleable shape. Spring snow, he thought. She could run in the morning—he was going to let her run—but she couldn’t hide her tracks, not in the wet stuff Mother Nature had laid on the country.

  She’d had plenty of chances to tell the truth, to let him in on the deal, and she’d decided to go it alone. He dropped the snow onto the ground and stood up. She could have it her way, until he caught her with Lacey’s Lode in her hands.

  He walked back to the tent and let himself inside. The first thing he did was slip out of his boots and slip into his sleeping bag. The second was to look her dog straight in the eyes and say, “Move.” He liked dogs as well as the next person, but he didn’t fancy sleeping next to a wet one.

  When Trapper had found a spot at the bottom of the sleeping bags, Walker rolled onto his side and pulled Blue close. She made a minimum of fuss and actually snuggled up closer, convincing him she was sleeping like a baby. He kept one arm around her middle. He didn’t care if she took off in the morning; he just wanted to make damn sure he knew when she left.

  Later, much later in the night, he woke to find the tables turned. He was flat on his back, and she had him pinned to the floor. Her head rested in the nook of his shoulder, her soft breaths sighing across his neck. He lay quietly for a long time, holding her and listening to the tent walls quiver in the wind. The silence closer to the ground told him how far up the snow had drifted. The drop in temperature and the shadows rippling across the front of the tent told him the sky had cleared, leaving the full moon free to shine down through the trees.

  Ah, Blue, he thought on a deep breath, closing his eyes. What am I going to do about you?

  * * *

  Waking to an internal alarm, Blue slowly opened her eyes and took careful stock of her surroundings. The faint light of dawn revealed a large bundle of white fur curled up against the inside curve of her legs. Trapper. She started to reach for him, then found she couldn’t move. She turned her head and peeked over the edge of her sleeping bag to where Trapper was supposed to be, and instead saw Walker Evans pressed along the full length of her body from above her head to well past her feet. Mostly she saw his shoulder, but she heard his deep, even breaths filling the quietness, and she felt the warmth of him surrounding her, especially in the strong, muscled arm thrown across her middle. She was trapped.

  She pondered the problem for a minute: the logistics, her chances of escaping unnoticed, and the improprieties. They weren’t supposed to have gotten this close to each other. Even with two layers of sleeping bag between them, she felt the possessiveness in the angle of his body wrapped half around her. She didn’t doubt that he’d corralled her on purpose. Trapper wouldn’t have disobeyed a “stay” command unless it had been recanted. Regardless, she had to get out of the tent. Easing one arm up to her neck, she slid the zipper down to her knees.

  Walker heard the hushed sound and decided to make things simple for her. With a soft groan he rolled away from her over to the far side of the tent, giving her all the room she needed to run out on him.

  Blue held her breath and shot a wary glance at his back. Seconds later she quietly scrambled out of the tent, taking her sleeping bag with her.

  The morning was still dark, with only the barest traces of dawn reflecting above the mountains. She didn’t waste time starting a fire or fixing breakfast, and probably broke a record stuffing her sleeping bag and tying it onto her backpack. Every step she took would be frozen in the snow pack, an undisguised trail. Her only advantage was time. She had to get in and get out before he caught up with her—finder’s keeper’s.

  Silently gesturing to Trapper to follow, she hefted her pack to her back and struck out on the straightest line to Bays Back Ridge, the gray pinnacle of rock backlit by the rising sun in the east.

  Walker took his time waking up. He’d accurately predicted her first move of the day, and he didn’t doubt his ability to go on staying one step ahead of her even if he was an hour behind her.

  But it took him less than an hour to fill his thermos with hot coffee, down a triple bowl of instant oatmeal, and break camp. And it didn’t take any time at all to find her trail.

  He kept up a steady, even pace throughout the morning, his strides eating up two of hers with each step. She didn’t have a chance, but she didn’t seem to be aware of that particular fact. She was melting into the forest almost faster than he could keep up—almost, but not quite.

  He followed her tracks to the edge of a meadow and stopped where she’d scuffed the snow. He knelt with one knee on the ground and pushed his hat to the back of his head. His fingers gently lifted the low raspberry branch that had caught his eye. Tufts of white hair clung to the thorns. A canine print was pressed into the snow below the bush. He grunted in satisfaction. The dog was holding up.

  His gaze lifted past the raspberry patch to the conifers darkening the ground with morning shadows. Beyond the trees the peaks of the Rawahs cut a jagged line across the sky.

  “Where’s she taking you, Trapper?” he murmured under his breath, searching the hills, wondering if they’d both be camping out in the snow again tonight. He rose from his kneeling position and brushed the snow off his knee. He could easily catch her before nightfall, but it wouldn’t do him much good. She needed to be free. She needed to lead him to Lacey’s Lode before he confronted her.

  Walker settled his hat lower on his head and took up her trail again, not at all sure what he was going to do when he caught her with the goods. Fighting hadn’t gotten him anywhere, and he doubted if reason would either. But one thing he did know, he wasn’t going to let her get away with it all. In truth, he didn’t think he was going to let the lady getaway, period.

  In mid-afternoon he found himself pacing back and forth through a glade of budding aspens, stopping every couple of steps to check the ground. The melting snow had made a mess of her tracks, but she’d obviously changed her mind about her direction when she’d reached the glen, or maybe she’d made a mistake. Stranger things had been known to happen, but he doubted if they happened to her very often.

  More likely, she’d deliberately tracked in and out of the trees to throw him off. Well, she’d have to do better than that to lose him.

  Dammit, Blue. He knelt again, found nothing, and moved on. A half an hour later he picked up her trail, his mood sorely deteriorated. Anger lengthened his strides, anger and determination. He’d fooled around with her long enough.

  * * *

  Blue stood at the crest of the ridge, thirty feet below the pinnacle, scanning the downside of the northern slope. The weather had been working against her all day and was having the last laugh. The slight melt of the afternoon had frozen up with the setting sun, turning the scree slope into an ice field. If she’d had it all to do over again, she’d have waited until summer. Who knew how much better things might have gone in July instead of April? Maybe O’Keefe wouldn’t have caught up with her, and without O’Keefe there wouldn’t have been any tracker named Walker Evans pushing her past sensible limits.

  But he was back there, and she was only forty paces away from her fortune. She looked down the mountain again and took
a deep breath. She’d have to carry her pack with her, because she doubted if she’d be able to climb back up.

  Forty paces into nowhere. There’s nothing there. She visually traced a path across the mountain, following a line up to the base of the pinnacle. Then she saw it, a row of crystalline quartz jammed under a flat sheet of shale, the black-and-gray-flecked white chunks almost imperceptible in the snow. They didn’t belong on the north side of Bays Back Ridge, and Mother Nature never arranged her playing pieces that neatly.

  Excitement, sweet and pure, shot through her, shortening her breath. Lacey’s Lode. She tightened the hip strap on her pack, pulling it snug. “Don’t follow me, Trapper.” She pointed to an easier slope to her right and snapped her fingers. “That way, boy. Go on. Git. I’ll meet you at the bottom.”

  The dog whined, picking up on the agitation in her voice. His paws danced a pattern in the snow, but Blue didn’t bother to erase the marks. By the time Walker got to the ridge, she’d be long gone.

  Trapper took two steps and stopped, looking back at her.

  “Go on. I’ll be fine.” She urged him forward with a sweep of her hand.

  He finally obeyed, almost. He took off, but in the wrong direction, disappearing over the back of the ridge. Blue didn’t blame him. He’d chosen the easiest route to the bottom of the hill—the longest, but the easiest. She wasn’t worried about him finding his way; shepherds didn’t know the meaning of the word lost.

  And she didn’t want to dwell on the meaning of the word clearheaded, doubting if it applied to her in her current situation. The rocks shifted beneath her feet without any added movement on her part.

  Fortifying herself with a long breath, she eased herself off the ridge and onto the scree, keeping her knees bent and her weight angled into the mountain. She slipped once and caught herself. Then she took a second step.

  * * *

  Walker slipped in the gully, caught himself, swore vehemently, and kept going. He’d decided what he was going to do with her, and it started with a good verbal thrashing. Bays Back Ridge; he’d figured it out about an hour ago, and his heart hadn’t been quite right since. If the mountain didn’t kill her, he just might. She should have trusted him. They could have gone back for ropes and tackled the scree slope with a measure of safety. Instead she’d gone on alone and was probably lying in a pile at the bottom, broken into a hundred pieces by her own damn stubbornness.

  The image added force to his next steps. He crawled where he had to and walked when he could, mentally cussing her with every step. Near the top of the cut a sharp bark brought his head up. Trapper came around the side of the mountain alone, and a cold shot of fear went through Walker. He lost his footing and slid backward a few feet before he caught himself. He grabbed a handful of jagged rock, but didn’t feel the edge cut into his fingers or the warm blood run into his palm.

  Scrambling faster than made good sense, he double-timed his way up to the top of the ridge. And the closer he came, the more his fear increased.

  * * *

  Blue wedged herself under the slab of shale, swearing at the cold, the unsteady earth beneath her, and the dying sun above. One by one, she dug the chunks of quartz away from their resting places and sent them rolling and bouncing down the slope. The vast silence of the dusk swallowed up the retreating sounds of rock hitting rock. Her hand brushed against something soft, something that didn’t belong in the harsh landscape of snow, earth, and stone.

  She stopped all movement for a second, believing but not believing she’d finally found the stuff of her dreams. Then she slowly ran her fingers over what she couldn’t see: folds of canvas, two leather straps, the cold metal of a buckle. Her chin dropped to her chest, lowered by a rising tide of emotion, a mix of elation and sadness. She’d found Lacey’s Lode; she’d come to the end. She tugged the heavy bundle into the open air and clasped it close to her chest for a long, quiet moment.

  The twilight shadows slipped up her body and washed over the rocks, reminding her of her need for haste. Time enough for looking later, she told herself, but years of anticipation overruled the logic of her thoughts.

  With fingers numb from the cold she unbuckled the straps, promising herself she’d only look once, quickly, then be on her way. If she waited now she’d have to wait longer, until—she didn’t know when. She didn’t know if she’d make camp tonight or try for Walden. She couldn’t think beyond the bundle in her lap. She tried not to think at all about the man behind her. She unwound the straps, visually measuring the encroaching darkness and praying it would hold off long enough to give her one look at her hard-won treasure.

  Parts of the canvas tore as she unfolded the cloth, falling away, rotten and worn. Each of the pieces was individually protected in soft, thin leather, and she would have unwrapped one of them first if something else hadn’t caught her eye—a sheet of paper tucked amid the separate packages.

  Curiosity tinged with a different, special kind of excitement guided her hand in pulling it free. Her fingers shook, making the paper tremble . . . a message from her father. He’d left her a message. He’d believed in her, had believed she’d find Lacey’s Lode. She forced herself to calm down, to keep the paper still long enough to read the words scrawled across the lined sheet.

  But it didn’t take many of the words, four or five at the most, before she realized all of her other mistakes were nothing compared to the one she’d made by believing in her father. Abel had never wanted her to find his damn treasure. He’d never wanted her at all. The letter was to Lacey, to Lacey and the son she’d had by another man, the son who should have been his.

  An icy, mind-paralyzing calmness seeped into her consciousness, and with the greatest of care she rewrapped the bundle, her anger showing only in the extra force she used to tighten the straps. She debated whether or not to shove the damn thing back under the rock and let him find it on his own, then decided against such a churlish reaction. She’d lost; he’d won, fair and square.

  Cradling the package in her lap, she leaned back against the rock and watched the night steal the last light from the sky, and she waited for Walker Evans to come and claim what was his.

  Nine

  “Blue!”

  She heard him call her name from up above on the ridge, but didn’t move to respond in any way. “Blue! Are you hurt?” he hollered again.

  Yes, she was hurt, deep down inside. Damn all men. She’d been right never to trust a one of them. She clutched the canvas bag closer to keep herself from throwing it down the mountain—or worse, ripping it open again and rereading the letter. The son who should have been his, Walker Evans.

  Stifling a groan of pure frustration and anger, she held the package even closer. Her whole life had been a lie. She’d lost and had nowhere to go from here. Everything she’d worked for belonged to him, to the one man who had caught her.

  A small avalanche tumbled down the mountain, skittering by her to the right, preceding his approach. “Dammit it, Dalton! Talk to me!”

  “When hell freezes over,” she muttered, squeezing her eyes closed. Of all of them, he’d proven to be the worst, playing her along, being nice to her, with those damn kisses of his. He hadn’t fooled her, but she’d come close to fooling herself.

  Suddenly she didn’t want to face him, not when she was hurting, not when she’d lost. She started to rise, but he caught her from behind, whirling her around and causing them both to slide another ten feet down the ridge.

  Walker pulled her close, stopping them both more with the force of his will and anger than his balance. Standing below her, he gripped her arms and shook her, shouting in her face. “What in the hell kind of damn fool—you could have—what is it with you? A death wish?”

  “You’re hurting me,” she said through gritted teeth. He had no more claim on her time, and she had no more time for midnight dreams, naive wishes, and memories she couldn’t forget. He didn’t belong to her. Nothing belonged to her.

  “I ought to—I ought to—” He gave
up in frustration and shook her again, once, hard, forcing her to look at him. “You’ve gone too far this time, Blue. Too damn far. You can shoot at me all you want, threaten me with that damn big knife you carry, but if you ever pull a stunt like this again, I’ll chain you to the cabin wall. I swear it.”

  His ultimatum snapped her control. She glared back at him through the deepening twilight. “You’re not my keeper! Nobody tells me—” She struggled to pull her arm free and sent them into another pell-mell slide.

  He didn’t release her as they both scrambled to gain a foothold and went farther down the mountain. Boots slipped on the icy rocks, hands reached for something to hold on to besides each other, but he didn’t let her go. The package she’d been holding made it to the bottom before they did, but neither of them noticed.

  “Dammit, Blue, I’m telling you, and I’m only telling you once.”

  “You’re telling me nothing!” Blue landed on her bottom, her fall cushioned by her sleeping bag and his leg. She fought to gain her release.

  Walker was having none of it. He got to his feet and pulled her up right along with him. He brushed the snow off her, none too gently, all the while maintaining his grip on her arm. “We’re going home. If you’ve still got enough energy to fight when we get there, maybe you are a better man than me. Until then, I want you to head your nose down the trail. We’re not too far from the North Star . . . but I guess you knew that all along.” Damn you, he added silently to himself. Damn you for lying to me, for taking the ridge alone, for not trusting me. And damn you most of all for putting your life in danger when I was right there to help you. “Don’t forget your junk.” He picked up the canvas bundle and shoved it in her arms, his actions and his words heavily laden with the fury he was trying to control.

  Too furious herself to speak, Blue stalked off through the trees, instinctively heading in the right direction. Trapper caught up with them within the first hundred yards, the only one of them too smart to take the ridge.