Greene tilted the broad brim of his hat back and peered into Mitch’s eyes. “I heard you’re ordering yourself a pretty young thing from back East.”
The same warmth that always hit Mitch’s cheeks whenever anyone mentioned Gemma came back to him once more. “Ah, yes, she’s coming in today.”
Greene’s lopsided smile showed off his wide teeth. “Well, now, that’s something. Maybe I should order myself a lady love.”
The hairs on the back of Mitch’s neck stood up a bit. It was something about the tone of Greene’s words, though Mitch couldn’t quite say just what that tone was.
“We best be going,” he said, “The stagecoach is coming in soon.”
Nodding their goodbyes, Mitch and Beau retrieved their horses and set back down the bone-dry road.
“They might have moved on,” Beau said out loud as they turned out onto the main road into town.
Mitchell shot him a sharp look. He was no fool. Beau wasn’t the kind of man who let his guard down, which meant he wasn’t about to be optimistic just for the fun of it. Likely, he was only trying to help bring Mitch some peace.
But peace and calm were a long way away. Momentarily leaving behind the cattle issues as he rode into town, the other pressing situation took up residence in his mind.
With each clop of Lady’s hooves, Mitch’s palms became clammier and his heart beat faster. Just like at Greene’s, she took charge on the familiar street and brought Mitch to the front of the hotel.
Sliding down her side, he took a nervous look up and down the street. There were no signs of the weekly stagecoach, though it could have come in a bit early and the travelers could have already dispersed. Making his way across the creaking boardwalk, he peered through the hotel restaurant’s window. The owner’s wife roved around, scrubbing busily at the tabletops, while old Mr. Galloway sipped on a glass of milk. Not much happening there.
Beau stood with one leg on a step, studying the shadows in the street. “I guess I’ll go on and put those orders in for ropes. Stagecoach should be here any time.”
“Uh-huh,” Mitch answered with a dry mouth. He was sweating even more now, if that was even possible, and it had nothing to do with the fierce heat.
Beau took off down the road, headed for the general store at the other edge of town. Mitchell stayed where he was, watching the Eastern horizon between the buildings. Would Gemma recognize him from the photograph he’d sent her? It was five years old, one of the ones his parents had taken only a few months before they died, but it was from the only collection he had. He’d wanted to show Gemma that he was standard in all regards. He’d realized his expression in it had been somewhat stern, but there had been nothing to do about that.
A few minutes crept by. Mitchell walked up and down the boardwalk, his boots making unnerving echoing sounds. He took his hat off, fanned himself with it, and put it back on.
More walking. More fanning and looking down the street. Still no signs of the stagecoach. The driver, Uli, was fairly good at arriving on time, but every once in a while, something could delay him.
Mitchell was just about to go into the hotel to check the time when he got that familiar feeling of being watched. It was like being poked between the shoulder blades. Slowly turning on his heel, he found a man sitting on the hotel’s steps, a glass bottle of amber liquid in his hand, his tattered hat askew.
“You look like you’re waiting for someone,” the man simply said.
“The stagecoach,” Mitchell, just as simply, replied.
What was the man’s name? Folsom? Ketcher? No. Fletcher. He’d come into Shallow Springs no more than a month before. He got by performing random handy jobs and spent most nights camping out under the stars. Mitch had heard that when the weather was bad, the sheriff let him hunker down in the old shed behind the jail. He’d also heard Waters had offered him a position as a ranch hand, but Fletcher had turned it down, stating that he preferred to live a life untethered to a job.
Fletcher took a long drink of his poison of choice—whatever it was. “That usually arrives about now, don’t it?”
Mitchell ran this thumb along the brim of his hat and nodded. “Yes, sir.” He tried to ignore the gnawing feeling in his gut. Likely, the stagecoach was just running late. Another hour or less and it would be in.
But then, Beau arrived from the general store and the frown on his face told Mitch otherwise.
“What is it?” Mitch asked, jumping down to street level.
The two or three seconds before Beau answered became the longest ones ever. “I just talked to Duff. He said Uli was skipping his Carson Gorge stop, on account of the town being shut down from that fire they had.”
Mitchell’s ears pounded. “And that means...”
Beau rubbed the scruff on his jaw. “The stagecoach should have been here six hours ago.”
9
9. Gemma
Chapter Nine
It was the most horrible cracking sound Gemma had ever heard. The stagecoach bounced, sending her and the other three passengers flying toward the ceiling. Gemma’s hands were a blind mess, scrambling to grab hold of anything they could. The woman next to her shrieked in terror.
“Whoa! Whoa!” came the shouts of the driver.
The stagecoach came to a stop, the side Gemma was on tilted steeply toward the ground. The ladies gasped and made general sounds of distress while the one gentleman—Gemma thought she remembered his name as Mr. Byrne—clutched his hat and shrieked out a word Gemma had been taught to never say.
Nearly pushed against the window anyway, thanks to the new angle of the couch, Gemma had no difficulty seeing the driver. Jumping to the ground, he bent down and inspected a front wheel. Head-shaking and spitting into the dirt quickly followed.
“What is going on out there?” Mr. Byrne called, sounding indignant.
“Broken wheel,” the driver called back in an accent that Gemma didn’t recognize.
Next to Gemma, the young Baltimore lady going to retrieve her aunt from Shallow Springs pressed hard against her side. Already, not moving made the air in the cabin stifling and unbearable. After what felt like endless hours of being in the stagecoach, Gemma could no longer take it.
With great difficultly, she pushed the door open and half-stepped, half-tumbled onto the ground. Nearly tripping over the hem of her draped skirts, she finally managed to gather her dress and straighten her posture.
“A broken wheel?” she cried. “But we’re so close!”
“Three miles,” the driver confirmed. “Or four.”
Behind her, the other passengers exited the stagecoach as well, each one expressing their own specific form of dismay.
“Goodness,” Mr. Byrne rumbled, getting his first look at the shattered wheel. Somehow, the outside of the wheel had cracked despite the steel covering. One of the spokes was also broken in half, jagged pieces from the two sides of the tear reaching out for the other ones.
The driver dropped his hat on the ground and wiped his forehead. “I can fix, but will take a while,” he said in broken English.
“How long?” Mr. Byrne questioned, already taking off his jacket and rolling up his sleeves.
He shrugged. “A few hours, perhaps. Or more.”
The other two ladies had retreated to the shade of a nearby tree, settling on a rock to fan themselves. Gemma turned away from the group surrounding her and looked westward. The mountain range covered the horizon, more tantalizingly beautiful than she could have ever imagined. Having left her hat in the stagecoach, she shielded her eyes with her hand and gazed into the far distance. Between her and the mountains, swaths of varying green covered the land. Though she couldn’t see it from where she stood, Shallow Springs was nearby.
A few hours.
How could she possibly wait that long? After years of dreaming of the West, months of terror being engaged to William Picoult, and days of tiresome traveling, she was finally so terribly close to what it all came down to. And yet, she was still three m
iles off.
“It’s not that far,” she announced to no one in particular.
The driver grunted. “In this heat? Oh, it’s very far.”
Gemma crossed her arms and went to the shade the other women were still in. Unable to sit like them, she paced back and forth, her nerves becoming more compressed with each minute. Nearby, the men struggled and grunted over the stagecoach, hammering a fresh piece of iron onto the wheel. It stayed on for only a moment before falling onto the ground.
The driver shook his head. “I will have to shape it better. I need a flat rock.”
The other man got up to look for one. Gemma pressed her arms even tighter against her chest and ground her teeth together. They were already running late, on account of the coach having gotten into Lincoln the morning after it was supposed to. Gemma had ended up having to stay a night at a hotel in Lincoln instead of continuing straight on to Shallow Springs. At this point, each part of her body was shaking with so much anticipation, she was liable to faint.
“We can walk!” she announced, waving her arms through the air.
Everyone silently looked at her. Gemma wasn’t used to speaking out of place. She might have resented the endless etiquette lessons her mother sent her to, but that didn’t mean the curriculum hadn’t been drilled into her.
Still, out here in another land, the rules from New York didn’t seem to apply. She’d been compelled to speak her mind, and so she had—even though no one else seemed happy about it.
“Walk?” gasped Mrs. Byrne. “Who knows what’s on that road?”
“The lady is right,” the driver nodded. “It’s best to wait here.”
Gemma chewed on her lip. If progress on the wheel had seemed to be swift, then she might have listened to him. But it wasn’t. The cracked wood was a horrible sight, and she didn’t see how they were going to make the stagecoach roll again with nothing more than a piece of scrap metal.
“I think I shall walk,” she evenly said, going to the stagecoach and seizing her carpetbag. Luckily, it was right on top, and with the way the coach was leaned to the side, fairly easy to slip out from under the ropes.
“It’s a bad idea, young one,” the driver warned.
Mr. Byrne wiped his hands on his pants and gave Gemma a serious look. “It’s best we wait here, Gemma.”
“It’s only a few miles. He said so.”
Mr. Byrne’s mouth drew into a tight line. He looked like he was about to bring forth a reformed argument, but Gemma would have none of it. Three miles was nothing. She’d walked that all the time in New York, going with a chaperone across the park to see Abigail or to a show downtown.
“I am quite used to walking.” Not wanting for a response from anyone, she turned and lifted her chin. “When I get to town, I will send someone to come back with help.”
The driver narrowed his eyes at her, either squinting from the sun or showing disdain. Gemma couldn’t tell. “We don’t need that, girlie. We have horses right here.” He waved his hand at the two beasts harnessed to the stagecoach. “I told you, this will be all finished soon.”
“Still, I would really rather walk. After all that time traveling, I feel I must stretch my legs and absorb some sunlight.”
He shrugged and looked away. “As you wish.”
Gemma set off, following the narrow road past an area covered with bushes and through a field with tall, waving grasses. With each step, she felt better about her decision. Being free in Wyoming Territory was a thousand times better than being contained in New York. The park there would never beat the broad skies and colorful landscape of the West.
As she walked, a hum started in her throat and emerged from her lips unchecked. Again and again, Gemma hummed the same refrain. No one told her to be quiet. No one looked at her as if she were a nuisance. It was the first time in her life that she had gone out on a walk and found herself completely alone.
The road went up slightly, revealing a new view. There, far away, but real all the same, was the outline of a small town. Gemma’s breath caught in her throat and her feet skidded to a halt.
Shallow Springs. There it was: her new home. It seemed even smaller than she had expected, but no matter. It wasn’t New York and it didn’t have William Picoult in it.
A new pep in her step, she carried on once more. No sooner had she gone several steps, though, than a rustling came from some nearby bushes.
Gemma halted and cocked her head, listening for more. The rustling came again, louder this time. Fear gripped her soul. For the first time, she questioned walking off into the Wyoming wilderness by herself. Back in New York, she knew all the dangers to look out for: pickpockets, holes one could trip on in the streets, lecherous men prying on unaccompanied girls. But in Wyoming, she didn’t know the first thing to expect, other than what she’d read about in dime westerns.
But were savage Indians, rattlesnakes, and old mining holes any real danger in the place she was?
Something shuffled along the ground, making heavy footsteps. Gemma clutched her carpetbag to her chest and took a step back.
Run, she told herself.
Springing onto the balls of her feet, she prepared to catapult herself in the direction of town. Right before she did, though, a creature the size of a dog appeared from the bushes.
Gemma gasped. The little wobbly-kneed creature gazed back at her, its ears and nose twitching with curiosity. A moose calf!
She’d seen a drawing of one before, in her father’s encyclopedia of Earth’s creatures, but she never thought catching sight of one in person would be so delightful. All fear dissipated, Gemma bent low and extended her hand to the babe.
“Hello,” she cooed. “Don’t be afraid. You can come here.”
It took a tentative step, then another. Gemma bit back the joyful laughter bubbling in her throat, afraid that if she made any noise, she’d scare the calf away.
“You are beautiful,” she said. The animal didn’t understand, of course, but that didn’t stop Gemma from wanting to repeat the words over and over again. The calf was beautiful! This land was beautiful! Wyoming was quickly turning into a dream come true and she wanted all to know about it.
The calf began taking another step, but paused with its hoof mid-air. It cocked its head to the side and blinked fast.
Gemma shuffled closer. She had a heel of bread in her bag from lunch and she wanted to retrieve it, but wasn’t sure what the calf would think of any quick movements. “It’s quite all right,” she whispered. “Are you hungry?”
A crashing sounded, the sound of multiple branches and twigs being torn asunder. Gemma snapped up to standing just in time to see an adult moose, its ears laid flat back, advancing on her.
10
10. Mitchell
Chapter Ten
Mitchell could feel the muscles of his jaw tensing up, his shoulders squaring, and his eyes burning as he stared down the hot landscape. Six hours late.
He couldn’t stop thinking—worrying—about Gemma and the stagecoach she was on. There were some standard reasons for why they might have been late to Shallow Springs, but those weren’t the reasons on Mitchell’s mind. All he could think about was some terrible catastrophe happening: the stagecoach being attacked by bandits, a snake spooking one of the horses and sending the whole party into a deep ravine. His mind could go on and on when it came to the matter.
He knew he wasn’t being paranoid, though, and that was thanks to Beau having suggested they ride east a bit to see if they could catch sight of the missing party.
“There,” Beau suddenly said, leaning forward in his saddle. “What’s that, there?”
They’d only made it a few miles so far and were coming up on the fields that spread out above the river. Mitch set his eyes on what Beau was pointing at. Right away, anxiety plowed through him. It was a young woman, but she wasn’t alone. A female moose was less than a couple yards away, aggressively advancing with its head down and its ears back.
A sharp hiss escaped Mitch
ell as he put Lady into action. Her shoes collided with the dirt, carrying Mitch across the field at a pace that was faster than any he’d ever taken her. Mitch didn’t even have time to think; it was all happening so quick. The moose tossed her head, shaking it around like she’d gone mad, while the young woman clutched the bag in her hands to her chest.
“Here!” Mitchell yelled, taking Lady into a curve right between the beast and the woman. The young lady’s eyes snapped onto Mitchell, taking in his extended hand.
Just take it, he prayed. There was no time for hesitation. The moose would charge at any second.
Her Western Heart (Seeing Ranch series) (A Western Historical Romance Book) Page 6