“Who’s there?”
That was Pop Poole’s voice. And it sounded just as unfriendly now as it had earlier.
“It’s no one, Pop.” There was Catherine, her voice coming from slightly to the side and lower. “Were you dreaming? Go back to sleep.”
Matty turned his head on the pillow and saw movement on the floor. A flash of white. Like the shoulder of a nightdress.
Was Catherine sleeping on the floor? He squinted, but in the darkness, he couldn’t make out if it was her or the older man, but if he had to guess, he believed it was her.
She’d given up her bed for him. If that didn’t give him a kick in the gut.
He could still remember her in the schoolroom. He’d been nine, and she must’ve been around the same age when she’d come shyly in the door, a few minutes after the teacher had called them to order.
All the other children were already seated. Luella was his seatmate that autumn, and her whispered, Look at her dress! was audible, even from across the room.
Pink climbed into Catherine’s cheeks as her eyes darted their way, then quickly to the floor.
He wouldn’t have noticed her dress if Luella hadn’t pointed it out. But once he’d noticed, it was impossible to ignore that it was different from the other girls’ store-bought dresses.
And after a quiet conversation with the teacher, Catherine took a seat next to one of the little kids.
Luella must be right. She was different.
And he was so confident in his place, he wanted to show off for his friends, so he stage-whispered, You think she’s slow or somethin’? That why she’s sitting with the little kids?
Luella and another friend who sat just in front of them tittered, and he earned a rap across his knuckles from the teacher. It was worth it. He was grinning as he returned to his seat.
Until he’d seen the tears sparkling in Catherine’s eyes.
She looked down at her desk quickly, but he saw the swipe of her hand against her cheek.
That had been Monday. On Thursday, he’d come across her alone behind the corner of the school, where she’d been curled in a ball behind the wall of her knees and skirt, her face tearstained. When she’d seen him, she’d scrubbed at her eyes with her hands and left streaks of dirt across her cheeks.
And he’d turned and run away.
Friday, she hadn’t returned to the schoolroom.
He’d been a stupid kid. More so because he’d forgotten about her after a few weeks. And at the end of that winter, his parents had died, and his entire life had been uprooted.
He’d forgotten about Catherine, forgotten to wonder what had happened to her.
Until now.
Now he couldn’t seem to stifle his curiosity. Why did she live out here with no close neighbors and a crotchety grandpop?
His job as deputy had taught him to collect information. He wanted that to be what drove his curiosity, but if he was honest with himself, he knew it was the woman herself.
She was striking. Her pixie features and sharp eyes drew him in somehow.
Why did she cut her hair like that? And wear men’s clothes?
There was a groan. Too deep to have come from Catherine, so it must’ve been her Pop.
“It’s all right, Pop.” Her voice came soft in the darkness.
“Catherine? What’re you doing on the battlefield? It’s too dangerous for you to be here, girl!”
Battlefield? Was the old man dreaming? Matty hadn’t seen any signs of danger around the soddy. There was nothing around, no close neighbors.
“Pop, we’re safe here at home in Wyoming.”
He couldn’t see well in the dark and with his head at the foot of Pop’s bed, and he worked to get his elbow under him, biting back a groan at the lightning shot of pain across his chest.
“Who’s there?”
“Pop—”
“Ssh! Girl, get down. There’s someone out there. He’s close. Where’s my bayonet?”
Something cold slithered down Matt’s spine. Now he sensed danger.
“Dirty Rebs,” Pop growled. “Sneaking and spying at night.”
Rebs. Rebels? As in, Confederate soldiers?
Suddenly it began to make sense to Matty. The old man must be caught in memories of the War Between the States.
Matty went still. He didn’t know if Pop had a weapon.
“There are no soldiers here,” Catherine said softly, calmly. “We’re in the soddy. Home in Bear Creek.”
“We are? Catherine?” Now the old man’s voice had changed, turned weaker.
“Breathe in deep, Pop.” Her voice was almost ethereal in the darkness. “Can you smell the Wyoming air? Smell the pine just outside.”
Matty found himself following her directions. She was right. There was a bite of pine in the brisk air.
“Smell the earth. Did the earth in Georgia smell like this?”
“No.” Pop sighed. “You’re right. We’re at home.”
Matty carefully laid his head back on the pillow, not wanting to rustle around too much. Not wanting to draw Pop’s notice, when she’d done such a good job settling him.
Matty had gotten a small glimpse of what kept her here on the homestead. Her Pop had seemed lucid today, but did he also have episodes during daytime hours?
Was she in danger from her own grandfather?
It didn’t set right with him.
And, not knowing if the old man had a weapon in his possession, it was a long time before Matty got back to sleep.
Chapter Four
Catherine had spent the dark hours of morning tearing out the decimated garden plants so she could replant them later in the day. She’d also mucked out the barn, milked the cow and gathered eggs, all before breakfast.
She was dirty, smelly and tired. The storm had pushed laundry day back in favor of more urgent tasks.
And she still had to deal with the cowboy, who no doubt would make more demands about her returning him to his family.
Which is why she hesitated outside the soddy door, leaning her shoulder against it. She could just rest here for a bit in the silent, peaceful moment.
Was that movement across the creek, in the woods? She squinted against the shadows but couldn’t be sure, even as a fearful tingle crawled up the back of her neck.
She’d caught Ralph Chesterton loitering in the woods two weeks ago and had been unsettled ever since. He’d asked her again to marry him, and she’d turned him down flat.
She couldn’t understand why he continued to ask when she’d fairly run him off her property. Once with a pitchfork. Since that sighting, she’d had the feeling of seeing something out of the corner of her eye. But when she’d turn to look, nothing was there. Maybe she was going mad like her grandfather.
And Pop’s middle-of-the-night spell hadn’t helped her relax any. She was on edge, strung tight as a wire.
But there was no use dawdling anymore. Breakfast needed cooking.
When she kicked open the door, as she was holding three eggs in one hand and the milk pail in the other, she nearly dropped both when she caught sight of the cowboy sitting in the chair, stirring something in the skillet.
“What are you doing?” she asked, her voice sharp.
He glanced up at her, his brown eyes touching her and glancing off. “Cooking breakfast.”
She sniffed, not smelling the charring there would be if he’d burned something. Instead, there was the familiar woodsmoke and the floury scent of biscuits.
Bacon popped and he calmly used the wooden spoon to shift something in the skillet.
Pop sat on his bed, whittling. His face was grim and he kept shooting glances at the cowboy wielding the spoon.
“Are you sure you should be up and about?” She set the pail of milk on the table.
“There’s not much up about sitting here,” he responded with a cheeky smile, but she didn’t miss the white lines around his mouth. It was costing him to sit upright.
“Here.” She put the three
brown eggs into his hand, her fingers brushing against his palm. A tremble zinged up her arm at the touch of skin on skin. She felt his gaze rise to her face but edged away instead of looking at him.
A splash of water from the basin cooled her burning cheeks. She took extra moments patting down her face and hands, drying off, trying to regain her composure.
Why did he affect her so intensely?
He was handsome. But surely it was more than that. It must be that so much time had passed since her last interaction with anyone other than Pop. She didn’t count the marriage proposals from Ralph Chesterton. Mostly, she tried not to think of them.
When she got used to the cowboy’s presence, it would be better. She wouldn’t be so affected.
And then he would leave. And that would be even better.
She got three tin mugs down from the shelf, conscious of how her trousers brushed the cowboy’s knees in the enclosed space.
She heard the series of cracks and the following sizzle as the cowboy must’ve broken the eggs into the skillet. She put the table between them, dipping milk for each cup out of the pail and then perching on a stool.
“I was just telling your Pop about my brothers and how their families have been growing.”
She hadn’t been aware that he had brothers. She remembered him being an only child. Hadn’t he been? He’d been friends with Luella McKeever then; they’d been thick as thieves. Had she just forgotten those details?
She doubted it. Those horrific days were seared into her memory and had been for years. They had been enough to make her quit coming to school.
Looking up, she found him watching her. One corner of his mouth turned up, and all she could remember was him at nine years old, standing shoulder to shoulder with Luella and pointing at her, laughing, because her dress hadn’t been like the other girls’.
Was he still laughing at her now?
She must be different from the other women he was used to. And that wasn’t even counting her parentage. If he knew about that, no doubt he would look down on her even more.
Tearing her eyes away from the cowboy, she averted her gaze to the window, where bright morning sunlight streamed in.
“Do you want to hear about my family?”
She shrugged, figuring it was safer not to say anything, in case he was looking for a way to poke fun at her. Pop had taught her how to track and hunt, how to watch her surroundings for danger.
And family could be a dangerous topic for discussion.
“You probably didn’t know I had brothers,” he said easily, as if she’d answered him. “My parents died when I was ten. Man named Jonas White took me in—only, he already had five other kids. Four adopted sons and a daughter. And then about nine months after I’d come to be a part of the family, two other boys joined us—they were orphans, too.”
She was sorry to hear that his parents had died. That wouldn’t have been long after she’d left school. She could relate to how it felt to lose the person closest to you.
“You always been the only child?”
She startled, realizing he’d asked her a direct question. A quick glance showed he was stirring the pot, not watching her.
“Yes.” Her voice sounded rusty. She realized she hadn’t spoken all morning. She offered no details. Didn’t want him guessing her shame.
“I was, too, up until that point. You can probably imagine it was a shock to me, going from being the only kid at home to having to share everything.” What must that have been like? Growing up, she’d wanted a bigger family. A father at least.
Was he trying to befriend her? Make her feel companionable with him?
Suspicion filled her. What was his motive? Just to make her want to help him get home?
She tensed, still not answering him, still not knowing what the right thing to say was.
After all the years of isolation, she couldn’t imagine having more of a family. She felt Matty’s intrusion acutely, couldn’t be inside the soddy without him being in her space.
And he talked. A lot.
To have seven others…she couldn’t imagine the noise level, couldn’t imagine having that many people close.
Her skin prickled just thinking about it.
*
Matty sensed Catherine’s interest in his words. Why was she being so standoffish?
He gave the scrambled eggs and then the fried potatoes a last stir and grabbed a plate from the shelf above the stove and began filling it.
“Pop?”
The old man grunted what Matty thought must be assent, and Matty passed him the plate. It landed on the table with a thump.
The spoon clinked against the skillet as he worked at filling Catherine’s plate. It didn’t escape his notice that her pants were grubby at the knees and she’d had dirt rubbed into her knuckles before she’d washed up. She’d been in the garden and the pail of milk and eggs told that she’d been working at chores. If he hadn’t cooked up breakfast, would she have come inside and done that, too?
It didn’t seem fair for a young woman alone to be running an entire homestead.
“Catherine?”
She jerked when he said her name, then accepted the plate from him silently.
He worked at piling food on his own plate, and the silence began to grate on him. “Five of my older brothers are married now. Oscar, Edgar and Davy have built their places on the family land—we’ve got a big spread, plenty of room for everyone—Edgar and Davy run cattle with my pa, and Oscar raises cutting horses. Then Ricky lives with his wife on her family’s ranch up north near Sheridan. And my brother Maxwell is married to Hattie. They’re both doctors and split their time between town and the family homestead.”
“Your sister-in-law is a doctor?”
There. There was the interest he’d been waiting for, in her soft-spoken question about Hattie.
“Yep. She trained as a nurse under her father—old Doc Powell—and then went to three years of medical school down in Denver.”
He saw the light of interest in her eyes before her inky lashes came down and hid her gaze from him.
And he felt the stirring of curiosity, as well. “Did your family move away from Bear Creek for a while?”
He wanted to know why she’d disappeared from the classroom without coming right out and asking about it.
“Lived on this very land since 1871,” Pop growled through a mouthful of eggs.
“Oh.”
Then why had she stopped coming to the schoolroom?
“Will your brothers come looking for you?” she asked softly, her fork scraping against the edge of the plate.
“I expect so. I’m not sure they’ll find me this far out. I visited the Samuels family and the Chestertons two days ago, so maybe they’ll follow my tracks.”
Pop harrumphed. “No good Chestertons. They’d better stay out of our business.”
Matty didn’t know the two bachelors well. They’d been courteous enough when he’d checked on them. He could only hope the sheriff or his brothers would find him. He couldn’t stay out here. The isolation, the quiet, was about to drive him crazy, and it had only been one day.
Catherine set her fork down, still silent. Was she upset that he was here, as her grandfather was?
He couldn’t get a read on her, and that was unusual for him, and frustrating. He was an open and honest kind of guy, and most folks responded to that. Not her.
Was it old scars from their childhood that were still between them? He needed her on his side so she could help him get home. He had to find a way to make things right.
*
Catherine had left off clearing the field last night. Half of the ground had been rebroken, the rich brown soil turned up, while the rest bore the signs of the damaging storm, plants beaten into the ground and destroyed. She could finish this plot today, if the weather held and Pop behaved.
She approached the plow she’d left in the field, marking her place, with the mule slightly behind her, tugging its leading rope
when it stubbornly slowed. And saw one person she could’ve done without seeing ever again. Ralph.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded.
He stood with arms crossed. He would’ve been handsome, tall and dark-haired, except for the hard light in his eyes and the unkempt state of his dress. And if she got close enough, the smell of his unwashed body.
His lips opened in what must’ve been supposed to be a grin, showing his crooked teeth, stained brown. “Came to see if you’d had the same damage we had. Looks like ya did.”
“We’re managing.” She hated the way that he looked at her. She always did. From the way his eyes lingered when it would’ve been polite to glance away, to the slight narrowing of his eyes.
She started buckling the mule’s harness, trying to pretend he wasn’t there. He made no move to help her. Just stared.
“Was there something else?” she asked.
He gestured to the field. “It’s a lot of work and just you to do it. Seems like you need a man in the worst way.”
A shudder snaked through her. “I do just fine. And I’ve got a man. Pop.”
“That old geezer ain’t no help to you no more, and you and I both know it.”
She kept her eyes on the buckle, on the movement of her hands at the mule’s flank, though her attention did not waver from the man. From the sidelong glances she sent his way, she could see his posture was relaxed, but she wasn’t fooled. He was a threat.
“You been thinking about the partnership I proposed?”
She knew the partnership he was talking about. Marriage. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of mentioning it aloud.
He stepped closer. “Your big secret don’t matter to me.”
She inhaled sharply at his reminder. He knew about her shame. And wasn’t above trying to use it as leverage, apparently. “I gave you my answer the last time we talked. It’s still no.”
He went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “You lost your crop thanks to the hail. Ain’t no way you’re gonna catch up on all the work you need to do to make it through the winter. We could help each other.”
Love Inspired Historical October 2015 Box Set Page 4