Cheyenne ignored the sinking feeling that she might actually be right about that. “I’ve had an offer of marriage. It’ll get me out of here, and I’m taking it.”
She stormed toward the stairs, going to her room to pack, though she wasn’t going to tell this lot her plans.
“Cheyenne, stop!” Win shouted.
Cheyenne looked back. Only staying because her friend asked her to.
“What offer? Who proposed?”
“I’m surprised you don’t know. I thought he’d’ve told you.”
“Told me? Who do I ever talk to? One of the cowhands here? Some friend of Wyatt’s?”
Cheyenne hadn’t meant to announce it. Hadn’t even decided to do it until she couldn’t stand to be in this house anymore.
“Your pa proposed to me, Win. After he heard I’d lost everything.”
“Pa?” Win looked truly shocked. “He’s too old for you.”
Cheyenne brushed aside her friend’s objection before glancing at Molly and Andy. “I won’t share a home with thieves. I’m leaving first thing in the morning. Tomorrow I’ll accept your pa’s proposal.”
“Calling him ‘your pa’ instead of by his name seems like a real bad sign.” Cheyenne didn’t miss the sarcasm in Molly’s soft voice.
She left the room at a near run and didn’t stop until she slammed her bedroom door. No one came after her, and that was lucky . . . for them. She’d said she was leaving in the morning, but she began stuffing things in a satchel. Planning, thinking, running away. And high time.
Cheyenne spurred her horse. Fighting tears. Furious tears.
And she didn’t let them fall.
She’d sworn long ago to never again let Clovis Hunt make her cry.
Oh, she might’ve gotten carried away a few times, but if she had the control she usually had, there were no tears. And there wouldn’t be any today.
She should have just ridden straight over to the HR and accepted Hawkins’s proposal.
But nightfall was coming. She couldn’t do that now. Even she, a woman who wore men’s britches and worked right alongside the cowhands, couldn’t do something that outrageous.
She didn’t exactly want to go agree to marry him tomorrow, either, but sure as certain she couldn’t do it now.
Because Win’s ranch was west of the RHR, Cheyenne rode east. If she had followed the road past the Hawkins Ranch, it would take her to Bear Claw Pass. Another place she didn’t want to be.
Her horse thundered along. The sky overhead was still light, but the sun neared the edge of the mountain peaks to the west. She took the only real direction that made sense.
North. Into the wild. She knew a fallen oak that she could use to get across the fast-moving river there.
Her heart chose the direction before her mind caught up.
If she could just be alone for a while. Think. Get away from all these blasted, newly discovered relatives.
Get away from being poked in the face every minute of every day by the betrayal of the man who should have been her father.
Not by blood. She had only vague memories of her birth father, though she’d heard so many glowing stories that she felt like she remembered a lot about him. And they had a picture. But he’d never been a real part of her life.
The man who came along next though, Clovis, he stepped into what should have been a father’s place.
Cheyenne’s only vivid memories of a father were him, and she’d despised him. And he’d done the favor of hating her right back, it seemed, though he’d treated her no worse than Ma or Wyatt. She’d never thought his behavior toward her had any special cruelty. He was just a sidewinder of a man, and she’d made a bitter acceptance of the fact that he wasn’t to be escaped.
And then he’d died.
It should have been a happy day to finally get that man out of their lives for good. Instead, he’d found a way to strike a blow of spite from the grave.
And she couldn’t stop the searing pain. The only way to stop the tears was to grab hold of a terrible fury.
Wending her way along a familiar trail, she pulled her horse to a stop. Wyatt would be upset about this. He’d come after her. And he knew her well. He’d come this way eventually.
Because she expected that, she’d brought along a pencil and paper. She took the time to leave him a note where he’d be sure to find it, telling him to leave her alone. She used a knife she’d brought from the house with this purpose in mind—not wanting to give up her own knife—and stabbed the note into a tree.
She rode on, higher . . . slower, deeper into the wild. The mountains rose up in this direction. She had a lot of places she could go, and she wouldn’t choose one. Instead, she’d just wander awhile. A day or two . . . or ten . . . or a hundred. And while she wandered, she’d think. She’d thrown Kevin’s offer of land back in his face. But that was pride and foolishness. Her temper was so crazed that things came out of her mouth she shouldn’t say.
So she’d keep riding until she got herself back under control. She probably should have done this right after they read the will. She might be calmer by now.
An owl hooted in the woods, and the trail closed around her like a cloak. The threat of tears eased. She’d always loved the wilderness. If she lost her home to strangers, then so be it. She’d find another home.
She thought it, but her heart wasn’t ready to accept it yet.
Meandering along, she saw how narrow the trail was getting. Lodgepole pine branches were a ceiling overhead. As she went higher, the branches were low enough that she had to push them aside or duck to avoid them.
Finally, she had to dismount and walk.
Wyatt felt terrible about the situation. Since they were children, they’d talked of the day the land would be theirs. Grandpa had been one to speak of handing down his land. He’d loved what he’d built here and wanted his daughter and his two grandchildren to share that love.
And they had. The four of them, seeing as how Clovis was rarely around, had been a good team.
And they’d talked of adding more land, the good and bad of that. Was the ranch big enough? How much could one family handle? Was there a moral limit to how much they should have? There were plenty of others who wanted to ranch.
Grandpa had been a man of God. He’d insisted they all ride into town for the church meeting on Sundays when the weather allowed. They’d gone in many a Wednesday night for a singing when it wasn’t calving time or branding time or roundup time or wintertime.
She let the darkness ease into her bones. She prayed. Sincerely asked God to forgive her for how badly the pain had twisted her.
Thought of the book of Job and all he’d lost and how he’d never cursed God.
Well, for heaven’s sake, she wasn’t going to curse God. This was none of His fault. Nothing about Clovis Hunt had a thing to do with God.
But her anger.
That was a sin.
And that was why she needed to be alone.
It was branding time, and it didn’t suit her to ride off like this, but she had to be alone until she could go back and accept what life had given her. Or decide if she’d keep going, strike out on her own, find her own home somewhere else.
Or get married.
Oliver didn’t run his ranch beyond hiring cowpokes, but she could. The idea, when she’d had a ranch stolen from her, had a strong appeal.
EIGHT
Could a body be on fire and freeze to death at the same time? Falcon was proving it could, right here and now.
He woke up drowning in icy water, every joint burning with fiery pain.
Only not quite drowning. Not enough to go ahead and do it, and end the fire and the ice.
His head cleared enough that he could breathe before he’d be doused again. At last, he was able to look around and realized his body was hanging in water to his neck. Clawing around, he found a branch hooked into his coat. The water was a blasting stream, and this branch was the only thing keeping him from hurtling along it.
His fingers and feet were dead from the cold. Twisting to figure out where he was, he saw he’d been slammed up against a whole tree that included this branch.
A tree that would let him crawl out of the water if he could just break free without plunging on downstream.
He reached overhead and slung an arm around the trunk of the tree. He lifted his whole body up, fighting water that seemed angry about his escape.
With a grunt of pain, he managed to throw a leg over the trunk, drag himself far enough out that his weight was on the tree and not depending only on his battered, freezing arms.
He hung there, upside down, his arms and legs wrapped around that trunk, as useless and heavy as a sack of drowned possum hides, gasping for breath, trying to find another burst of strength. With a huge effort, he yanked his coat free of the branch, then dragged himself up and over the trunk and belly-flopped on top of it.
He lay there, choking some water out of his chest, and slowly getting the worst of the brutal cold out of his fingers, till he could rub them together and feel them.
As the worst of the pain from the drowning and cold eased, he could focus on the fiery part of his misery. His head was ablaze.
He reached up and back until he touched a raw spot. A long tender stripe along the base of his skull.
Where had that come from? He looked around, studied the water racing below him. Had he scratched his head somehow?
Been clobbered by a rock?
Most likely something of the sort.
He lifted his head, aware of something bothering him more than the cut on his head. More than drowning. More than the terrible chill and the terrible pain.
He couldn’t touch on it for some reason, but it was there, and it’d come to him. For now, one step at a time, he’d get himself out of this mess and track down the why of it later.
Edging along the trunk, he reached the muddy bank and kept right on crawling until he was on dry land.
As he stood, he looked around and saw woods and mountains. That hollered home and safety for some reason. And he felt sure it was important for him to find safety. He just wasn’t sure why.
He staggered toward the dense woods, realizing that his vision was blurry and sometimes he saw two of a thing. He gained the trees and leaned against the first one he got close to. He walked along the edge of them, leaning when he could, staggering when he couldn’t, listening for anyone coming.
Before he could be caught in the open, he found a game trail so thin he had to think it was made by rabbits. He turned into the woods, following it, heaving a sigh of relief to be out of view.
Then he plowed into a low-hanging branch and knocked himself over backward.
Lying there, breathing hard, he had a flash of reason that told him why he was in such an all-fired hurry to find a safe haven.
He didn’t remember anything that had brought him to this moment.
Why was he in that stream? Why did he feel hunted?
And then as he chased those thoughts around, a real big one hit him hard.
He realized he didn’t know his own name.
His thoughts echoed. His head was empty and in agonizing pain. Who was he? How did a man go on if he had no idea who he was?
Looking up through the dappled leaves, he wondered if he knew a thing about how to go on. Touching his holster, he knew his gun was gone. In fact, just knowing he’d had one—or for that matter, what a gun was—was a lot of remembering.
But he couldn’t remember his own name. Putting two hands flat on his face, he knew nothing of his own looks. He felt the scratch of a few whiskers on his cheeks but no beard.
He looked at his hands and felt no recognition. The impact of realizing it almost knocked him sideways, and it might’ve if he weren’t already lying flat on his back. He stayed right where he was to think.
The tender head.
He had no idea what it meant, but he felt danger. Even that was all instinct with no reason to it.
Time helped steady his pounding heart.
With no idea whether to hide or hunt someone up to help him figure out what was going on, it settled into his brain . . . or maybe his gut, that he needed to lay low until his thoughts cleared.
And he needed food. His belly was mighty empty, and food was strength. Did he go back to that stream? Maybe walk upstream figuring he’d been swept down. Find a shallow spot, see if there were backwaters where the fish weren’t being swept along at a dangerous pace.
And he needed to get warm. Dry clothes. For that he needed a fire.
All of that would give him time to heal his sore noggin.
There was too much to do, so he decided he’d just do what came next. Food first. How did a man find food? He saw himself spearing a fish. Fumbling in his pockets, he found a knife. He’d sharpen a stick. Catch a fish, build a fire.
But should he build a fire?
He realized he knew how. But should he oughta do it?
He’d be mindful, and if no one was about, he’d build a fire, the thought of being warm and dry was too much to resist.
But first, the sharp stick and the fish.
He rolled onto his side and saw a tree full of berries. Of a sudden, his worries for food were set aside. That gave his rickety brain time to worry about everything else.
NINE
After a couple of days, Cheyenne got tired of wandering and decided to climb.
Since she had no place to be and no time that made hurrying needed, she reined her horse back toward the RHR and rode for home. She waited until long after sunset. After the cowhands had come in from their long day of branding.
She felt a twinge of guilt for not helping them. Then the notion of working her fingers to the bone on a ranch that was in no way hers got her all lathered up again, and she shoved the guilt away. But that easy anger convinced her she wasn’t ready to stay at home yet.
She waited until after Wyatt, Win, and all those fools invading her house went to bed.
Feeling a smug assurance that no one would notice her if she was careful—and she was—she rode her horse right to the barn, stripped the leather off, and turned the mare loose with the other critters in the corral.
She snuck into the house, smack-dab into the kitchen, and collected plenty of food and a slicker because it looked like rain, and walked out. It was a long distance—especially on foot—but what difference did distance make when she wanted to be alone?
Three days now, she’d been camping and wandering and thinking. Her head was swooping left and right, mad and resigned and calm and furious, all churned up going from one feeling to another. The point of getting away was to get control of herself, and she hadn’t managed it yet.
And then, by the full moon’s glow, she saw signs that someone had passed through on foot.
She could track well enough to be sure it was no one she knew. Another invader. Could it be the man who’d shot Win?
All her mental fussing went flooding away. Someone was skulking around her land. And she didn’t care what the law said, the land was hers.
Not only did she have an invader to catch and throw off the RHR, she had something to do besides wrestle with her own half-crazed thoughts, and that was such a relief she jumped into finding out who it was.
The signs were hard to read. In fact, it got harder with every step. She could see that whoever it was had started out careless but then quickly switched to concealing his tracks.
And concealed by a man who knew what he was about.
Once in a while, she was lucky to catch a half-wiped footprint or a broken branch. She lost him repeatedly . . . and it was a him. She could tell by the size and weight of the occasional track that it was almost certainly a man. The tracks were odd though. Moccasins, she thought, but not those made by her Cheyenne people.
Was this man from another tribe? Without being able to say why, she was sure this was no Indian.
She’d lose him for a stretch and start circling, casting out a wider area until
finally she found him again.
It was a grimly satisfying use of skills she didn’t employ often, and she was glad she hadn’t lost the knack, but at the same time, she knew she wasn’t near as good as the man she trailed.
Her skills were enough to keep her on the trail and judge the trail to be fresh. He was ahead of her but not far. She never caught sight of him, let alone caught up to him.
She considered herself a fine tracker, as good as anyone around, save the people from the Cheyenne tribe. They were her pa’s family, and Grandpa had gotten on well with them, her ma even more so. Cheyenne had spent time with them and learned a lot from them.
But not enough to find this man.
The search kept her busy, giving her a focus for the intense feelings inside her, especially since, in all fairness, she probably had no business being furious with Kevin Hunt anyway.
So she searched and the days passed and her confusion built along with admiration for the man she tracked. And she thought maybe, just maybe, after she found this invader and threw him off her land, or dragged him in to face the law, she might be ready to go home without chewing everyone’s head off.
TEN
Falcon felt like a savage. An animal. He decided he liked feeling that way. In fact, that might describe him pretty well.
He’d learned to trust his hands. Funny business a man’s hands knowing something his head didn’t. Like how to rig a snare.
He’d unraveled thread from his shirt and set one, not thinking, not planning, just letting his hands take charge. When he tried to think, plan something out, he’d get confused, and then his head throbbed.
But if he just trusted his hands, he built a good snare, though he hadn’t caught anything in it yet.
The first night, he’d quickly tired of hiking alongside that stream looking for fishing ground, so he roasted acorns and pine nuts and plucked ripe berries.
Come morning of the second day, he woke up feeling stronger but still with no working head. Letting his hands guide him, he speared a fish and roasted it. Then, feeling steady, he speared three more and feasted.
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