“No idea. A month at least. Their eyes open at about two weeks. So maybe a month. They’re still really young.” Cheyenne shrugged.
“Funny thing.” He watched the dog when he spoke. She must be getting used to them because she just attended to her babies now without a growl or a fang showin’. “I kinda like it in here. It feels like I’m in a sheltered spot.” He looked at Cheyenne. “You reckon that means I lived in a cave back in Tennessee?”
That got a smile out of her as he’d planned. He pulled out more jerky and fed the dog.
“You lived with the bears and cougars no doubt,” Cheyenne said. “You’ve got the ways of the wild on you, Falcon. I’m thinking you lived in the mountains there. You like the mountains here too much. Took right off for the hills when you got here, almost as natural to you as a bear hunting a cave.”
Nodding, Falcon pulled his canteen off his shoulder. “Cup your hands. We’ll give her a drink of water.”
The dog, wary but buried under puppies and too worn down and thirsty to resist, lapped water out of Cheyenne’s hands.
They let her empty the little serving of water, then Falcon poured more. He said, “I need to doctor that shoulder, but I’m not sure how, and I don’t have anything with me to use if I did know. If she’s been huntin’ her own meals, she probably won’t survive out here hurt like this. Must’ve managed it before, but now she can’t outrun much. We can wait on the cows, but we have to take her and the pups home with us.”
Cheyenne looked away from where she watched the mama lap up water fast enough it wasn’t all dripping away through Cheyenne’s fingers. “We’re turning dog thief?”
“This dog and her pups would’ve all been dead in a couple more days. We don’t even know for sure she belongs to someone. She might be a dog running wild.”
“So we can have her?”
“Your land. Your cows. I say that makes her your dog. We’ll talk it over with the sheriff about the cows. I s’pect he’ll want to have a talk with Ralston. After that, if the sheriff says it’s legal, we’ll take them to the RHR, too. If Ralston comes after those cows—and with his brand on a lot of them, there’s a chance he could, though I don’t know how he’s gonna explain your bull in here—then we’ll brace him with how he took over land that doesn’t belong to him. And if he can prove he came by it all honest, we’ll let him have everything back that doesn’t have an RHR brand on it. For right now, I’d say he’s got some explaining to do and what better way to make him do it than to . . .” He looked at her. At those black eyes and that dark hair twisted into one long braid hanging over her shoulder so it dropped nearly to her waist.
“Than to steal his cattle?”
“Yep.”
She wore somewhat less manly clothes today than he’d seen her in before. A brown riding skirt, not the britches she wore in the mountains. She had on a shirt the color of a biscuit. Blouse not shirt. Blouse was what it was called. Buttoned up the front with pretty tucks and wooden buttons.
He poured more water.
“Pa, is that you?”
The voice. Who had said that? It was gone before he could focus on it.
Like a flash of lightning he thought, Harvey.
C-could Harvey have been who said, “Pa, is that you?” Could he have a son named Harvey?
The pain came fierce. He bent his head forward to force himself to bear it, hoping more memories would come.
Then he knew Harvey was a . . . was a mule. That came clear.
“Falcon, what’s wrong?”
A hard tug on his arm brought his head up. He didn’t know it was down. He capped the canteen, set it aside, and rubbed on the back of his neck. The crease was scabbed over, hardly even tender anymore.
“I-I think I—maybe I had a mule named Harvey.” Of a sudden, the front of his head throbbed so hard his torso fell forward again. He’d’ve fallen over, laid out on the cave floor, if there’d been room. He braced his forearms on his knees, rested his head there, and forced himself to reason it out. He tried to picture Harvey.
“An old rawboned mule.”
Cheyenne clutched his arms. “Named Harvey?”
“Harvey, yes. I’m sure that’s from before. Out of my memory. Harvey was mine.”
Forcing himself to think made his head throb until it pounded, like someone hammering on it. He pushed on. The things buried in his brain seemed to be trying to get out, but they were using a hammer and chisel to make their way.
“You’re remembering?”
“I think so, yes.” A mule named Harvey. But then who had asked him, “Pa, is that you?”
He couldn’t get any image of children who’d asked that question of him. The question was asked by . . . by an adult man. That seemed right. The voice was clearer now, and he was sure it wasn’t a child speaking. Could it have been him? If it was, who had he asked? Clovis? From what he’d been told, he hadn’t seen his pa for years.
Keeping his head bowed, he found a prayer inside him. He could remember there was a God, but not what his own believin’ had been like. He couldn’t get that out of hiding in his noggin, either. And the pain was carving his head up. But he pushed on. It was there. Right there to hand, if he could only—
A hand touched his chin and lifted. He raised his head.
Their eyes met. He saw only kindness. Kindness and something else. Her hand moved until it slid up to rest her palm on his cheek. “Stop now. You’re in pain. I can see it in your eyes, in the expression on your face.”
“It’s givin’ me a powerful headache.” He covered her hand with his. It felt so nice, that strong, callused woman’s hand. “But I need to keep at it. It all feels close, and if I can just—”
She brought her other hand up until she held his face. “Stop. Don’t hurt yourself like this.”
“I have to, don’t I? I have to keep—”
She moved one hand to rest her fingers on his lips.
That drove his headache away and all thoughts of digging around for memories.
He said quietly, “I have to remember, Cheyenne.”
“You will. The pain has to mean you’re not done healing. With time, you’ll remember. But, for now, stop fighting through the pain. You have courage, and I like courage in a man, but I hate seeing you hurt.”
The soft suckling of the hungry pups faded. He forgot about the cool shade of the crowded little space, almost too little to be called a cave. All he could feel was her callused fingertips, and he smelled the warm scent of a woman. She looked at him, and he saw goodness in her eyes. Considering how cranky she’d mostly been, it was a fine moment.
“You’ve had a few memories. Give yourself time, and you’ll have more.”
“You don’t know that.”
“It stands to reason.”
He smiled. “So you touch me, lean close to me, all to distract me from my pain? An act of kindness? Or are you really starting to like me?”
Something dangerous flashed in Cheyenne’s eyes. A look that, if Falcon had any common sense, would make him hightail it before she started swinging a fist.
Then her eyes flashed with something else, and she whispered, “I’m starting to like you real fine, Falcon.”
He forgot every sensible thought in his mostly senseless head.
FIFTEEN
Falcon Hunt had handed her a puppy.
That was no reason to think such warm thoughts of him, but it was a sweet thing to do. A quiet, gentle, happy moment in her life, which had been loud and harsh and sad for too long.
And then his pain. Such a gentle act with the puppy. A man she’d trailed in the woods long enough to know how strong and smart and woods-savvy he was. And so wounded.
Those rugged, callused hands handing her that soft puppy. Its belly so full of milk she could almost feel it sloshing as the little critter slept. Her hands touched his as he gave the baby over. An expression on his face. Not a smile. Falcon wasn’t a big smiler, nor a big frowner. He didn’t laugh or yell. Not overly anyway.
He was a man in control of himself. It was a relief after the treatment she’d received in that will at the hands of Clovis, whose only type of control was to lie well enough you had no idea what went on in his fermented mind.
Now Falcon, who’d come here to invade her land, had saved that mama dog. And whatever his outward appearance, that injured, fiercely protective, half-wild dog saw inside to someone she trusted.
Cheyenne found herself trusting him, too.
She’d told him if he could remember when his ma died, if it was late enough that Clovis’s marriage to Cheyenne’s ma was illegal, the will wouldn’t stand. That meant Falcon would lose everything.
And still he’d faced pain, trying to remember.
She’d always hoped to marry someday, but her measure of a man was her grandpa. He was the kind of man she wanted to share her life with. And on the other end was Clovis. Her ma was a strong, wise woman in so many ways, but she’d let herself be fooled by Clovis. And a big part of that, Cheyenne knew, was because she’d married too quickly. Cheyenne believed Ma would have seen the truth, the rot at Clovis’s core, if she’d just gone more slowly.
Cheyenne was going to give any man she was interested in plenty of time to reveal his true self.
And here she was, thinking warmly of a man she hardly knew at all. Moreover, a man who didn’t know himself. For a moment, she’d thought he would kiss her.
She’d never imagined wanting such a thing, but she had. Inside, she was churned up, heated up, melting. It was the oddest feeling, and she wanted more of it.
Especially because it was only now that she realized how cold she’d been. How frozen inside. Yes, she’d known of how hard and angry she’d been since the reading of the Sidewinder’s will. But she now knew even before that she’d kept much of herself lassoed and hog-tied, never to run free.
Never had she imagined wanting to be touched and held by a man.
She thought of her hasty plan to marry Oliver Hawkins. She’d known him a long time. He might not send her pulse racing, but she knew him and wouldn’t be fooled by him. But now that she’d thought of kissing Falcon, she realized how impossible it would be to let Hawkins kiss her.
Here she sat with Falcon’s face still held gently in her hands. His eyes on her. He was so still, so silent.
She should pull back, but she didn’t want to. Didn’t want to let go of him. His eyes drifted closed, then, from deep in his chest, the words so quiet they reminded her of the dog’s growling, he said, “Thank you.”
The mama dog yipped, looking at the entrance to the cave, and Cheyenne turned to look out, reaching for her gun, afraid Ralston had come to check his cattle and saw the boulders moved.
The bull, Texas Midnight, poked his nose into their cave. Cheyenne’s nose almost brushed his. He bellowed hot breath right in her face and bunted the roof of the cave opening.
Cheyenne scooted back, which wasn’t hardly possible in the cramped space. The dog barked with more fury, wasted on the bull and upsetting for her and the pups.
“Do you think he can get in here?” Falcon whispered, and his warm breath from behind her was all the way different from the bull’s.
“Nope, and I think, for a while, we can’t get out.”
She looked over her shoulder and grinned at him. Then she said, “You try and calm down that mama dog. I want to hold a puppy again.”
“Don’t answer this if it’s going to make your head hurt.”
Falcon turned to look at Cheyenne, who carried his bag, filled with puppies. He had the mama dog draped across his lap. Once the bull had tired of staring at them and wandered off, they’d loaded up the dogs, giving the mama plenty of time to sniff her babies to make sure they were all right, then they’d carried them down to the horses and headed for home.
“I’m going to come back for my bull whether the sheriff lets me have those cows or not, and to get rid of that barbed wire.”
“It looks like he kept the top of the trail wired up. But it’s all fallen down.”
“I suppose by the time it fell, the cows were used to the canyon and didn’t try and get out. But he should have wound up the wire and gotten rid of it.”
“We’ll find plenty of places where this Ralston will turn out to be a careless fool,” Falcon guessed.
“He got away with this thievin’ for a long time,” Cheyenne observed.
They wound down the side of the mountain.
“Give mama another sniff of her babies. She’s fighting my hold,” Falcon said for the umpteenth time.
Finally, he just took the bag, puppies and all.
“No.” Cheyenne made a swipe for the bag, but the mama growled and her ears went back.
Cheyenne scowled. “Why do you get to carry all the dogs?”
Falcon laughed. A nice change from the pain. “What did you start to ask? About me not answering if it made my head hurt?”
“Oh, that’s right. I want to talk about Harvey.”
Falcon, paying close attention, didn’t feel a single pang. “Just you asking about it didn’t give me pain. Let’s see.” When they finally reached the bottom of the mountain, and Falcon could pay less attention to his horse and the dogs had settled in to sleeping, he could think on Harvey.
“Just tell me what you see. Don’t search for more.”
“A mule.”
“What does his bridle look like? Does he have a saddle? Are you riding him or leading him?”
They were mighty good questions, and it set him to thinking, not of what he couldn’t remember but on the details of what he could.
After he’d told her all he knew about Harvey, he said, “And I saw a cabin. A little, ramshackle thing. It’s built into the side of a hill, or probably a mountain.”
“In the paper work we got, your address was a town called Chickahoochi Cove.”
“That rings something in me, but I can’t really remember it. It’s just a name that somehow seems right.”
“That’s probably your cabin you’re remembering.”
They rode along, a friendly sort of ride. Falcon talked of his cabin until his head started aching.
“Enough now,” Cheyenne said. “We’ve used up the day, and we’ll be lucky if they haven’t thrown our supper out to the chickens.”
“I hope they’ve saved enough to feed the dog.”
Cheyenne looked at the dogs, then her eyes raised to meet his. It was there between them. Falcon could feel her hands resting on his face. How it upset her to see him hurting. How close they’d been in that tight little cave.
“I’m starting to like you real fine, Falcon.”
It helped get the pain away from him.
“Let’s pick up the pace if the dogs can handle it,” she said. “I want to talk to Wyatt about those cows.”
SIXTEEN
You found Texas Midnight?” Wyatt had barely washed up and sunk to his chair.
Molly and Win were putting a meal on the table. They’d turned the noon beef into shepherd’s pie, with meat and vegetables in a thick gravy and mashed potatoes over the top.
No one had ever cooked like this at the RHR. Ma was no hand at it. She was good enough to keep them fed, but she was working long hours with Grandpa. She’d never had time to fuss over preparing a meal.
Cheyenne had followed in her footsteps.
And Win, who’d cooked here off and on for years, was a whole lot better than Cheyenne, but she’d never made food like this.
Cheyenne told Wyatt all that had gone on. He looked under the table and saw the mama dog nursing her babies right there in the kitchen.
“And how many cows again?” he asked.
“I don’t blame you for finding it all hard to believe,” Cheyenne said. “Where do you think those deeds are, Wyatt? Where’d we put them? Or have they been stolen by your sidewinder of a pa?”
“What makes you think he took them?” Kevin stopped eating.
“The only reason I thought of Pa,” Falcon said, “is he was
the only low-down coyote around. There’s no proof he did it.”
No one seemed interested in fighting to clear his name.
“There are some old papers of your pa’s, Cheyenne, your real pa, Nate Brewster, in a . . . in a chest somewhere. I think,” Wyatt said. “He didn’t exactly own land, but he might have some records and maybe Grandpa put their deeds together.”
“You can help me hunt,” Cheyenne said. “Then we’ll go in tomorrow and talk to the sheriff.”
“I can’t go.” Wyatt jabbed a thumb at Kevin. “And he can’t go. He’s been some help with the cattle. Not much, but enough I want him out there. He can at least watch after his little brother. Keep him from spooking the whole herd all the way to Denver.”
“I’m glad to try,” Kevin said.
“Falcon and I will talk to the land agent tomorrow, and to the sheriff again,” Cheyenne said. “It’s time to stop asking questions and start getting some answers.”
At that, Molly set a custard on the table and a bowl of peaches she’d found jarred in the root cellar, but she’d done something fancy to the peaches and the custard smelled like a slice of heaven. She added coffee, and it distracted them all from their planning, which was just turning into a repeat of Wyatt asking the same questions from different directions over and over.
Falcon found himself enjoying the way the family ate and talked and sometimes squabbled. He tossed a few hunks of tender roast beef to the dog, then glanced under the table to see a chunk of beef coming from the other side. He looked up and saw Cheyenne blush at being caught.
Family, it was an interesting business. He found it suited him.
Cheyenne shoved the trunk back under the big sofa in the front room. She’d forgotten it was tucked under there. This house hadn’t been dug into like this in all the years she’d lived here.
“Nothing. I’m done,” she said in exasperation. “We’re going to have to hope Gordon Spellman found what we need.”
She stood and crossed her arms, thinking of any other place she could search. The whole family had been at it for over an hour. Wyatt had even gone and looked in the barn, where they had a few things stored. Even though Grandpa would’ve never left them out there.
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