Chapter 3
Delaney knew she had the look of a gently raised woman.
Even though she wore sturdy clothing, it was a finely made riding skirt, with her brown shirtwaist fitting her well. She had her hair done up in a decent style. She wore a hat to keep the sun off her face like a citified woman might do. Of course, most country women did it, too. And men.
She also knew she could outshoot, outride, and out-track every man here. She knew how to defend herself, too. And she wasn’t opposed to proving it.
Owen knew, at least a little. She’d assured him that she wouldn’t be a burden to him when she arranged with him to be escorted to Fort Russell, where her pa, Colonel Bridger, was posted.
Delaney looked at her brother Boone and realized that she hadn’t bargained on having to protect him as well.
Her brother! Her big brother! Owen said he’d probably be all right, but Boone looked terrible. The wound was so ugly. He was dead white, his breathing unsteady. She wished there was something more she could do for him.
Morgan Sawyer spoke up. “Tex, come up here and cover us. I’ll lead us to Pa’s cabin.”
While Tex had ridden alongside Delaney and Boone, Morgan had talked with them a lot since leaving Denver. He’d heard her brother brag up Delaney’s tracking skills and laughed at the bragging.
Later, after she’d tracked a mule deer across solid rock and brought it down from two hundred feet with her brand-new Winchester ’73, a gun that wasn’t even on the market yet outside of Pa’s connections, Morgan had stopped laughing. Instead, he studied her and her gun with profound respect.
Now that she’d seen him on a trail, she knew he was good.
Delaney knew less about Owen and the others.
Owen had helped keep watch over the prisoner on their journey.
Clive Duncan had ridden on a horse led by Marley Tweedt, with the youngster, Deputy Marshal Stan Ross, and Owen riding on either side.
Those fools she’d heard Morgan call the Duncan Gang had been trying to pick off the men watching over their brother and managed to shoot Clive.
Boone had been close enough to be hit by a wild shot.
A powerful mix of fear and anger swept through her. She forced herself to look at Boone. Wake up, brother. God, please let him wake up and be his healthy, funny self again.
Owen had Marley, the old-timer, bandaged well and up on horseback, while Morgan hoisted Boone over his saddle. Stan still rode along, draped over a saddle like Boone but beyond help.
Owen wore an aging Stetson over his thick dark-blond hair, and his eyes were a cold blue most of the time. Hard to say why since the man didn’t talk much, and yet he made her feel safe.
She wasn’t sure what Tex had done to assist Clive. Gutshots like his were always serious. The outlaw was still unconscious, but they’d tied him hand and foot. Maybe lying across a saddle would put pressure on his belly wound and save his life.
Delaney didn’t much care whether he lived or died. She’d heard of his crime. The man was on his way to be hanged. Being shot by his own family in a hotheaded attempt to break him free of the U.S. Marshals seemed like justice to her.
She looked at the still-unconscious Boone. There’d been no justice in his or Marley’s being shot, nor in a Marshal being dead as a result.
Boone’s dark hair, much like her own, was overlong from a neglect of barbering. It hung down, his Stetson gone. His dark eyes, also like hers, were closed. Pa had always said that their eyes were a matched set.
They’d been born two years apart, the stragglers in the family after three older brothers.
With Pa stationed at Frontier forts, then gone to fight the Civil War, then gone back to the Frontier for a good portion of his marriage, the children were spread out in ages, and her older brothers had been gone a long time.
Now Ma lived with Pa at Fort D. A. Russell near Cheyenne.
Ma had headed west, while Delaney, a schoolmarm and near spinster (oh, who was she kidding?
, it was a lot more than near these days) had the school year to finish.
Boone had offered to wait and ride to Wyoming with her to keep her safe.
They were on their way to join their parents at the fort.
Delaney took one long, aching look at her brother. She was safe, but not him. She swung up onto her horse. She rode forward and took over leading Boone’s horse. She’d see to him from now on if she could. That was something she could do.
“This trail is going to take everything we’ve got,” Morgan warned. “Tex, don’t stay back long or you might never find us again. Tracking on this rocky ground is almost more than I can do. Maybe Miss Delaney could manage it, but not me.”
Owen gave her a sharp look and arched a brow before turning and heading after Morgan.
Delaney brought up the rear, leading her brother’s horse. But before anyone thought to complain about a mere woman watching their back trail, Tex caught up and took over being rear guard.
It wasn’t long before she began to see what Morgan meant about the trail.
She didn’t see one, and yet Morgan seemed to know exactly where they were going.
There were canyons to climb down into, follow along, then scale again.
Jumbles of stone, walls of granite, rushing streams, and stretches of solid rock.
And all along, there were clumps of grass and scraggly scrub brush everywhere.
Delaney studied the ground for the tracks of the horses right in front of her and saw nothing. Their horses seemed content to move on. She said quietly to Owen, just in front of her, “I sure hope he knows where he’s going.”
Owen turned to glance at her. His eyes were lit with amusement, but all that had gone on had made a smile impossible. “Is Morg right? Are you that good a tracker?”
“I brought down that deer,” she replied.
“Morg mentioned you found it when he’d’ve said it was impossible. But I figured him for being silver-tongued.”
That jolted a small smile out of her. “Morgan? Silver-tongued? I’ve heard the man speak very little, and mostly when he made a sound, it was growling.”
Owen nodded. He smiled for a brief moment, but then his eyes went to Boone and Stan and the smile faded fast.
Morgan reappeared, way to the right and up about a hundred feet, almost straight up.
Delaney trusted to her horse, and the critter proved its skill because she was soon climbing, twisting, and rounding boulders that looked like they’d roll right off the mountain with little more than a breath of air.
And so the day passed. They stopped to let the horses rest a few times and to stretch their legs, to see how the injured were faring and eat some hard biscuits and jerky, and then they pressed on.
At some point, Clive woke up. They let him sit up, but he showed no fight. His hands were lashed to the saddle horn, his reins tied to the horse Marley rode.
Delaney thought if the gutshot hadn’t killed him by now, he might just survive it. Boone, however, remained unmoving. And as the hours passed, her worry grew.
Their horses plodded onward, slow and steady, following the tail in front of them.
Delaney had seen no sign of pursuit. She couldn’t make out if they were leaving any trail, though once when she glanced back, as she did often to study the way they’d come, she saw Tex off his horse, brushing out a hoofprint.
Toward evening, up among peaks she’d never seen before, they came over the saddleback on a mountain in air so thin it felt sharp when she breathed. Morgan pulled up and stared at whatever was over the mountain.
They all caught up to him and looked down at . . . nothing.
This was where Morgan had grown up?
Delaney didn’t bother to ask. There was nothing below them but a valley full of scrub brush, soft grass, and quiet.
“Home sweet home.” Morgan’s voice was quiet, but everyone heard him. “We do have to climb down one more cliff.”
Morgan gave his horse a gentle kick as if there was no sense hurrying on a trail this treacherous.
The horse veered sharply to the right and descended on a trail Delaney couldn’t see.
But she followed along, her heart pounding with fear.
She hadn’t known that she had, it seemed, a fear of heights.
Tamping down on her delicate nerves, she was determined not to be the slacker when in truth she wanted to loudly protest that she was not going down a trail that’d give a mountain goat the vapors.
She resisted closing her eyes, although being able to see wasn’t going to help much. Either her horse would follow this ghost of a trail or it wouldn’t.
Thankfully the horse did follow it.
Morgan had ridden all the way down into the inhospitable valley by the time Delaney caught up to him.
Just beyond an outcropping of rock, she saw a ramshackle cabin and a log barn that was barely standing.
A corral, more collapsed than standing, showed no evidence of livestock.
Everything there was built of the wood and stone available around them and tucked back so that no one would see there was anyone here if they ever did find their way into the valley.
Morgan drew his horse up at the cabin. The roof looked solid, but the door sagged open. There was no sign of life, not so much as a trail worn from the house to the barn. No smoke was rising out of its stone chimney.
Morgan swung down and ground-hitched his horse, then righted a collapsed hitching post so that they could tie up to it. Hopefully it’d hold.
Delaney slid down from her own horse. Much as she loved horseback riding, she liked it now that the world wasn’t moving under her.
Owen plucked Marley off his horse.
“I can get myself down, boss.”
Not giving the man time to say more, Owen looped Marley’s arm around his neck and took him inside.
Tex was doing the same for Clive Duncan while Morgan saw to Boone. Delaney was left to wonder if they’d bury Stan up here. Someplace where no one could ever visit his grave. But she didn’t see that they had much choice.
Tex went inside. Morgan followed him and then emerged without Boone, saying he would take the horses to the barn.
Morgan stopped and studied her. Quietly he said, “I’m sorry about your brother, miss, but he’ll be all right .
. . I hope. I lost a big brother in the war.
I didn’t know about it for a year after it happened.
I came home after the fighting was over and found a letter from Pa in Elk Point, the nearest town, telling me Gavin had died and I wasn’t welcome to come home.
“My brother fought for the South, and that was my pa’s idea of what was right. He grew up in Georgia before he came west and had his own notions about slavery, notions I didn’t share. I went off to throw in with the Yankees.”
“The war’s been over for years. You can’t have been old enough to fight.”
He shrugged one shoulder. “A lot of youngsters fought.”
It was more words than she’d ever heard Morgan speak since she’d met him three days ago in Denver to be escorted to Pa.
“Thank you. I’m sorry for the loss of your fellow Marshal.”
Morgan nodded, then turned to lead the horses to the barn.
Delaney headed toward the cabin to see what needed doing. She watched Tex stride away in the direction they’d come from, rifle in hand. Posting a sentry.
But those outlaws had to be at least a full day behind them. And no matter how badly they wanted to free Clive, she couldn’t imagine them finding their way to this place.