Chapter 28
With every jolt of the wagon, James welcomed the pain.
It kept him sharp, kept the panic from swallowing him whole every time his mind conjured images of Rose in Vincent’s hands. He gripped the reins tighter, urging the team faster down the dark, rutted trail.
Somewhere ahead, Thomas and Robert rode horses borrowed from the livery, eating up the miles faster than this rumbling wagon could manage.
He’d sent them on because it made sense, because they could cover more ground, because a man with a broken leg had no business trying to ride astride through mountain wilderness in the dark. He’d already learned that lesson once.
But logic did nothing to ease the burning need to be the one who found her. To be the one who protected her.
To make up for standing in that barn like one of the support beams while she’d apologized for sins that weren’t hers to carry.
The well-traveled main trail stretched ahead in the moonlight, winding between snow-heavy pines that pressed close on either side. He scanned the darkness for any sign of his brothers returning, for any movement that might signal they’d caught up to Vincent.
Unless Vincent had turned off somewhere.
The thought made his chest tighten so hard he could barely breathe. Vincent could have taken any number of side trails branching off this main route—paths that wound deeper into the wilderness, leading to abandoned mining camps or forgotten homesteads where no one would hear a woman scream.
He forced the images away before they could take root. Vincent might not even have Rose at all.
All James could do was keep going and use every one of his senses to find clues. Anything that might lead him to her.
As the wagon rounded a cluster of boulders in the trail, he caught it—faint wood smoke on the icy breeze.
He pulled the team to a stop and sat perfectly still, testing the wind.
Not just his imagination. Definitely smoke.
In the dark sky, he couldn’t see any sign of which direction it might be coming from.
He glanced at the ground, straining to decipher the shadows in the snow. Were those tracks? Or just uneven ground beneath the layer of white?
They had to be tracks. The ice crystals looked churned in some places. And there seemed to be a straight line of them. A single animal, maybe a horse.
He lifted his focus to the trees and shrubs his team would have to travel through to follow the tracks. The trees were spaced far enough apart, the wagon might actually be able to fit. Perhaps this had once been a road.
The scent of smoke had grown stronger. He had to find out for sure whether or not Vincent went this way. There weren’t enough tracks for his brothers to have searched this route. They’d likely been moving too fast to see a single set of prints veer off or smell the smoke.
He guided the team off the main trail, the horses stepping higher through the new snow and the wagon lurching more over the uneven ground.
The tracks became clearer as they progressed—definitely a single horse, recently passed. The prints cut through the snow in a line too straight to be from a wandering animal. Someone had ridden this way with purpose.
Every step brought the scent thicker, cutting through the crisp mountain air with the unmistakable tang of burning wood.
The trail—if it could be called that—narrowed as the trees pressed closer. Branches scraped against the wagon’s sides, and twice he had to guide the team around fallen logs half-buried in snow.
The path was too rough now, too overgrown. He couldn’t risk breaking an axle or getting stuck.
He pulled the horses to a halt and sat listening. The forest pressed in around him, silent except for the wind sifting through pine needles and the creak of snow-laden branches. No voices. No sound of movement.
But that smoke meant someone was out here.
He set the brake and wrapped the reins around the brake handle, then reached for his walking sticks and the rifle from the bench beside him. He couldn’t manage both at once, but he didn’t dare proceed without a weapon. Hopefully, he could hold the gun in the same hand as one of the walking sticks.
His boots hit the snow, and the splint jammed into his flesh as his full weight came down on it. Sweat dampened his back despite the cold.
He sucked in a breath, though, and pressed forward. The snow covered his boots, dampening his trousers and forcing him to drag his splinted leg behind him.
Finally, the trees thinned ahead, revealing a dark shape against the snow—a structure of some kind, small and hunched. An old trapper’s cabin maybe, long since abandoned.
But smoke curled from a rusted stovepipe jutting through the roof, and a single horse stood tied to a post near the entrance.
His pulse hammered against his throat. Someone was definitely inside.
Vincent? Or just a traveler seeking shelter from the cold?
He edged closer, using the trees for cover. The horse lifted its head, and James tensed. Don’t nicker. Don’t make a sound.
Surprise might be his only advantage. That and his rifle.
Before he could make a plan, though, he had to know for sure who was inside that cabin.