Chapter 1 #3
A horseman appeared down the street, leading another mount. Rafe felt the first tingling of expectation in a very long time.…
He’d remembered Ben Edwards as little more than a boy, barely into shaving, but now there was no mistaking the man.
Ben’s face was hard, tempered too early by pain and war.
He and Clint had wandered after the war, driving cattle for a while, scouting for wagon trains.
They’d been farm boys before the war, but the fighting had ruined them for that.
The Edwards brothers had seen too much of the world to settle on a small plot of earth and take up plowing.
They’d left the small Illinois farm in the hands of a third brother who’d stayed home and who loved the land.
They’d gathered others, too, Clint had written him.
Men who had been in the ragtag unit Rafe took over when the war started.
Men who had never been able to settle down after the war, whose restlessness drove them from one job to another.
Johnny Green, Bill Smith, Cary Thompson, Simon Ford, and Skinny Ware.
They’d needed another cause, and Rafe’s had become theirs, because there was nothing else.
Rafe didn’t kid himself about that. Still, he was grateful.
Ben reached him and leaned over to shake his hand, searching his face as Rafe searched his, to find all the changes in ten years. Ben’s gaze fell to the back of his hand, to the brand, and Rafe heard the indrawn breath.
It was an awkward moment. Rafe had gotten used to the brand, as had others in the prison. He’d realized it would be more difficult outside, but he wasn’t prepared for the reaction of someone who expected it.
“Sorry I’m late,” Ben said, trying to cover his reaction. “I took the train, and the damned thing was late. I bought the horses here.” He hesitated. “I brought you some clothes, and Clint said you would want some gloves.”
Rafe nodded as his throat tightened. He was unwilling to acknowledge the scar with words.
“Want to stop first for a drink or anything?”
“I want the hell out of here,” Rafe said.
Ben grinned. “Well, I brought a flask just in that event. You’ll find the gloves and clothes in those saddlebags on the bay.”
Rafe nodded and went to the horse, stopping to run his hand along the horse’s neck. Christ, that felt good. He had to wait a moment before mounting. Ten goddamn years. Suddenly, it was almost too much. He was paralyzed by the feelings that flooded him.
“Captain …?”
The word revitalized him. Revitalized his purpose. “Not captain anymore, Ben. Just Rafe.”
Ben hesitated. “I think of you that way.”
“Don’t.” It was said too sharply, and Rafe knew it.
But the reminder hurt. Rafe felt the ache of loss, the diminishment of his manhood, the erosion of who and what he once had been and could be no longer, as he swung up on the bay.
He sat there in the saddle, feeling the animal’s muscles underneath him.
He fought back the despair and tried to relish this moment alone.
He concentrated on it, fed on it, letting it block out all the other feelings.
He lifted his face to catch the dry, hot wind, unblocked now by the high walls of the prison. His eyes caught some lazy clouds drifting overhead, and his legs tightened around the sides of the horse. He was free.
Christ, he was free!
His mind couldn’t comprehend it, couldn’t accept it. Not yet. He would wake up in the tiny dark cell, the three walls of brick and the door that was grated with iron bars.
No, he would never be truly free again. Not as he once had been.
But vengeance would help. Randall’s destruction and his own vindication. And then squaring the account with Sergeant Sam McClary, who had also been involved in framing him.
He looked at Ben. “Which is the best route to Colorado?”
Ben’s eyes met his. Understanding was there. Not pity, thank God. “The way I came.”
Rafe didn’t say any more. He turned his horse and pressed his heels into its side, prompting it to a canter.
He was finally on the road to redemption.
The funeral was small. Quiet and dignified, which was the way her mother would have wanted it.
The burial expenses took all the money they had saved. Shea had the millinery store, of course, but she didn’t know whether she could run it on her own. She didn’t know whether she wanted to. She had enjoyed the creative part, but she had no liking for the business end. Her mother had handled that.
Still, she had to do something.
The shop itself was not worth much. They had rented the space, and their only asset had been Sara’s hard work and Shea’s imagination.
She found it so difficult to make a decision, which was unlike her. But she was cloaked in a cloud of disbelief, of loss. She was floundering, and she knew it—and didn’t like it.
Shea said all the proper things. She heard herself as if from a distance. She was present, yet she wasn’t present.
The last guest finally left. The lawyer had read the will, which left everything to Sara’s “beloved” daughter.
Shea wandered through their empty rented rooms. Her gaze went to the wooden box on her mother’s desk, the box she hadn’t had the heart to open.
Why had her mother wanted it so badly, so badly that she had died alone?
And where was the key? In her need to do something, anything, Shea became obsessed with the box.
Shea found a knife and started working on the lock.
When it resisted her every effort, she worked around it, trying to dig it out, scarring the lovely wood, but she couldn’t stop. She had to open it. Now.
The room had darkened before it came open, but she didn’t stop to light an oil lamp. She lifted the lid, and what she could see of the contents stilled her. She sat there, drinking in the implications.
Shea finally rose and lit the oil lamp, then returned to the box. Money. Lots of money. New bills wrapped in paper with the name of a Kansas bank. Used bills.
And letters. She picked one up and saw the name at the bottom. Jack Randall. Her father. She looked at the date. Ten years ago. Her hand shaking, she picked up another letter. Three years ago. There was a Colorado address. A town named Rushton.
Other letters. A total of ten. And beneath them a clipping from a Boston paper.
She quickly read the story. A court-martial.
A Major Jack Randall was the main prosecution witness, the man who had discovered and caught a traitor involved in army payroll robberies.
There were drawings of the convicted man and of Major Randall.
She glanced at the former, caught for a moment by the handsome angles of the man’s face, but then she moved quickly to the latter.
Ten years ago. She would have been thirteen at the time.
Why hadn’t she seen this before? And if she had, would it have made any difference? Randall was a common enough name.
But that, with the letters and money, posed unsettling questions.
Dear God in heaven, what did it mean? She read the letters.
At first they asked her mother to return to the writer in Kansas.
And then they merely hoped Sara was well and stated that money was enclosed.
They said nothing about Shea. Nothing at all.
Shea closed her eyes, trying to think. The major had to be her father.
Her birth certificate listed a Jack Randall as her father.
Thoughts whirled in her head like flying debris in a tornado.
She tried to remember everything her mother had said about him.
Honorable. The clipping she’d read seemed to verify that.
Why had her mother left him? Why had she never told Shea he was alive? And why had she never spent the money when they’d so often needed it?
Why had her mother lied?
Suddenly, Shea’s whole existence seemed a lie. The foundation, once so solid, quaked and wavered, and she felt she would fall through the flimsy flooring.
Who was she?
Shea knew she had to find out. She had to find Jack Randall. She had to find her father.