Chapter 5
Grace’s hands were shaking as she and Hunter walked down the street toward the sheriff’s office. She wasn’t entirely certain what she was going to say to Robert. After all, she didn’t know the man. What was he like? Hunter wasn’t saying anything. He had been very quiet that morning.
It was clear that he didn’t approve of her idea to go with them.
But it seemed that since they were very newly married, he didn’t want to cause waves in the relationship.
He clearly wanted the sheriff to do that.
Well, there was no harm in asking, was there?
Grace could do that. She had to. She knew about farms, and she could be of help to this town and her new husband.
She could prove that she was more than a fainting ninny!
Yes. She would speak to the sheriff despite how much it scared her to do so.
For some reason, her mind kept bringing up a picture of Sheriff Dolan, who had been the sheriff in her small town all her life. The man was like an old, wise uncle who handed out sweets to the children when their mothers weren’t looking.
Despite telling herself over and over that she shouldn’t have any expectations, she did. But all of them fell in tatters the moment she met Robert Hayes, sheriff of the town with no name.
He was tall and burly, with a mop of dark hair that showed the indentation where a hat had recently sat on his head. His eyes were keen and sharp, and judging by his appearance, he was only a few years older than she was.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” he said with a nod and something that looked like an attempt at a smile. “Are you here to wish Hunter well on his journey?”
Hunter shifted and began to study the toes of his boots.
“About that,” Grace said, gathering her courage. Standing beside her, she felt Hunter tense up as though expecting a fight. “I’d like to accompany you … I mean Hunter.”
“Excuse me?” the sheriff said, now looking incredulous and stern. “I must have misheard.”
Grace swallowed. Her heart was hammering in her chest so loud and hard she thought she might break a rib. “No, you heard me right.”
Hunter scuffed his boot on the floor. “She means it, Robert.”
“I have had a lot of experience speaking to farmers and negotiating with them,” Grace soldiered on.
“My father would never allow substandard flour in our bakery and that took a lot of negotiation. Some folks just don’t understand the importance of the flour, eggs, and milk all being absolutely fresh.
I mean, you can’t make anything good with substandard ingredients.
It’s just not possible.” She was rambling, and she knew it, but for some reason, her mouth was like a steam engine left to run down a hill at full speed.
She couldn’t put the brakes on it, no matter how much she wanted to.
“Okay,” Robert said, holding up a hand. “What are you planning to negotiate for? Are you opening a bakery and wanting to secure your ingredients? Because I have no problem with that. But if you’re suggesting that you should be poking your nose into sheriff’s business?—”
“Oh heavens, no!” Grace said with a nervous chuckle and a shake of her head.
“Gracious me! I would never want to impose. I simply want to get my business started, and I thought tagging along would be the best way to do it.” She looked at Hunter, who seemed to tense even more.
“And I want to spend some time with my husband since we’re new to each other and marriage. ”
Beside her, Hunter seemed to relax a little. “It would help,” he agreed.
Robert nodded, seeming mollified. “That’s fine. Can you ride, Mrs. Marks?”
Mrs. Marks? Oh, right, that was her. Grace nodded. “Yes, sir. I was the riding champion of my school back east.”
“They had riding competitions?” Hunter asked in surprise.
She nodded. “It was a tradition in Coatesville, and we would compete with our neighbors in New Dresden.”
“Sounds fascinating, and you can tell Hunter all about it on the ride out,” the sheriff said dryly. “I want to get going as soon as possible.”
“Of course,” Grace said. She had done it. She smiled shyly at Hunter. He smiled and took her hand for a moment.
The kiss the night before flitted through her mind. It had been the most fleeting whisper of a kiss, but she had hardly been able to think of anything else since. It would shoot into her mind and fill her with delight for a second before moving on and then circling back again.
Was that why Hunter was being so strange with her? Did he think she was angry with him?
She squeezed his hand and smiled at him. He returned the smile, and some of the concern left his features.
Just then, Jeff came up the street leading three horses. They were saddled and ready to ride. However, the smile he had been wearing fell from his lips when Robert told him that Grace would need a horse too.
“You’re not going to faint again, are you?” he asked a little nastily as he turned to go back down the road to wherever he got the horses from.
“No!” she called after him.
“You fainted?” Robert asked.
“Yes, well, it was just a combination of—” Grace began, but Jeff yelled over her, holding up two fingers.
“She fainted twice! And threw up!” he called.
Grace’s cheeks turned bright pink and she looked down at her boots.
“She got sick on the train,” Hunter explained, putting an arm around her shoulders. “It was the movement.”
Robert nodded. “It’s really unsettling. I also felt queasy coming out here.”
“Yes, so that’s all it was. Excitement and no food,” Hunter shrugged. “And then she nearly got kidnapped by bandits. It was a natural reaction.”
Robert nodded his understanding and patted her shoulder. “It happens. Don’t let Jeff get to you. He can be a bit of a grouch, but he’s a good fellow to have in your corner.”
“I’m sure he is,” Grace said, thinking she and Jeff might need to have some words and come to some sort of agreement.
Soon Jeff returned with another horse, all saddled and ready to go. Grace had no trouble at all mounting the lovely gray mare with big, liquid eyes.
With a broad-brimmed hat that she had borrowed from Hunter on her head and her bag slung across her body, Grace felt ready for just about anything.
They set off at an easy pace, riding through the town to the north. They didn’t take the bridge across the creek but rode alongside it for a while. They came to a point just a few hundred yards from the last building, where a trench was being dug. It wasn’t wide but was quite deep.
“What is that for?” she asked.
“We’re building a barricade around the town,” Hunter said. “Just one more thing to keep the bandits out.”
“That seems like a huge endeavor,” she said.
“It is,” Jeff said, riding up alongside Hunter. “But we take our safety seriously.”
“Of course,” she said, still thinking to herself again that they’d downplayed the bandit trouble, yet here they were building fortifications against them!
It was clear that the folks of the town were determined to stay where they were and make a success of it.
Grace wondered what the bandits had against that.
Surely people who ran a successful town would be better to rob than folks who failed.
Why wouldn’t the bandits at least wait until the town was well-established and financially prosperous before attacking?
“Have you ever wondered why the bandits are targeting you folks?” Grace asked, frowning.
Hunter nodded. “It’s a hot topic at the campfire,” he said. “Why?”
Grace shrugged. “It just makes no sense. I think there is another player involved that you haven’t met yet.”
“What makes you say that?” Robert asked from in front of them.
Grace bit her lip. She had a habit of speaking out of turn, but it was too late to back out now.
“It’s just that from what Hunter told me in his letters and hearing you all talk about it, it seems they want to get you off your land.
But why? They presumably don’t know how to mine copper, so taking the mine won’t benefit them.
The land is in the middle of nowhere. There’s nothing of strategic importance around you.
What purpose does scaring you off the land serve? ”
“Those are interesting questions,” Robert said, nodding to her. “Maybe you’ll be able to figure out the answers once you’ve lived here a while.”
Grace smiled. “I’ll do my best.”
“Good, we need smart folks in this town,” Robert continued. “We need thinkers, not just doers.”
That brought a time of silence on the ride, and Grace had a lot of time to think about things, although all she ended up with was more questions.
The path they were following was a track more than a road, but it was clear from the way the grass was flattened that it was used often.
With a clear blue sky overhead and a light breeze keeping the heat at bay, at least for the moment, Grace was happy.
She liked being out of the train and seeing the countryside moving at a reasonable pace for a change.
Soon they turned off the track onto another one that had been well cleared. It was a dusty road that led them down a hill and around a copse of trees. Soon, Grace spotted a marvelous sight: fields of wheat rippling in the breeze.
“Oh my!” she said, sitting up straighter in her saddle. “Look at that. Isn’t it magnificent?”
“Tell Mr. Emmerson that,” Jeff said with a grin. “He loves to talk about his fields.”
“With fields that look that good, I would brag too,” she said.
It wasn’t long before they came to the large arched gateway to Mr. Emmerson’s farm. Some large letters on the arch read Emmerson’s Farm, with smaller ones stating that trespassers would be shot and fed to the hogs.
“Goodness!” Grace exclaimed as she read the latter part of the sign. “Putting that on one’s gate seems quite rude.”
“Mr. Emmerson is a gruff old man,” Hunter said. “It took a good deal of talking to him before he would agree to a decent price for his wheat. Michael, Jeff’s brother, spent a month going back and forth between the town and this farmer alone. It was a lot of work.”
“Yeah, and I was along for the ride on most of it,” Jeff said as he dismounted and went to the gate. “Hey, it’s closed but not locked. That’s unusual.”
“I guess Emmerson is expecting customers today,” Robert said. “We’re in luck then.”
“He usually leaves the gate all the way open on those days,” Jeff said with a frown.
“Maybe it swung closed on its own with the wind,” Hunter suggested. “It would only take a gust to do it.”
“I guess so,” Jeff said. He opened the gate all the way and they rode in.
It was so similar to the farms Grace was used to around her hometown. Even the farmhouse, which was a rambling construction that had clearly been added to over time, had a familiar feel. It set her at ease.
They reined in their horses in the yard and dismounted. Jeff tied his horse loosely to a nearby fence and walked up to the house.
“That’s odd,” Jeff said. “Usually, someone comes out to greet anyone who comes down the drive.” He banged on the door quite loudly. “Hello?”
For a tense while, they waited. Nothing happened. Jeff knocked again, but there wasn’t any indication that Mr. Emmerson, or any other member of his family, was on the premises.
“Do you think they could all be in the fields?” Hunter asked, looking around. He had also let go of his horse’s reins, and the creature moved to the side of the house, where there was some green grass for it to nibble. Grace let her horse go too, and it joined Hunter’s.
“The fields are still green,” she said, looking around. “They’re not ripe, so there’s no reason for everyone to be in them. Maybe their irrigation isn’t working. That could get them all out and away from the house.”
Robert’s hand drifted to the butt of his pistol in its holster at his hip. Grace watched Hunter’s hand do the same.
She had been quite surprised to see him wearing a holster that morning when he came down to breakfast. She hadn’t said anything though. He was a deputy now, and she guessed the gun came with the territory.
“Hello!” Jeff called, looking around some more. He spotted something to the right of the house and began to walk toward it. “Hey! Is anyone here?”
No answer.
Grace took a few steps toward the barn and peered into the gloom. She heard a horse make a snorting noise and then another one whinnied, but she didn’t see either of them.
Was that movement? Something glinted for a second, and Grace drew in a breath. Was someone in the barn? She took another step closer.
“Hello?” she called. “Is someone in there?”
Hunter came up beside her. “See anything?” he asked.
She shook her head.
An abrupt boom made her scream and drop to the ground as though she was a stone left to gravity’s mercy and dropped from a height. Hunter was beside her, also crouched on the ground.
Another boom, and a little puff of dirt rose in the air right in front of Grace’s left hand. She made a strange choking noise in her throat as the air seemed to solidify around her and refuse to enter her lungs.
Hunter was yelling something at her as another boom sounded, this one from behind them. He pulled her arm, dragging her to the side. She let him and soon was crouched behind a couple of barrels and crates.
“Are you okay?” he asked, pulling his gun from its holster.
She nodded. She couldn’t speak. Bile was rising in her throat again, and she was certain she would throw up if she opened her mouth even a little.
“Okay, just keep your head down,” Hunter said.
He rose a little, peered over the debris they were hiding behind, and fired his gun.
It was so loud, adding to the strange cacophony that surrounded them.
Grace clamped her hands over her ears and tried not to let the rising panic she felt overcome her.
She had to stay calm and, above all, stay conscious.
Hunter, Robert, and Jeff had fought off ruffians before, and this would be no different.
They would shoot the bandits and either hit them or scare them away, and everything would be all right.
Something splintered right above her head, and Grace screamed as a stinging sensation filled her right cheek. Then something else sliced her calf, and blood blossomed on her leg.
Hunter’s gun boomed and someone screamed. It wasn’t her. She was relatively certain that it wasn’t, anyway. But her leg hurt, and the world was shrinking around her.
“Oh no,” she said. She knew the signs all too well. She turned to Hunter, terrified of what would follow. “Hunter, I?—”
Darkness took Grace in its arms, and she knew nothing anymore.