Chapter Thirty-Nine #2
“I figure we can start over there. We’ll work from the fence line up.
” He didn’t say the rest, and he didn’t have to.
Brendan’s marker stood at the top of that rise, and they were about to spend a day putting holes all over the ground around it so that a man who might have killed him would come and look in them.
“We can work our way around, and—” He turned, and seeing Alexandra, he stopped short.
She opened her mouth to explain, gesturing vaguely back to the house, but the look on Aidan’s face halted her. “I hope you don’t mind,” she said, brushing down the front of her borrowed shirt.
“Oh, I definitely mind,” he said with a cheeky grin. “I mind very much that you look better in that shirt than I ever did.”
Alexandra laughed. “Come on, you silly man. Let’s go dig up some pretend treasure.”
***
Alexandra stared down at her hands. Although Aidan had insisted she wear gloves, they were raw and blistered. Toughened from laundry and washing dishes, they were still unprepared for a day full of digging. She flexed her fingers experimentally and winced.
“Here,” Aidan said. He was standing near her with a bucket of water. “Put your hands in here—no, don’t move them about. Just let them soak.”
Alexandra hissed as her fingers touched the cold water, then sighed with relief. “Oh, that’s divine,” she purred. “Are you sure you don’t need any help?”
“I can manage,” Aidan said, which she noted was not the same as yes. He had dug perhaps an hour of the day’s work and spent the rest moving dirt she’d already loosened, and twice she’d caught him standing still with a hand flat to his ribs, waiting for something to pass.
They were sitting around a fire just outside the cabin, Alexandra resting on a goat hide rug that Aidan had brought from inside. Over the fire, he’d built a spit out of sticks and bits of metal, upon which a rabbit he’d shot earlier roasted.
Alexandra watched as he sprinkled water on the rabbit, then turned it carefully. It glistened in the firelight, and her mouth watered. She would have turned her nose up at such a meal the week she came west, but after a day of hard labor, it smelled like the finest thing in the world.
“How do you think Antony’s getting on?” she asked.
Aidan grunted. “Well enough. He’s known the sheriff longer, so I imagine he’ll have a better time getting him mobilized. Once the sheriff is involved, he won’t have a hard time rounding up a posse.”
Alexandra turned her hands over in the bucket of water, swirling them gently. “I hope you’re right.”
“Me too,” Aidan said.
They sat in silence for a moment. Without the children and the horses, the ranch was quiet.
She thought of Lisa in a strange bed in town, and of how small her aunt had looked being handed up into the doctor’s wagon, and made herself stop.
The only sounds around them were those of nature—bugs humming, birds chirping their last songs for the day.
In the distance, a coyote yipped and yowled.
Alexandra tipped her head up and looked at the sky, which was going violet toward the east.
“I never had much of a chance to appreciate how beautiful it is out here,” she said. “The sky is just so big.”
“We should sleep outside sometime,” Aidan said, delicately shifting the rabbit over the fire again. “It feels like the sky is going to swallow you right up.”
There was a sound that didn’t belong out there—the creak of a metal gate opening. Alexandra craned her neck, trying to see past Aidan. For his part, Aidan went very still, his shoulders and back tensing.
“He’s coming?” he asked.
Alexandra nodded.
“Alone?”
Alexandra nodded again. “On horseback,” she told him.
“Stay calm,” Aidan told her. He shifted so that he was sitting at a different angle, concealing a long lump under the goat hide. Alexandra knew that he had a rifle tucked under there, but carefully kept her eyes off it. The weight of the gun in her pocket against her thigh reassured her.
Kevin Black approached them, keeping his horse at a sedate walk as if he had all the time in the world.
“Well, isn’t this cozy?” he called. He pulled his horse up just behind Aidan. “The two lovebirds, camping under the stars.”
“What do you want, Black?” Aidan asked.
“Same thing I’ve always wanted,” he said. “The rest of my money. Now, word in town is that you’ve got it for me.”
“I told you not to be telling anyone,” Aidan said with mock irritation at Alexandra. Like they’d rehearsed, she ducked her head as if chastened. In reality, she was screwing up her mouth to keep from laughing.
“That’s no way to talk to a lady,” Black tutted. “But I’ll take this to mean that you’ve finally seen sense?”
Aidan grunted and wiped his hands together. “I wouldn’t go that far, but yes, I believe I have something that would satisfy even you.” He stood and faced Black directly.
Quietly, Alexandra slipped her hands from the water. She placed one on her lap and the other beside her, near the opening of her pocket.
“How much are we talking about here?” Black demanded.
“Enough. A lot,” Aidan said. “You know how Brendan was always off riding up in the hills? Turns out, he found something up there. Something big.”
“How big?” Black snapped. “I’m getting real tired of vague allusions here, Rawlins.”
“Enough that none of us are ever going to have to work again,” Aidan said. “A seam of silver, wide as a river.”
“You’ve seen it?” Black’s face was skeptical.
“No,” Aidan said. “I’ve seen what came out of it, though. Brendan buried what he’d found. It’s crate after crate of the stuff.”
“You’re telling me that your do-nothing brother buried crates of pure silver?” Black said. He reached into the inner pocket of his jacket and pulled out a hand-rolled cigarette.
“It’s not pure,” Aidan said, shaking his head. Aidan’s fist tensed when Black insulted his brother. Her hand drifted closer to her pocket, her fingertips just inside. “It still needs to be smelted and freed from the rock. Even so, it’s a lot. You’ll need a cart, and a lot of men.”
Black put his cigarette in his mouth, eyeing Aidan carefully. “How many men?”
“As many as you can bring. We don’t want anyone getting wind of this,” Aidan said.
The fire crackled in the silence that followed as Black’s eyes traveled from Aidan to Alexandra.
“How much you giving me?” Black said finally.
“Twenty percent,” Aidan answered.
“Try again,” Black retorted.
“Half,” Aidan said reluctantly. “That’s still more than most people will see in their lifetime, maybe two.”
“As you say,” Black said. He wheeled his horse around. “I’ll be back tomorrow evening. Let’s do this under cover of dark—as you say, we don’t want anyone accusing us of claim jumping or some such.”
“Tomorrow evening,” Aidan repeated.
Alexandra didn’t move, didn’t breathe until Black was gone. She exhaled when he rode past the gate. Her hands were numb in a way that had nothing to do with the cold water she’d put them in.
Aidan turned back to her. His face was stony, carved from one of the mountains rising in the distance. “There’s a fire laid on the ridge,” he said. “We set it before Antony went into town. He’ll be watching for it.”
“We’ll light it,” Alexandra said.
Aidan looked as though he might argue, and then didn’t.
“I can’t believe that worked,” she breathed.
“He wanted it to,” Aidan said. He sat down next to her, his shoulder pressing against hers. He looked out over the ruins of the ranch, and Alexandra followed his gaze.
The big house was mostly gone. The range and the fireplace stood defiantly in the pile of blackened wood and ash, but there was little else to salvage. The barn, too, was gone, and most of the fences were tilted or knocked over.
“All of this, over money,” Aidan said, shaking his head.
“People have survived with less,” Alexandra said, laying her head on his shoulder. “This was hardly anything when you and your brother bought it, and you built it up from nothing. We can do it again.”
He pressed his lips to the top of her head. “I don’t know what I’d do without you,” he said against her hair.
“Be bored, most likely,” she said lightly. Inside, her heart lightened and quickened.
Aidan laughed and pulled her tighter against himself. She went willingly, curling up against his side.
“Strange to think that all of this will be decided tomorrow,” he said softly.
Though he didn’t say it, Alexandra could hear the unspoken words at the end of that sentence: One way or another.