Chapter 5
Martha wrapped up everything she could at the inn, went over the next day’s work with Eliza, and went to bed early. That morning, she had ridden beyond the inn before the sun cleared the roofs of Willow Crossing.
Jonas’s letter rested inside her coat, folded beside the map he had drawn the day before. She could feel the stiff edge of the paper whenever Chester’s stride shifted beneath her. Jonas had warned that his brothers might not believe a stranger who arrived carrying his instructions.
He had written the second message so they would recognize more than his hand. Whatever he had put on the page was meant to convince them he had given Martha the map willingly.
Their fingers had touched when he passed it to her.
Martha tightened her hold on the reins.
The moment had lasted no more than a second. There was no reason to keep thinking about it, just as there had been no reason to notice how the morning light sharpened the angles of his face or how the old scar along his jaw made him more handsome rather than less.
He was injured. She had saved him. She was carrying out a necessary errand.
That was all.
Chester’s hooves struck the frozen street in a steady rhythm. The bay gelding exhaled clouds of white into the cold air as he carried her past the darkened windows of the mercantile.
Eliza walked alongside them, one hand resting on the saddle skirt. She had followed Martha from the stable despite insisting that breakfast would not cook itself.
“You could still turn around,” she said.
Martha kept Chester at a slow walk. “Jonas’s brothers are expecting word.”
Eliza glanced toward the rifle secured beneath Martha’s leg. “One of the men at the inn could go.”
“Which one?”
“Mr. Talbot.”
“He came to examine the wringer and declared it beyond human repair.”
“That doesn’t mean he can’t ride.”
“It means I’m unwilling to trust his judgment.”
They passed Horace Beckett’s butcher shop. Its shutters remained closed, though smoke rose from the chimney behind it. Martha looked away before the sight could sour her morning.
Eliza continued beside the horse until they reached the eastern end of the street, where the buildings thinned and the road narrowed between snow-covered pines.
“The Numa brothers stay away from town for a reason,” she said. “They don’t welcome people riding onto their land.”
“Jonas warned me.”
“Did he warn you about Reuben?”
“He said Reuben can be argumentative.” She thought about it. “Or did he say untrusting? I don’t remember now.”
“Either word would be a charitable description.”
Martha glanced down. “You know him?”
Eliza’s pace faltered for half a step.
“I’ve spoken to him.”
“Where?”
“At the general store.”
“Recently?”
A flush appeared above the collar of Eliza’s coat. “He comes in sometimes.”
The evasive answer caught Martha’s interest, but she did not press. Eliza had given her little reason to believe the stories about the brothers were entirely true. She sounded less frightened of Reuben than irritated by him, and irritation required familiarity.
“What does he argue about?” Martha asked instead.
“Everything. Prices. Supplies. Whether people are staring at him.”
“Are they?”
“Yes.”
“Then perhaps that argument has merit.”
Eliza frowned at the road ahead. “People say the brothers have caused trouble for years.”
“People also say I refused Edwin Pike because I believe myself too good for him.”
“You refused Edwin because you don’t want to marry him.”
“Exactly. Stories generally improve when the person concerned is excluded from telling them.”
Eliza fell silent.
Martha guided Chester around a deep wagon rut glazed with ice. The trees beyond the last houses stood close together, their branches heavy with fresh snow. The road through them was visible but little traveled.
“What sort of trouble?” Martha asked.
Eliza pulled her shawl tighter. “Reuben broke a merchant’s nose.”
“That sounds specific.”
“The merchant refused to serve Tobias.”
“Why?”
Eliza’s expression hardened. “Because of who his father was.”
The answer needed no further explanation.
“Reuben told the man to apologize,” Eliza continued. “The man called him something worse, and Reuben hit him.”
“Was the merchant arrested?”
“No.”
“Was Reuben?”
“For one night.”
Martha looked toward the pale sky. “Then the story about his temper seems incomplete.”
Eliza stopped walking.
They had reached the place where the road left the final row of buildings. Beyond it, the snow remained almost untouched.
“You still shouldn’t go alone,” she said.
Martha shifted in the saddle and checked the strap securing her rifle. “Taking a man with me would give Willow Crossing enough conversation to last until spring, and besides, I imagine they will be less concerned about me showing up on their land than they would about a man.”
The truth was simpler. Martha wanted to go alone.
She had not ridden this far beyond town since Amos died. For more than a year, every journey had been measured against the inn’s needs. She went to the river for food, the cemetery for obligation, and the shops because people refused to deliver without payment.
An hour on an unfamiliar road should not have felt like escape.
Before the inn, Martha had spent years moving from place to place.
She had watched the country change around her, from open grassland to wooded slopes, from scattered farms to towns built beside tracks that had not existed the year before.
The danger of those years had become clearer once she knew what Amos had hidden from her. Even so, she remembered the freedom.
There had always been another road.
At the inn, every door led to another demand.
A shout came from behind them.
Martha turned Chester as Percy ran along the street, his cap pulled crooked over one ear. He had left his coat unfastened and carried one of Martha’s gloves.
“You forgot this.”
Martha looked down at her hands. One was gloved. The other held the reins bare.
She had been more distracted than she realized.
Percy reached them out of breath and handed it up. “You can’t ride all that way with one glove.”
“You’re right.”
He remained beside Chester after she pulled it on.
“Is something wrong?” Martha asked.
Percy looked past her toward the trees. “How long will you be gone?”
“Only a few hours.”
“What if they don’t let you leave?”
Eliza’s face softened.
Martha leaned down in the saddle. “Jonas asked me to go. His brothers won’t harm the person carrying his letter.”
“You don’t know them.”
“Neither do you.”
“That’s why I’m worried.”
Martha dismounted.
Percy’s fear had not begun that morning. It lived beneath his questions, waiting whenever she walked out the door. He had been abandoned before she found him. A child did not forget how quickly a place could disappear.
She pulled him into her arms.
Percy clutched the back of her coat. His body was thin beneath the wool, though he had gained weight since coming to the inn.
“I will be careful,” Martha said.
“You have to come back.”
“I intend to.”
“Promise?”
She closed her eyes.
Promises had failed her often enough that she disliked making them. Percy needed one anyway.
“I promise I’ll do everything in my power to return to you.”
He held on for another moment before releasing her.
Martha straightened his cap. “Help Eliza with breakfast. Keep the fire in the sitting room fed, but don’t let Jonas attempt to walk.”
“What if he won’t listen?”
“Threaten to fetch me.”
Percy nodded slowly, and then more quickly.
Martha mounted again. Eliza put an arm around Percy’s shoulders as they stepped away from the road.
“If you aren’t back by one, I’m sending someone after you,” Eliza called up to Martha.
Martha lifted one hand and urged Chester forward.
The road disappeared behind her within minutes.
Snow muted the country. The only sounds were Chester’s breathing, the creak of the saddle, and the occasional fall of powder from a branch. Cold pressed against Martha’s cheeks, but the air smelled clean after the mixture of coal smoke, grease, and wet wool that filled Willow Crossing.
Jonas’s map proved precise.
She found the cedar split by lightning where the road divided. One side of its trunk had burned black from root to crown. From there, she followed a narrower trail south of a rock face, then crossed a creek where water moved through an opening in the ice.
The farther she rode, the more she wondered about the man who had drawn the route.
Jonas had spoken little about himself unless the information concerned someone who depended on him. He worried about the Dalrymples, his brothers, and even the mare he had lost. He had not once asked whether the wound might leave him unable to ride or work.
His concern seemed to move outward, never turning toward himself.
Martha had known men who performed kindness so others would witness it. Jonas had nearly died where no one could see.
She pressed Chester onward.
The Numa homestead appeared on a low rise less than an hour after she left town.
The house was built of squared logs beneath a steep roof, with a stone chimney sending a straight line of smoke into the still air.
Fenced pasture stretched behind it. Several cattle gathered near a hayrack, their dark bodies stark against the snow.
A barn and two smaller buildings stood to the east. The place showed careful work rather than wealth. Fences were straight, roofs sound, and paths cleared where people needed to walk.
A man emerged from the barn carrying a pitchfork.
He stopped when he saw Martha.
She halted Chester outside the yard.
The man was younger than Jonas but shared his broad shoulders and dark hair. His expression sharpened as he studied her rifle, the saddlebags, and finally her face.
“I’m looking for Reuben Numa,” Martha called.
“You found him.”
He planted the pitchfork in the snow and approached without offering a greeting.
“Who are you?”
“Martha Bellamy. I own the inn in Willow Crossing.”
His posture changed slightly. Whether he recognized the name or merely distrusted anyone to do with the town, she could not tell.
“What do you want?”
“Your brother is at my inn.”
Reuben closed the distance between them. “What happened to Jonas?”
“He fell near the river. A rock cut his thigh, and he spent most of the night exposed to the cold.”
Reuben’s face lost color. “Is he alive?”
“He was arguing with me when I left.”
The answer eased something in him, though fear remained behind his eyes.
A second man appeared on the porch. He was younger and leaner, with a quiet manner that immediately distinguished him from Reuben.
“Tobias,” Reuben called without turning. “Jonas is hurt.”
Tobias came down the steps quickly.
Martha dismounted and kept Chester between herself and the brothers until she had removed the folded letter.
Reuben watched her hand enter her coat.
“Jonas wrote this for you,” she said.
She held it out.
Reuben accepted the page but did not look away from Martha until she stepped back. Then he unfolded it.
Tobias read over his shoulder.
Martha could not see the words, but she saw when they reached the part about the Dalrymples. The brothers’ concern shifted into purpose.
“They’re above Miller’s Creek?” Reuben asked.
Martha removed Jonas’s map and pointed to the marked parcel. “He left them in a canvas shelter against their wagon. They lack food and tools. Jonas promised to return with help by tomorrow evening.”
Tobias examined the route. “We can take the high-wheeled wagon.”
“Jonas said you’d know which tools,” Martha told him.
“Axes, auger, adze,” Tobias said. “Shovels if the ground near the shelter drifted.”
“We’ll need rafters,” Reuben added.
“The spare ones behind the barn.”
Reuben glanced toward an unfinished shed. “Those were meant for spring.”
“The shed can wait.”
They made the decision without argument. Whatever else people said about the Numa brothers, Martha saw no hesitation when strangers needed them.
Reuben folded the letter and placed it inside his coat.
“We’ll leave within the hour,” he said. “Tell Jonas we’ll get the family under something stronger before nightfall.”
“I will.”
“And tell him he had no business taking the river trail in weather like this.”
“It sounds like he’s learned his lesson about that sort of mistake.”
“He didn’t. He’ll do it again.”
Reuben’s lips thinned once more. “You rode here alone?”
“Yes.”
“Jonas let you?”
Martha raised an eyebrow. “Jonas is in no condition to stop me.”
Tobias looked down, but not before she saw the beginning of a smile.
Reuben seemed uncertain whether to be offended. At last, he stepped back.
“I’ll come to the inn after we settle the Dalrymples.”
“I’ll tell Jonas.”
Martha placed one foot in the stirrup.
“Mrs. Bellamy,” Reuben said.
She paused.
His expression remained guarded, but the hostility had faded.
“Thank you for bringing word. And for finding him.”
Martha nodded, then mounted and turned Chester toward the trail.
Light broke through the branches as she reached the lightning-struck cedar, bright against the untouched snow.
A second path curved north from the road, disappearing between the trees.
Martha slowed.
She had no idea where it went. It might end at a logging camp, another homestead, or nowhere at all. She imagined following it until Willow Crossing lay too far behind her to hear the inn bell or the voices asking when she intended to admit defeat.
Eliza could manage for a day.
Guests would complain. Horace would demand his money. Edwin might call again and find no one to refuse him.
Would anyone else notice her absence?
Percy would.
The thought of him standing at the edge of town, holding her forgotten glove, settled the question.
Martha turned Chester toward Willow Crossing.
The unknown road remained behind her, but she continued thinking about it long after the trees hid it from view.