would keep him company tonight. A part of the little boy who'd had to grow up at ten years old still haunted the man.
CHAPTER 2
Travis spent the next morning trying to avoid Sage. Kid sisters were no fun when they turned into women. She pestered Martha, and then him, with worries over her hair, the length of her dress, and what ribbon to wear at her throat. Martha didn't seem to mind the talk, but Travis escaped to the little study where the family kept their library of books. He pretended to be lost in a book every time she passed. He would have ridden the ranch, but a fine mist started before dawn and, according to Sage, hung around just to frustrate her.
Travis found refuge in the library. He loved the book-lined room almost as much as he loved campfires and night skies. Here, among the many volumes, he felt near his parents. Andrew McMurray had cherished books. When he came west, half the weight of his luggage had been reading material. He met their mother, Autumn, at a mission where he'd gone to teach reading. Both were seventeen-too young to care about their differences but old enough to recognize true love. According to Autumn, she'd fallen for Andrew the moment their fingers touched beneath a book they both held. After they married and settled Whispering Mountain, Andrew made the journey to the Austin Colony twice a year to pick up supplies shipped from New Orleans. He'd trade a horse for a wagonload of goods and always packed within the necessities would be the latest books from back East.
Travis ran his hand over the leather-bound copies on every subject from law to ranching. He also noticed the stack of new novels piled on the desk and wondered if his brothers ever had time to read them. When Sage was in school, her teacher, a widow named Mrs. Dickerson, always sent home lists of books the boys should buy each year. She might not have taught them, but she made sure they were well read.
He pulled a book called
Hours passed. He was lost in the book when Sage tapped on his shoulder.
'You'd better get dressed. We need to leave before it starts raining again.'
Travis stood, reluctant to pull away from the fiction. 'All right. Hitch the wagon while I change into the clothes Martha ironed for me this morning.' He might as well stop dreading the evening and start getting it over with.
Sage folded her arms. 'I can't. I'm all cleaned and pressed.'
He looked at her. True. She wasn't just clean, she was spit and polished. For a moment he wondered where his sister was beneath all the ribbons and ruffles. The brothers had tried not to make her into a boy, but they may have gone too far. She looked as if she were wearing a bushel of lace.
'Hurry up.' She pushed his leg off the arm of the chair. 'I don't want to be late to the year's only dance.'
There she was, he thought, bossy as ever. He remembered when she'd been five and Teagen had ordered her a china tea set for Christmas. She'd made them all sit down and have tea every night for a month. The conversation was always the same. They drank lukewarm tea, and she threatened to kill the first one who broke a piece of her set.
Travis took the stairs three at a time wishing either Teagen or Tobin had shown up to take his place. He'd made it to twenty-eight without ever having attended a barn dance and dreaded this one more than any gunfight he'd ever experienced. The folks around, even the upstanding ones, had never been too friendly toward him, and he guessed nothing would change just because they set the meeting to music. But Sage seemed to have her heart set on going.
Thirty minutes later he waited beside the buckboard while Sage stood on the porch and tied a scarf around her hair as if it were the most important thing she'd done all day. 'I don't see why we can't ride horseback,' he mumbled. 'We could make it in half the time.'
She didn't answer.
He studied the sky while he waited. Rain still lingered far off along the horizon. He'd lived outside for so many years, he could feel the weather as if it were a part of him. When he noticed Sage still standing on the porch, he got the hint and tromped through the mud to carry her to the wagon.
'Don't drive too fast,' Sage said as she settled on the bench. 'I don't want to lose all the curl I burned into my hair.' She pulled her skirts around her knees. 'And don't get those muddy boots within a foot of me.'
'You're welcome,' he said after he circled and climbed up on the other side.
'I'm sorry.' She touched his arm. 'I'm just excited. You don't know what this means to me. I've been planning it since Christmas.'
He smiled, for the first time understanding how important this must be to her. The brothers had each other when their parents died, but Sage had only been a baby. 'Well, then, I'd better get the prettiest girl in Texas to Old Elmo Anderson's annual party in one piece.' He held the reins to a pair of matched bays that could have pulled ten times the wagonload at twice the pace. The McMurrays raised horses, and these were fine examples of their stock.
Twenty minutes later the wagon rolled across the only bridge that connected their ranch with the rest of the world. Travis sometimes told people he lived on an island, for it seemed that way. The river bordered the ranch from the north and east, the hills from the south and west. A lone man on horseback, if he knew the exact path, could make it through the cliffs between their land and the settlement in a few hours. The boys, when they traveled that way, never left any sign.
The bridge, two miles north of the ranch house, made access to the ranch easy but almost doubled the time it took to reach the settlement. Travis remembered, down to the smell, what it had been like the day he and his brothers burned the old bridge. Their father had been specific: If they were to survive, they had to totally isolate themselves from the world. The bridge that had taken Andrew McMurray a month to build burned within an hour.
It wasn't rebuilt for seven years. Until then, Travis or Teagen had packed everything they needed into the ranch using the hidden path between the hills. Their mother's father and a few braves had come for a short time a year after Andrew and Autumn died. He'd taught them how to mark a trail that they could follow but that no one else would see. He'd also shown them secrets about raising horses that not even their father knew. Then one night he and his men had left as silently as they'd come.
Travis watched the land as he drove the wagon looking for any sign that his grandfather might still be watching over the ranch. Once in a while he swore he saw one of his grandfather's markings on a branch or in dried mud, and he wondered if the old man were still around.
Twilight cooled the air by the time they reached Elmo Anderson's barn. Bedrolls spread out beneath buckboards revealed that some of the families must have arrived the day before. Several covered wagons, loaded for travel, stood circled to the south of the barn. New folks moving in or passing through, he thought. People were coming to Texas by the thousands-Germans, English, French-as well as a steady flow from the other states. Some wanting to get rich quick, but most only wanting a fresh start.
Travis noticed horses tied to a line thirty yards from the road. Saddles and gear had been stacked a few feet away. Hired hands, he thought, and from the looks of the mounts, some must have ridden long and hard to get here. Not counting those married, men still outnumbered women twenty to one out here. Sage would have her pick of single men, and Travis would make sure her pick measured up.
Sage had been wiggling in the seat for an hour. She was starting to look more like she thought she might be shot before anyone asked her to dance. 'Promise me you'll stay close, Travis. There will be people here I don't know.'
'You'll recognize most.' He winked. 'The others will want to know you.'
She nodded but didn't look like she believed him. The McMurrays hated strangers with good reason.
'I won't let you out of my sight.' He knew few in town and remembered only one young woman near his age. Madeline Ward. She'd been a few years younger than he, but he'd seen her in the settlement on trading days. Her father started blacksmithing at the post about the time Travis joined the Rangers. She'd be twenty-five by now and probably had half a dozen kids, so Travis saw no problem in fulfilling his one duty of keeping an eye on Sage.
His sister had a death grip on his arm as they walked into the barn. 'Take it easy,' Travis whispered. He
