hurt her.
“I’m sorry.” He cleared his throat.
“I don’t need reminding,” she whispered.
“I know. I just don’t want to see you hurt again.”
She watched Miles limp toward the back of the store. He didn’t mean to be cruel, he’d just hardened a long time ago.
Mary shoved a tear from her cheek. She was slowly mirroring him. Before long they’d be made of rock. The ?rst two petri?ed humans to still be breathing.
Maybe Cooper Adams wasn’t mean or even worthless, but she knew he was not for her. She didn’t want to marry a rancher and look like she was ?fty by the time she turned thirty. She had seen the settlers’ women come in the mercantile with children hanging all over them while they traded their last family heirloom for a month’s worth of groceries.
She’d been told there were only two kinds of women out here, wives and whores, but as long as she had her brother to live with she would be neither. She’d stay here hiding. Invisible.
Chapter Four
“SHE’S SURE NOT the girl for me,” Cooper mumbled as he rode along the north border of his ranch toward the breaks. He had tried not to think of Mary Woodburn when he drove back from town with Winnie chatting at his side or while he’d unloaded the lumber. He tried, but he hadn’t succeeded. He must have relived their short time together a hundred times during the night.
The memory of her touch was a way to help him through the night, nothing more. Anything was better than remembering the battles.
Now, this morning, no matter how many times he told himself he had more important things to think about, thoughts of her wormed their way into his mind. Bluegray eyes lingered.
“She’s as plain as this land. A mouse of a woman who probably fears every man who walks into that shamble of a store,” he continued to argue, muttering to his horse. “The odd tingling I got when she brushed against me was probably more like that feeling folks get when they say someone just walked over their grave. More eerie than intimate. So what if she smells all clean and fresh? For all I know she just ?nished taking her monthly bath.”
Cooper kicked his horse into a gallop. If he didn’t stop talking to himself he would be as crazy as Winnie, buying furniture for a house she would never have. How did she ?gure to get that old rocker home on the stage?
All afternoon he pushed himself harder than usual as he helped his men move cattle away from the arroyo where ?ash ?ooding might happen this time of year. Most of the day he didn’t think of anything but work. By midafternoon, the rain rolled in at full gale as the heavy clouds had promised. Now there was no
Just after dark he returned to the house. His only comfort lay in the fact that he wouldn’t have to face his sisters. They were like chickens, getting up and going to bed with the sun.
He climbed down from his horse in the stillness of the dry barn and smiled, knowing Winnie would have left his supper on the stove warming. After being cold all day, he’d end with a hot meal. He hoped he could stay awake long enough to enjoy it.
The feel of a barn always made him relax. When he’d been a boy with older sisters and a mother forever watching him, the barn had been his hideout. He loved the smell of hay and the way rain tinked against the roof. Air always drifted through the cracks in the walls letting him know he wasn’t yet inside and completely safe. The low noises of the animals whispered a welcome. The creaking sounds of the walls made him think the barn itself was an aging giant stretching around him.
The side door thumped against the barn wall. Footsteps, muf?ed by yards of material, shuf?ed through the hay toward him.
“Cooper Adams!” Johanna’s sharp voice sliced through his peace. “It is about time you got home.”
He removed his hat, letting a spray of water circle him as he turned. “Evening, Johanna. What’s wrong?” He’d been able to read her moods in the tone of her voice for twenty years. “Surely you weren’t worried about me.”
“Of course not.” Johanna’s features hardened. He’d insulted her by even asking. “You can take care of yourself. It’s Winnie. She has disappeared completely. Doesn’t have the sense God gave a goat, it seems.”
Cooper’s muscles tightened. “What do you mean, disappeared?”
Johanna looked like she was trying to communicate with the cow. “She has simply vanished off the face of this earth. Emma and I have been beside ourselves all afternoon. Lord help us through this trial.”
“Slow down, Johanna.” To his oldest sister everything fell into the category of “trial” or “blessing.” “Just tell me what happened.”
“When last we saw her Winnie was polishing that horrible chair she bought. When we called her an hour later for lunch, she wasn’t there.”
Cooper stormed toward the house. Maybe Emma could tell the facts. Johanna, for once, was making no sense. Winnie wasn’t a child. She wouldn’t just walk off.
“Did she take the wagon?” he said without slowing.
“No,” Johanna shouted over the rain as she matched his stride. “I had your bunkhouse cook, Duly, check. No horse or wagon is missing. If she rode out of here she did so on a pig. Not that she isn’t dumb enough to try it. I swear, the older she gets, the more absentminded she becomes. I only pray I live long enough to take care of her. It is my cross to bear in this life.”
Cooper reached the porch, running across the wood without caring that his spurs might be scarring it.
“Winnie’s missing.” Emma stated the obvious as he stepped inside. “Gone. Disappeared. Lost.” She paced like a toy wound too tightly, as she waved both arms, twin windmills blowing in circles accenting each word. “She’s been acting stranger than usual ever since we got here. Everyone knows she walks for her constitution every day, but never far, never long.”
Cooper tried to calm down his sisters. Johanna saw herself as a martyr and Emma followed suit as second in command. “She couldn’t have just evaporated,” he said. “Has she ever done this before?” The thought occurred to him that he didn’t see them all that often. Maybe this was something she did on a regular basis.
“No,” Emma answered. “She goes in her room sometimes and reads. And she goes for walks, but never long ones. I’ve told her ?fteen minutes is all she needs of exercise each day to be regular as a clock. That’s very important at our age.”
Emma paced in front of the ?replace, putting pieces of an invisible puzzle together. “She must have been reading late last night because her eyes were red this morning. I’ve told her a hundred times not to read by lamplight or folks will think the color of her eyes is red and not blue.”
“What was the last thing either of you said to her?” Cooper could guess. They said the same things to Winnie and somehow she managed never to listen.
Emma wrinkled up her forehead. “I said she must have had to search long and hard to ?nd a dress as ugly as the one she bought while she was in town with you. I can hardly believe the Debords bought such a pattern.”
“Did that upset her?” Cooper asked.
Emma shook her head. “I don’t see why it would. Someone had to tell her, after all. Did you see the thing? The lines were out of date and the material looked like it was faded along one side.”
Johanna stepped in front of Emma like a seasoned tagteamer ready to take on the cause. “Did Winnie talk to anyone in town yesterday?”
“You think she’s been kidnapped?” Emma whispered her fear. “Oh, my. She was taken wearing that terrible dress.” Emma’s face paled. “Maybe the Apaches got her. I’ve heard of such things. They come into the house all silent like and snatch the ?rst woman they see. Take her back to their camp and make her one of their wives.”
Cooper studied Emma carefully, trying to decide if she’d been dropped on her head once too often as a child. “First, there are no Apaches in these parts and, second, it would take two or maybe three strong braves to
As the women made other guesses, he thought of Woodburn back in town. Winnie
