Gwen held Ronnie tight and rocked him. Deb didn’t try to explain it.
Trace’s mom had died when he was about Maddie Sue’s age, and he had no memories of her at all. If no one ever spoke of the Scotts again, would these children soon forget they’d ever existed? Ronnie would for sure, while Maddie Sue might hold on to dim memories.
Gwen and Deb shared a somber, worried moment. None of them knew what to say. Try and explain death? Distract the young’uns and move on? Which was right?
Gwen said quietly, “I’ll ride with the children. At least for now.”
Nodding, Deb stepped up to Trace and reached for him in a way that made his heart start pounding. Deb reached on higher and lifted Maddie Sue off his shoulders.
He felt a little dizzy once he realized she hadn’t been reaching for him; his mind had just gone wild.
He helped transfer Maddie Sue and got everyone mounted up on Black, hunted up his hat, and they set out.
“I’m going to walk just as fast as we can, Deb. Let me know when you need to slow down, but by my figuring we’ve only come about five miles up that trail, and with my tracking we made mighty slow work of it. We have to cover a lot of ground. The temperature out here drops at night, and we’ll be walking well after dark even if we make good time and don’t stop very often. We’ll be sorry to be caught out.”
“As I said, Trace, I’ve walked across the bulk of this whole country. Let’s move fast and try to beat as much of the cold as we can.”
CHAPTER
6
They turned south at the fork in the trail and walked along in silence for a time, Trace setting a fast pace with his long legs and Deb keeping up without a word of protest.
She didn’t want to make this one bit harder on him than it already was. The man was saving their lives plain and simple, and she’d do her best to make that as easy as possible. He was already taking a twenty-mile walk when he could be riding.
Trace led the horse. Deb listened to Gwen and the children’s lighthearted chatter about everything—the trees, the horse, the dog, the sky. No such simple conversation sprung up between Deb and Trace.
It reached a point, though, when they’d settled into a comfortable walk and had put an hour of the trail behind them that the silence began to bother Deb. And it didn’t look like he was ever going to break it.
“Tell me about your ranch, Trace.”
“Uh . . . well, it’s a ranch.” He lapsed back into silence. It was possible he was walking faster, too. “With cows and such.”
Cows and such? Well, Deb had interviewed people for her newspaper and heaven knew they weren’t all eager to talk.
“You’re back from a cattle drive? Didn’t you say that? Where’d you take the herd?”
“Sacramento.”
Silence again. Taking the direct approach, she said, “Don’t you want to talk to me? Is that it?” She couldn’t see why he wouldn’t, but then her father had been a talker of the highest order. In fact, the man never shut up. And he’d talked himself into a heap of trouble, so Deb couldn’t fault a quiet man. She saw a faint blush on Trace’s cheeks. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to embarrass you or make you uncomfortable.”
He shrugged. “I-I’ve . . .” His cheeks got purely pink now. Well, not pink exactly because he was so tan, but it was undeniable that under the dirt of a deeply tan cowboy who’d been on the trail for days, he was blushing.
She waited. Wolf ran back and forth across the trail, sniffing and studying everything in complete, almost eerie silence. The horse quick-stepped along, led by Trace. The children chattered quietly, and Gwen spoke as if she didn’t want any loud voices to disturb the horse, so Deb didn’t try and listen to them.
“I’ve . . . that is, you’re the f-first woman I’ve . . . I’ve practically ev-ever talked to. Ever. In my whole life.” His eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “There was a woman who brought me food in the diner in Sacramento. And one behind the counter in the general store where I bought some new trousers and shirts and a new hat. I said what I wanted to eat, later ‘thank you’ to the waitress, and she said I was welcome. And at the store, the woman behind the counter asked me if I had a list and I said—”
“You are speaking literally? With those two exceptions, you have never spoken to a woman?”
“There was one or two on the wagon train when I came out. But I fought shy of them.” He looked up at the riders. She didn’t think he was trying to evade her question, he was just a watchful man.
“I have no memories of my ma. Pa said she died when I was near three years old. Pa and I lived on a farm in the hills of Tennessee, and we were a long ways out. There were other men there but no women. My grandpappy lived with us and betwixt him and Pa, if someone needed to head for town, leaving me behind was always simple. I preferred it anyway. A town sounded like a strange place to me.”
“Towns aren’t strange. Well, not exactly.”
“Sacramento was big, though we stayed at the edge of town with the herd, and I didn’t go in and explore much. And no one seemed to like Wolf, nor my horse. I’d call it strange.”
“There isn’t a town around here anywhere?”
“Dismal is about thirty miles past my place. It’s a frontier town with some of the men who got fed up with mining
